My Most Excellent Year Read online

  Naturally there were bound to be a few conflicts with Papa, Mamita, and Forever Flawless Carlos. The family business depended on tact and diplomacy, and meanwhile they were raising a ten-year-old activist who could find a social issue in a box of Kleenex. After I’d told the Korean ambassador that I had little use for either half of military Korea but at least the south knew how to say “May I?” before they shot you, I was persona non grata all along Embassy Row. And since I’d obviously become a disappointment to every one of my relatives, I compensated the only way I knew how: straight A’s, Honors English, Honors Math, and first prize in two national creative writing competitions. I decided that if I had to join the diplomatic corps sooner or later, at least I’d have the academic credentials for it—and all I’d need to learn in the meantime was how to stop talking. But two things happened back to back that turned my plans inside out.

  The first was an accident. I’d been sent home from school with the flu, and Clint was so determined to cheer me up that he went DVD-shopping to find an extra-special movie that might take my mind off the fact that I was never going to eat again. What resulted was a copy of Damn Yankees, which was either a lucky choice or a deliberate move by Clint to start a civil war in my own family. Until I recovered enough to return to class, I was glued to the television screen watching Gwen Verdon dance a tango and a mambo again and again until I could match her step for step. And except for the vomiting, I’d completely forgotten that I was supposed to be sick.

  Less than a month after that, Papa had business at the United Nations, so we found ourselves in New York at the Broadhurst Theatre for a performance of a musical called Fosse—where, for two and a half hours, the most beautiful men and women imaginable used their bodies to create sheer magic. By the time the curtain had come down, my eyes were wet and I was absolutely certain I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I also knew that I’d need to be re-born to different parents first. (Proof: Papa thought the show was “mildly diverting,” Mamita wished that the boys had worn more clothing, and Utterly Unassailable Carlos—eighteen at the time—missed the whole thing when he ran into the only Argentine vice consul on West Forty-fourth Street and spent both acts in the lobby, chatting him up about tin and copper deposits outside of Buenos Aires.) Faced with the prospect of bringing shame to my very visible family, I was convinced that I could keep myself from even thinking of becoming a dancer just as long as Papa never retired as ambassador to Mexico—something that certainly wasn’t going to happen in my lifetime.

  So naturally Papa retired as ambassador to Mexico when I was fourteen because Harvard University’s history department made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. We sold the houses in Mexico City and Washington, D.C., emancipated all of the serfs, and moved into one of the loveliest homes in Brookline, Massachusetts. The rest of that summer was taken up with visiting the museums, walking the Freedom Trail, learning how to ride the T, and trying to figure out what these people saw in the Boston Red Sox. (I discovered no rational clue. Perhaps it’s viral.)

  I didn’t realize what Papa and Mamita had done to me until right after Labor Day, when I found myself sitting in the third row of a ninth-grade public school classroom filled with thirty-five chattering kids I’d never seen before in my life, but who all seemed to have known each other from the womb. And just kids. No nannies, no bodyguards, no heads of state, no dinners with Chelsea Clinton or Tobey Maguire, and no one who wouldn’t think you were a stuck-up pain in the ass if you mentioned either one of them. I was terrified. There was one boy in particular who always wore blue and white sneakers, easy-fit jeans, and gray T-shirts (half of them unraveling so badly he could have played The Mummy). He spoke with such an unseemly Boston accent that you were lucky to catch every fourth word, he tried to be cool by pretending he didn’t know how cool he was, and his bangs looked like brown flax woven on a loom.

  His name was Anthony and I detested him. I even told him so—and assumed he believed me.

  I didn’t know it then, but my clock was running out fast for a lot of things. Especially since my much-loved Gwen Verdon had recently passed away, and there was nobody in the wings to replace her.

  Yet.

  Diary

  T.C. Keller, 9th Grade

  Mrs. Norwood’s Class

  INSTRUCTIONS: While we’re studying Anne Frank, try to remember that a diary isn’t just a book with blank pages. It’s a place where you can put down all of the thoughts and feelings that nobody else knows you have. Anne Frank called hers “Dear Kitty.” So think carefully before you give your own diary a name.

  Dear Mama,

  Pop and Nehi and I go to visit you all the time with flowers, but there’s a lot of things we don’t have time to tell you while we’re sitting on the ground. These are some of them.

  1. I’m getting a B+ in everything except for the A in algebra, which is the way I like it to square out. Pop always says you should never pretend to be something you’re not, and I don’t want to be a know-it-all gink who thinks he’s better than anybody else. Besides, Pop got a B+ in everything except for an A in algebra too.

  2. Right after you left, me and Pop started building a model of Fenway Park in the basement. And you know how Pop is when he gets started on projects like these. One time we had an assignment at school on the solar system and all I had to draw over the weekend was Jupiter. But when Pop found out about it he made me a planetarium from an old crate, a motor, and nine cut-up bicycle spokes with different-sized rubber balls on the ends of them that we painted to look like planets. They spun around a yellow lightbulb sun and had all of the constellations in the sky behind them except for Ursa Minor because we ran out of stars. Lori Mahoney is my adviser, and she was a little pissed off that we got carried away, but not as pissed off as the time our homework just said to list the ten biggest cities in the state. It took two people to carry the map Pop built down the hallway.

