Of Mice and Nutcrackers: A Peeler Christmas

  To Jim Ellieff

  The baby next to me sounds like a machine gun. Ack ack ack ack ack. She’s an ugly baby: almost bald, with gummy brown eyes, a bubbling nose, and a wide-open toothless mouth. Her tonsils waggle as she coughs again. Ack ack ack ack ack.

  “There, there, sweet pea,” says her mom.

  Sweet pea.

  The hospital walk-in clinic is filled with coughers. Also sniffers and wheezers, moaners and drippers. It’s December. Flu season. Kids clutch dirty toys. Parents wipe runny noses. Cartoon characters stare down from the walls. They don’t care. They’ve seen it all before.

  “Peeler!” calls the nurse. She has orange hair and black eyebrows. Good makeup for Halloween. Too bad it was weeks ago. She should put on her Christmas makeup soon. “Bernard Peeler.”

  “Right here,” says Dad. He’s holding my kid brother Bernie in his arms. Bernie’s one of the wheezers. That’s why we’re here.

  His breathing was bad this morning, when I left for school, and it got worse through the day. Dad didn’t even let Bill and me take off our coats when we got home from school. “We’re taking Bernie to the hospital,” he said, in that tone of voice that means no arguing.

  I didn’t say, “But I’m thirteen; I can stay home by myself.” I didn’t say, “But I have homework.” I didn’t say anything. I turned around and walked back out the front door.

  Bill said, “Aye, aye, sir.” He’s been saying that for a while now. He thinks he’s a sailor. Last summer he was an astronaut, always saying “roger,” or “affirmative,” or “Houston, we have a problem,” but he’s been watching a lot of sea stories on TV lately. And there’s this comic book series set on a sailing ship, with cannons and cutlasses and mizzenmasts. Last month he changed his personal e-mail address from Astrocoolboy to Not_unjolly_Roger. I’m getting tired of larboard and starboard and splicing the main brace.

  “Bernard Peeler!” says the nurse again.

  Dad stands up. Bernie wheezes in his arms.

  The ugly baby beside me goes off again. Ack ack ack ack ack.

  Bill paces up and down in the waiting room. His pants are wet at the bottom from the crust of slush that covers the sidewalks. We were supposed to get a major snowfall last week, but it wasn’t major, and it wasn’t really snow. Now it isn’t really anything at all.

  He stops pacing suddenly – the way he does everything. He slumps into Dad’s chair and picks up the nearest book. A fat one, with a lamp on the cover. Bill is eleven: not much of a reader, not like me, but he likes to pretend. He starts turning pages. I open my knapsack. I take out my “Nutcracker” notebook.

  Usually The Nutcracker is a ballet, with music you recognize from “Bugs Bunny” or “Walt Disney.” My mom took me to see it when I was seven. I don’t remember anything about it except the strawberry ice cream at intermission. It came in a silver dish, and there was a rolled-up wafer cookie in the middle. Mmmm! Anyway, our class – 7E – is doing a musical play based on The Nutcracker at the winter concert next week. I’m the director because it was all my idea. I wrote it – actually, I wrote the words. Tchaikovsky wrote the music. My best friend Patti is Maria, the heroine. Miss Gonsalves, our teacher, plays the piano. We’ve been rehearsing in the classroom for weeks. Tomorrow we get our first chance onstage in the gym. I can hardly wait.

  I go over my notes from today: Justin likes doll too much. Justin is a slender well-dressed boy who sits in the front row of the class and raises his eyebrows a lot. He plays Maria’s brother Fritz, who gets an ugly nutcracker for Christmas. He’s supposed to toss it aside because he’d rather play with his toy soldiers. Only Justin can’t help smoothing down the fur on our nutcracker doll’s hat.

  I wonder if we could get a different nutcracker doll. An uglier one. I’ll ask Patti’s mom. She works in a gift shop. And I’ll tell Justin again.

  Next note: a single name, circled twice. Firi. Oh, dear. He only has five lines, but he keeps forgetting them. I probably shouldn’t have given him a speaking part. I thought and thought about it. Patti was against the idea, but I like Jiri, and he begged me to give him something to say. I’ll have to talk to him too.

