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SHE'S ALL EYES by Maura Conlon-McIvor
Published by Warner Books, © 2005 by Maura Conlon-McIvor

CHAPTER ONE

Bang. Bang. Bang. Strike three. You're dead. I practice these lines because the world is a dangerous place. I lie in bed at night with my yellow-daisy sheets up to my nose, and Dad comes in my bedroom to snap shut my window. He is like one of those monks from "Robin Hood," moving slow, his toes cracking as he walks from one room to the next. He does not explain why he locks everything up, but I have figured it out: the world is packed full of criminals, and it is the job of my father, Special Agent Joe Conlon, to keep them out of our house.

I pull my sheets closer, fall asleep thinking about the smell of criminals in the trunk of my father's car.

On Saturday morning, Dad stands just outside the doorway, with his hands in his pockets, waiting for me to look up from my book and notice him.

"It's 'The Clue in the Crumbling Wall,'" I say. "Nancy Drew is just about to crack the case." I can barely read all the words, but Dad must be proud that I am holding such a book, so advanced for my age.

"Uh-huh," he says, rocking back and forth. "I am asking you and the others if you'd like to go up to the St. Bede field in fifteen minutes and play ball." Dad never asks us ahead of time. It is always a surprise, one that doesn't happen all that often. It's like it has to boil up inside him, and then his invitation comes like a dandelion that I wish upon, its feathers blowing through the air, whooshing farther away in the wind.

Before we play baseball, we kids–Michael and me and Julie and John–rush to complete our weekend chores. Julie and I make our beds, then we grab Windex and swipe the dining room, living room, and family room windows. I'm older–seven years old–so I reach for the high spots. We compete to see who can squeak the loudest. Mom dusts the furniture after she's finished typing up all the news for the St. Bede Catholic Church bulletin. Michael mows the lawn because he's the oldest. Dad vacuums the new pool in our backyard and then inspects the lawnmowing effort. His hands make fists in his pockets. He shakes his head no to Michael's job.

"Can I be in charge of collecting the baseball mitts?" I ask Dad before anyone else gets the chance. I ask this every time. He pulls his head back as if an idea has landed in the thin air between us.

"Come with me."

I follow him into the house, down the hallway lined with framed pictures of our New York relations. We are the only ones who live far away in California, just us four kids, Dad, and Mom. I follow as Dad turns into his bedroom and walks straight over to his ash-blond dresser, which is a foot taller than the curls on my head.

In the top left drawer, Dad stores his white, folded handkerchief, ChapStick, brown comb, and the little black pens that say "U.S. Government." In the middle drawer, he stashes car keys and the blue-and-black-covered booklets that say "Savings." In the top right drawer, Dad stores his badge and FBI gun. I have never seen him stash the gun there, but I can tell it's in that drawer. When I walk past his dresser, slow, with crouched fingers like Nancy Drew, I feel that haunting gun stare at me. I keep the perfect distance, three feet away. I know if I get too close, the gun will go "bang" and Dad will discover that I spy on him.

He takes his keys from the dresser and thumbs through them as if they are dollar bills, then hands me the specific one for the trunk of the FBI car. The special key is as silver as the fish Mom cooks Friday nights. He looks at his watch like I have exactly two minutes to complete the mission. "Go ahead and get the mitts in the trunk–and come right back."

"Can I wear your mitt?"

"Just get the mitts."

I hold the key up to my chest, skip out into the hot and dusty sun, past the red-rose bushes that Mom says always bloom too late in summer. I climb through thick, tangling, ankle-high ivy until I reach the trunk of Dad's black FBI car. The silver key fits, twists perfectly, just like the last time. It makes a popping noise as I turn it, like the loud snap of bubble gum. The trunk lifts higher than my arms can reach, so I let it sail up like a kite into the air.

