And This Is Laura Read online

  She nodded.

  Facing us, she took an imaginary toothbrush out of its holder and stuck it in her mouth. She held it there, her mouth slightly open, while she picked up an invisible tube of toothpaste and twisted off the cap with two fingers. She took the brush out of her mouth and squeezed toothpaste on it. Then she put the tube down on the side of the “sink” and reached for the water faucet.

  It was amazing. Her movements were so realistic you could almost see the water running and the toothbrush in her hand. She put the brush under the water a couple of times and even examined her teeth in the mirror above the sink as she brushed them. She rinsed off the brush and stuck it back in the holder, then turned off the water. She peered into the “mirror,” baring her upper lip and running her tongue over her teeth. She even picked at the spaces between two teeth with her fingernail, as if she’d missed something. Then she gave a little satisfied nod of her head, capped the toothpaste and put it back on the side of the sink.

  “That’s it,” she said, and broke the silence.

  Everyone burst into applause.

  Jean walked back to her seat and Beth whispered, “Isn’t that something? I could almost hear the brushing noise.”

  “Me too. She’s really good.”

  “Thank you, Jean,” said Mr. Kane. “Now that you have an idea of what you can do with pantomime, who else would like to try?”

  Jean must have inspired us. This time quite a few people waved their hands to be called on, and even I felt the urge to try a pantomime. It looked like fun.

  The next person was a short girl with dark, curly hair.

  “I’m Rita Lovett,” she said, almost in a squeak.

  Mr. Kane had her put on shoes and socks. She wasn’t nearly as good as Jean Freeman had been. In fact, if I didn’t know she was supposed to be putting on shoes and socks, I would have thought she was tromping on ants and spraining her ankles because all she really did was raise and lower her feet a couple of times and kind of hold her hands on them.

  Beth looked at me and shrugged, ever so slightly, as if to say, “Either one of us could do better than that.”

  I nodded to show I agreed.

  “That’s not bad, Rita,” Mr. Kane said. “But remember when you do pantomime there are lots of little details that make it realistic and if you leave them out it’s not as effective. Can anyone suggest something that Rita might have done even before she started to put on her socks?”

  What was she supposed to have done before putting the socks on? I couldn’t imagine. It seemed to me that Rita’s problem was mainly that when she was supposed to look like she was putting on socks she actually looked like she was stomping on bugs, but apparently that wasn’t what bothered Mr. Kane.

  “She should have gotten the socks from the drawer,” said Jean from the back of the room. “And then she should have unfolded them, or unrolled them or something like that.”

  “Right. You remember, Jean didn’t start right off brushing her teeth. She did all the preliminary things you do first, uncapping the toothpaste, turning on the water. It’s those little details that help your audience really see the thing you’re acting out.”

  Beth and I both raised our hands. He called on me.

  I went to the front of the room and looked back at all those faces. Beth smiled encouragingly at me. I tried not to show that I was nervous.

  “I’m Laura Hoffman.”

  “Laura’s sister, Jill,” Mr. Kane said, “was in this club a few years ago. She had exceptional talent. It seems to run in the family.”

  I sighed. I wished Mr. Kane wouldn’t make such snap judgments. After all he hadn’t even seen me act yet and now that he had everyone expecting I’d be as good as my incredibly talented sister, I felt more self-conscious than ever.

  Everyone waited for me to do something terrific.

  “Make 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 d
id 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.

  3

  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.

  Beth’s mother was having a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter when we came in. The counter was in the center of the kitchen and divided it in half. Like everything else in the room, it gleamed.

  “Hi, honey.” Mrs. Traub put down her coffee cup and looked up from the newspaper.

  “Hi. Mom, this is Laura Hoffman. She’s in the dramatic club too.”

  “Hi, Laura. How did the meeting go?”

  “It was fun,” Beth said. “Is there anything to eat?”

  She rummaged through the copper-colored refrigerator and came up with Hawaiian Punch, chive cheese and two pears. Then she took a box of crackers and a bag of potato chips from a cabinet.

  “Leave some room for dinner,” Mrs. Traub said mildly.

  “We will.” Beth lined up everything on a red enamel tray, along with glasses and knives. “Listen, is it all right if Laura stays for dinner?”

  “No, really, I can’t.” I didn’t want to just barge in like that and have Mrs. Traub worrying about how to stretch the lamb chops to feed an extra mouth.

  “Of course you can,” Mrs. Traub said. She didn’t seem to be counting lamb chops in her head. “It’s only going to be spaghetti and meatballs, Laura, and I’ve got plenty. We’d love to have you.”

  “Well—if you’re sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble.” I did want to stay. I felt very comfortable in Beth’s house.

