My Most Excellent Year Read online

The way to Lori’s office is down a green hall with lockers on both sides. Not even posters of Halloween Week or anything else that has color in it. No. Just green. Dark green. It’s a long hall anyway, but it was even longer today.

  INSTANT MESSENGER

  TCKeller: If I don’t come back alive, cut me out in little stars and I will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will fall in love with night and pay no attention to the garish sun.

  AugieHwong: Olivia DeHavilland said it better in Gone With the Wind. “Take care of my Ashley, Scarlett.” Less is more, Tick.

  Lori was already standing in the doorway with that kind of a smile on her face that people always have when they’re going to ruin a kid’s life.

  “T.C.?” she began. Translation: Any last words? If she was anybody else, I might have noticed her light brown hair and the way the bottom half of her dress swishes just the right way when she walks. But I didn’t. Instead, I came up with a sudden-death play before it was too late.

  “Um—boys’ room,” I said while I was bending over so it’d look real. “Be right back.” Then I ran for it.

  I didn’t really have to go, but it was the only chance I had. Once the lav door closed all the way behind me, I hid in a stall and flipped open my cell phone. When Pop’s at work, the only calls he takes are mine.

  “Tony C?”

  “Why do I need algebra in my life?”

  “It teaches you how to solve problems and weigh variables and factor out the crap. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Got it in the back pocket. Peace out, dude.”

  After that I put my cell phone away and peed for good luck. I was untouchable.

  STUDENT/ADVISER CONFERENCE

  Lori Mahoney/Anthony C. Keller

  LORI:

  How much is (x+y)2?

  T.C.:

  x2+2xy+y2.

  LORI:

  You got that one wrong on the algebra quiz.

  T.C.

  It was October 2. The anniversary of the day my parents met each other and Bucky F. Dent hit the home run. My mind was thinking about that instead.

  LORI:

  Je suis, tu es, vous what?

  T.C.:

  Êtes.

  LORI:

  You got that wrong on the French quiz.

  T.C.:

  Probably a brain fart.

  LORI:

  T.C., you’re an A student with a B+ average. Why?

  T.C.:

  I’m a B+ kind of kid?

  LORI:

  I need a better answer than that.

  T.C.:

  Everybody knows that only posers get A’s. And I’m not a poser. I’m a chip off the old block.

  LORI:

  Maybe. But you still don’t understand why you need algebra.

  T.C.:

  Sure I do. It teaches me how to solve problems. And weigh variables. And factor out the crap.

  LORI:

  How do you know that?!

  T.C.:

  Doesn’t everybody?

  A long time ago I never thought I was going to like school the way you said I would. Because after you left, I didn’t even know how to get kids to talk to me anymore. I remember being in first grade and doing weird things like wearing my shirts backwards or drawing Saturn on my arms just to see if anybody would ask me how come. But nobody ever did. Some of the guys instead wore their shirts backwards too like they were making fun of me, so I pretended I didn’t notice and waited to cry until I got home. I told Pop it was because I was still sad.

  When we were seven and pretending we were knights, Augie killed a dragon to save my life. But if you were still here he wouldn’t have had to.

  I love you,

  T.C.

  LAURENTS SCHOOL

  BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS

  VIA E-MAIL

  Dear Ted:

  Please. You’ve got to stop bailing Anthony out of a leaky skiff. “It teaches me how to weigh variables.” Did he call you on his cell or are you hot-wired directly into his head?

  While we’re here, I need to warn you that their first out-of-class projects are going to be assigned in three weeks. They’re studying the history of the nation’s capital and they’ll be asked to build models of their favorite landmarks. Let’s not have a replay of fourth grade. A 200-foot Washington Monument that lights up in eighteen different colors won’t be greeted with a sense of humor.

  Know what? I’m in charge of 91 kids, and you’re the biggest discipline problem I’ve got.

  Lori

  KELLER CONSTRUCTION

  BOSTON • GLOUCESTER • WALTHAM

  ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION

  Dear Lori:

  First of all, how do you know he doesn’t have a crush on you? Maybe the B+ thing is a way to guarantee that you’ll call him into your office at least once a month for a one-on-one. When you think about it, it’s a pretty provocative ruse for a kid.