Heat rises from inside the trunk, spreading the smell all around me. I look down and see the mitts: Dad's black and oily one stitched with white shoelaces, Michael's with his handwriting that says "Mickey Mantle" in its meat, mine with its fresh leather, and two shrimpy junior mitts for Julie and John. The mitts are scattered among the golden bullet shells, hundreds of them, everywhere in the trunk, swimming in the creases of the leather gloves. I close my eyes and breathe deeper. The bullet shells smell like the clothes gangsters wear. Mitts and golden bullet shells and gangster smells lying in Dad's trunk, on their bellies, their sides, on their backs.

"Bang. Bang. Bang."

The shiniest bullet shell stares at me. I pick it up and blow on it like it could be a whistle, making a whirring sound, then I hold it right up to my nostrils and breathe deep. Its smell is serious–a blue smell, like the cannons exploding in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, where Father Jack takes us when he visits from New York. Father Jack isn't like Dad at all, even though they're brothers, and I remember how my uncle put his hands over my ears when the Pirates' gunfire scared me so bad. His hands landed like butterflies, and the cannon pounding got softer, but the smell of blue smoke kept coming.

I reach up for the trunk, high on my tiptoes, muscles twitching in my legs, and slam it shut. I take Dad's mitt, throw it as high as I can, and catch it right at my belly. I love the smell of Dad's mitt the best. Inside my throat, I yell "yahoo," then run back to the house and find Dad where I left him, standing next to the ash-blond dresser, his palm open, waiting for the safe return of the silver key.


We play ball at the St. Bede field, which is on the same block as our parish church. Michael is the first to push out of the car. His
cleats dig into my white sneakers and I thwap his leg with my mitt.

"Slow down, will ya." Dad hates it when we get so excited. I settle down, pull myself out, and after me come John and Julie, jumping up and down next to Mom's belly that's large as a watermelon. Mom is about to have our new brother or sister. Mom loves babies. She and Dad tried for seven whole years after Michael to have me. She says she will take as many babies as God will give her.

When Mom is not having a baby, she throws the baseball left-handed. She calls herself a southpaw. I am proud to have a mother like that. She loves the Brooklyn Dodgers even though they are not in Brooklyn anymore. "Isn't it funny how the Dodgers followed us from New York to Los Angeles!" That is what Mom said to Dad once, like she had something to do with it. Dad hates the Dodgers. Mom says he is a Yankees man, even though he's just switched to root for the California Angels. They play not so far from our house, and very close to Disneyland.

"I get center field." Michael swings his arms around. He thinks he can take any position he wants since he is the oldest.

"Maura, why don't you stand in the outfield this time?" Dad pulls two fingers out of his green pants pocket, motions for me to go position myself. I scratch my head because I usually just hang around shortstop and pick up slow-moving grounders and try hard to get them back into Dad's mitt, even though I still can't throw that far.

Dad trudges to home plate and I follow. The closer I get to him, the farther away the outfield seems, so far away a covered wagon would have to pull me there. I walk on the dirt, which is red, like brick dust, and follow Dad's shadow, so quiet behind him he has no idea I am there until he turns around and almost hits my head with the bat.

"What are you doing?"

"I don't know."

"Come on, we don't have all day, get out in the outfield."

"Can you just tell me something?"

Dad lights up a cigarette. He stands behind home plate and signals Michael to scurry deeper in the field. He tosses the baseball, speaking through his cigarette smoke that I should back away so I don't get hurt. He tosses the ball again and swings, and the ball sounds like a greasy cheeseburger as it flies away. Michael screams "weeeee-hah" as the ball swerves into center field, where I am supposed to be standing.

"Okay, make it quick." Dad keeps his stare to the outfield, sending out puffs of smoke that look like small balloons.

"Those gold things in the car?"

"What are you talking about?"

Dad lifts his arm as Michael throws from center field, snatching the baseball flat in his naked palm. Dad backs away, pelts the next ball, this one sounding like a firecracker. A shriek, then it's gone, the ball whirling way out, past Michael's head, all the way to the boundary fence, where the St. Bede baseball field runs right into the Jacaranda Navy Base.

"The golden bullet shells, Dad. The trunk is filled with them."

Dad drops his bat, ignoring Michael's return ball, which goes sailing by, banging against the wooden backstop behind us. He bends to pick up the bat, gripping it in the middle.

