The Curtain Went Up, My Trousers Fell Down Read online

  “My dad has a subscription to National Geographic,” I said.

  “I thought you just looked at the pictures.”

  “I’ve moved on. Now I read the captions under the pictures too.”

  “I’ve chosen to show you an excerpt from this film,” Mr Rock said, turning back to us, “because the winter musical, which will be held in three weeks, is presenting an adaptation of this story.”

  “I’m going to audition to play Anna,” Heather volunteered.

  “Good for you,” Mr Rock said. “Our director, Devore, has asked me to encourage all of you to audition. I’m going to work with him as musical director, and we want everyone to participate in this very exciting production.”

  “Not me,” Ashley said. “I can’t sing to save my life.”

  “Putting on a play requires so many different talents, Ashley,” Mr Rock said. “For instance, we need a stage manager to be in charge of the production…”

  “Did you say in charge?” Frankie asked. “Then you’ve got your man, Mr Rock.”

  “We also need people to build and paint the scenery and to design costumes…”

  “That’s me,” said Ashley. “I’ve found my job. Did they wear rhinestones in Siam?”

  Ashley loves to bejewel all of her clothes with rhinestones. In fact, that day she was wearing a blue T-shirt with three purple rhine stone dolphins on the front. Dolphins are her trademark, but she also decorates her clothes with turtles, fish and baby hippos.

  “Not only did they wear rhinestones in Siam,” Mr Rock said, “but the royal clothes were often made of cloth spun from real gold.”

  “Wow,” said Ashley. I could see her mind start to swirl with excitement.

  “The scene I’ve chosen to show you is when Anna, who is a governess, arrives from England,” Mr Rock explained.

  “Is a governess like a lady governor?” Luke Whitman asked, taking his finger out of his nose just long enough to finish the question.

  “No, a governess is like a tutor.”

  A tutor! Could someone please stop using that word around me?

  Before I could stop myself, my eyes locked on Heather’s eyes. She gave me a little smile, as if we had some sort of secret connection. This was not OK with me. It’s one thing to be tutored by her. But it’s quite another for her to think she could get away with making little smiley faces at me.

  If Heather Payne thinks I’m going to smiley-face back, then she doesn’t know everything she thinks she knows.

  “Anna has been brought from England by the King of Siam to teach his nineteen children,” Mr Rock was saying.

  “Nineteen kids!” Ryan Shimozato called out. “It’s a good thing they didn’t live in my apartment!”

  “At first, the king and Anna do not get along at all, because he isn’t used to a woman being so independent. But eventually they fall in love.”

  “There’s not going to be any kissing in this, is there?” Luke Whitman asked. “Because I can’t be in a play where there’s kissing.”

  “You won’t have to worry about that, Luke,” Kim Paulson said. “The area under your nose is not exactly a ‘Kiss Me’ zone.”

  “But mine is,” bellowed Nick McKelty like the water buffalo he is.

  “You wish,” Ashley said.

  “Well, I just want everyone to know now: I am playing the king,” McKelty hollered out in his usual bully voice.

  “Not necessarily, Nick,” Mr Rock said. “That’s why we have auditions. To find out who is right for what part.”

  “Come on, Mr Rock,” McKelty said. “We all know that auditions for the part of the king are a waste of time. I mean, look at me. Do you see anything else here but a king?”

  What I saw was a thick blond brute with size sixty-two feet and taco sauce running down the front of his shirt.

  “Let’s just watch the tape, shall we?” Mr Rock said.

  I settled back in my chair and watched the video. I was prepared not to be impressed. Once, when my grandpa Papa Pete was babysitting for us, he made us watch a DVD of an old Broadway musical and invited our neighbour Mrs Fink to come over and watch it with us. They sat singing along really loudly to songs that had never ever been on MTV. I love Papa Pete, but I have to say, that night definitely did not make the list of my top three favourite evenings.