  Next note: a phone number. I’m supposed to remind Trinley’s mom, who’s sewing the costume for the Mouse King, that we need it next Monday. Also to remind her that Essa, who plays the part, is really small.

  Directing is more complicated than you think. It’s not just bossing people around.

  Bill’s lips are moving as he reads. His eyebrows are down, and his mouth is open. He really seems interested.

  “What’s the book about?” I say.

  “A storm at sea.”

  Figures.

  The nurse calls the machine-gun baby, who gives me one last cough on her way out. “There, there, sweet pea,” says her mom.

  I think about the atmosphere in the hospital waiting room: a thick soup of germs, spiced with menthol and eucalyptus and dirty diapers. I try to breathe very lightly, through my nose. Maybe, if I take little breaths, the germs won’t find their way down into my lungs.

  Brad from my class comes into the waiting room, with his mom. He has golden hair – not blond or yellow, but gold, like a sunset. I can’t decide if I like Brad or not. He smiles a special smile at me, like he’s more interested in what I have to say than anything else in the world. A personal-for-me smile – and that’s nice. And then I’ll see him talking to Miss Gonsalves, or to my friend Patti, and he’ll have the same special smile on his face.

  Patti doesn’t like him. She says his hair is the same color as margarine.

  Brad was fine in school this afternoon, but now he’s holding one hand in the other, cradling it.

  His mom is checking in with the nurse. “My name is Ogilvy!” she says, in a loud voice. “With an O.”

  How else could you spell the name? I wonder. Pogilvy – only the P is silent, like pneumonia. Or psoriasis. Or Psmith. I wonder if that’s what the machine-gun baby has: pneumonia.

  Hey, Brad notices me. I wave at him. He tries to wave back with his good hand, winces in pain. Poor guy.

  “Who’s that, dear?” asks his mom. She frowns in my direction.

  “A friend of mine from school,” says Brad.

  His mom looks from me to Brad, then comes right up to where I’m standing. “What’s your name?” she says.

  I tell her.

  She nods, filing me away. “I like to know all about Brad’s friends,” she says.

  Not much to say to that.

  “What happened to you?” I ask Brad.

  He looks embarrassed. “Hangnail,” he mutters at last.

  “What?”

  “A bad one. See?” He shows me. There’s some blood on his middle finger.

  “Oh, yes,” I say.

  Brad’s mom stares at me.

  “Looks like you should be okay for tomorrow’s rehearsal, though.” Of course Brad is the star – the handsome prince transformed into a nutcracker doll.

  “Rehearsal?” Brad’s mom makes it sound like a dirty word. The way I’d say “cockroach.”

  “Uh, Jane and I are doing a project together in school,” says Brad. He shakes his head at me. Why? I wonder.

  “What kind of project?” his mom asks. “Why do you need to rehearse?” Again she emphasizes the word.

  “It’s The Nut –” I begin, but Brad interrupts.

  “About nuts,” he says, quickly and loudly. “A project about nuts. For science class.” He smiles at me – the special one.

  “Nuts?” says his mom.

  “Sure,” I say quickly. I find myself playing along. I don’t know why – maybe it’s the smile. “Nuts. All about nut
s. Peanuts, chestnuts, cashews. Say, Brad, I found out where Brazil nuts come from today. Do you know where Brazil nuts come from? I’ll-give you a hint.”

  “Ogilvy,” says the nurse.

  “Come on,” says Brad, dragging his mom away. He looks back for a second, shrugs his shoulders. I wave good-bye.

  Weird.

  Bernie’s looking better when he gets back. “Hi, Bill,” he says. “Hi, Jane. I can breathe now. See?” He breathes in, and starts to cough. “Careful,” says Dad.

  Dad’s not looking so good. His face is redder than usual, and he’s taking a long time doing up Bernie’s snowsuit. His hand trembles on the zipper.

  “Come on,” I say to Bill.

  “In a minute,” he says. “This is interesting. The storm is so bad they’re going to throw this guy John overboard.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a stowaway, and they figure he brought the storm.”

  “What are you reading?” asks Dad, looking over.

  Bill holds up the book with the lamp on the cover. The Bible.

  Dad laughs. “That’s not John, it’s Jonah. With an a.”