"Who said you should be paying attention to those?"

"They're all over–they smell like gangsters." I watch gray cigarette smoke snaking all around him.

Dad wipes sweat off his thick arm, then lifts his cigarette so that it's staring down straight into my eyes. Its red lava glows as he sucks on it.

"You ignore the bullet shells, you hear. Otherwise"–he shifts his jaw–"otherwise, I'll have Michael be in charge of the equipment." He tosses the ball, once, twice, three times, snapping it up louder each time as I wonder how Dad can smoke and snap at the same time. "Now, are we here to field balls or talk about something we should not be talking about?"

Mom, in her green-and-white-striped shirt, stands up in the dugout like she is my coach, and claps her hands like maybe it's more important to catch balls than pester Dad. "Maura, aren't you going to play today?"

Michael yells from center field, "What's the holdup?" as Dad leans on his bat, folding his tight arms. I tie both my sneaker laces, then run past shortstop. It seems like it takes me forever before I leap into center field, stepping on boatloads of dandelions. Even though Dad doesn't say a word, I can tell by his posture he is pleased I am standing out in the field. I wonder if the next ball will come my way, but before Dad swings, I inhale deep into my mitt. It has the blue smell. Dad hits a high fly ball. I wobble, trying to spot it, my arms outstretched to the sun.


On Sunday night at eight o'clock, our whole family watches "The F.B.I." It is our tradition. After we eat mashed potatoes, green peas that taste like mushy Wonder bread, slices of beef that float in red meat juice, and ice cream with Bosco chocolate syrup, we pile into the family room. This is after Dad has washed the dishes and dried them–it's never good enough just to wash them without drying them–and Mom has asked us to put our brown-checked St. Bede school uniforms and clean socks out for the next day.

During the first commercial break, I roll over on the spindly green carpet and look at Dad. He sits in the corner of the blue tweed couch, wedged in like apple pie.

"Dad, I think Inspector Erskine–I mean Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.–is the tannest movie star I have ever seen."

"Is that right?" His eyes zoom like a fastball from the TV to the "Los Angeles Times" open on his lap as the commercial continues.

"Dad, do you have to go on car chases and jump over buildings and handcuff those smelly gangsters, just like Inspector Erskine?" I ask, nice and slow.

Dad does not say anything. He stretches the newspaper past his face, like it is a curtain. I wait for it to drop. Instead, he keeps turning pages. I wait for him to speak. Dad turns another page, the newspaper crinkling in his fingers. Maybe he would be put on detention at work if he told how they catch criminals. Maybe that information is top secret, to keep the gangsters from finding out.

Billy Romero, the first kid on our block to get a ten-speed bike, tells me they are out to get us. Every time I pass his house on my way home from St. Bede Elementary School, he zooms out of his driveway, sits on his seat, and crosses his arms, right in the path of my stingray bike.

"Hey, Maura, your father could be killed by criminals anytime–did you know that!" That is what he yells.

"No. Never," I say, veering past, like I am the mermaid captain of my own ship, although I say it so soft Billy Romero must not hear, because he already blurts his next warning.

"And "you"–"you" could get kidnapped on your way home from school. FBI kids get nabbed all the time."

I keep riding my bike, faster, in my heart of hearts saying, "Bad things will never happen to my family, because Dad is tougher than the worst criminal out there." No gangster would dare come close. They could never outmaneuver Dad. He is the smartest special agent in the whole FBI.

Dad clears his throat when the second commercial comes on, finally dropping the newspaper.

"What is your baseball mitt still doing in here?"

The mitt, which I have worn all day, sticks to my left hand. I shrug my shoulders.

"Why didn't you give it to Michael to put back where it belongs?"

Before I can answer, the Crest toothpaste commercial ends, and that special-agent music starts up again to tell us we are back to "The F.B.I."

It is time for the epilogue. Inspector Erskine and his agents capture the bad guys each week and sentence them to prison. After we know they are locked up for sure, spicy FBI music begins.