  But this movie, The King and I, was different. I mean, the guy who played the king was cool. He was completely bald and completely buff, like the slickest wrestler you’ve ever seen. He walked around barefoot in these puffy golden trousers, flexing his muscles and looking powerful. And his voice! Wow, that voice! It sounded like Darth Vader would sound if he could sing.

  I didn’t take my eyes off the screen. I was totally hooked. That guy was me, and I was him. I had those muscles inside my arms. I had that voice inside my throat. True, I didn’t have those cool golden trousers inside my wardrobe. But that could be arranged.

  By the end of the music lesson, I had made my decision.

  Watch out, McKelty. I was going to be King of Siam.

  WHEN I GET SOMETHING in my head, I really get it in my head. I mean, once it’s in there, it’s not going anywhere else soon until it’s done. Papa Pete calls this tenacity, which means that once I decide to do something, I see it through to the very end. There’s no stopping me.

  So when I decided that I was going to play the King of Siam, the idea crawled into my brain and took up permanent residence there. From the moment I saw the video, I was the King of Siam.

  “Turn green,” I ordered the traffic lights on the corner of Amsterdam and 78th Street as my sister, Emily, and I walked home after school that day. “The King of Siam commands it.”

  “Apparently, the light doesn’t obey foreign royalty,” Emily said.

  Oh yeah? Well, at that very moment, the red light turned green, which shows you how much Emily knows about the power of the king.

  When we arrived at our apartment, I pushed the front door open and announced to all that could hear, “The king has arrived. Please show the proper respect.”

  The only person who responded wasn’t a person at all. It was Cheerio, our family dachshund, who came running up to greet me, spinning in crazy circles like he always does when he’s excited.

  “At least the royal puppy shows me some respect,” I said, scratching him behind both ears at once.

  Emily wasn’t having any more of my kingly games.

  “Hank, would you please get out of the doorway so I can get into the apartment? Some of us actually have homework to do. But I guess you wouldn’t know about that.”

  I hope that you never have to put up with a smart sister, because they are really difficult to live with.

  “The king grants you permission to pass this once,” I said. “But please show the proper respect in the future.”

  “Hank, breaking news. You’re not a king,” Emily said in her know-it-all voice. She pushed by me and shook her head all the way down the hall to her bedroom.

  “I will find the appropriate punishment for you, peasant woman,” I called after her.

  As I hung up my green jacket on the coat-rack by the door and dropped my rucksack in the hall, I shouted again, just for the fun of it. “Hear ye, hear ye, loyal subjects, the king is home for his royal snack.”

  Unfortunately, the only loyal subject who heard me was my dad. He was sitting at the dining-room table doing whatever he does on his laptop. I’m still trying to understand exactly what he does for a living. I know it involves computers and long columns of numbers, which as we know, I am allergic to. One number, like ten or even fifteen, is OK with me. But when that number becomes a huge pile of numbers, I get a purplish rash on my knees, which is really tough to scratch through my jeans.

  I walked through the living room, stepping carefully over Cheerio, who was still spinning in circles around my feet. When I reached the dining-room table, I saw that my dad had set out an after-school snack for me – a muesli bar and a glass of milk.

  “A
h, the juice of the cow,” I said, picking up the milk and gulping it down. “To express his thanks, the king will have a sack of gold delivered to you.”

  “Enough of your clowning around, Hank,” my dad said, looking around the table for his reading glasses – which he finally found on top of his head. “I have a message for you.”

  “Ah, another one of my loyal subjects wanting my advice?” I asked, a little less kingly this time.

  “Heather Payne called,” my father said, reading her name from a scrap of paper he had torn off the bottom of one of his crossword puzzles.

  “Oops, wrong kingdom,” I said, heading for my room as fast as my royal feet could carry me.

  “Stop right there,” my dad said. “I am not finished. Her message was that she wants to set up a tutoring time. She said she was your peer tutor in maths.”