  Second of all, Tony C did all of the work on the planetarium and the map. I just helped out with the odd jobs like hammering, nailing, building motors, and painting. Period.

  Third of all, if you’d finally agree to go out with me, I wouldn’t have to subvert the entire school system just to get you to send me notes. Like father, like son. And I’m only half kidding. This is the first time since Nikki died that I’ve found someone who might actually be able to coax me back onto the field of play. So you’d better think about it unless you want a life-sized replica of the Iwo Jima statue (in bronze).

  Ted

  P.S. Besides, we’ve had one date already. So it’s out there.

  LAURENTS SCHOOL

  BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS

  VIA E-MAIL

  Dear Ted:

  What’s out there?? That wasn’t a date, it was a chance encounter at Starbucks. And I paid for both Fraps.

  Anthony doesn’t have a crush on me and you know it. He idolizes his father, who—improbably—earned a B.A. from B.U. with a B+. But that was 1974. It’s 2003. “A” is the new “B+.”

  I’m not going out with you because I’m your son’s adviser. But if I weren’t, I might. Unless you were serious about the statue. Then you’d be out of luck.

  —The Field of Play

  KELLER CONSTRUCTION

  BOSTON • GLOUCESTER • WALTHAM

  ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION

  Dear F.O.P.:

  Don’t worry about Tony C. He knows how to go for the gold when it’s time. So does his dad.

  TK

  www.augiehwong.com

  Was Barbara Stanwyck really a man?

  Ten reasons to come back as Angela Lansbury

  Proof that Eve Arden and Kay Thompson were the same person

  Augie the Jock: soccer, swimming, and track photos; worth a fortune on eBay after my first Olympics

  BULLETIN: AUGIE HWONG SIGNED TO DIRECT FRESHMAN TALENT SHOW! TONY AWARD SHOO-IN!

  Diary

  Augie Hwong, 9th Grade

  Mrs. Norwood’s Class

  Dear Liza with a Z,

  I can’t believe you married David Gest and didn’t check with me first. All he wanted was your money and to find out if your mother sang “Over the Rainbow” when she put you to bed so he could tell his tacky friends about it. Trust me. David Gest is a gink. But you can still call me after the divorce if you need to borrow my shoulder. I’d never say “I told you so” to anybody except Nicole Kidman.

  Incidentally, I know I have a big mouth—but why the hell did they pick me to direct the talent show?

  INSTANT MESSENGER

  AugieHwong: I’m having an anxiety attack.

  TCKeller: Is it a new one? ’Cause I’m working on my diary.

  AugieHwong: Tick, it’s happening too quick, that’s what scares me. How did I get to be an A-list director already?? Where’s all the torture you’re supposed to go through before you click? And the hard knocks? And the setbacks you’re supposed to learn from? I haven’t suffered enough yet.

  TCKeller: Dude, it’
s just a talent show!

  My brother is enjoying this too much. He’s been waiting for the axe to drop ever since I found out that third grade wasn’t ready for my impression of Bette Davis in the Holy Grail of movies, All About Eve (“Why, Max—you sly puss!”). He also grew two more pit hairs during homeroom, so he’s finally broken ten, and now he thinks he’s bulletproof. That’s the last time I let him make more kicks than me in soccer so that people won’t guess who really rocks.

  Okay. Maybe I’ll cave in after all. I don’t like making people beg. But I told Mrs. Fitzpatrick I’d only sign a contract if she agreed to my terms.

  1. There’s just one prima donna in an Augie Hwong show, and that’s Augie Hwong. Everyone else is expendable.

  2. A curtain made of gold tinsel, a silver disco ball, and my entire cast dressed in sequins. Blue for the boys, pink for the girls.

  3. A pit band of exactly nine musicians. I’m not paying overtime for more than that.

  4. A celebrity M.C.—either Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, or Coretta Scott King.

  Liza, if you think George Abbott gave you a hard time in Flora, The Red Menace, that’s because you never worked with me before. I’m ruthless. The only act I’m pre-approving without a tryout is Tick and John Siniff and Andy Wexler and Grid Tarbell in a staged version of “Casey at the Bat,” which probably sounds like playing favorites with my brother. But let’s face it, sweetheart—when Judy let you sing with her at the Palladium, you weren’t exactly ready for the Big Time either.

