A Crooked Kind of Perfect (3 page)

Which I wouldn't have to do if I was practicing the piano.

Practicing the piano is never boring.

There are whole movies about people practicing the piano.

I saw one movie about this curly-haired kid who heard a piano recital on the radio and the next day her parents got her lessons and a real piano. And a teacher came and told her to play scales, which she hated. Everybody in piano movies has to play scales. They all say they hate playing scales, but they do it anyway and then the movie shows you lots of close-ups of hands playing scales. The hands start out small like that curly-haired girl's and then they change into teenager hands and then grown-up hands and then the next time you see her she 's not a kid, she 's a grown-up in a ball gown playing Beethoven at Carnegie Hall.

When you play the organ, you don't play scales.
And you don't play Beethoven, either. Mostly, you play old television theme songs from the Perfectone D-60 lesson book.

Already I can play "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" and "The
Scooby-Doo
Theme." This week's lesson is
The Brady Bunch
song. It's kind of easy. I play it a bunch of times with the Perfectone D-60's Metronome switch on, and then I flip a switch labeled Western Swing.

"That's pretty good, honey," says Dad.

"It sounds okay," I say.
For an organ,
I think. "Want to hear it on Cha-Cha?"

"Lay it on me," says Dad.

I press a button and a peppy beat kicks in. Until we got the Perfectone D-60, I had never heard a cha-cha. It's like two shoes dropping on the floor and then a dog scratching himself.
Whump whump cha-cha-cha, whump whump cha-cha-cha.
Like that.

Dad is dancing around the living room. I push Steel Drum and Marimba on the Perfectone D-60.

"Olé!" says Dad. Then he starts singing—
cha-cha-cha
—about a lovely lady—
cha-cha-cha.

By the time he gets to the "three boys of his own" part, I have flipped the rhythm switch to Polka and the keyboard is pumping out accordion sounds. Dad keeps
singing, but now he 's bouncing and spinning around the room and using some kind of accent, saying "vun day" and "dis vellow."

He does a hoppy kind of twirl. "Dis is a vonderful polka, Zoe," he says. "Just vonderful."

"Thank you," I say.

"But I am getting voozy from de spinning."

I flip a couple of switches, swapping Tuba for Accordion and changing the rhythm to March.

Dad grins and dashes out of the living room to grab two pot lids he's been using for his DC-10 course. He marches back and forth across the carpet with his knees high in the air, singing and crashing his cymbals together after every "bunch."
Crash-crash!

"Big finish!" I yell, and Dad tosses a pot lid up in the air, spinning to catch it behind his back. He misses. The lid rolls into the hallway and clatters on the linoleum.

I peek around the Perfectone D-60 to see where it has landed. It's at Mom's feet. She's home from work. With all our playing and singing, we didn't hear her come in.

"Let me guess, Living Room University has added a drum major course?" she says. She tosses Dad his runaway cymbal. "Where's dinner? I'm starving."

"Couldn't cook," says Dad. "All the measuring cups are in the mock cockpit."

Mom sighs.

"Wing Ping Linguini?" asks Dad. That's his favorite BBQ-Chinese-Italian restaurant. The food isn't good, but they deliver.

"Not in the budget. We're still crawling out of the financial hole created by this marching band of yours." Mom tilts her head toward the Perfectone D-60.

Dad sits. His pot lids clang together in his lap.

"It's okay, honey," says Mom. "We'll have frozen pizza."

Dad nods and heads to the kitchen.

Mom turns to me. "Shouldn't you be playing scales or something?"

Right before Valentine's Day a pink envelope comes in the mail, which I think maybe could be a valentine from a secret admirer or something but it is not. It is an invitation: pink, in the shape of a sneaker, with a big silver bow where the laces should be.

We're having a Birthday Party!
And this invitation's for you!
We want you to come and have lots of cool fun!
It will sure be a Really Big Shoe!

W
HO
:
Emma Dent
W
HAT
:
An 11th Birthday Party
—
Bring Your Dancing Shoes!!
W
HERE
:
31 Superior Drive, East Eastside
W
HEN
:
Saturday, March 6, 4
P.M.
W
HY
:
Because You Are One of Emma's Best Pals!!!

