Babyface Read online

  Ms. Shindy was sitting on the edge of the stage, talking to some of the Drama Society kids. She looked like one of the senior girls in her skinny pants and unlaced high-tops. Toni sat down in back, and Julie went up front. She had a part in the play they were giving just before finals.

  During the second act L.R. Faberman came in and sat down across the aisle from Toni. “Holy cow!” she whispered to herself. She riveted her eyes on the stage, sending thoughts to Julie. L.R. is here … L.R. is here … L.R. is here.…

  The scene ended and Ms. Shindy went up on the stage. “I want to check my voice projection. Are you people able to hear me in back of the auditiorium?” She leaned out. “Who’s back there, anyway?”

  “It’s Toni Chessmore,” Julie said.

  Everyone in that auditorium turned and looked toward the back. L.R. also turned and looked at Toni.

  “Can you hear me back there, Toni Chessmore?”

  “Yes,” Toni mumbled.

  “What?” Ms. Shindy put her hand behind her ear.

  “I can hear you.”

  “You can hear me?”

  They could probably hear her in China, Toni thought.

  L.R. suddenly stood up. “Yes, we can hear you.” He left after that. Why had he come? Why had he left? Toni had no answers, no theories. That was the way the boy was, mysterious.

  On the way home she asked Julie if she’d noticed L.R. back there. “Of course,” Julie said. “I think he came in to see me. He was there one day last week, too.… I think he’s rich, Toni. The dark glasses are the giveaway. He wears them every moment of every day. Doesn’t that seem superior to you, beautifully arrogant? Exactly the way somebody rich would act?”

  Toni mused over this. She had never known anyone rich. Were they really that way, superior, arrogant? Was L.R.? “Are you criticizing him? I thought you were in love with him.”

  “My child, one thing has nothing to do with another. It’s spicy to criticize. It’s interesting.” Julie linked her arm with Toni’s and pulled her close. “That’s why I like being in love! It’s interesting, and it gives me something to think about besides my rude parents.”

  Rude? That was mild compared to some of the things Julie said about her parents. After their last fight Julie had come running over to Toni’s house. “I hate them!” she screamed. “I’ll never forgive them. I hate their guts. I’d like to rip off their heads. And don’t say anything. You don’t know what it’s like, Toni. Your parents are wonderful, they love each other, they love and adore you.”

  Toni didn’t say anything. How could she, without sounding smug? What Julie had said about her parents was true. They were wonderful. It was part of her Toni Luck. It was part of her.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  “Toni!” In her room, Toni heard Julie calling her. She went to the window. Julie was below, on the lawn. “Toni, I’m coming up.” A minute later she burst into Toni’s room. “My stupid parents are at it again. My father quit his job. He just got it two months ago!”

  “Oh, Julie—” Toni began, reaching out to her friend.

  Julie jerked away. “Don’t say it! Don’t say you’re sorry. And don’t tell me you understand, because you don’t.” She threw herself down on the bed. “Your father works, he always has the same job, your mother doesn’t have to grovel for money. Your parents get along, your whole life isn’t ruined by them.”

  “My parents fight sometimes,” Toni said.

  Julie blew disbelievingly between her lips. “You call that fighting? They don’t fight, they bicker. That’s different, take it from me, that’s a huge difference.”

  Toni sat down next to Julie and tried to think of something to say to her, something positive but not goody-goody. She stroked the glass cat on her bedside table. Her father had bought it for her on her tenth birthday at the factory in Corning. They had driven down there together to pick it out. It was hand-blown, all curves and shining smoothness, the tiny glass whiskers so fine that they seemed to tremble as if in a breeze.

  “You know, Julie, when your father’s not working, he does things around your house. Remember when he painted your desk? And he does things for other people. Remember when he went all the way to Utica to pick up a part for my mother’s car?”

  “He’s all heart.” Julie pushed the pillow behind her head. “You know what he kept saying to my mother? Don’t worry. ‘Don’t worry, Jerrine, I’ll get another job. This one wasn’t suited to my temperament. Don’t worry about the bills, Jerrine. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.’ Don’t worry, don’t worry! Do you know how many times he said it? I counted. When I got to twenty, I left.”