I stare straight ahead to the picture of J. Edgar Hoover, my dad's boss, that hangs on the wall above the television. Mr. Hoover must wear that stiff Brylcreem, like Michael does since he started St. James High School, to keep his hair straight and narrow. Mr. Hoover's looks are serious, like he has not had a dessert for twenty years. I switch my eyes back and forth, from Mr. Hoover to the television screen. I imagine it is really Dad's boss talking to me as Inspector Erskine points to the poster behind him with the black-and-white photographs of the Ten Most Wanted. Inspector Erskine's voice sounds like gravel. He tells us to be on the alert. The gangsters are armed and dangerous. They could be in our neighborhood.

I roll over on the carpet and look at Dad and wonder if he thinks a gangster would ever sneak around Thrifty's Ice Cream or the Fox Movie House or the St. Bede ball field. I wait for Dad to notice me, but he is busy inspecting the faces of the Ten Most Wanted.

"Dad, does that mean armed and dangerous with golden bullet shells?"

Dad's eyes clamp onto the television screen in such a way I know I should stay quiet. He folds his legs, the newspaper dropping to the floor, and he barely opens his mouth. "The inspector means you should play it smart. Otherwise, you'll get hurt."

"How do you play it smart?" I crawl just a bit closer toward his dark shoes.

He lights a cigarette, cups it, curls of smoke escaping the cracks between his fingers. Mom stares at Dad like she would prefer for him to talk about pleasant things, to switch the topic away from how we have to worry about all the danger. Dad looks back at Mom with that face that says he has nothing pleasant to say. Then he slants his head and squints his eyes.

"Avoiding dangerous areas is one way to play it smart."

I gulp. I watch him turn up his sleeves and stare straight ahead like one of the Ten Most Wanted has just jumped through the television screen into our family room. I turn back to watch the set. The camera zeros in on one criminal, the gangster's face hogging the entire screen. I lower my face and let it rest in my mitt.

"Maybe you shouldn't watch this part, Maura. This may be what's giving you those nightmares." Sometimes Mom rubs my back when I have my nightmares of houses catching on fire, but lately, she just sleeps when I tug at her at night. I stand in the dark room and watch her pregnant belly go up and down like the ocean, and listen to Dad snore until I am so sleepy I am forced to go to bed alone.

"No, I like this part–it's my favorite."

I dare myself to stare the guy in the face. I drop my mitt and
watch from under my eyelids. This criminal looks like a grizzly
bear, like he is so hungry that if he found you on the playground,
he would kill you for your hot dog or Cream-a-ling apple pie.
He's got scars and bruises and a crooked nose. His eyes look
watery and silver, like our steak knives when they soak in the sink.
I grab my mitt again and lift it up and smell it and wait for Inspector Erskine to end this Ten Most Wanted part. I sniff closer. I smell the stitches in the leather, the meat of the mitt where Dad says you should catch the ball. I bury my face in it, breathe in and out like the doctor says to do when you sit on his cold table. I breathe so much that soon I can't smell or even see anything else.

"What in God's name are you doing with that mitt?" Dad says as he gets up to turn off the television. He steps my way and grabs the mitt stuck on my hand. "I've never seen a house like this in all my–"

"Dad, I don't want us to ever get hurt. Can't you teach me–"

"Maura, come on, now. Don't let your imagination get the best of you." Mom stands up with her hand on her belly. "No one is going to get hurt. Now–bedtime!"

It looks like her belly is smiling, which makes me think my imagination is getting the best of me. Still, I study Dad to see if he agrees with Mom. He waves at the air, then walks out of the room without saying a word, just like he does every Sunday night after we watch "The F.B.I."


From Monday to Friday nights, I sit in my corner bedroom, by the window, and wait for Dad to come home. I look up and down our street, Margaret Rae Drive, and think of all those pictures that come on the news every night, all the guns and soldiers and hippies in torn clothes who yell and shake their long hair.