Emma Dent has invited me to her birthday party. Me. Her former best friend. But the invitation says I am one of her best friends. Am. Like, right now. Actually, it says "best pals," but that's really the same thing.

Maybe she and Joella had a fight. Maybe Emma was always talking about me and how much fun we used to have at lunch talking about whatever it was we used to talk about. And then maybe Joella got jealous and told Emma that if she liked me so much why didn't she just marry me, which is all babyish and stupid, but exactly the kind of thing that a stupid babyish person like Joella would say. And then Emma said, "Fine!" and Joella said, "Fine!" And then maybe Emma felt all rotten about how she treated me and she didn't know what to say. So she invited me to her birthday party and prayed that I would come and forgive her. Which, of course, I will.

I look at the invitation again and see something written behind the silver shoelace bow.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Don't tell Emma!
This is a surprise party!

Emma Dent did not invite me to her Really Big Shoe birthday party.

Her mother did.

I tell my dad that I need dancing shoes for Emma Dent 's birthday party.

And he tells my mom.

And she says that my regular shoes will be fine and what kind of parent throws a party where kids have to go out and buy special shoes, isn't it enough that we have to spend twenty dollars on a birthday present?

We don't spend twenty dollars, though. We spend $14.98. Plus shipping.

"What kind of birthday present do you bring to a Really Big Shoe party?" I ask Dad.

"Odor-Eaters?"

"Dad!"

"How about socks?"

Socks might be okay. The first time me and Emma talked was in third-grade square dancing. We were changing into our gym shoes and Emma noticed we were both wearing toe socks. And when we had to pick partners, she picked me and that was it. Best friends.

"Socks sound good," I say.

Me and Dad spend the whole afternoon shopping
online for socks. We order a bunch from this website called
Sock-It-to-Me.
We get pink ones with sparkly pigs, and some turquoise ones with crocodiles in sunglasses, and two pairs of stripy toe socks: one for me and one for Emma. Like old times.

Emma Dent's party is on a Saturday afternoon, which means that even though my mom goes in to work most Saturdays, she can come home in time to drive me to Emma's. Which is good, because Eastside Wreck and Tow closes early on Saturdays and if Dad got lost we might have to sit in the car until Monday when Marty opens up so we could call him and he could tell us how to get back home.

I've got my feet up on the dashboard. I stare at my regular shoes, which are not made for dancing.

"New socks," says Mom.

I can't tell if she says it like it's a good thing, like "Cool, new socks!" or if it's a bad thing, like "Where did you get the money for new socks?"

I like these socks. They have all my favorite colors striping through them. Turquoise. Sea green. Teal. Navy. Turquoise. Sea green. Teal. Navy. You can't tell with my regular shoes on, but the toes are pink.

Maybe I'll take my shoes off to dance.

"Thirty-one Superior Drive, right? Is this the house?" asks Mom.

There is a huge, inflatable, high-heeled shoe hovering above the patches of snow in the front yard.

"I think so."

"I'll be back at six, Zoe. Can you be ready, so I don't have to get out of the car?"

"Okay," I say.

"If you need me, call the office," Mom says.

I grab Emma's present and dash up the walk.

Mrs. Dent opens the door for me. "It's Zoe Elias!" she yells.

"Aaawwwwwwwwwwww."

"We thought you might be Emma," says Mrs. Dent. "The other girls are in the media room."

The media room has a huge flat-screen television and a wall full of DVDs and posters for movies I've never heard of and marble-looking tile. It also has ten fifth graders smooshed together on an L-shaped couch.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi," they say, all at the same time.

None of them move. There is no more room on the couch. I stand next to a poster for something called
Death Wish II.

"You can put your present over there," says Joella
Tinstella, pointing to a TV tray with lots of little pink presents stacked on it.

I put my present where she tells me to. Then I return to my
Death Wish
spot.