  “Are you sleeping over?” Toni asked.

  “Yes, I’m sleeping over! I’m sick of hearing them. I don’t see how Heather can stand all that disgusting noise.”

  “Heather is leather,” Toni said.

  Julie gave her a quick smile. “Toni, I’m never going to make it to eighteen living there.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “I have to get away.”

  “You can’t, Jul. You have to finish school.” This wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation.

  “I don’t need school to be an actress.”

  “Julie, you’re going to go to a college where they have a really great drama department, and you’re going to learn all kinds of stuff, and then you’re going to be discovered.”

  Julie made a terrible face and started breathing hard. “What if I go crazy first?”

  “You won’t, Julie.”

  “How do you know?” Now her eyes were filling. Her lips trembled.

  “I won’t let you go crazy.”

  “Promise?”

  Toni put her arm around Julie. “I promise.”

  “Sacred promise?”

  “Sacred promise,” Toni said.

  Julie closed her eyes briefly. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “Okay.”

  Every year on Toni’s birthday, the plum tree below her bedroom window was in blossom. Her father had planted it on her first birthday, and every morning of her life it was the first thing she saw, bare black branches in winter, white flowers in spring, and tiny red plums in summer.

  Her father used to sing to her in her crib, a song of his own making. “Babyface, my dear little babyface, you are the sweetest little neatest little babyface.…” Maybe, Toni thought, that was how she’d gotten her love of music—her father’s face over her crib like a giant daddy balloon, his deep voice singing just to her. Her parents thought it was impossible that she remembered that, but she did.

  Sometimes, if he was moved to do it, her father would sing that song on her birthday. Toni hoped he didn’t do it this year. Julie and she were having a joint birthday party with their families. They almost always did, and almost always, for one reason or another, somebody wouldn’t show up. Two years before, Heather had been down with a cold. Another year, Toni’s mother had gone to New York City to be with Toni’s sister, Martine, when she was having an operation.

  This year it was Toni’s father. She didn’t have to worry about his singing to her in front of everyone. He was on duty at the firehouse and wasn’t able to trade time. For a while it looked like Julie’s father wasn’t going to make it to the party, either. He’d taken off on his motorcycle on a jaunt to Atlantic City a few days earlier, to see a wrestling match and maybe do a little gambling. But at the last moment—they were already at the table in Julie’s house—he showed up with his helmet in one hand and a bunch of yellow flowers in the other.

  “Bought you these posies with my last ten dollars,” he said to Julie’s mother.

  Mrs. Jensen stared at her husband. He was a tall, thin man who liked to wear scarves tossed around his neck. Mrs. Jensen was pretty but tired-looking. She had the same sort of flashing, bulgy blue eyes and blond hair as Julie and Heather. “Flowers?” she said.

  “Flowers,” he said, bending almost from the waist toward her. He was smiling and staring back at her, and
Toni wondered if they were going to explode into one of their fights right in front of everyone. Her stomach tensed at the possibility.

  Then Mrs. Jensen took the flowers and stuffed them in a jar. “Well, thank you, Steven,” she said.

  “You’re welcome, my darling.”

  Under the table, Toni toed Julie, who gave her a relieved look, then got up to get a plate for her father.

  After the food but before the cake, Toni’s mother and Mrs. Jensen brought in the girls’ presents. Julie and Toni went from one box to the next, tearing paper and throwing ribbons into the air. “These girls don’t know how fortunate they are,” Julie’s mother said. She was smoothing out the ribbons to use again.

  “I never had a birthday party,” Julie whispered from the corner of her mouth to Toni.

  “I never had a birthday party,” Mrs. Jensen said. “You know, Violet,” she said to Toni’s mother, “my folks were hired-out farm workers.”

  Every year Mrs. Jensen said the same thing on their birthday. “I had two rich cousins I hated because I had to wear their old skirts and blouses.”