Finally, Dad's FBI car rounds the corner, slow, and pulls into our driveway. The headlights stream through the holes of my yellow lace curtains. I duck so Dad can't tell I watch him take off his black hat, which is called a fedora, as he gets out of the car. I get ready to run and greet him at the front door as he goes slower than a snail up the walkway. The fedora rests in his hand, soft next to his important black trousers. I tell Dad he is the smartest father in the whole world, and then I lean into his cheek and smell the blue smell.


CHAPTER TWO

It is Friday night and all I do is drum my fingers as I sit at the kitchen table, staring at the pink telephone and counting from one to ten, hoping for an invitation from our neighbors the Flanigans to see "The Sound of Music." Mom is busy with the new baby, who's three months old today, busy talking to doctors. She tells me she needs privacy when the doctors call. She asks me to go outside and play with Julie and John for a while. I always do, dreaming that the Flanigans will let me watch "The Sound of Music" three times in a row and then take me out for a banana spIit. When the Flanigans took me to see "Mary Poppins," Mrs. Flanigan handed me a Mary Poppins coloring book. I wonder what she will give me this time.

Mom and Dad sit at the kitchen table at night after we all go to bed. Their voices hide in whispers. I hear them from my bedroom, hear spoons clank inside cups, then small slurps. Dad's voice is low like the heater. What they say is top secret. They don't want us kids to hear. I wonder if Dad caught one of the Ten Most Wanted at work. I creep out in my purple pajamas, sneak up to the shut dining room door, but Mom must sense I am near, because right away she pops up and escorts me back to bed.

"You and Dad. What are you talking about?"

"Adult things. Everything is fine. Now it's time for sleep." Mom does not have her orange lipstick on. Her lips are faded, like roses thirsty for water.

"If it's time for sleep, then how come you and Dad aren't sleeping?" I get into bed with her hand on my back, but I refuse to lie down. Mom does not say anything at first, and I can hear the kettle whistle in the kitchen and Dad's chair scraping against the floor.

"Daddy and I have some things to talk about–"

"There's no gangsters on the loose, right?!"

Mom fluffs my pillow. "Gangsters?" She chuckles, catches herself by surprise, and then swallows like there's words tangled in her throat. "No, no. Just things parents talk about. Everything will be fine."

"Dad says you have to play it smart for things to be fine." Mom looks at me and pulls back the covers. I swing my legs in.

"You can play it smart by getting some rest. Good night."

The heater clicks on, and soon its roar travels through our house on Margaret Rae Drive like a choir of ghosts. I lie in bed and touch my warm cheeks and think of our new baby brother. I love the new baby's feel, his skin so soft, like Jell-O. His hair is red, and Mom says wouldn't you know, the fifth baby to arrive is the most Irish-looking of the bunch.

He came home from the hospital wrapped in the official Conlon baby blanket, the one our Gramma Molly made for the rest of us. Dad did not say much when the baby came home. He thanked the Flanigans for babysitting, then put his FBI badge in his gun drawer. I saw him do this. I don't know why agents need badges at the hospital. Someday I will ask. Dad is lucky. The new baby is named after him Joe, Jr. We will call him Joey. His skin is light, like Dad's, and so far, his eyes are just as blue, like the eggs robins lay.


I finish my Friday night dinner of tomato soup, fancy fish sticks, and french fries and then go back to staring at the phone. Finally, it rings in a special way, and I can just tell it will be for me. I leap for the phone, skirting past Michael, who is getting ready for sports night up at his school. It is Mr. Flanigan on the other end.

"'Ho ho ho.'" He says this each time he calls. "Guess who this is!" Another "ho ho ho" and a snort.

"Mr. Flanigan!"

"How'd you guess?"

I bite my nail and worry he will not ask me to come along to the movie, and instead will ask for Dad, who always lights up a cigarette when you tell him Mr. Flanigan is on the phone.

"Do you want to talk to my dad?"

"No, honey, we'll leave that ole Irishman alone. Listen, how would ya like to see that new movie up at the navy base tonight? We've got room in the car."

"'The Sound of Music?'"

"And, honey, I got a free pass just for you." He snorts again.