  I ask you, how about that Heather Payne? She should change her official name to Heather “I’ll-Just-Blab-About-Hank’s-Personal-Business-To-Anyone” Payne! What was she thinking? Is there anyone in this whole city she hasn’t told yet? Maybe the guy who runs the lift in the Empire State Building wants to know about my long division skills or lack of them.

  “What’s all this about peer tutoring?” my dad asked me.

  “Oh, it’s an experiment that Dr Berger thought up,” I said, trying to make it sound like everyone in the school was giving it a shot.

  “Apparently, it’s more than an experiment if Dr Berger feels you need it.”

  “OK, Dad. I’ll give it to you straight. I didn’t exactly ace my last maths test.”

  My dad took off his glasses and stood up. I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t like the standing up part. I didn’t feel it was necessary.

  “How bad, Hank?”

  “Let’s just say I took the long way around long division, and it led nowhere,” I said.

  “You failed?”

  Not only was my dad standing up now, he was bending down so his face was directly in front of mine. And let me tell you two things about his face. One is that his face looks a lot like mine, only older. And two is that his face definitely didn’t look happy.

  “I don’t think a D-minus is technically in the failure category.”

  “Hank, have you no pride?” he said, starting to pace up and down on the Oriental carpet. “If you just sat at your desk and concentrated instead of playing toe basketball or any of those other silly games you dream up, you wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of peer tutoring.”

  I didn’t answer him because I couldn’t tell him he was wrong. I mean, yes, I was suffering from embarrassment at having to be peer tutored. And it’s even more embarrassing that Heather was telling everyone in the world. But most embarrassing was that I just couldn’t figure out why my brain didn’t work like everyone else’s.

  “We have to start cracking down on you, Hank,” my dad said. “Failing maths is not acceptable.”

  Oh boy, I didn’t like where this was going. I hoped it wasn’t going towards the subject of TV.

  “I think I’m going to have to start limiting your television watching, young man,” he said.

  Look at that, that’s exactly where it went. I’m a mind reader.

  “When is your next maths test?”

  “Two weeks on Friday,” I answered. I knew that because it was a big unit test on long division. Ms Adolf had mentioned it every day that week.

  “Fine,” my dad said. “Between now and two weeks on Friday, there will be no TV, except maybe an hour on the weekends.”

  My heart was going thumpity-thump, and not in a good way.

  “Does that include video games?” I asked. “Because technically they’re not really TV, they’re just digital games played on a TV screen.”

  I thought I’d wowed him with my excellent and very resourceful point. Apparently, he was wowless. “Let’s see what it’s like for you to have two solid weeks of no distractions,” he suggested. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow right after school. I’ll walk you home. And you’ll get straight to work studying maths.”

  “Gee, that sounds great, Dad. But tomorrow after school are the auditions for the winter musical. I’m trying out for the part of the king.”

  “This is a prime example of your priorities, Hank. A musical is an extracurricular activity, and cannot get in the way of your maths.”

  “But, Dad, it’s a school function. Being in a play is part of my education.”

  “Nonsense,” my dad said. “Your future will not depend on you being in a play. But it will depend on how proficient you are in mathematics.”

  “Dad, I can feel it in my bones. I’m going to get the lead. I’m going to be the king. You can’t stop me from auditioning. You have to let me audition!”

  My dad paced up and down on the Oriental rug again. Cheerio had stopped spinning and had started chewing on my socks. The only sound in the room was the grinding of his cute little teeth as he chomped away at my sock’s elastic. My dad was rubbing his chin, something he does when he’s thinking hard.

  “All right, Hank,” he said at last. “If you want to be in this play so badly, I’ll make a deal with you. When is the musical?”

  “In three weeks.”

  “And your maths test is in two and a half weeks? So it’s before the musical.”

  “Right you are, Dad. You’re pretty good at maths, I must say.”

  I gave him a big smile, which he didn’t return.

  “OK, Hank. You can audition tomorrow. And if you get the part, you can play the king.”

  I threw my arms around his neck. “Dad, you’re the greatest,” I said, hugging him with all my might. “I knew you’d understand.”