  “Even their underwear,” Julie whispered.

  “Even their underwear,” Mrs. Jensen said.

  “Oh, that would never do for my Toni,” her mother said. And then she started telling the same story she told every year—how when Toni was little, she loved the story of the fairy godmothers crowding around the princess’s cradle, blessing her with wonderful wishes like beauty, wisdom, and happiness.

  “Here was this little mite, and she always cried when I came to the part where the jealous fairy godmother wishes the princess will fall into an everlasting sleep,” Toni’s mother said. “She would pipe up in her little voice, ‘I don’t want the princess to sleep forever. I want her to be happy forever.’”

  Heather rolled her eyes. “Oh, how adorable.”

  “Happy forever,” Mrs. Jensen echoed. She looked at Mr. Jensen, who was tipped back in his chair, yawning. “Isn’t that something, how we think things like that are possible when we’re kids?”

  “And a good thing we think so,” Toni’s mother said. “Otherwise we might never get out of bed.”

  Mrs. Jensen gave an abrupt laugh. “How true!” She got up and brought in the cake. It was frosted in white and covered with candles. Toni counted. Thirty candles. Fourteen for each of them, plus one each to grow on.

  “Speech! Speech!” Heather said. “Toni, make a speech.” Heather gleamed. She knew she was putting Toni on the spot.

  Julie rescued her. “Shut up, Heather. We have to wish on the candles.”

  Julie and Toni held hands and bent over the cake together. Toni closed her eyes. What could she wish for? She didn’t want to change anything in her life. It was perfect. Well, nearly. She could wish for her mother not to tell that same story on her birthday again next year, but that was so trivial. Finally she wished for nothing in her life to change.

  When she told Julie later, Julie said, “That wasn’t my wish, kiddo! I wished for tons of changes.”

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  “Julie’s eating supper with us, Mom,” Toni said. “She’s going to sleep over, too.” She kissed her mother, who had just come home from work. “I smell licorice.”

  Her mother felt around in the pockets of her jacket and came up with a string of red licorice. “I saved it for you.… What’s with Julie?”

  Toni got plates from the cupboard. “Her parents.”

  “Again?” Her mother moved quickly around the kitchen. She took an aerobics class once a week and ran four miles every other morning. “I’m fifty, I can’t let myself slow down,” she would say. “Because once you start slowing down, you start running down.”

  “How did you like that caraway cheese I put in your lunch?” She was constantly trying to fatten Toni up. At the supper table, though, when Toni’s father sliced a chunk of the same cheese, her mother’s reaction was different. “Hal—calories and cholesterol.”

  Her father cut a second slice. “Babyface, tell the skinny woman that the fireman eats whatever he wants because he’s in shape.”

  “Sweetie,” her mother said, “tell the overweight one that he hasn’t been in any kind of shape for more years than he wants to count.”

  Babyface, tell her … Babyface, tell him … For as long as Toni could remember, her parents had played this game. When she could barely walk, they had sent her with messages to deliver in her baby voice from one to the other. She would be rewarded with a hug, a kiss, laughter.

  Toni passed the rolls to Julie. “You people are very cute, but cut it out now.” Her father saluted. They both liked it when she bossed them around. “Dad,” she said, “Mom has a point, though. We were hearing in health class about obesity—”

  “Hey, hey, hey. You calling me names?” He sat there, a massive man with a round smiling red face. Every room was always too hot for him. “You think I’m fat? You getting together with your mother on this?”

  “Daddy, you could lose a little bit of weight. And I worry about you smoking. You know what Julie calls you? A smoking maniac.”

  “Thank you very much, Toni,” Julie said.

  The phone rang in the kitchen, and Toni went to answer it. It was her sister. “Martine here,” she said. “Is this Toni?”

  Who did she think it was? “Hi, Martine.”

  “Is Mom there, then? May I speak to her, please?”

