The Talented Clementine Page 2

  “You thought I might be getting a new job in Egypt?”

  I nodded. “On Friday.”

  “Well, that’s an odd one. No. You don’t have to worry about that anymore. We are definitely not moving to Egypt on Friday. In fact, we have no plans to move anywhere, any time.”

  Then we trimmed the ivy some more. And I got a good idea.

  My dad says I’m the queen of noticing interesting things. He says he’s just learning from a master, but I think he’s pretty good at it too. For a grown-up, anyway.

  So I asked him if he’d noticed any good talents lately.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, not the normal ones, like singing or dancing or playing an instrument. Those are boring. I was just wondering if you’ve seen any pizazzy ones lately.”

  “Well, let’s see. In the park this morning, I saw a bunch of guys flying kites with fishing poles. They were really good—really talented at it.”

  That would be kind of hard on a stage. “Any other ones?”

  “Well, on the way home, I was walking behind a woman. She had a poodle, a pocketbook, and a cup of coffee and she was talking on her phone. I have no idea how she juggled all that.”

  Juggling was a good talent.

  “Thanks, Dad!” I said.

  Then I went inside. Luckily, I found everything right away. My mom’s pocketbook was right on her drawing table, and next to it was half a cup of coffee. The phone was under my bed—probably String Bean left it there, because I’m sure I didn’t. Then I found Moisturizer and scooped him up.

  Okay, fine, a kitten isn’t the same as a poodle. This is called Making Do.

  Let me tell you, it’s pretty hard just holding all those things at once. And before I could toss everything into the air and start talking on the phone, Moisturizer saw a bird outside the window. He jumped out of my arms, and everything else crashed to the floor.

  And I learned the difference between crashed and smashed: crashed is easier to clean up. Also, I learned that coffee is easier to clean up when you spill it on a new brown rug. You hardly have to touch it at all!

  I went back outside and asked my dad if he had any other talents to tell me about.

  He put down his clippers. “Why all this interest in talent all of a sudden, Sport?”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the stupid flyer and handed it to him.

  “‘Talent-Palooza, Night of the Stars,’” he read. “That’s quite a title.”

  I pointed up to the fifth floor.

  “Oh,” he said. “Margaret.”

  I nodded. “And Margaret has hundreds of talents. She’s going to do something really pizazzy at the show.”

  “So you’re trying to think up something pizazzy to do, too, right?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I’m trying to think up anything to do at all. I don’t have any talents.”

  “Are you kidding, Clementine? You’re the most talented person I know!”

  Of course, he has to say that: he’s my father. Still, for a minute I started thinking maybe he and Mitchell were right. Maybe I had some really great talent I just didn’t know about yet. Then he started talking again and ruined it.

  “Take pruning ivy, for instance,” he said, nodding at my wall. “You’re a natural. One day, and you’re already one of the best in the business, Sport.”

  “Dad.” My dad thinks he’s funny. Mostly I do, too.

  “Or thinking of things to put on top of toast. Remember the lime Jell-O? I still can’t get over it. Sheer genius.”

  “Dad. I’m serious.”

  “Okay, seriously. Let’s see. You’re good at math, obviously. You’re an amazing artist. And you’re really good at seeing things from a fresh angle, having new ideas. Remember how you won the Great Pigeon War for me? And you’re the queen of noticing things. You’re curious and you ask the most interesting questions. You—”

  “Dad!” I stopped him. “I can’t do those things on a stage!”

  But he wasn’t paying attention. “And you are very empathetic. Do you know what that means?”

  I shook my head. Maybe it was something like “good at a musical instrument nobody knows about.”

  My dad sat down on the wall again and patted a space next to him. I sat down, too.

  “It’s a wonderful thing to be. It means you’re good at figuring out how other people are feeling. You care about that.”

  And suddenly I was very empathetic! I saw that my dad was starting to get worried about me. And he was going to feel sad if he couldn’t help me.

