The Talented Clementine Read online

  “No, Dad!” I cried. “I need them for my act! I’m tap-dancing at the talent show!”

  Too late. My dad left. But I was in luck—a few minutes later he came back, holding my sneakers. With the bottle caps still on.

  “They wouldn’t come off?” my mother asked.

  “Not in this lifetime,” my father answered.

  “Are you saying…?” my mother began.

  Then they stared at each other and they both said, “Not me!” at the same time.

  “I took her last month,” said my mom.

  “I won’t do it this time,” I told them. “I’ll be like a normal person.”

  My mother and father just looked at me as if I’d spoken in Martian, which I am going to learn. Then they turned back to each other.

  “I really think I should stay here,” said my dad. “What if the elevator breaks again and I have to call the repair service?”

  “But what if someone needs a drawing really, really fast—an emergency piece of art?” my mother tried. “No, I’d better stay home.”

  “If you take her, I’ll make dinner every night for a week,” my father offered.

  “I’ll make dinner every night for two weeks,” said my mother. “And do the dishes.”

  My parents always try to bribe each other into taking me shopping, which I do not think is funny. But—okay, fine—I take a really, really long time in stores. My parents think I have a hard time choosing things, but that’s not it. I can choose things just fine. The problem is, whenever you have to choose something, that means you have to not-choose about a hundred other things. Which is not so easy.

  Like in the candy store. If you choose peanut butter cups you have to not-choose red licorice and M&M’s and Starbursts and bubble gum. And Tootsie Rolls and Gummi Worms and Pixy Stix.

  And no matter what you pick, as soon as you take the first bite, you suddenly know you wanted one of the other ones.

  Still, this time I could try. “Today,” I promised my parents, “I’ll be really quick.”

  My parents just made faces that said, “We’ve heard that joke before.” Then my mom sent me to my room to change into dry overalls. When I got back, they were still at it.

  “I will make dinner and do the dishes for three weeks,” said my father.

  “A month,” said my mother.

  I flopped down on the couch to wait. When they got going like this, it could take a while.

  Finally, my father took all the money out of his wallet and held it out to my mother. “If you take her, you could buy a pair of shoes, too. My treat.”

  My mother said, “Well…” and I could see she was thinking about it.

  And then my father said, “Plus, I’ll take you out to dinner so you can wear them.”

  My mother reached toward the money, then stopped. “We’re not talking pizza or hamburgers, right?”

  “Absolutely not,” promised my dad. “We’re talking a tablecloth-and-candles kind of place.”

  “It might even be…the Ritz,” my mother warned him.

  The Ritz is the fanciest restaurant in Boston. It is very expensive, probably because it costs a lot to make all those crackers.

  “A deal,” my dad said.

  My parents smiled at each other and then they kissed. And here is a secret thing that I never tell Margaret or Mitchell—I like it when my parents kiss. Even in public.

  On the way to the shoe store, whenever we slowed down a little bit, people on the sidewalk would sniff at me and wrinkle their noses. “It’s not what you think,” my mother said every time. Then she made me walk even faster, which is not easy when you have twenty-four bottle caps on the soles of your shoes.

  When we got into the store, right away I saw a great pair of bright green sneakers in the front window. I ran in and climbed up to get them.

  My mother grabbed me by my overalls and pulled me back. “That’s the display window, Clementine. We need to find a salesman.”

  And you will not believe how lucky I was, because right then I found one! He came running up behind me.

  “May I show you something?” he asked, with a nervous look on his face.

  I pointed to the bright green sneakers and my mother said, “Size three and a half.”

  “Wonderful,” said the salesman. “That’s the lime from our new ‘Popsicle’ line. It also comes in—”

  “No!” My mother tried to stop him. “That’s fine, please don’t tell us the other—”

  Too late.

  “Lemon, orange, coconut, grape, blueberry, mango, and pink grapefruit. Very popular.”