  So the only reason the model of Fenway Park is twelve feet long is because there wasn’t any more room in the basement than that. It took us two years to finish, but it has the Citgo sign behind it and all 33,871 seats inside. Pop said, “Tony C, where are we going to find the right color green for the walls?” and I said, “Maybe we could puke on them,” and he said, “You have your mother’s sense of humor.” Then when it was all done, we opened our old scorecards to find our ticket stubs and we painted each of the seats that we ever sat in. Bluish green for the ones that just me and Pop had, sparkly silver for the ones we bought when you were with us too, and gold for the two that you and Pop were sitting in when you first met each other.

  3. When they decided that they weren’t going to tear down the ballpark after all, Pop and I had to give up our “Save Fenway Park” website and our hotline and our T-shirts. We used to stand at different corners on Yawkey Way and Kenmore Square, hand out flyers to people, get them to sign petitions, and make them call all of the Red Sox phone numbers so many times that nobody could get through to buy tickets. Pop always says, “Tony C, the best thing Mama ever taught me was how to be a pain in the ass. That’s how I got my own company instead of just being somebody else’s carpenter.” Mama, it worked this time too. I mean, they stopped talking about tearing down Fenway Park, didn’t they?

  4. But we missed being troublemakers, so Pop told me I could be in charge of the next crusade. So I picked Buck Weaver. He was one of the eight Black Sox who got banned from baseball for cheating in the 1919 World Series—except that he didn’t do it. The other seven guys asked him if he would throw games with them, but he called them hosers and said “Count me out.” And they busted him anyway for not squealing on his team. What’s up with that? But that’s all going to change once I get 20,000 signatures on my “Free Buck Weaver” website.

  5. I wish you’d known Augie while you were still here—but come to think of it, if you were still here I wouldn’t have needed him so much. We play soccer together in the fall, we’re both forwards, and the other team hates it when we get the ball
because they know it’s already over. We pass it back and forth to each other so many times that they get mixed up, and all of a sudden the ball is in the net. We never practice who’s going to make the kick—we just know when it’s the right time.

  I’m five weeks older than Augie is but he’s a lot smarter than I am, except that he doesn’t know he’s gay yet. I don’t see how he couldn’t. I guess he figures that because he loves women like Audrey Hepburn and Judi Dench so much, he’s automatically going to wind up with one. (Shh. What he really loves is their clothes.) But Augie is the best at everything he does and I’m betting that once he puts 2+2 together, he’ll have a steady boyfriend before I even get this new girl Alejandra to think about kissing me. Of course, once in a while he gets called things like “fag,” and since we’re brothers, sometimes I do too. But the kids who say it usually aren’t around for very long. Besides, I found out that when girls think you might be gay, you turn into a chick magnet on the spot. It’s like they can’t help themselves—even the ones who tried to smack your face off in fifth grade when you hit on them. So I go with the flow. I’m easy that way.

  6. Remember how you told Pop that if he didn’t get married again you would kick his ass? Because I think he finally got the hint. Last month, he wrote an ad for the Internet and I got to help. “49 y/o SWM, 6′2″, athletic, with irresistible son who owns a Carlton Fisk rookie card, seeks intelligent, romantic woman for long walks, long talks, and candlelit moments.” Even though the candlelight part made me and Augie gag, he started getting answers right away. The first girl he went out with was a blond grad student who didn’t tell us until she got there that her diploma was for witchcraft. So Nehi and I stayed awake until Pop got home, and while he was brushing his teeth I asked him things like “When she spilled her water, did she melt?” and “Was your waiter a scarecrow?” and “Did she land on the roof and throw fireballs?” Pop sprayed me with a can of Right Guard and I stunk for three days.

  7. Even though I’m almost fifteen, I’m getting tall fast. You probably wouldn’t even recognize me anymore. But I still remember what your voice sounds like.

  Love,

  Your son,

  T.C.

  Dear Mama,

  Pop says he knew you were already falling in love with him after the first two hours because you held on to his arm when Bucky F. Dent hit the home run. But I remember when you would tuck me in and tell me the same story, you always said it was the other way around and that Pop kept sending you snapdragons so you would call him back. I used to think that somebody was making up their half of it until I started to fall in love. Then I found out how complicated it really is.

  Even though I should have listened to Augie when he told me that Alejandra needed special handling, I didn’t. Instead, on the first day of school I stuck a note into her social studies book. This wasn’t a kissing kind of strategy to show her how cute I am, it was because my voice is changing so fast I couldn’t count on it not to crack when I told her I loved her. And who wants a boyfriend who sounds like he needs a tune-up?

  DEAR ALLIE: I’M CONSIDERING A RELATION-SHIP WITH YOU. AND BY THE WAY, FORGET THAT MRS. FITZPATRICK CALLS ME ANTHONY. YOU CAN CALL ME T.C. —T.C.