Mr. Flanigan always says he has a free pass. He was in one of those big wars, just like Dad, but Dad was in the army and had to go to faraway places. Mr. Flanigan gets tickets for half price when a new movie comes to the Jacaranda Navy Base theater, but he calls it a free pass because free pass sounds more exciting than half price.

I put the phone down and run from one room to the next, asking Julie and John where Mom is and they shrug their shoulders, playing Mother Goose. I find Mom in the back bedroom. She wears her pink sweater and scoops down to Joey. She holds his hands together, rubs something off her cheek with her shoulder, as she sings low. She says the lyrics, line by line, from "The Farmer in the Dell." Joey's eyes smile back even though his mouth falls open and saliva covers his chin. Mom wipes it up.

"Hi, Mom."

She looks up, startled, and I see tears shining on her cheeks. Her eyes are red with veins. Before she says anything, I become a tornado and run out of the room back to the kitchen. Dad walks in with his tin bucket full of sudsy water, sets it down, and leans over to start mopping the floor, just like he does every Friday night. First he flicks on the radio to listen to a California Angels game, then turns it off when he spots the phone off the hook.

"What's going on here?" Dad says this like any moment a call could be coming in from J. Edgar Hoover and we should remember to keep the phone free.

"Ooops. I'll get it." I pick up the receiver, pull the phone cord as far away as I can, and whisper, "Mr. Flanigan, my parents say it is okay for me to go." He tells me to get ready right away because the Flanigan family will honk their horn in five minutes.

I hang up the phone, so quiet. Dad sets the mop down, stretching his neck like a turtle.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Nothing."

"Who was that on the phone?"

"I'm going to see 'The Sound of Music' with the Flanigans." I say it so fast I nearly choke.

"Did you ask your mother?"

"No, she's with the baby...She's cryin'–"

"Did you ask me?" He leans forward, crosses his arms again to inspect how I will answer his question.

Dad doesn't have any scars on his face, just a tight grin. He has that look that says I should be careful if I want to get away with going to the theater with the Flanigans.

"Can I...see the movie?"

He shakes his head, then turns to the heating vent in the wall as if ghosts live there. "I've never seen a house like this in all my life," he says. The ghosts must listen, because he says this all the time, even if none of us ever mutter a word.

"Please, Dad?" My tongue tightens.

Mom comes out with Joey in her arms. She looks at my scrambled eyebrows, then looks at Dad.

"This one here." He points to me.

"Mom, Mr. Flanigan invited me to see 'The Sound of Music.' They're going to pick me up right now."

"How wonderful! That sounds like a terrific invitation." Her eyes roll back over to Dad.

Dad mumbles under his breath. "How is Joey feeling?" Mom clears her throat, nods her head so Dad will remember me.

"Oh, sure, okay." He reaches into his pocket. I hear the tinkling of metal whirling about. Sparkling coins come out from his trousers, as if they could be wishes tossed into a fountain. He turns quarters in his wet palm, looking for the right one.

"What do you think, little Joey? Do you think we should give her twenty-five cents?" Dad talks to him like he is his partner, like talking to Joey will keep the FBI protection over him. Dad walks in twice to lock our windows at night ever since Joey was born.

Dad drops a quarter in my palm. I stash it deep in my pocket.

"Don't forget to bring back the change."

"Okay."

I always do. Even though I buy Milk Duds, Good & Plenty, or sometimes Chocolate Flicks, I surprise Dad with a nickel back.

"'Honk, honk.'" The Flanigans are here! I kiss Mom goodbye. Dad goes back to his pail of water, looks up at me, then at the floor. I think maybe he is waving goodbye with his eyes. FBI agents always communicate in code.


Mr. Flanigan jumps out of the car and opens the door for me, just like they do in the movies. "Nice to see you, honey!"

I climb into the Flanigans' backseat, sitting next to Fergus, who sits next to Donal, who sits next to Fintan, who sticks his tongue out to Jimmy in the front seat. The boys scoot away from me immediately because I am a girl, they say, and there's no way they want girl germs. Mrs. Flanigan leans over the seat just as Mr. Flanigan snorts, but all I see is Mrs. Flanigan's white helpless face.

