The Excellent Lombards(41)
One of the twins saluted, snapping his heels together.
“So, like I was saying,” she went on, clearing her throat and stroking her own irresistible hair again, “I’m super jazzed to have the opportunity to create your parade event and to work with you…athletes? Or whatever. A special shout-out to you, Mrs. Lombard, for inviting me here. Really, I just love this wacky formation biznass. Um, so, okay, I’ll show you what I’m thinking, give you”—she made her gigantic eyes bigger—“the grand design, and then we’ll do some warm-ups.”
The older Bushberger daughters were on Cart Drill, and so was Amanda and there were several adults, including Melvin Pogorzelski, my mother’s star patron, the librarian’s pet. Gloria would have been there if she hadn’t had her love attack, if she hadn’t had to leave us. We all nodded at Brianna, except for William. He seemed to have been struck by the lightning that was Brianna Kraselnik herself. A zap just for him.
She was saying, “Is there anyone who would like to demonstrate what this—thing is, for the newcomers, and maybe for review?”
“Good idea, Brianna,” my mother called from the sidelines.
Amanda’s hand shot up. I would have volunteered but a small something stopped me. I wasn’t sure that our choreographer was in fact trustworthy. My mother had invited our neighbors over for dinner back in the fall, but because of the Kraselniks’ school and hospital events, and our harvest, we had so far never gotten together. Cart Drill, then, was our first substantial acquaintance with Brianna. Her squealy voice, her mincing and mugging for the Bershek twins, made me wonder if deep down she didn’t think Cart Drill was retarded. That would be her word, one we weren’t allowed to use. And maybe William was arriving at that same suspicion, too, the reason he looked as if, should he be able to move, he might try to slip away.
I could see suddenly the retarded aspects of Cart Drill, the outsider’s perspective at once unsettling. There was the embarrassment of Mitchell, for one, the autistic patron, thirty-three years old, whom my mother enlisted to operate the boom box. During rehearsal he cradled the box in his arms as he rocked and groaned, taking the job of operating the PLAY/PAUSE button with the gravity it required. And there was dumpy old Melvin Pogorzelski, who was overly enthusiastic, too, sliding around in his stockinged feet, and clumsy Mrs. Johnson, always banging into us with her cart, and even my mother was mortification, The Director on a stepladder looking down on our formations as if she thought she were the Almighty.
But was Brianna mocking us, the team? When she described how the carts would be decorated with shiny silver strips that hung from the lip of the shelf, like a hula dancer’s skirt, she did seem sincerely excited. We girls all said, “Ahhhh!” There were fifteen carts that were strictly designated for the drill team, carts that could not be used for ordinary purposes. Shelvers, stay back. When Brianna—and not my mother—asked who would like to be on the decorating committee I couldn’t help thrusting my arm into the air, even before Amanda did. And I couldn’t help, either, my pride when Brianna said that I would be the girl hoisted on the shoulders of Melvin and Mrs. Bushberger, my cart minded by William when we got to, Oh, as long as I know how to love, I know I will stay alive. The key message of the song. Amanda could never have been at the top of any pyramid because she was too chubby to be lifted.
When Brianna first played us the song, played “I Will Survive,” Melvin observed, “That is not the most patriotic number I’ve ever heard.”
Before our choreographer could defend her Memorial Day selection William said, “Yes, it is.” He spoke softly, so that everyone had to turn to see if in fact it was he who had made the comment. His face had turned completely red. He was looking at the floor. “It is,” he said again. “There’s no point to freedom—I mean, you can’t, um, have love if you’re not free.”
What in the world?
“OhmyGhaaaad,” Brianna said. “That, my friend, is so deep.” She shook her head in wonderment. “I can’t believe, Will, how incredibly, amazingly profound that is.”
Will? Did she already know him? From the middle school and high school bus stop? An acquaintance he’d never mentioned?
“KA-razy deep,” one of the Bersheks said.
“You, boy,” she barked, “no more out of you, you hear me?”
I was confused, still very much unsure if I liked Brianna, if I maybe wanted to tell my mother right then that I was retiring, but also I couldn’t quit when I was going to be the girl riding on the shoulders of the adults. By the end of the hour the Bersheks had decided Cart Drill was too difficult for them, they were too cloddy, and away they went into the library proper. “Oh, too bad,” Brianna said sarcastically. “Whatever will we do without them?” She slapped her hands to her cheeks, her lips in the O of astonishment. Some of the Cart Drillers laughed.
With the irritants gone we were able to get down to work. Although in the end the parade was a sensation, most everyone proud and exhilarated, I was not in that camp because of my private knowledge of Brianna’s character. Beyond her flirty behavior and her obscure jokes in our rehearsals, there was criminal conduct that I, and only I, happened to witness after our first practice, when the orchard came into full bloom.
This is what happened. On Blossom Day my mother always let William and me stay home from school. We were sent from the house in the morning with a basket of necessities, and told not to return until three thirty, the hours of the official school day. If the sky was softly blue and the sun’s radiance everywhere, no dark hole in which to hide, and the air still, nothing in it but bees working, blossom to blossom to blossom, the orchard lit with a snowy brilliance, and the grass plush and shiny, every green blade brimming with light, and here and there a carpet of violets, and swaths of beaming dandelions—then you yourself, you were dazed. You were bumbly and drunk, too, a once-a-year festivity.