  Whenever her sister called, it was always, “Hello, is this Toni? Is Mom there?” Once in a while she’d ask to talk to their father. But never, Toni thought, never did her sister take an extra breath to talk to her. Would it hurt her to say “Toni, what’s doing with you? How’s your life? What’re your thoughts on the world?” But maybe she thought Toni had no thoughts, or none that she would be interested in, anyway.

  When her mother came back to the table after getting off the phone, her face was flushed. “Well, guess what? Martine’s engaged to that nice man she told us about. Alex Grant, the one who sells real estate.”

  Toni gave Julie a look and held up three fingers, meaning this was the third time her sister had been engaged. Each time before, her mother had been just as happy. And each time when Martine broke the engagement, Toni’s mother had said it was for the best.

  Later Toni and Julie went into the family room with their homework. Julie shoved a cassette into the VCR. She was an old-movie freak. “North by Northwest is a classic, Toni. Cary Grant is adorable. I love that dimple.”

  “As adorable as L.R. Faberman?”

  Julie shoved her. “It’s different. Cary is old and adorable. L.R. is young and adorable.”

  “I think you should talk to him.”

  “I will when the time is right,” Julie said.

  “When is that going to be?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe soon.”

  “Are you worried about talking to him?” She would be if she were in love with someone.

  “No, I always have things to talk about. You know what I’m really worried about? What if he’s dull? Then I won’t have anybody to be in love with.” Julie leaned forward. “Wait, don’t talk, this is one of my favorite parts.”

  Toni found the movie not terribly interesting. The heroine, an actress named Eva Marie Saint, had hair like gold cement. Ditto her face, not a quiver of emotion. Maybe Toni’s sister and Eva were the same type. She picked up the framed picture of Martine that was on the end table, her high-school graduation picture.

  Toni had been only two years old and didn’t remember that time, but then she didn’t remember very much about Martine, who had been fifteen years old when Toni was born. Two years later Martine had gone to college. Since then, except for brief visits sometimes, over the holidays, she rarely came home. They were like strangers, Toni thought. If she wrote her a letter, she’d have to begin not with Dear Sister, but Dear Stranger.

  Dear Stranger,

  I find it amazing we came from the same parents. We are not at all alike. You’re tall, bea
utiful, graceful, you’ve got a great business head. You got some very fine gifts from the fairy godmothers at your cradle! Do you know what I’m saying? Do you like reading? Did you read fairy tales when you were a kid? Did Mom read to you? Did Dad sing to you?

  I have an idea that sisters should be special to each other. I can see from watching Heather and Julie in action that I’m probably right off the track, being sentimental. I don’t think you’re sentimental, so probably it won’t bother you at all when I say that sometimes I forget I even have a sister. Well, I know you won’t write back, because I won’t send this letter. And I won’t send it because I know you wouldn’t write me back, even if I did send it! (Remember the year I wrote you three times? No? I didn’t think so. You never answered.) Well, good-bye for now, until the next time I feel like writing you a letter I won’t send.

  Toni

  P.S. My music teacher in fifth grade wrote in my autograph book, “Never B Flat, Always B Sharp, Always B True to Yourself.” I tried to take that to heart. I thought it meant I should always be honest. Maybe that’s one thing we do have in common. Since you have no interest in me, it’s probably very honest of you not to pretend that you do.

  “You’ve got to watch this part.” Julie shook Toni’s arm. “This is my favorite scene. Cary Grant is so cool.” She spoke his line with him, in a clipped English accent. “‘I haven’t let anybody take off my clothes since I was a little boy.’”

  “‘But you’re a big boy now,’” Eva Marie Saint and Julie drawled together.

  A few minutes later Toni’s father came in. Julie flashed a smile. “Mr. Chessmore, are you going to watch the movie with us? You’ll probably enjoy it.”

  “She lies, Dad,” Toni said. “It’s boring.”

  Her father pulled up a chair. “Is it hot in here?”

  “Not especially, Dad.”

  He wiped his forehead with a red bandanna. “Are you girls comfortable?”

  “I’ll open a window for you,” Toni said.

  “Oh, don’t bother, Babyface,” he said. But she got up, anyway, and opened both windows.