"You boys straighten up. You hear?"

It must be terrible for the Flanigans to have all boys, four pesky sons who act as tough as cowboys. Last summer they cycled over to my corner lemonade stand, where I was selling Michael's old model airplanes for twenty-five cents apiece. The Flanigan boys grabbed half the planes and escaped back down the street while I sat there frozen, afraid to tell a soul for fear they'd come back to beat me up. Tonight I try hard to give them my calm Nancy Drew look.

Wind blows my light brown curls as we head for the theater, driving past the St. Bede ball field. I think of all the times I have climbed to the top of the bleachers to see the Jacaranda Navy Base theater and the green tanks and the huge gray airplanes that shake our classroom windows when they fly overhead. Mr. Flanigan says they store something called nuclear weapons there, but I forget about all that when the man in the white cap salutes Mr. Flanigan, and we enter the base.

Mrs. Flanigan, with her night-black hair, turns around in her seat. "Did you bring a sweater, Maura?" she says, smiling at me before she asks, and then smiling afterward. It's like she dreams up a question just so she can have a reason to look at me. I smile back. I know if the Flanigans could, they'd give anything to have me as their daughter.

Sometimes I lie in bed and think of Mrs. Flanigan's look when she tells Mom how lucky she is to have a daughter, and I think how if our house ever caught on fire and I was the only one left alive, I would go live with the Flanigans because they'd spoil me rotten, making me my favorite dinner every night, which is meat pie with a Bisquick crust. They would give me an extra-large bedroom with white fancy furniture and a playhouse even taller than the one Dad built for me, a playhouse with its very own electricity so I could plug in my Suzy Homemaker oven.

I look around the navy base theater. It is not like the other movie theater where my parents took us once, the one with red curtains and dark velvet cushions and little lights like fireflies. In the navy base theater, we sit on cold chairs and there are no curtains ahead, just bluish green walls. All around the theater are men wearing strict-looking uniforms. But all that disappears when the lights go off for one second, then two seconds, then three seconds, then the movie projector flicks on.

I can hear the voice of a woman, and there she is, on top of a mountain packed with purple and yellow flowers. She swirls and she swirls, and her arms are out to the world. I lean forward in my cold seat, and the hills "do" come alive when she sings–I can hear the crickets and the wind and the brook and practically even the flowers start to sing with her. During the show, Mrs. Flanigan smiles at me some more. I wonder if she will sew me a new wardrobe, using fabric from the Flanigans' bedroom curtains, just like in the movie.


After I see "The Sound of Music," Mom takes me to Mildred Perry, who smells like hair spray as she snips, and who gives me a butterscotch candy when the cut is over. When I come home, I walk into my parents' bedroom and look in the mirror. I have no more curls. Instead, I just have eyes, which seem even bigger, and now I can see my entire neck and my ears and all of my forehead too.

Mrs. Flanigan comes over to help Mom with the new baby, and when I answer the door, she gives me that look of appreciation.

"Why, Maura...you have a Julie Andrews haircut!"

I gulp. "I do?"

I run back to Mom, who holds a warm bottle up to Joey's mouth. Mom is quiet when she feeds the new baby, and she gives him a long look each time he tries to gulp. His saliva gets bad, and his gulps are slow. His tongue is thicker than most babies'. That is what the doctor told Mom, but I think when he gets older, that condition will just go away.

"Mom, do I have a Julie Andrews haircut, do I?"

She wipes off the baby's face and pulls him up in his bassinet because he's constantly slipping down, she says, this one, constantly slipping.

"Yes, Maura. You have an 'official' Julie Andrews haircut."

I go running back to the mirror in my parents' bedroom to look at myself. My hair is just like Fraulein Maria's. I spin around three times. I run out to Mom, jumping up and down, but I can see Mom is busy talking, munching on words like roast beef. Mrs. Flanigan doesn't notice me either when I walk into the kitchen. Instead, she digs her fingernails into one cheek and stares at baby Joey.

"Oh, my. But does the doctor–"

Mom turns around and sees me and hushes Mrs. Flanigan. "Oh, hello."