  So I jumped up. “Thanks, Dad! I feel better now!” I gave him a big smile and hurried inside in case he was empathetic, too. In case he could see what I was really feeling.

  Wednesday morning, Margaret’s teacher came into our classroom right after the pledge, to visit with my teacher. This is because the fourth graders are supposed to be responsible enough to be left alone for a few minutes. I don’t think this is such a hot idea. I know Margaret and I never leave her alone in my room.

  But I was glad. Margaret’s teacher wears her hair swirled up like a tornado, and I think if a bobby pin ever came shooting out of it, it would look like lightning. I like watching for that.

  “I am going to be the director of our talent show,” Margaret’s teacher said. “Each morning we’ll have a little trial run of a couple of acts. That way everything will run smoothly on the big night.”

  My teacher made a face at Margaret’s teacher. It meant they didn’t believe that for a minute, but they had to say it anyway.

  “Who would like to go first today?”

  All the kids except me raised their hands, so my teacher just started with the first row.

  “My act is called ‘Cartwheel Extravaganza,’” said Maria.

  She went up to the front of the classroom and did a cartwheel into the chalkboard. We were all very surprised to learn that a chalkboard that big wouldn’t flatten a kid when it fell off the wall.

  “Are you all right?” my teacher asked, lifting it off her.

  “Oh, sure,” said Maria. “I always do that.”

  “Well, just in case, why don’t you go visit the nurse. And we’ll make sure there are no chalkboards on the stage Saturday night.” Then he called on the next kid, whose name is Morris or Boris, I always forget.

  “My act is named ‘Cartwheel Wham-o-Rama,’” Morris-Boris said. He jumped up out of his seat.

  “Wait, no!” my teacher cried, throwing his arms around the fish tank.

  But it was too late. Morris-Boris cartwheeled to the front of the room, where he didn’t knock over the fish tank, thank goodness, only the hamster cage. Zippy and Bump looked pretty surprised to be out on the floor like that and they let Morris-Boris scoop them right up.

  “Thank you, Norris,” my teacher said. “Are you all right?”

  Oh. I wrote a big N on my arm so I wouldn’t forget.

  “We’ll make sure there are no hamster cages on the stage, either. And just to be on the safe side, why don’t you go visit the nurse, too.”

  I don’t know why my teacher bothered with sending Maria and Norris to the nurse. All she ever does when you go in to tell her how sick you are is roll her eyes. She always looks bored, as if she’s just killing time until a really good disease hits the school. Maria and Norris could have head lumps the size of toasters, and all our nurse would do is hand them a frozen sponge.

  “Now,” my teacher was saying, “does anyone have an act that isn’t cartwheeling?”

  Half the kids put their hands down. My teacher called on a boy named Joe and asked him what his act was.

  Secretly I was hoping it was cartwheeling anyway. Joe is really short and he has really short everything: really short name, really short hair, really short ears. He has really short arms and legs, too, so if he did a cartwheel, I bet it would look like a starfish rolling across the floor, and I would like to see that.

  But nope.

  Joe took a harmonica from h
is pocket. “I’m going to play this. And my dog, Buddy, is going to sing.”

  “Your dog?” my teacher asked. “Your dog sings?”

  Joe went over to the open window and whistled. His big brown dog, who waits all day on the playground for him, ran over. He jumped up and put his paws on the window ledge. Then Joe blew into his harmonica.

  Buddy threw back his big brown dog head, closed his eyes, and howled.

  “See?” said Joe. “Buddy loves my harmonica-playing!”

  “Well, I don’t know…” my teacher started.

  Then Margaret’s teacher came over and wrote something in her notebook and showed it to my teacher. I guess it was, “At least it’s not cartwheels!” because then my teacher said, “Okay. Two rules. First, Buddy has to be on a leash. And second, if he has an accident on the stage, you have to clean it up.”

