Violet and the Pie of Life Read online

  Mr. Goldstein spent the next few minutes giving us notes. He finished by saying, “Let’s not dwell on our mistakes. Hang up your costumes, put away the props, and rest well tonight. Curtain call tomorrow is at six p.m. Onward. And break a leg.” He tried but failed to smile, shook his head, and walked off.

  I hurried backstage, got out of the disgustingly sweaty Lion costume and scrubbed the greasepaint from my face.

  Back in my school clothes, I walked through the cursed auditorium and empty seats. They’d be filled tomorrow as we performed our disaster in front of my mom and other parents and teachers and hundreds of kids from school.

  If I couldn’t get a serious-but-temporary injury or disease, my best hope was for a large house to soar through the sky before showtime and flatten the auditorium.

  TWENTY-SIX

  When Mom picked me up, she didn’t even ask how the dress rehearsal went. Instead, as soon as I got in Grandpa Falls-Apart, she gushed, “I did it! We closed escrow!”

  I knew from hearing Mom talk over the years that “closing escrow” means a deal is final—no changing your mind and returning a house for something better. It’s good news for real estate agents, but the way Mom was going on about the open houses and showings and negotiating she did, you’d think no one had ever sold a house before. I hadn’t heard her this happy since before Dad left. Actually, I hadn’t heard her this happy when Dad was home. Even though we sat inches from each other in the car, her cheer was not contagious.

  “This is a game changer,” Mom said as if she’d closed escrow on the Empire State Building.

  I felt an urge to punch something, but I choked out, “Congratulations.”

  “Violet? Did something happen? How was the dress rehearsal?” Mom had lost her annoying perkiness, which should have made me feel better but didn’t.

  I looked out the car window, even though it was too dark to see anything. “Rehearsal was fine.”

  “Was that a great ‘fine,’ a good ‘fine,’ or a terrible ‘fine’?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Because you’d probably say rehearsal was fine if a lightning bolt destroyed the auditorium.”

  “I wish,” I muttered.

  Mom put her hand on my shoulder. “That bad?”

  “It was fine. Terribly fine.” I let out a laugh that sounded like a hysterical bark.

  “Someone forgot their lines?” Mom asked.

  “Not just someone. Lots of people forgot their lines. And their cues. And their props. And their brains.”

  “Isn’t that part of the play? The Scarecrow forgetting she has brains?”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t only the Scarecrow.”

  “Oh no.” Mom sighed, almost as if it had been her dress rehearsal that had gone so wrong. “What happened?”

  I told her. Maybe it was because she seemed so concerned or maybe because there was no one else to talk to about it—since McKenzie and I weren’t speaking, Dad was pretending he wasn’t a father, and I couldn’t add to Ally’s suffering—but it felt good to tell Mom about the dress rehearsal. I described the Aunty M&M and Toto/Tonto mistakes, my stinky Lion costume, Diego tripping over the yellow brick road and ad-libbing, “I’m filing a lawsuit,” and the Wicked Witch’s hiccupping fit. I couldn’t tell Mom everything that went wrong. The car ride wasn’t long enough. We’d probably need to drive cross-country for that.

  Every so often, Mom said “Wow” or “Oh gee” or “Sheesh.” She also said, “That Diego sounds like he has a great sense of humor.”

  “He’s pretty funny,” I said as casually as possible. The one thing I would never, ever, ever tell Mom about was my crush on Diego.

  Mom acted so calm that I felt a little less worried by the end of the car ride. What had seemed to me like an endless, nightmarish disaster probably seemed to her like a bumpy few hours. In fact, when I told her about one of the monkeys accidentally wearing her costume backward with the tail in front, Mom did a fake cough like she was covering up a laugh.

  Spilling my guts (some of them, anyway) to Mom had been a good move on my part. Though I wasn’t going to do it on a regular basis or anything.