  My mother threw her hands up and then sank into a chair. “Bring them all,” she said. “And bring them in size four, too. We’re going to be here a long time.”

  The salesman went away. He came back with a big stack of boxes. He opened them up and laid out all the pairs in front of me in a big sneaker rainbow. Then he sniffed. He looked at my mother as if he couldn’t believe what his nose just told him.

  “It’s not what you think.” My mother slumped down in her chair and sighed. “Oh, heck,” she said. “Maybe it is what you think.”

  I tried on all the Popsicle sneakers.

  The salesman asked me if I really had to test out each color by running across the store, climbing onto a chair, and then jumping off. I guess he was new.

  Blueberry was the zoomiest, and pink grape-fruit was the bounciest, so I put one on each foot and tried them out together. It was perfect and it looked wonderful, too, but the salesman said, “I don’t think so.”

  And I didn’t even care, because right then I saw the most beautiful pair of shoes in the world on a shelf near the display window: purple, with tall, skinny high heels and sparkly green dragonflies at the toes.

  I pointed to them. “How about…?” and before I could finish, both the salesman and my mom said, “I don’t think so,” at the same time.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “What other kinds of shoes do you have in this store?”

  “I can’t watch this,” said my mother. “Just make sure she chooses something sensible.” She got up and whispered to the salesman. Then she went over to the grown-up shoes and started shopping.

  As soon as she was gone, I asked the salesman if he had a tattoo. You can never tell which adults are going to have one.

  “No,” said the salesman. “Do you?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Pretty soon.”

  Then he left to get some more shoes for me. And you would not believe how many pairs of shoes were in that store! My feet were exhausted from all the trying on and my head hurt from all the not-choosing I was thinking about.

  Finally, the salesman held up a pair of striped basketball sneakers. “This is it,” he said. “These are the last shoes we’ve got.”

  When he was lacing them up for me, I saw something amazing. “Hey, did you know that you have a circle right at the top of your head where there’s no hair?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he said, “I am aware of that, thank you. Did you know that you smell like a brewery?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I am aware of that, thank you. And I’ll take the lime Popsicle sneakers.”

  The salesman sighed. “I know that, too,” he said. “They’re already in the bag at the checkout counter. Your mother told me you’d end up picking them.”

  Then I went up to the register where my mother was waiting. I made my mouth into a ruler line because I was so mad at her for knowing what I was going to do before I did. I was never going to speak to her again.

  “Want to see what I bought?” my mother asked outside.

  I kept my mouth a ruler line but I nodded and opened up her bag.

  And then I didn’t care about being mad. “WOW!” I said.

  “Exactly,” she said. “Wow.”

  We stopped and just stared at those purple wow shoes. The heels looked even taller and skinnier, and the dragonflies sparkled in the sun like emeralds. They were so beautiful that I was suddenly cured of bein
g afraid of pointy things.

  “Not very sensible,” I said.

  “No, definitely not very sensible,” my mom agreed. “In fact, they’re probably the least sensible shoes in the store. One of the benefits of being a grown-up.”

  “Can I try them on?”

  “Sure,” she said. Then she leaned over and gave me a huge smiling hug, even though I smelled like a brewery! “After you’ve had a bath.”

  I showed Margaret my new sneakers at the bus stop Friday morning.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. She fake yawned. “I had a pair like that when I was a little kid. Not green, though. Green is the dumbest color.”

  That Margaret.

  When I got on the bus, I hid my feet under my backpack and looked out the window for the whole ride. There are ninety-four street lamps between the bus stop and the school.

  In my classroom, a surprise was waiting: we had a substitute. Mrs. Righty-O. I call her that because she always says “Righty-O.” Also, okay, fine, because I can’t ever remember her name.

  It was a good surprise for two reasons. First, because when she read my teacher’s instructions, she said, “I’m sorry, but we’re not going to be able to have a run-through of the last acts for the talent show. It will be a miracle if I can even figure out what the heck we’re supposed to be doing for class work.”

