The Nerviest Girl in the World Read online

  “I don’t think I want to be famous,” I told her. “But I’d put up with it if they’d let me keep doing stunts in the pictures. I wish they needed someone to jump out another window. It was fun, landing in all that hay.”

  Jezebel gave her wings an irritated flap. Something about her hostile gaze under those long ostrich eyelashes reminded me of the way Mary had glared at me the day Mr. Corrigan put me in a picture. And suddenly I realized why she’d been so mad. She’d been jealous. Jealous that I was going to be in a moving picture and not her. All this time she’d probably been dreaming of being a famous actress. And there I was, barely even aware such things as actresses existed.

  “I wonder if Mary’s been to the opera house,” I mused aloud. “I bet she’s seen lots of pictures.” I thought about asking her. But no, why give her another chance to snub me?

  Instead, I climbed up on a fence rail and reenacted the jumping-out-the-window scene from my third picture. I hollered like I was falling four stories instead of four feet, landing in the soft dirt with a satisfying thud.

  Jezebel frowned at me. She didn’t approve of such shenanigans. But she didn’t approve of much of anything, so that was all right.

  One morning Mama sent me to the post office to mail a letter she’d written her aunt in Colorado. I saddled Dinah, who was in a lively mood. Perfect. The faster we got to town, the longer I could hang around on Straight Street to see if anything interesting was happening.

  It was one of those fresh, clear mornings when the sky is smooth and blue as a ribbon. The air was still cool on my skin; the day’s heat hadn’t set in yet. I’d likely bake on the way home, but for now it felt delicious, putting me in a lively mood of my own. I could tell Dinah was charmed by the weather; she cantered with her head held high and proud. A hawk sailed in lazy circles above us. Small finches with berry-colored heads darted in and out of bushes along the road, fussing at each other or singing hymns; I’d no idea which. A stout bull snake coiled on a warm stone lifted its head to watch us go by.

  As we neared the edge of Lemon Springs, the bird chatter and leaf rustle all around was drowned out by people noises: men shouting to each other in the lumberyard, wagons groaning and rattling on the dusty road, kids hollering whose turn it was to go next, mothers hollering at the kids to stop squabbling. They sounded like the finches, only sharper.

  The post office was a two-story red-brick building sitting by itself on a Straight Street block. The building was owned by the Lemon Springs Lemon Co., a fact announced in big white letters two feet high painted on the bricks across the top of the front wall. On the north side of the building, more big white letters shouted about shoes and gear and EVERYTHING USED ON A RANCH. A man in dusty pants and a dusty cap leaned against the white-framed windows reading a newspaper under the wide front-porch roof, which bore a small sign that said POST OFFICE. It always seemed funny to me that the post office sign was so little and the LEMON CO. sign was so huge. It was like some enormous tree, a live oak maybe, with a little mushroom at its base—but you knew the mushroom was connected underground to ten thousand more mushrooms all across the country.

  I was about to walk through the mushroom’s door when a big advertisement on the back of the dusty man’s newspaper caught my eye.

  I stared openmouthed at the two small photographs printed above the names of the pictures. One was a picture of Ike on horseback, wearing his black mustache and aiming his gun at someone outside the frame.

  The other photo was of me.

  There I was in the window of the farmhouse, one leg over the sill, about to jump. That was me. My face, my leg.

  It was real. Right there in the newspaper! I was in a moving picture, and people were going to see it. Strangers. Family. Mary Mason.

  “Can I help you, missy?” the dusty man asked, startling me. He was eyeing me over the top edge of his paper.

  “No, sir!” I blurted, embarrassed to have been caught gawking at my own photograph. At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d seen the photo. Would he recognize me?

  I didn’t know if I wanted him to. I felt my cheeks go hot. The post office door opened and a woman came out. I scooted in behind her as the door swung shut. My heart was pounding like I’d just raced an ostrich. (They’re freakishly fast, those birds. Maybe that’s why they don’t bother to use their wings for flying, just for flapping in my face to scold me.)

  I think I got Mama’s letter posted all right, but I couldn’t say for sure. My head was whirling with the staggering realness of that advertisement. Why, Mr. Corrigan’s company had paid money to have it printed in the paper!

  What if people didn’t like the pictures? What if they saw right through my pretending? When Nell performed, you forgot it was acting. It was like she was a brand-new person actually living this experience, not an actress who put on new parts as easily as new hats. And the scary, scowling villain Bart was a whole different person from the Bart with the sideways grin, palling around with my brothers after the camera stopped rolling. Bill and Ike were teaching him how to fall off a horse without killing himself. But the second Mr. Corrigan yelled “Action!” the amiable, joking-around Bart would vanish and the murderous scoundrel would appear.