Mrs. Flanigan snaps up and tries to give me that look of appreciation. I smile in a gray way. I stand with my new haircut, like Fraulein Maria when she arrives at Captain Von Trapp's house for the first time and her mouth drops open and she stares all around her, like she is on a new planet and she barely knows what to say. I try to give Mom and Mrs. Flanigan my own look of appreciation.

Later that night, I sneak into the living room when no one is looking, and start swirling around, singing to myself so soft that no one will hear my voice, "The hills are alive with the sound of music." As I twirl, I think how in one week, I will start second grade and no one will recognize me. They will think it is Julie Andrews who has come to attend St. Bede school. I spin so hard my father steps into the living room in his white shirt and black tie and tells me to stop making myself "dizzy." The winds blow in September, kicking up hot, sizzling air. You have to be sure to hold on to your skirt when you walk outside. Mom says the warm winds are called the Santa Anas because they come in from the desert. They blow in brown tumbleweeds that go skipping along the school pavement, across the St. Bede ball field, whirling in circles. Tumbleweeds scare me. They are like Gypsies, like wild ghosts who have no place to go.

I put on my St. Bede uniform of brown plaid and a brown sweater, complete with a sewn badge that says some motto in Latin. I arrive at the classroom of Sister Norah, wondering if any of the other kids will notice my haircut, but no one, not even Sister, says a word.

Our first month of school we begin to learn how to write in cursive. The letters from big "A" and little "a" to big "Z" and little "z" are spread above the brown chalkboard. Sister Norah is plump. Her habit hangs in heavy pleats as she grabs her pointer stick and follows the outline of each and every letter, telling us that this, "this" is how we will be writing in no time at all.

Each letter comes easily to me. I stare down at my notepaper and watch them slip out of my hands. A beautiful "A." A fine "B." A nice "C" and a dandy "D."

"Those are beautiful letters," Sister Norah says to me, her mole above her lip moving up and down as she speaks. The cloth from her habit swipes my pencil when she turns around, marching to the front of the classroom.

"Next week we begin our "Es." Is everybody clear on that?"

"Yes, Sister Norah." We speak all together at once. I am not worried, since all of my other letters have been perfect.

The following week is when the troubles begin. I try and try but cannot write the "E" like the "E" on the official chart. My hand
is in a dream, for I add an extra curlicue on my capital "E" because I think "E" is sad and plain just as it is, and in my opinion it screeches out to be dressed up. Sister Norah starts pacing past my desk all week, telling me I am not making the capital "E" in the proper way. She will not let me move on to the other letters–as the rest of my class does–until my "E" is just perfect. One day she slaps my hand with a ruler, telling me I must once and for all get my "E" right.

After school, I jump into my shorts and T-shirt and run out to my playhouse. I try on the dresses Mom gives me, the ones that are wide like spinning tops with colors of Life Savers. I put on her old pointed shoes. I sit and watch my yellow windows fill with shadows of tree branches. I nestle close to the window, pretending the shadows are dancers who touch my skin. I think of Mom inside the house and wonder if I should tell her about the problem with my "Es."

I sneak back into the house to find her. She sits alone in the living room, where I used to swirl around. She is crying again and listening to music on the console, but then she sees me and smiles a little bit and turns the music down.

"Are you having fun in your playhouse?" I nod my head yes to her. "How would you like to bake me a little chocolate cake on your Suzy Homemaker?" she asks.

"Okay, I would like to do that," I say.

I go and pluck two eggs from the refrigerator and run back out to my playhouse filled with sun and the odor of old rug squares Mom bought for me at the carpet store. I stand over my box crate, crack the egg. It spills into the flour. I add a snatch of water, swirl it around with my pink spatula until I have a mixture smooth as silk. I spoon the wet mixture into my magic baking pans, dash to my bedroom where Suzy Homemaker sits, and pop the pans in the oven and watch the two lightbulbs bake my cake for almost two hours. When the cake is ready, I bring it out to Mom. I hope my cake makes her happy.

(This excerpt ended on page 24.)

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