  “It isn’t any trouble. It’s all made already, except for the spaghetti; we just have to put an extra plate on the table, and if it makes you feel better, I’ll let you do that.”

  She grinned at me, and I smiled back. She was very pretty, younger than my mother and a lot more dignified looking. She had on this cream-colored pantsuit with a brown and beige striped sweater. My mother, who could be absolutely stunning if she felt like it, is about as clothes-conscious as my father. She’s partial to old jeans and sweat shirts with pictures of Beethoven on them. When she goes out shopping, she throws a fringed shawl over this outfit. She has even been known to rush out for a carton of milk in the winter with a twenty-year-old mink coat draped over her sweat shirt and jeans.

  If I protest that people will think her even more eccentric than they already do, she replies, “But it’s coming back in style. This type of coat is just what they’re wearing now.”

  Beth’s mother was waiting for my response.

  “Come on, Laura,” Beth urged. “Stay.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thank you. I’d better call home and tell them.”

  I followed Beth upstairs. The sound of the television was barely audible up there and in her room, with the door closed, you couldn’t hear it at all.

  “You can use the phone in my parents’ room,” Beth said. “Just shut the door so you can hear yourself talk. My brother sits in front of that TV all afternoon.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Seven. He’s a real brat.”

  “So’s my brother. Seven, I mean.”

  “We ought to get them together,” Beth said. “At your house,” she added quickly.

  After I called home we ate the cheese and crackers and pears. Beth’s room was as neat and quietly elegant as the rest of the house. Everything was white and yellow and green; it would be summer all year round in there.

  “Your mother’s nice,” I said as we finished off the potato chips and juice.

  “Yeah. You’ll like my father too. They’re okay. You won’t like Roger. But that’s all right. Nobody likes Roger, except my parents.”

  “You have a great house,” I said enviously. “Wait till you see mine. It looks like a rummage sale.”

  I began to wonder what Beth would think of my family when she saw the way we lived. It’s not that we would be condemned by the Board of Health or anything. It’s just that the place always looks like a crazed litterbug has just run amok through it. My mother has a woman who comes in to clean every Friday and before she comes we dash around trying to put away the clutter that’s amassed during the week so she can get to things like floors, countertops, etc., but within a day or two all the stuff somehow reappears in the living room and dining room and you’d never know that underneath all that mess it was really clean.

  “We have a maid come in Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays,” Beth said. “It would never look like this if she didn’t. My mother’s a lawyer.”

  Well, that explained why she was all dressed up. After all, even my mother wouldn’t go out to work in a sweatshirt and jeans. Although my father does, come to think of it . . .

  We had planned to do our homework, but every time we picked up a pen and actually started to work one of us would begin talking and we’d forget what we were supposed to be doing. We found we liked the same books, watched the same TV programs and hated the same things in school—graphs, maps and fractions.

  We agreed that Jean Freeman would probably be the star of any play Mr. Kane’s clu
b put on.

  We were just about to give up on the homework and do pantomimes instead when Mrs. Traub called us to set the table.

  I followed Beth as she bounced down the stairs and was suddenly aware of how at home I felt here. I could very easily get used to living surrounded by quiet elegance, I thought. It was quite a comfortable feeling.

  Since Beth knew where everything was, she carried in all the dishes and forks and things and I set the table. We do set the table at my house, in spite of what you might think. As a matter of fact, we use a very old, fancy set of china that my Grandmother Hoffman gave us. It’s practically an heirloom. We also use real silver and cloth napkins. My mother says she likes to set a nice table. It never seems to bother her that we usually eat in the kitchen, and that it might strike people as a little silly to use all that good stuff when stacks of pots and half-empty packages of macaroni and little heaps of recipes and clippings surround you on all sides and you know you’re eating in the midst of this mess because you can’t get into the dining room . . . But as long as the table looks nice she doesn’t care.

  Beth’s mother had changed her clothes. She was now wearing plaid slacks and a turtleneck sweater. She didn’t look one bit less classy than she had before.

  “This is my father,” Beth said. “Daddy, this is Laura Hoffman.”

  “Hello, Laura.” He turned to his wife. “Isn’t it amazing, Lee? The older Beth gets the prettier her friends get.”

  Mrs. Traub just smiled, like she had heard that before.

  I, on the other hand, hadn’t. At least, not from a father who looked like him. He was much younger than my father and he could have been a male model. He had dark blond hair, dark brown eyes and had either just come back from Miami Beach, or used Insta-Tan.

  I realized I was staring. I quickly went back to setting the table.

  “Did you call your parents, Laura?” asked Beth’s mother.

  “Yes, I did before.”

  “That’s good. Beth, get Roger away from the television, please, and tell him we’re eating.”

  Beth sighed. “All right. Where’d you leave the leash?”