  Bill peers at the page. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “How did you know?”

  “I used to go to Sunday school,” says Dad. “Now, let’s get home. It’s almost dinnertime, and we have to get Bernie’s prescription.”

  “Could I take this book with me?” asks, Bill. “I want to finish the story.”

  “I think we have a copy at home,” says Dad. “Somewhere.”

  A dark December evening with the streetlights on and a cold wind whistling up your sleeves and down your collar. I shiver. A shadow flits over the snow as we walk across the hospital parking lot. Big and black and spooky – the shadow, that is. The snow is white, though it looks blue in the streetlights. There isn’t a lot of snow – just enough to cover the ground, and collect in the folds of the garbage bags piled high by the curb.

  “Avast!” says Bill, grabbing my arm to stop me. He points up into a big bare tree behind us. “D’you see that bird?”

  “No,” I say.

  Dad is pushing Bernie in the stroller. They’re ahead of us. Dad’s head is down. He’s hunched over. From the back he looks like an old man.

  “It’s a raven,” says Bill. “The bird of doom.”

  “Bill – shut up!” I say.

  “They say the raven hovers around houses of ill luck. Someone inside … that place there is very ill.” He points dramatically.

  “Bill, that’s the hospital,” I say.

  “You see!” he says. “That proves it.”

  I stare up into the tree. The bare branches look cold and spooky. “It’s not a raven, anyway. It’s a duck, or something.”

  “A raven,” he insists.

  I make a quacking sound. “The duck of doom!” Bill snorts with laughter.

  We stop at the big drugstore on Copernicus Street and get Bernie’s prescription, and some cough drops for Dad – the kind that taste horrible. Bernie doesn’t try to climb out of the stroller, like he usually does.

  The houses are close together on our street. I can tell ours even from a distance because it and the house beside it – we share a roof – lean into each other, like friends with their arms linked. There’s a light on in our house. The front door opens. A beam of gold shines out from the hall onto our front walk. Mom stands in the doorway. She must have been watching for us. The beam of golden light makes her red-brown hair shine like a halo. She waves. We wave back.

  From right overhead comes the most hollow mournful croaking sound. Scary as anything. It sounds like an old coffin door swinging shut – right on you. I jump. So does Bill.

  “That wasn’t a duck,” says Bill.

  I dream that I’m bowling. I don’t know why – I don’t bowl very often, or very well. Mostly at someone else’s birthday party. In my dream, just like real life, I keep bowling gutter balls. So does the person in the next lane over. And the lane beside that. The whole bowling alley is full of lousy bowlers – every ball ends up in the gutter. I hear Brad’s voice. Maybe he’s the guy in the next lane. Maria, he says. Is he talking to me? My name is not Maria.

  Something scary about being Maria. I’m scared to turn my head and look at Brad. I run up to bowl again, grabbing firmly onto the ball, aiming right down the middle of the lane. I plant my feet and try to let go of the ball, only I can’t. I hang on too long, and find myself at the other end of the alley, down by the pins. I’m small, and I’m in the gutter, and this giant bowling ball is coming right at me. I try to climb out of the gutter, but I can’t. Of course it’s a gutter ball, and it’s coming, coming, coming….

  I wake up, sweating, and still afraid to turn my head. My heart is racing. Darkness. A flashing red light across the room – 3:05. My clock. I realize where I am. A sigh of relief – it was just a bad dream. I wonder if it was about The Nutcracker. Maria is the girl in the play.

  I shake my head. I must be more worried about this production than I thought. That reminds me – I must remember to ask Brad what all that was about yesterday with his mom.

  I get out of bed and go to the bathroom for a drink of water. No glass, so I bend down and gulp from the tap. And I hear a sound from next door, from the other side of the connecting wall. It’s coming toward me, getting closer and closer. I choke on the water. I’m back in my dream. The sound is a bit like a bowling ball.

  I listen hard. Marbles, I guess, is what it really is. Little Cisco, the kid next door, is rolling marbles up and down the hallway.

  Marbles at three in the morning?

  I stick my head into my brothers’ rooms. Bernie’s in a junior bed against the wall. He’s sleeping on his back, still and calm. His hands are crossed on his chest, and his skin is blue-white, like skim milk. Bill is tossing and turning – dreaming of a storm at sea, perhaps.