  I’m holding auditions after school all of next week. You can come if you want, but there might be no point. I get the opening spot and I’m singing “Maybe This Time.” It’s a cruel, cruel business.

  Love,

  Augie with an A

  Alé,

  I need you to co-produce my show with me. Even Florenz Ziegfeld couldn’t do it all by himself. I can also use you as property mistress, wardrobe mistress, and stage manager. What do you think?

  —Augie

  Augie,

  I think you ought to read about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911. This is what happens when you employ slave labor. They jump out of windows to get away from the smoke. The answer is no.

  I stopped by The Word Shop yesterday to see if they had any nonfiction on oppressed Filipino salmon packers in Alaska. How much is your father paying Phyllis to run the store? Because she knows more about books than the Library of Congress does. I asked her why Huckleberry Finn wasn’t on the Classic Literature shelf and she said, “Alejandra, no black man says ‘dem de d’wyne de goan’ unless he’s coming out of a coma—that’s why.” If your family is exploiting a minority, there will be pickets.

  —Alé

  Alé,

  My family is an exploited minority. Our ancestors built the Union Pacific Railroad for twenty cents a day. If it was a good day.

  Dad made Phyllis a partner in the store ten years ago and our insurance even paid for her mother’s cataracts. So she doesn’t need pickets.

  What if I make you a producer all by yourself?

  —Augie

  Augie,

  Maybe. But with top billing and a retirement plan. And as long as this isn’t just another one of your excuses to get me to run into Anthony. “I’m con-sidering a relationship with you.” Was I supposed to faint over that? Besides, he couldn’t possibly want to go there. I say awful things to him and whenever I see him coming my way I grab that boy with the curly hair and walk him to our next class.

  —Alé

  Alé,

  That’s Andy Wexler. We’ve been bonding during soccer practice. We both like Swiss Miss and chocolate chip cookies, and he calls me Spidey because he says I’m lithe enough to swing from the Prudential Tower even without red tights and a mask. Have you ever met anyone who could use “lithe” in a sentence before? I’m teaching him how to improve his kick, and he’s going to be a shell of his former self when he finds out you’re just using him to make my brother jealous.

  Can we schedule our first production meeting for tomorrow after school?

  —Augie

  Augie,

  Not tomorrow. We’re having Bill and Hillary over for dinner. Do you want to come? Carlos is bringing a date and Mamita hates odd numbers at her table.

  Anyone with a cute quotient as high as Anthony’s deserves to suffer. Things come too easily to those people already. And no girl will ever break Andy Wexler’s heart. Trust me.

  I can squeeze in a production conference on Saturday. Meet me outside of the Lycée Francais at 1:00 after my French lessons. (There’s no use telling Papa that I’m already taking French at school because as far as he’s concerned, if it doesn’t cost him money it can’t be worth much.)

  —Alé

  Alé,

  Don’t tell that to anyone else. People will think you’re a stuck-up snob.

  —Augie

  Augie,

  I am a stuck-up snob.

  —Alé

  Dear Liza,

  I thought she was kidding. I thought she was making it up. I almost didn’t wear my suit because of it. Hillary Clinton spooned Hollandaise onto my asparagus! With her own hands! Alé’s beginning to scare me.

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick got back to me with a counter-offer.

  No sequins, no tinsel, no disco ball.

  A pit band of Mr. Disharoon on the piano. Period.

  Two-hour rehearsals, not eight. And only three times a week.

  No prima donnas, including Augie Hwong.

  Our adviser Lori Mahoney as celebrity M.C. Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang weren’t available, and Coretta Scott King costs $40,000.

  There was a time when I would have had an artistic meltdown, but when you’ve had a former First Lady practically feeding you, you learn how to rise above it all.

  Love,

  Augie

  FROM THE DESK OF LISA WEI HWONG

  Honey—

  I tried to make you something special from The Irish Cookbook, but it backfired halfway through. So I invented sweet-and-sour mackerel. It’s on the top shelf in the fridge. If it still looks like it’s alive, Dad’s only allowed to take you to the Brookline Café or Huskies for dinner. They pay their people sixty cents an hour more than they have to.