  He unwrapped my arms from his neck and held my face in his hands. I thought he was going to give me a kiss. But instead, this is what I got.

  “If you get a B-plus or better on your maths test, you can continue to be in the play,” he said. “If you get lower, you will have to immediately drop out.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said, without even thinking.

  I danced around in a little circle, and Cheerio twirled around with me. Then I picked him up and ran into my room before my dad had a chance to change his mind.

  I sat down at my desk. I spun my chair around, and, as I was doing a 360 degree turn, it hit me like a wet noodle right across the face.

  A B-plus.

  The last time I got a B-plus was … let me see … oh, right, it was in … “plays well with others”.

  And that was in preschool.

  How was I ever going to get a B-plus?!

  TEN THINGS THAT WOULD BE AS DIFFICULT FOR ME AS GETTING A B-PLUS ON MY MATHS TEST

  1. I could hold a rope between my teeth and pull the family minivan with the whole family in it (including Cheerio) all the way out to Aunt Maxine’s on Long Island while singing Yankee Doodle.

  2. I could hop upside down on one hand across the Manhattan Bridge right into my favourite Chinese dumpling restaurant and eat two dozen pork dumplings with my toes.

  3. I could use a diving board to spring into outer space, where I would land on Mars. I could then send back photographs of me doing the cha-cha with a bunch of Martian girls.

  4. I could root for the Yankees to beat the Mets in the World Series baseball championship. Nope, I could never do that. That’s just not possible. Ever.

  5. I could keep my sock drawer neat and tidy. Nope, that’s not possible, either.

  6. OK, I could live in an igloo in the North Pole for a whole winter, eating whale blubber sandwiches, wearing only a bathing suit. Actually, that sounds more doable than getting a B-plus on my maths test.

  7. I can’t go on with this list, not because I’m out of ideas, but because my father is yelling through the door that Heather Payne just called to say we’re meeting tomorrow morning before school to go over … yes … long division. Oh, Heather, will you ever get a life?

  IF YOU THINK THAT SEEING Heather Payne first thing in the morning is going to put you in a goo
d mood, then you’re probably the type of person who likes to break their leg and walk around on it without crutches. But there she was, at school bright and early the next morning, waiting for me at the round table in the corner of the library – book open, pencil in hand.

  “Ready to work on some long division?” she chirped like a twiggy cricket.

  “I can hardly wait,” I said, sitting down on the blue plastic chair that she had pulled up really close to her. I pushed it back a bit. I like to keep some personal space between me and long division.

  “Hank, why do you have such a poor attitude towards maths?” she asked.

  “Because I can’t do it,” I answered.

  “Long division, like all forms of mathematics, is just about remembering a logical sequence of steps, if you know what I mean,” Heather said.

  “Well, in this case, I don’t know what you mean, because what’s logical to you isn’t necessarily logical to me.”

  I wasn’t being a smart alec. I was just trying to give her the picture of what happens inside my head when I see a maths problem on the page. The first thing that happens is that I feel nauseous. Then my brain goes numb, like the way your arm feels when you sleep on it – except my brain doesn’t tingle, it just lies there in my head, staring at the problem with no idea where to begin to solve it.

  “I’ll walk you through the steps,” Heather offered. “For the first problem, we’ll try a simple one. What is seventy-five divided by five?”

  “Forty-five,” I said, without a second’s hesitation.

  “Why did you say that, Hank?”

  “Because forty-five is Pedro Martinez’s number.”

  “Who is he and what does he have to do with long division?”

  “He’s my favourite pitcher for the Mets, and he’s got nothing to do with long division, but he happens to be one of the best pitchers in the big leagues.”

  “Hank, watch me as I solve this problem,” Heather said. “And please, concentrate.”

  She started scribbling numbers down on a piece of notebook paper, talking in strange tongues as she wrote. She was throwing words around faster than Pedro Martinez’s fastball.