  The second reason was that seeing Mrs. Righty-O in the front of the room gave me the most astoundishing idea of my entire life.

  I raised my hand. “Yes?” Mrs. Righty-O said.

  “I need to go to the principal’s office,” I told her.

  “Righty-O,” Mrs. Righty-O said. Substitutes don’t ask you why about things.

  I walked down the hall, which was very hard because my new sneakers wanted to run, and I knocked on Mrs. Rice’s door.

  “I have new sneakers,” I told Mrs. Rice.

  “I see that,” she said. “Do you have a note?”

  “Nope. I just came to tell you that tomorrow night I’ll be sending in a substitute.”

  “A substitute?”

  “Right. A substitute. Like my teacher sent a substitute today.”

  “I’m sorry, but there are no substitute students.”

  “But why not? If a teacher can have a substitute teacher, how come a kid can’t have a substitute kid?”

  Mrs. Rice looked at me for a long time. “Do you know, Clementine, that no one has ever asked that question before? And it’s a good question. An excellent question.

  “I’m sorry that the answer is still no, but I’m going to need a little time to come up with an excellent reason for you.”

  “Oh. So am I all done being here?” I asked.

  “You’re all done being here,” Mrs. Rice answered. “For now.”

  After school, I brought my old sneakers with the new tappy bottoms up to Margaret’s apartment.

  “All right. I’ll teach you a very easy routine,” Margaret said. “But remember, you have to do everything I say. You’re eight and I’m nine, so that means I’m the boss of you.”

  Which is a rule I don’t like very much.

  “What about Mitchell?” I asked. “He’s older than you. Is he the boss of you?”

  “Mitchell is Mitchell,” Margaret said. “He can’t be the boss of anybody.”

  “Well, what about my parents, then? I guess they’re the boss of all of us.”

  “Nope,” Margaret said. “My mom is way older than your parents. She’s the boss. So you have to do what I say.”

  Sometimes that Margaret makes me so mad. I tried one more thing. “Oh, yeah? Well, what about Mrs. Jacobi on the top floor? She’s about a hundred, and I think that’s older than your mother, so that makes her the boss.”

  Margaret looked stumped for a minute. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s too hard to tell with grown-ups.” Then she brightened up. “So we’ll just stick to me being the boss of you.”

  I thought about the talent show. And about me being the only one without any talents.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “For today.”

  Margaret put on her tap shoes, and I put on my sneakers with the bottle caps. She rolled up her rug and started tapping around.

  “This is called Shuffle off to Buffalo,” she said. “I am extremely wonderful at it. Just do what I do.”

  Except she did four million things at once.

  “Head high, spine straight, arms floating, big smile!” Margaret said. “Flap, flap, step, step, ball-shuffle, change!”

  Her feet were moving so fast I couldn’t even see them, but I went over to the floor to try it anyway.

  Let me tell you, a shiny wooden floor is very slippery when you have twenty-four bottle caps glued to your sneakers. I took one step onto it and skidded right into Margaret’s dressing table. Perfume bottles and hair clips and brushes and rings and ribbons went flying through the air.

  Margaret made a face that said, “Clementine, you are hopeless.”

  Which I already knew.

  But then while she was picking everything up, she surprised me.

  “I guess you’re not meant for tap dancing,” she said. “But we still have a little time. I’ll keep trying to think up something you could be not so hopeless at.”

  I think Margaret might be a little empathetic, too.

  “Thanks for the lesson, anyway,” I told her.

  I changed back into my new sneakers and went outside to where my dad was finishing up the ivy. Maybe he’d noticed some really great new talent today. But before I could tell him the bad news that his daughter was a failure at tap dancing, my brother came outside with my mom. He ran over to us and tried to pick up my dad’s clippers.

  “Uh-unh,” Dad said. “Sorry, Bud—not for little guys.”

