1991 (d)

I work on my speech. Whereas last year mom did the bulk of the composition for me this year we collaborate together, as if we are songwriters chiseling out a show tune for a number that will never be performed.

We garner more written recommendations.  We get one from Bernie next door. We get one from Mr. and Misses Wahl. We get one from Mr. Teske at Christ Lutheran who I have a special bond with.

Dad says not to worry and he will ask his good friend Chuck to write a recommendation on my character.

Every time I skirt past Miss Best’s secretarial office the condom wrapper sized print of my best friend from a snatched childhood standing behind the sunrise smile of his seated Homecoming date like he is about ready to recite pledge of allegiance after lunch. His hair is neatly combed, ploughed to the right with stickly tines smattered with a dollop of gel. The innocuous banner of his smile stretched above his chin in a display of almost child-like joy.

            Renae's forehead alone seems to the mid-chest mural of his sweater. Her hair correlates that of his own in hue and texture,  sandy-blond, a thatch of unadulterated coastline that is peeled back to reveal a generous almost middle-ages dignitary propitious bloodline assenting film of forehead, adorned with a few errant strands of her hair dripping like a stalactite fountain in the form of bangs. Her skin seems almost glossed in a fleshy sheen seated in front of him, her smile dripping below that of his own like two hangers strewn on different racks in a kiddie-room closet. Her dress looks like something leftover from early late night hairspray fused jam sessions with the Bangles, two piece blouse and skirt, Cheetah prints dappled in a black and gold, as if she is some Egyptian goddess.


She is wearing tights that look like you could dip a medieval ostrich quill inside of and scrape out Petrarchan sonnets.

I can't stop thinking about her smile.
 
The planet grows cold. Frost gnaws at the windshield of the planet in translucent fractals. The first film of snow coating the chapped sidewalks of the west bluff a week before Thanksgiving.
 The paper arrive in heaps. We can see caricatured bulbs exit our lips like dialogue ferrying bubbles in the Sunday comics when we pick up the papers in mid-November.

 
I think of the smile of my best friend's girlfriend. Every night I listen to Shepherd moons and rehearse my speech in front of the full length mirror in the music room, the blink of my eyes ricocheting back to me as I expound my hand gestures into a fledged image of my almost fourteen year old self.

Dad arrives inside my bedroom before I go to sleep at night.

He tells me that this is going to be my year.

Sometimes I listen to enya when I fall asleep, dreaming that I am lost in the labyrinth of Parisian avenues and am catching the first asterisk fleck of winter.  

                                                                            ***     

“What did you give Renae for Christmas?” I ask David at church, the sunday of the yearly Christmas concert. 

            “A sweater.” He says, down in the bell choir room, placing his robe on. I repeat the object of the deemed gift again.

            “Yeah,” He says again, Dave he founded the national chapter of the itty-bity-titty committee compliments of Kristi Esutice.  “She helped me pick it out.”

            I make a jab, tell him that I figured that he would be buying her lingerie or something. I then ask him what she got him.

            “She got me a sweater too.”  Adding that they bought each others gift at the same place. As a quick scowl slips across my face, I tell them that they sound like yuppies.

            “Did you kiss her?” I inquire. In his choir robe Dave looks back and says the word what in a vexing fashion.

            “Did you kiss her?” I inquire, once again. From shoulder blade to shoulder blade David swipes his head indicating an elongated no. I think about how just plain out hot Renae is. I think about how much I anticipate entering the social dish of high school. I think about how finding someone besides me between classes will somehow add significance and meaning to my life.

            “Your girl is hot man,” I say again. David adjusts his shoulders in a quick shrug, saying that he can’t argue with me there.

            I turn to David’s brother Andy. I ask Andy what he got his girlfriend for the holidays. He says he got her a sweater as well. He says it plural, “some sweater.”

            “You’ve got to be kidding.” I add. Andy swipes his chin in a similar fashion of his brother to indicate no.  Andy’s homecoming picture is next to David's in Mrs. Best office. His girlfriend is not nearly as hot as Renae Holiday.

 
From behind me Dave tries making a joke by talking like a snork. 

            “ Dude, It’s Christmas bro and you didn’t even kiss your girlfriend.”

                                                            ***

 

“Karen Christmas is a finalist again,” Mom tells me, after coming home at 9:30 in the evening after rehearsals for Oklahoma almost exactly one week before  what has been given the appellation in the Von Behren house hold as the Big Day.

As with last year mom is doing community theatre down at Roosevelt. Last year it was Bye Bye birdie, this year it is Oklahoma. As in last year Martha Thomas has the female lead.

I think about Karen Christmas from last year’s contest. I think about how unblemished her speech was.

 

            “Both Karen and her mom are in the chorus again this year. Karen is also a dancer.”

  

I smile.  I go over the written speech again. I think about the girl with hair that looks like it has been gilded, a strident reflection of the brim of a Botticelli halo. Karen Christmas who is also Lutheran and graduated from the rival Lutheran parochial school in town.  I want to tell my mom that last year she had the best speech hands down. I want to tell my mom that I was envious of the mechanics of her speech.

 

Karen who is now a freshman at the high school located in the far north side of town, the school where all the doctors and lawyers send their progeny to. The school that is an academic powerhouse and teems with promise. Karen who, indubitably, would have already taken a semester of high school French granting her the almost unfair advantage in the judges periphery. That she will be able to seamlessly whip off an impeccably conjugated French sentence like silk emanating from her breath.

People begin to inquire about my pending contest. I listen to Shepherd moons by enya envisioning traipsing through the vortex city of streetlamps and cigarette smoke. I keep the note cards mother scribed out for me—the continental openings to every verbally espoused paragraph—the palm sized cardboard rectangles folded once and pocketed as if some kind of currency were chiseled into them.
It feels like I have an allegiance to those who believe in  me. I keep my notecards in my front pocket at school. I go over them in between classes. I go over them at the lunch table. I shuffle through them outside with David and Patrick on the Yellow Monkey bars at recess. It is like I am rehearsing lines for a play I co-wrote.

A theatrical performance.

 

 

 

I go back to working on my speech thinking to myself that the more I mentally go over the speech, the more I mentally comb over the stanzas and familiarize myself with the rhythm of the oratory I am to present the better it will sound. I look at the sheet of paper. I look at myself in the mirror noticing the subtle orchestrations of my limbs. I listen to more enya. I think about how the avenues of Paris must feel this time of year, cold and chapped and nicotine saturated but somehow trickling with culture and art and the occasional scratch of leaves raking against the street, next to diminutive Renaults, leaves swirling in a haphazard dervish swirl that have survived the indented paragraph breath of winter.

 

Paris in the arrival of Spring.

 

I mispronounce the word Seine on purpose. Not wanting to make it sound like its hominid sin. Not wanting to piss God off even more.

 

Father doesn’t make me a sign this year. Jenny does not write about me in her classroom . I go over the speech again. I can’t help but cosigning a cheesy action moviesque mantra to my individual quest this year, deeming in YC2—Business to finish.

 

Three days before the Big day I notice mom has not been eating. She sits in her mossy-colored house coat in front of the radiator with her bible splayed open.

 

She is fasting for her son.