a peanut butter sandwich,” Mr. Kane said.
Peanut butter sandwich. Why, I’d done that hundreds of times. I reached for a jar of peanut butter above my head, like I was getting it from a kitchen cabinet. But I couldn’t really feel it in my hand. How big was the jar? How wide did my fingers spread when I held a real jar of peanut butter?
I got the bread and put it down next to the peanut butter. I held it in two hands, although I was pretty sure that wasn’t the way I usually carried bread around. Again, with the knife, I couldn’t “feel” how I would ordinarily hold a knife. Did I just clutch it, or did my index finger extend over the handle?
I stuck the knife into the peanut butter jar and pulled it straight out. I think I did the spreading part pretty well, like I was really smearing on peanut butter. But apart from that, I knew I wasn’t much good.
It felt so strange. I mean, even though all those people were watching me, what bothered me most was that I couldn’t remember how it felt to hold a jar or a knife, things I did every day. It was mystifying that a peanut butter sandwich was so much more complicated to make in pantomime than it was in real life.
“Not bad, Laura.” Was it my imagination, or did he actually sound disappointed?
A little let down, I went back to my seat.
“Did anyone notice anything Laura forgot to do when she made her sandwich?”
Rita Lovett waved her hand. Without waiting to be called on she blurted, “She forgot to take the lid off the jar!”
She smiled triumphantly, as if she’d somehow made up for not unrolling her socks by noticing my jar lid.
Beth looked disgusted. “She just couldn’t wait,” she whispered, “to pick on someone else’s tiny mistake. I thought you were very good.”
I was grateful for her sympathy. But I was so annoyed with myself! How could I forget a dumb thing like the jar lid, when I’d been so careful to look out for just those little details Mr. Kane warned us about? I remembered to put stuff back in the cabinet—I even put the knife in the sink, although probably no one knew what I was doing. I guess I’d been so busy looking out for all the little details that I forgot to watch out for the big ones.
Beth was next. She had to make a telephone call. Without talking aloud, of course.
She was good. She moved her lips and made faces and reacted like she was really having a conversation with someone. You could even see her leaning against a wall that wasn’t there and fiddling with the curly telephone cord.
I made little clapping motions as she came back to the seat, and she grinned.
No one could find anything wrong with her pantomime.
“That’s all we have time for today,” Mr. Kane said. There were a few groans of disappointment from some of the people who still had their hands up.
“We’ll do some more next week,” he promised. “And I’ll have some monologues prepared for you to read too. And after that, we’ll begin to talk about our first play of the season.”
The room buzzed with excitement. A lot of the shyness had apparently been overcome.
“And maybe,” Mr. Kane went on, “you boys could get some of your friends to come down and join us. We’ll need some male actors for our productions, you know.”
The boys didn’t say anything. They looked slightly uncomfortable. They hadn’t done any pantomimes or even raised their hands during the whole meeting. I wondered if they’d stumbled into the wrong room by mistake and had been too embarrassed to just get up and walk out. One of them looked really young, like a fifth grader, and the other was tall and skinny with stuck-out ears. Neither of them looked like a potential leading man.
“You were so good,” I told Beth as we walked out of the building.
“Oh, it’s just that he gave me such an easy one to do. Yours was much harder than mine. Try it, you’ll see how simple it is.”
“I will when I get home.” In fact, that’s just what I’d been planning to do. She’d made it look like fun to make an imaginary telephone call and I couldn’t wait to try it in front of a mirror.
Beth and I certainly seemed to be on the same wavelength. Though I hardly knew her, I did know right away that I liked her and wanted to get to know her better.
“Where do you live?” she asked. “Do you get the bus?”
“No, I walk. You know where Woodbine Way is?”
Beth shook her head.
“In Old Hillside Gardens.”
“Oh, sure, I know where that is.” She nodded.
Old Hillside Gardens is an area of Hillside with big, old houses, no sidewalks and lots of tall trees and broad lawns. They call it Old because right near it they built New Hillside Gardens, which has big modern houses, smaller, younger trees and sidewalks.
“We’re in Country Manor,” Beth said. “I have to get the late bus.”
Country Manor is a lot like New Hillside Gardens but newer and way over on the other side of town.
“Hey, why don’t you come home with me?” she said. “They don’t care who gets on the late bus. They don’t even check the bus passes.”
I hesitated. I wanted to, but it was already late and I had so much homework to do and I didn’t know how I was going to get home.
“Come on,” she urged, starting to walk toward the waiting bus. “We can do our homework together, and my mother could drive you home. Or you could stay and have dinner with us.”
“Well . . .”
“Come on, we’ll miss the bus.”
“Well, if you’re sure your mother wouldn’t mind—”
“Of course she wouldn’t mind. She’s always telling me to bring my friends home.”
Beth already thought of me as her friend. I liked that.
“And if we get our homework done fast,” she went on, “we can think up pantomimes for each other to do.”
“Or,” I said, following her onto the bus, “we could do one the other person has to guess. To see how realistic we can be.”
“That’s a good idea. Like charades.”
The bus pulled away just as we got into seats.
“Oh,” I said suddenly.
“What?”
“I guess I accept your invitation.”
Beth laughed.
THE FIRST THING I noticed about Beth’s house was how quiet it was. No one was pounding on a grand piano. No one was rehearsing the role of a madwoman in the dining room. No one was raving about the impact of Ultra Brite on his love life.
True, there was the sound of Fred and Wilma Flintstone arguing in another room, but it was not simultaneously combined with all of the above, as it is in our house.
The second thing I noticed was how neat and orderly everything was. There was no clutter in the living room; a big bowl of fresh fruit was the only thing that sat on the glossy surface of the dining room table. In our house, if you want to eat in the dining room it’s a major production. You practically have to hire a bulldozer to clear away the debris.
I waited for Beth to tell me I had to take off my shoes to walk across the pearl gray wall-to-wall carpeting, which looked brand new. I had been in houses where that was required, but Beth just led me through the living room and dining room to the kitchen without a word about keeping the rugs clean.