  Cabbage screwed up his face like we were in for a real wail, so I quickly stuck some ivy into my sleeves and down my neck and waved my arms at him. I went staggering around crying, “Help! Help! I swallowed some ivy seeds!” This made him laugh so hard he forgot all about the wailing.

  “Now, that!” my dad cried. “See? There’s an- other talent you have, Clementine! Nobody else in the world can make your brother laugh like that.”

  “Dad,” I reminded him. “That’s not something people perform on a stage.”

  And then I remembered Joe. “Hey, Mom,” I said. “Could Beets still have an accident?”

  “First of all, your brother’s name isn’t Beets. And second of all, what do you mean, an accident?”

  “I mean, he doesn’t ever need diapers anymore, right? Even if he heard a really loud sound, like, say, clapping—he’d be okay, he wouldn’t…?”

  “Oh. No, he’s pretty safe there. Clementine, you ask the most interesting questions.”

  Then she dragged my brother off for his playgroup while he was still laughing about the ivy.

  I thought about the other part. My teacher probably wouldn’t make me put a leash on my brother. But I wasn’t so sure about Margaret’s teacher. Margaret’s teacher really liked rules. “Do we have a leash?” I asked my dad.

  “A leash? No, of course not. Why do you want one?”

  “Do you know anybody who does? I just need to borrow one for a little while.”

  “Well, actually, I’ve seen a leash in Mrs. Jacobi’s storage compartment. From when she had that Dalmatian. You could ask her.”

  My dad knows everything about everybody in the building, and he’s always saying it’s a good thing he can keep a secret.

  “But Clementine, I don’t think Moisturizer would like that.”

  “Dad! I know that! I would never put a leashon a cat!”

  At breakfast Saturday, I reminded my parents about the talent show. “You’re going to be there, right? It’s at six o’clock. You’re going to be there, right?”

  “Of course we’ll be there,” my mom said. “We’re going out to dinner tonight, but that’s much later. You know, we haven’t seen your tap-dancing routine yet. Do you want to practice it for us now?”<
br />
  “Oh, I’m not doing that anymore,” I told my parents. “I’ve got something better. Something I’m more talented at.”

  My parents asked me what it was, but I told them it was a surprise. “You’re going to love it, though!” I promised them.

  Then I brought Bean Sprout into my room to practice.

  “Once upon a time, there was a guy named Elvis,” I started. “His job was to sing and dance around until girls fell on the floor grabbing their hearts and wishing to marry him.”

  Then I pretended to play a guitar and sang the first line of the “hound dog” song and that was it. Squash went all historical, laughing so hard I thought he might spit up his Cheerios.

  We first found out how funny my brother thinks this is about a year ago. I had seen the Elvis guy on an old TV show with my parents one night. The next day, I did the act for Spinach and he cracked up. I didn’t know what the second line of the song was, but it didn’t matter because whatever I sang next—“Cracking at the top,” “Yogurt in your shoes”—made him laugh even harder.

  Now my parents call my Elvis act “The Old Standby.” Whenever my brother is in a bad mood, they call me in to perform.

  Because it only works if I do it. If my parents try, he just stares at them as if he’s trying to remember who they are. Once, Margaret tried and he ran into his room and hid under his bed and I had to drag him out by his feet.

  “Hound dog,” I sang again. “Dooby, dooby, curtain!”

  Carrot flopped onto my bed. He was laughing so hard tears squirted out of his eyes.

  Then I got the leash. “Sorry. Margaret’s teacher might make you wear it,” I told him. “But don’t worry, it’s not for your neck.” I buckled the leash around his overall straps in the back and waited to see what he thought.

  He got up on his hands and knees. “Arf! I’m a dog!”

  “No, you’re not a dog,” I told him.

  “Grrrrrrr…I’m a dog!”

  And then I saw what a wonderful idea that was! “Okay, fine. You’re a dog. Just remember that tonight you’re a dog who thinks Elvis is funny.”