  Home late tonight, so kisses for bedtime. I have to review My Fair Lady downtown. Wish I could send the mackerel instead.

  I love you,

  Mom

  THEATRE

  MY FAIR LADY RETURNS TO BOSTON

  BY LISA WEI HWONG

  . . . and at this point in Act I, we’re forced down to the lowest rung of the social ladder, where the economically less fortunate are given their own anthem in “With a Little Bit of Luck”—a song designed to show us how much fun it is to be poor, in much the same manner that Stepin Fetchit proved for all time that African Americans were the toasts of the town as long as they tripped over their own feet and said things like, “Mah, mah, mah, dis sho’ is a crazy bunch of folks.” And if Henry Higgins is not the most reprehensible character ever written for the stage, that’s only because somewhere, somehow, someone is composing a musical biography of Ronald Reagan.

  Dear Liza,

  Your mother liked to sing and take pills, my mother likes to write and start riots. The day after her review came out, they had to shut down Tremont Street because the protesters in front of the theatre were blocking traffic. The State House even had to close early. I’m surrounded by rabble-rousers. If I ever introduce her to Alé, Boston is finished. Especially if it turns out that we have Filipino salmon packers living here. Besides, I have bigger fish to fry.

  Tick talked about his mom. I know that doesn’t sound like the kinds of Oscar-winning headlines you’re used to, but you’re wrong. He hasn’t done that in six years. The last clue I ever had about her was the lost purple balloon that she promised was going to come back to him if he watched the sky long enough. He told me that story at the beach when we were eight, and nothing else until this afternoon. And it wasn’t
even a special occasion. Has he been keeping it locked up all this time? Or did he only just remember it?

  It happened at 4:11. We usually eat Sno-Kones on the overpass above Mass Pike after school and discuss the things we can’t tell anybody else—but Tick’s gotten so into this diary thing and trying to have some dead guy named Buck Weaver allowed back into baseball, and I’ve been so busy helping Andy Wexler with soccer, today was our first Mass Pike summit in almost a week.

  Nehi sat between us with his head in Tick’s lap and his eyes on Tick’s Sno-Kone (he must have been in a root beer kind of mood), while we went through one of our usual quizzes.

  “Best hot dog.”

  “McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket. Best thunderstorm.”

  “The one in Newburyport on spring vacation. Best worm.”

  “Under the rock at Castle Island. Best Christmas Eve.”

  “When I was three and a half.” This kind of threw me. Usually we always agree that it was the Christmas when we were seven. We stayed at my house the night before, and after we were asleep Pop brought in this life-sized mechanical Santa Claus whose arm went up and down like he was waving. He and Dad set it up by the fireplace and turned off all of the lights except for the Christmas tree. Then they woke up me and Tick and carried us to the doorway of the living room to say hello to Santa. Well, when you’re seven years old and you’re three-quarters asleep and your head is on your father’s shoulder, you’ll pretty much believe anything you see—even without the special effects. But this was the real deal. Santa Claus waved to us and we waved back. And we could never make anybody believe that it had really happened.

  So when Tick switched Christmases on me, I knew something major was about to happen. While he stared hard across Mass Pike at the lights behind Fenway Park, he told me about how his mom had surprised them on December 24 with a sleigh and a horse and a driver. And how—after dinner—they rode through Bowdoin Street with the snow coming down all around them and the people on the sidewalks shopping at the last minute to buy presents for relatives they didn’t like or ginky friends they weren’t crazy about either, and with the colored lights blinking in all of the windows and “Silver Bells” piping out of the speakers in front of Faneuil Hall. The picture that the driver took of them shows Pop and Tick’s mom with their heads leaning in together and Tick in between them with a “this is going to last forever, right?” grin across his face. (Kids are so clueless.) Pop still has the picture framed in their living room and they even used it for their holiday cards two years in a row. “Happy 1993. Love, Nikki, Ted, and Anthony” and “Happy 1994 from T.C. Keller and his two best friends.” But there wasn’t any Happy 1995. And I never knew the story behind the picture until today. No wonder.