  After phys ed there was a vanilla envelope on my desk with purple writing on it that looked like it came from the principal’s office—and I don’t usually get called in there until at least November.

  Dear Anthony:

  I appreciate your recent interest, but I’m not accepting applications at this time. Your letter will be kept in our files and someone will get back to you if there is an opening.

  Thank you for thinking of me.

  Respectfully,

  Alejandra Perez

  P.S. It’s not “Allie.” It’s “Alé.”

  She calls Mrs. Norwood “ma’am,” she turns in her quiz papers first, she didn’t laugh when Stu Merliss farted in the middle of factoring x2-y2, and her father knows the Queen of England. Big zow. Any poser can say that. But when Mrs. Fitzpatrick introduced her to the class and asked her who the most famous person she ever met was, she didn’t say the Prince of Wales, she said Hilary Duff. By lunchtime, all the other girls were afraid of her and the boys were conferencing on their cell phones in study hall to figure out who was going to make the first move. Andy Wexler won. It was too late for me to come up with a new game plan and even my Benedict Arnold of a brother wasn’t going to be any help. Why? BECAUSE HE WAS THE ONE SHE WAS HAVING LUNCH WITH!!

  INSTANT MESSENGER

  AugieHwong: Between homeroom and algebra I grew another armpit hair. That makes 9. Do you still only have 6?

  TCKeller: Like I would have told the Boston Globe first?

  AugieHwong: Don’t worry. I’m trying to slide you into the conversation.

  Meanwhile, there’s something else you should know. Andy Wexler asked me to work on his soccer moves with him after he makes his play for Alé. Are you still speaking to me?

  TCKeller: No. Not now. Not ever.

  But it was the picture of you and Robert F. Kennedy at the rally in 1967 that really got me into hot water. Pop hung it on the wall next to my bed when I was seven, and because I liked the way RFK’s eyes squinted while he was smiling at you, I read an old kids’ book called Meet Senator Kennedy. Now I know everything there is to know about him, from the Freedom Riders to his blue ties. That’s why I signed up for the Young Democrats Club at school, and Alé joining right before me didn’t hurt either. So when she picked President JFK as the most important American who ever lived, Pop said it meant we had something in common. He also said she might need to know who was the brains in that family and who wasn’t. But he left it up to me to choose my own arguments.

  RFK

  JFK

  Stuck it to Mississippi and integrated the colleges there.

  Hid under the desk so nobody would snap at his ass by mistake.

  Told his brother not to fall for a war in Vietnam.

  Told his wife to decorate the White House.

  Figured out a navy blockade of Cuba instead of an invasion so that we wouldn’t give Russia an excuse to toast us with missiles.

  Played with Marilyn Monroe’s underwear.

  Yeah. That was like a really good idea. Alé called me an empty-headed buffalo and walked to science class with Andy Wexler.

  Mama, I wish you could have stayed with us long enough to teach me about girls. Pop is clueless.

  I love you,

  T.C.

  NAME: T.C. Keller CLASS: Mrs. Fitzpatrick

  ALGEBRA QUIZ

  QUESTION: Factor x2-y2

  ANSWER: x2-y2= (x+y) (x-y)

  However, I have some questions too. What do I need this in my life for? Am I going to get a job in an XY factory? Am I going to go to work at Ben & Jerry’s selling XY ice cream cones? No. My dad and I are going to build houses and offices buildings, but out of bricks and glass, not out of X and Y. Right?

  T.C.: Please see me after 6th period about this.—Lori

  Dear Mama,

  Up until this year, I could always turn a B− into a B or a C into a C+ just by throwing the enemy off the scent. (QUESTION: What is the significance of December 1? ANSWER: 1955. Rosa Parks said no when they told her to stand up in the bus. Then civil rights happened. In 1949 the Sox got Al Papai from the Browns. He once tripped over the chalk line on his way off the field. We’d have been better off with Rosa Parks.) And they’d always fall for it. At the bottom it would say things like “T.C., a little more history and a little less Red Sox, please” or “T.C., thanks for the travelogue,” and the grade at the top was usually five points higher than it should have been. But not this time. “T.C.: Please see me after 6th period about this.” Not even from my teacher, but from my adviser. Notice how she couldn’t have said “See me at lunch” or given me a hint about how deep a hole I was in. No. That isn’t the way it works. You have to suffer first. Like I don’t have enough things on my mind.

  English notes: Puck blew a few sparks in his h
ard drive and zapped the wrong guy by mistake. Alé’s hair is long and black and falls down across her back like it doesn’t even care.

  History notes: We fought the British again in the War of 1812. Nobody knows why. Maybe a battle during the Revolution got rained out and this was their makeup game. I need Alé to wear the light yellow dress with the red and pink flowers on it again. It makes her skin look like an oil painting.

  Science notes: The telegraph got invented. Alé sneezed. So I sneezed back. She didn’t even look over her shoulder, even though she had to know it was me. Alexander Graham Bell discovered the telephone. His first words to Mr. Watson on the other end were “T.C.: Please see me after 6th period about this.” Then it was the end of 6th period.