  Joe said okay, and then my teacher said, “That’s enough for one day, time for social studies,” which was lucky because I was the next person in the row.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about not having an act to do. My teacher had to say six “Clementine-you-need-to-pay-attention!”s, which is a lot, even for me.

  By the time the bus came, I was so tired from worrying that my neck felt too weak to hold up my head. I flopped over in the seat.

  “What’s the matter?” Margaret asked me. “Are you sick?”

  “I might be,” I said.

  “Well, I hope you’re not too sick to come to the talent show Saturday night. You’d miss my act. Which would be a shame, because you could really use it.”

  I perked up a little. “What do you mean? What’s your act?”

  “The name of it is ‘Dressing Fashionably,’” Margaret said.

  “That’s not an act!”

  “It is too. And it’s something I’m very talented at. And certain people are not.” Margaret pointed her eyes at me at the “certain people” part.

  “What about all your other talents? What about gymnastics and singing and playing the accordion?”

  “Oh, lots of kids can do those things. Dressing Fashionably is a very special talent. And besides, my act will be helpful to certain people.” She arrow-eyed me at the “certain people” part again, but I didn’t care. Because I thought of something.

  “Can I have one of your extra talents, then?” I asked her. “One of the ones you’re not going to do?”

  Margaret squinted at me.

  “Can you show me how to do one? As long as you’re not going to be performing it…”

  Margaret thought for a minute. Then she said, “Well, okay. I guess we can try. Come over tomorrow after school.”

  Finally, Thursday after-school came.

  “We’ll go through my talents alphabetically,” said Margaret.

  She went to a shelf and pulled down her accordion. She looked at my hands and then she looked at the keys. She put the accordion back. “Fingerprints,” she said.

  Then she handed me her baton. Which I dropped.

  “Baton twirling’s out.”

  “How about your clarinet?” I asked.

  Margaret shook her head. “Spit.”

  “D is for dramatic acting class,” she told me. “Pretend you’ve just heard some surprising news.”

  I clapped my hands to the sides of my face and made my mouth a capital O.

  “Dramatic acting’s out, too,” Margaret decided.

  E was for riding English, and Margaret said I needed a horse for that. F was for fencing, and she said I wasn’t mature enough to touch her sword. I was losing hope, but then finally, when she got to T, she brightened up.

  “Tap dancing!”

  “Tap dancing’s easy?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Tap dancing is really hard. But maybe you could fake it. Maybe you could just kind of clomp around in tap shoes making a lot of noise.”

  “I can clomp around,” I agreed. “So I just need some tap shoes!”

  “You can wear my old ones,” Margaret said.

  Then she took me into her closet, which looks like a clothing store: everything is all folded perfectly and hung up in neat lines. In Margaret’s closet you expect to see signs saying BIG SALE ON SWEATERS! or NEW FASHION ARRIVALS! There was a whole wall of cubbies just for shoes, and every pair was in its own plastic bag.

  I pointed to the bags. “How come?”

  “Germs!” Margaret shuddered and made a face like she’d just swallowed a toad.

  “In or out?” I asked.

  “In or out, what?”

  “The germs. Are you keeping them in or out?”

  Margaret glared at me as if this question was too dumb to bother with, but I don’t think she knew the answer.

  She picked out a bag and started to give it to me, then stopped. “Have you washed your hands? You have to wash your hands.” She pointed to the bathroom.

  I went into her bathroom, which is hers alone and she doesn’t even have to share it with a brother, like I do.

  Margaret’s bathroom looks like a bathroom store. Okay, fine, I’ve never seen a bathroom store, but it would probably look just like this, except it would have price tags on the faucet and the soap and the toilet paper.

  I looked at my hands. They looked really good to me. Plus, they felt just right—not too slippery, not too sticky. And best of all they smelled perfect: a mixture of my new drawing pencils and grape bubble gum. It’s hard to get your hands to smell perfect like that.

  So I only pretended to wash them. I have in- vented a good way to do this.