  As we walked into the house, Mom draped her arm around me and said, “There’s an old saying: Bad dress, good show. That means a bad dress rehearsal is a sign of a good opening night.”

  I shook my head. “Good try at a pep talk, Mom. But that’s not a real thing.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s a common theater expression, like ‘break a leg.’ ”

  I stopped walking. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” Mom said.

  “Bad dress rehearsals lead to good opening nights?”

  Mom raised her eyebrows. “Honestly, it sounds a bit silly to me. But it’s a common saying.”

  “It sounds ridiculous to me,” I said. I’d thought I was lying to Ally when I’d told her that. But if it was a real expression, maybe there was some truth behind it. If opening nights came out the opposite of dress rehearsals, then we would have the best opening night ever.

  While Mom microwaved our dinner, I sent Ally a text:

  Violet: Remember bad dress rehearsal means great opening night

  Ally: My dad said that too. Sounds crazy

  Violet: Maybe not. And remember the theme of Wizard of Oz

  Ally: There’s no place like home

  Violet: No, what Goldstein said. Find what’s been inside u all along and use it

  Ally: Oh yeah

  Violet: Find ur talent and what u yearn for and use them opening night

  Ally: I’m scared I’ll mess up again and ruin the play for everyone

  Violet: U cant ruin it for me no matter what. Best thing about this play was becoming ur friend

  Ally:

  Violet:

  * * *

  As I heaped mashed potatoes onto my plate that night, Mom pointed to the glass bowl of green beans on the table and said, “You know the rule,” meaning I had to eat a vegetable at dinner.

  “Okay.” I speared a single green bean and dropped it on my plate.

  “You must be looking forward to more free time once your play is over.”

  “Uh-huh,” I grunted. But free time meant not hanging out with Ally and Diego and the other actors every day. I wasn’t looking forward to that. My mom didn’t know me at all.

  “Though maybe you’ll miss being with your theater friends every day,” Mom said.

  Okay, maybe she knew me a little.

  “I’d like to talk to you about Thanksgiving,” Mom said.

  Every Thanksgiving, my family—what used to be my family—drove to Fresno. We always stayed a couple of nights at my grandparents’ house. They had a nice, 2,600-square-foot colonial-style home, plus a quarter-acre backyard that was gigantic by Orange County standards.

  Most of my dad’s family lived in Fresno, so there were lots of relatives there—my Uncle Nate and Aunt Amber and their three boys, my great-aunt and great-uncle and great-grandma, and a few second cousins or cousins once removed or something like that.

  Mom spent most of her time helping Grandma cook and wash dishes, listening to stories about Dad as a boy, and wearing a tiny fake smile. Dad and Uncle Nate always drank a lot on Thanksgiving. It was another thing my parents fought about, on the drive up and on the drive down and sometimes randomly during the year. Dad said Mom was the only person who couldn’t even relax on Thanksgiving. Mom said it was supposed to be Thanksgiving, not Dranksgiving.

  Mom interrupted my thoughts. “I can call your grandparents and ask if we’re welcome there. If you want to come, they probably wouldn’t say no.”

  “Will Dad be there?” I asked, pouring ketchup on my potatoes, fish sticks, and green bean.

  “I don’t know.” Mom put down her fork and stared at me.

  Was drivi
ng five hours to Fresno and listening to Dad’s voice get louder and slurrier worth it just for the chance to see him? Was anything worth the chance to see Dad? There was my Aunt Amber’s caramel-apple pie to think about. Last Thanksgiving, Dad and I each ate a big slice for dessert, another slice a few hours later, and a third slice for breakfast.

  Thanksgiving was supposed to be about being with all your family—your mother and father. But if Dad couldn’t even bother to drive a few miles to see me, why should I have to go up to Fresno to see him get drunk with his relatives?

  “If you want,” Mom said, “we can do something else for Thanksgiving this year.”

  “Okay, let’s skip Fresno,” I said, surprising myself with my eagerness.