  I can hear my mom snoring from down the hall. A comforting night sound.

  Marbles at three in the morning. Okay, I guess. It’s not too noisy. Last year they dug up the street all night long for a month. That was noisy. I go back to bed.

  Next morning Bernie is feeling a lot better. He comes bouncing into my bedroom, the way he usually does. “Hi, Jane,” he says. “It snowed last night. It’s all white outside.”

  I run to the window. Yup. Snow. The sun’s just up, and the world looks clean and cold. People are scraping snow off the sidewalks and piling it on the lawns. You aren’t allowed to pile the snow on the road because that’s where the cars park. The people have mufflers around their heads. Their breath steams behind them, so they look like tugboats in a busy harbor.

  Bernie’s running around in his pajamas.

  “You should put socks on,” I say to him.

  “I’m fine. Except for a stuffy nose.” He sniffs.

  “You’re still sick,” I say. “You should get dressed.”

  “No.”

  He doesn’t go to school yet, so he doesn’t have to get dressed.

  “Put on something warmer. A sweater, or a bathrobe, or something.”

  “Bossy,” he says, running out of the room and downstairs. Oh, well.

  I get dressed and head downstairs too.

  Dad’s smile is a bit smaller than usual. So is Dad, come to think of it. He’s hunched over, and he clutches a big sweater around himself.

  “Hi, honey, have some soft tack,” he says.

  “Bill’s the one who likes soft tack.” It’s navy food – I don’t know why they can’t call it bread, but they don’t. I get myself some cold cereal and milk. Bernie isn’t allowed to have milk because of his stuffy nose. Dad pours him some juice and sits him in his booster seat at the table beside me.

  “Can I put juice on my flakes, Daddy?” he asks.

  I make a face. “Don’t do it,” I say.

  “Dad, can I?”

  “Sure,” says Dad. “But remember, you have to eat it.”

  Bernie thinks for a moment, then acts carefully and deliberately. He takes a sp
oonful of dry cereal from his bowl, and holds it in midair. Then he pours a little bit of apple juice from his cup onto the spoonful of cereal.

  Guess what happens.

  “Oops,” says Bernie.

  I move out of the way. Our kitchen table is on a slant. Dad says it’s not the table; the whole kitchen is on a slant. If you were eating spaghetti and meatballs, say, and a meatball fell off your plate and onto the kitchen table, it would roll off the table and onto the floor; and then, if you didn’t pick it up, your poor meatball would, as the song says, roll right out the door.

  Apple juice is flowing toward me like a river. It’s usually better to sit uphill from Bernie.

  Bill wanders in. I can hear his bare feet slapping against the kitchen linoleum. “Where are my striped socks?” he asks Dad.

  “I think I saw them last night in the bathroom,” he says.

  “You didn’t wash them, did you?”

  Dad shakes his head. He’s mopping up Bernie’s spill. Bill heads back out the door.

  “Your tack is getting cold,” Bernie calls after him.

  “It won’t be soft anymore.”

  “Hard tack is good too.” Bill heads upstairs.

  Dad coughs. A bad cough. He sounds like the ugly baby in the doctor’s office. Ack ack ack ack ack.

  “There, there, sweet pea,” I say.

  “Yeah, yeah,” says Dad.

  A snowy day means that the school hallways are wet and slippery. I almost fall, getting into my school shoes. I have to grab onto Patti to steady myself. Her locker is beside mine.

  “Careful!” she says.

  Patti is a bit of a worrier. Perfect for the part of Maria in the play, the girl who cares for the poor nutcracker doll that her brother Fritz has broken so carelessly.

  I’m hopping on one foot. My other one is wet. I hate wet feet. The bell rings.

  “If you aren’t careful, you’ll knock us both over!” Patti spits when she talks because of her braces. They’re new, and she’s not used to them yet. Her dark eyebrows curve down. “Come on, clumsy, we’re going to be late!”

  “Now, now, you girls!” Mr. March has a smile on his face and a mop in his hands. He works harder than anyone else in the school, I think. He makes the hallway clean around us while I struggle into my shoes.