Joella is wearing silver clogs with colored rhinestones that spell out
BRAT
. Britt Munsch is wearing them, too, only hers are shiny red and the brat part is gold. Everyone is wearing those Brat shoes. Except for Lily Parker. Lily Parker is wearing sandals with heels that must be three inches high. She sees me staring at them.

"They're my sister's. She's an eighth grader. She got them for the Winter Wonderland Dance at East Eastside Middle School. She went with Danny Parker. No relation."

No relation. Still, it would be kind of weird going out with a boy with your own last name. Actually, it would be kind of weird going out with a boy at all.

"Girls! This is it!" Mrs. Dent shushes us and everybody who has been sitting on the couch runs to hide behind it. I squat behind the present table.

"Mom," we hear Emma say, "there's, like, a big shoe in the yard."

"SURPRISE!" we yell. And then everybody who
was behind the couch pops out and starts laughing and hopping up and down and their clogs are clattering on the marble-looking tile. Nine—no, ten, counting Emma's—ten pairs of noisy, shiny, sparkling clogs.

And not a sock in sight.

There is a lot of squealing when Emma opens her presents. First she gets some lip gloss, which she has to try on right away.

Joella Tinstella gasps. "You look like that girl on
The Beach!"
she says, and then everybody squeals and nods. Except me. I don't watch
The Beach.

Emma opens some gift cards and some CDs. More squealing.

And then Lily Parker gives her a red T-shirt that says
BRAT
in gold and Emma likes it so much she has to run to the bathroom to take off the pink Brat shirt she is wearing and put on Lily's red Brat shirt and when she comes back into the media room and does this model pose thing, everyone squeals again.

And then she opens my present.

And she gets socks.

There is no squealing.

Emma stares at the socks. Then she shoves her hand into one of them, like she thinks that her real present must be inside. There is nothing inside except Emma's hand.

"Time for cake and dancing!" says Mrs. Dent.

Emma puts the socks down behind her CDs and gift cards and we all follow Mrs. Dent to what she says is the great room, which is really just a kitchen and a living room put together. On the kitchen island is a fancy grocery-store cake in the shape of a shoe. Emma blows out the candles and everyone cheers and somebody puts on some music and people start dancing. Mrs. Dent cuts the cake, and while she is handing out slices I hear Joella say to Britt that even Emma's mom doesn't wear socks.

"Nobody wears socks. Everybody knows that," she says.

I decide not to dance.

I sit on my feet and cover up my regular shoes and my stripy socks.

I eat shoe cake.

I wait for six o'clock.

Mrs. Dent turns off the CD player. "Girls, there is one last present. Follow me!"

We follow Mrs. Dent down the hallway and to a room with double doors.

"Voilà!" she says, flinging open the doors.

There, with a ginormous pink bow wrapped around it, is a gleaming white grand piano.

I get in the car.

"Shhhh," says Mom. "Horowitz."

She is listening to WCLS, the classical station. They're playing a recording of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." I close my eyes and try to forget about Brat clogs and grand pianos.

When we pull into our driveway, I open my eyes.

Mom has closed hers. She's sitting there, letting the car run. The corners of her mouth are turned up a little. She looks happy.

I close my eyes again.

I wonder what Mom is thinking.

Maybe she is thinking about me.

Maybe she is thinking about me thinking about her.

Maybe she is wondering if I had a good time at the party and if I like parties and if maybe I would finally like to have a real birthday party when I turn eleven in May.

Or maybe she is thinking about work.

"Bravo!" shouts someone on the radio. "Bravo!" We listen to the people on the recording cheer and then
Mom takes the key out of the ignition and the applause disappears.

"Nobody wears socks anymore," I tell her.

"Not even in Michigan? In March? When there's still snow on the ground?"

"Nobody."

"You wear socks," Mom says.

"Exactly," I say.

"That was fine," says Mabelline Person. She gulps the last of her ginger ale and stretches.

"Next week..." She flips the page from today's lesson, "Green Acres," to the next song in the Perfectone D-60 songbook, "Those Were the Days," which the book says is the theme from some show called
All in the Family.

"Scootch," she says.