  Mom started to smile, but stopped herself. She said, “I was thinking we could still go away for the weekend, maybe fly up to San Francisco.”

  I glared at her across the table. “You only know I want to fly to San Francisco because you read my private emails to Dad.”

  “I’m sorry. I never should have done that.” She picked at the cuticle on her ringless ring finger.

  “Anyway, I wanted to go on vacation with you and Dad. Not just with you,” I said.

  “I wanted that too.” Mom sounded yearn-y.

  I stared at her jagged cuticle and wondered if she’d checked her phone and emails a quadrillion times a day like I had, hoping for Dad to say he’d made a huge mistake.

  “But we’re not going back to how we used to be,” Mom said. “And it’s better for your dad and me to move on than to keep fighting with each other.”

  I nodded. I knew that now. It had taken me a while, but I had finally, sadly, faced up to it.

  “How about just you and me?” Mom asked. “We could stay in a hotel. Maybe eat clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls and ride a cable car and go to a museum.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Last time we went to San Francisco, we drove there and stayed in that old motel in Oakland and took the subway in, because you said hotels in San Francisco were too expensive. Dad said the stains on the motel carpet looked like blood.”

  “They might have been wine stains,” Mom said. “Things have picked up for us financially. Once that deal went through—”

  “What deal?” I smothered a fish stick in ketchup and ate it.

  “The house I sold in Laguna Beach. I’ve been talking to you about it for months.”

  Ugh. Real estate talk. I took a long drink of water to keep myself awake.

  “It’s not just a house, it’s a mansion,” Mom went on, “I priced it at three and a half million dollars.”

  I had a coughing fit. Water shot out of my mouth and nose.

  Mom laughed. “It sold for less than three and a half million, Violet.”

  I wiped my face with a napkin.

  “The buyer bid it down to three point two million.”

  I let out a smaller cough. Real estate agents get paid three percent of the sales price. Three percent of $3.2 million is $96,000. Whoa!

  “My share of the sales price is very nice,” Mom said.

  “Very nice? It’s fantastic!”

  “It really is.” Mom grinned. “And now the couple across the street wants me to sell their home too.”

  Cha-ching! “Tell me more!”

  “The square-footage isn’t as big, but apparently the kitchen was recently renovated, walls down and everything, to open up the space. They put in a Viking stove, induction oven…”

  I ate my mashed potatoes while Mom rambled on about travertine flooring and subway tiles and wainscoting, whatever those were.

  Things I Want to Do in San Francisco.

  Eat authentic Asian cuisine, like gross raw fish

  Go to the art museum

  See a play

  Things Mom Wants to Do in San Francisco

  Eat hot fudge sundaes in Ghirardelli Square

  Go to the celebrity wax museum

  Never set foot in a theater again

  Even if I didn’t get to eat hot fudge sundaes or go to the celebrity wax museum, I bet the trip was going to be awesome.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  As I sat across from Ally at lunch the next day, she let out a big yawn.

  “I’m excited to see you too,” I said.

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

  I could tell. Ally’s eyes were red, and her face was paler than usual. Shockingly, she looked less than beautiful today. Of course, she still looked pretty.

  I leaned across the lunch table and put my hand on her arm. “You’re going to do great tonight. We all will.”

  She shook her head. “The only chance I have to get through lunch and the rest of the day without crying is to not talk about the play.”

  I nodded, secretly grateful I didn’t have to give another pep talk. I did not feel peppy.

  “Let’s talk about something else, like…” Ally stared past me.

  I turned around. McKenzie was walking toward us, wearing the red T-shirt and Levi’s my mom had bought her, and carrying her lunch bag.

  She stopped in front of our table and said, “Hi,” as casually as if we’d traveled back in time, before McKenzie had kicked me, before I’d told her I liked Ally, before Ally had taped the note on my locker, before Mr. Goldstein posted the cast list, before we tried out for the play, to the time when everything was simple, before my dad left.