  First, you run the water. Then you hold the soap under the faucet so it gets wet, then put it back. Then you get the towel, and here is the tricky part: you can’t get it too wet but you can’t leave it dry, either. So what I invented is this: dab the towel into the wet sink just a little bit, then hang it back up. But rumpled, this time.

  I did all this, then I walked back into Margaret’s room and took off my shoes.

  Margaret’s eyes grew so big I thought they were going to sproing out on stalks, like cartoon eyes.

  “Clementine!” she gasped. “Your feet are huge!”

  “Shhhhh!” I hushed her, in case Mitchell was hanging around listening to us.

  Margaret put her foot next to mine. “Well, they’re as big as mine now. These aren’t going to fit,” she warned me.

  I tried to fit my feet into Margaret’s old tap shoes anyway, but it was no use. I felt very empathetic about Cinderella’s stepsisters.

  I was so sad I flopped down on Margaret’s bed before I remembered the rule about that.

  “Wrinkles!” Margaret screamed. She ran over and pushed me off the bed, then smoothed the bedspread, which has poodles wearing hats on it. So I sat on her chair to be sad there, instead.

  I studied the bottoms of Margaret’s tap shoes. “If I nailed something tappy into the bottoms of my sneakers, that would work, wouldn’t it? I just need to make the sound, don’t I?”

  “Well,” said Margaret. “I guess.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Then I took the elevator all the way down to B for basement, because I knew exactly what would make that tappy sound.

  Once a month, all the people who own condominiums in our building get together to argue about what things they need to buy for the building and who should pay how much. They drink beer at these meetings. My dad says this is not such a hot idea because then they forget what they decided, but he’s only the manager of the building, so he can’t tell them what to do. He just lets them keep the beer in the basement.

  And all those beers came in bottles. With bottle caps.

  I got a pair of pliers from the workbench. Let me tell you, it is N-O-T, not easy to get twenty-four bottle caps off with a pair of pliers, but finally I did it. Luckily, most of the beer that spilled soaked into my clothes, so I only had to mop up a small puddle.

  Then I went back to the workbench. I got out my dad’s building manager–strength superglue and glued all the bottle caps to th
e soles of my sneakers. All the while, I kept smiling whenever I thought about how happy everyone would be next week at the meeting because their bottles had already been opened!

  When I was done, I put my sneakers on and a good surprise happened. It was hard to walk, but when I did, I sounded exactly like a person tap dancing! I pushed the elevator button for the fifth floor so I could show Margaret.

  The elevator stopped at the lobby floor and Margaret’s mother and Alan got in.

  Alan is Margaret’s mother’s boyfriend. Margaret and Mitchell are not so happy about this because Alan kisses Margaret’s mother in public. Margaret and Mitchell think there should be a rule about grown-ups kissing in public if any of them are your parents. This is the only thing they have ever agreed about in their entire lives.

  “Hi there, Tangerine!” Alan said.

  Alan thinks he is funny. I do not.

  Alan sniffed the air as if he were smelling something weird. Then he bent over and sniffed me. “What the…?”

  Margaret’s mother bent over and sniffed me, too. “Beer?” she said. She reached out and stabbed the STOP ELEVATOR button, then she punched the button for my floor. “I think we need to pay a little visit to your parents, Clementine.”

  My mother opened the door, and Margaret’s mother handed me over.

  “Oh, thank you so much, Susan!” my mother said, as if it was a wonderful surprise. Then she closed the door.

  While I was explaining, she did so many “Clementine-what-were-you-thinking?”s that I finally stopped counting them.

  Then my dad came in and she told him about it, except she couldn’t finish her sentences.

  “All twenty-four… Condo Association meeting… Glued them on… Spilled all over… Smells like beer…!!!”

  Somehow my dad understood, and then I had to listen to all his “Clementine-what-were-you-thinking?”s, too.

  “And besides all that,” my mother said when he was done, “her sneakers are ruined.”

  “Let me have them,” my dad said. “Maybe I can get those bottle caps off.”