  Had everything been simple though? Even if none of that stuff had happened, other things would have. Other things already had. Deep inside, I’d been mad at McKenzie for talking me into quitting Girl Scouts. And I was mad at myself for letting myself get talked into it. And there was that argument between our moms before the campout. I had never asked McKenzie about her mother. I’d told myself it wasn’t polite, but really it was easier not to bring it up. With all the silent stuff that had gone on between us, our friendship had been as shaky as the stage curtain. It had never been simple. You could barely even make sense of it in a graph or chart.

  “Um, wow. McKenzie,” Ally said, not even pretending to act casual. “Violet? Violet, why aren’t you saying anything?”

  Because my mouth was hanging open.

  “Do you want to sit with us?” Ally asked.

  “Violet?” McKenzie asked, saying my name like a question.

  It sounded strange. She never said my name like a question. Before, her “Violet” had been more like an order. She’d lost her confidence, or at least her display of it. What if the confidence I’d gained in the last few weeks had been stolen from McKenzie? But confidence was a variable, not a fixed number. It could increase inside me without decreasing inside anyone else.

  “You don’t mind if I sit with you?” McKenzie asked.

  I nodded.

  “Does that nod mean you do mind?”

  “No. Of course I don’t mind,” I said, though I wasn’t sure how I felt. I wasn’t that confident.

  “Please, sit down,” Ally said.

  McKenzie slowly sat at the empty spot on my right.

  “Just don’t talk about the play,” Ally said with a sigh.

  “I heard about the dress rehearsal,” McKenzie said.

  Had she come here to gloat? I wouldn’t let her. If she said one mean word, I’d tell her off. I’d remind her that at least Ally and I had stuck with the play instead of dropping out before the first rehearsal. Ally and I would be laughingstocks, but we’d be brave laughingstocks.

  McKenzie shrugged. “I thought maybe if you needed something…Help with practicing your lines or…” She wasn’t gloating at all. She was being nice.

  “Thanks. But the best way to help me now is to not mention the P.L.A.Y.,” Ally said.

  “I know what
you can do, McKenzie,” I said. “Tell a joke to distract us from the you-know-what. You’re really funny.”

  “People keep saying I’m funny.” She grinned. “Funny looking.”

  I forced a giggle.

  “McKenzie, you’re not funny looking,” Ally said. “Not at all.”

  “I was joking.” McKenzie crossed her arms, probably thinking Ally was doing her sweet act again. She didn’t know it wasn’t just an act.

  “I got the joke,” I said.

  “Here’s something else funny.” McKenzie leaned forward and whispered, “Bella Perez tried to cut her own bangs and botched it. Now they’re more like wisps than bangs.”

  “I don’t think it’s funny to insult people,” Ally said.

  I didn’t either. I never really did. But I used to laugh at McKenzie’s whispered insults anyway and add my own insults right back.

  “What are you, Ally? The humor police?” McKenzie asked, sounding mad.

  Ally didn’t answer. She looked at me and raised her eyebrows as if to say She’s your friend, not mine. Deal with it. Or maybe I was just imagining that.

  McKenzie crossed her arms. “Violet asked me to be funny, so I was.”

  Now she was blaming me too.

  But McKenzie had made a peace offering by coming to our table today. It was up to me to keep the peace. So I said, “McKenzie, you won’t believe what my mom just did.” I wanted to change the subject, but also I was dying to talk about it. “She sold a mansion.”

  “That three-and-a-half-million-dollar house in Laguna Beach with the tennis court?” McKenzie asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “How did you know about that?”

  “How could I not? Your mom was always talking about it.”

  She was? I hadn’t even known about the tennis court. I wondered if McKenzie understood what wainscoting was too. I’d thought of her as self-centered, but I was the one who’d ignored my own mother.

  “I helped your mom with an open house for that place. It really is a mansion,” McKenzie said.