  I walked a whole block down Straight Street before I remembered I’d left my horse tied outside the post office. I turned back to fetch her and bumped smack into Mary Mason.

  “Ow!” she yelled, and her mother, a fearsome tower with an imposing scowl, snapped at me to watch where I was going. She was a tall, rail-thin woman with a long neck, reminiscent of an ostrich. Same angry eyes, same jutting-out chin. She seemed as likely to dart forward and nip me as Jezebel.

  “Beg pardon,” I mumbled, wanting to scoot around them and get back to Dinah. But then I froze in shock.

  Mary was smiling at me with a big toothy grin like she was my best friend in the world. I eyed her suspiciously. I’d seen in that sickbed scene what a convincing actress she could be when she wanted to, almost as good as Nell.

  “Why, don’t you trouble yourself the slightest little bit, Pearl!” she said, her voice syrupy sweet. “What a lovely surprise, bumping into you.”

  “It is?” I asked, skeptical.

  Her eyes flickered and it was like a window shade going up; for a second I could see the real Mary inside. Then the shade went back down and the Mary made of syrup and smiles returned.

  “Yes, indeed,” she chirped. “I wonder if you’ve heard the exciting news! Mr. Corrigan has asked me to appear in another one of his pictures! I’m to play a minister’s daughter who helps tend the sick.”

  “Oh,” I said, not sure how to respond. I knew that smile had to be an act. Under all that syrup was a pancake made of spite.

  I figured she just wanted to gloat over me. Well, I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. Thanks to Nell’s tips, I was learning a thing or two about acting myself. I put on a big toothy smile of my own and gushed, “Well, how about that? Isn’t that just the most tremendous news!”

  In that moment I realized everybody’s an actor at some point or other—pretty much every day, come to think of it. When Bill almost got killed vaulting from horseback into that auto, he acted like it was no big deal at all, nothing worse than stubbing a toe. After Dinah ran away with me, I acted nonchalant about it even though it was pretty scary. When I tried my hand at baking cookies last year, Ike gobbled his down with what sure looked like genuine enthusiasm and said it was positively indescribable. Then I bit into one myself and discovered something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. I must have mixed up the salt with the sugar, and I definitely didn’t get all the eggshells when I was picking them out of the mixing bowl. (Chicken eggs are the devil to crack. Ostrich eggshell shards are big enough you can’t possibly miss them.)

  That means Ike was only pretending his cookie tasted good, to spare my feelings. Was acting (in real l
ife, not for a moving picture) a kind of lying? A kind kind of lying? I’d need to think about this.

  Anyway, what Mary and I were doing didn’t have anything to do with kindness. She was pretending to be sweet to me when really she just wanted to gloat. And I was pretending sweet right back, so as not to give her the satisfaction of making me feel bad. And that was another curious thing—if she wanted me to feel bad in the first place, why go about it in that sneaky fake-smile way? Why not just get there directly like she usually did, with one of her mean-eyed glares?

  All these thoughts swirled in my head as I stood there having that smile-off with Mary. Her mother was smiling too, sort of—at least, it looked like a proud-mama smile wanted to shine out because of Mary’s part in the picture, but it was like a rodeo bull trying to break through the gate; it couldn’t get past the pinched-up set of her lips. Mary’s smile was growing frowny at the edges. I don’t think she was swallowing my syrup any more than I was swallowing hers.

  “Well,” I said cheerfully, wanting to be back on my horse away from this awkward scene, “I’d best be getting home. Congratulations on your swell news, Mary!”

  I scooted around them as quick as I could and was on Dinah’s back and almost to the edge of town before I remembered I’d wanted to poke around on Straight Street, maybe wander the rows at the feedstore, where the air smelled of sawdust and canvas, and the big sacks of feed let out puffs of grain dust when you punched them.

  Oh well, I might as well head home. Dinah had traded in her lively mood for a pokey one, so home would be a while off. I had plenty to keep my mind busy while I rode. When you’re alone on the chaparral, just you and your horse, that’s the best time for pondering. Dinah minded her own business and didn’t give a fig about mine. Horses don’t act; they just are. Cattle, too. Dogs, cats. Chickens. Ostriches—hmm. Most of the time an ostrich lets you know exactly what she thinks, with no regard at all for your feelings. But every now and then I’ve seen an ostrich pretend to be chummy just so you drop your guard and get close enough for a good nip.

  Same kind of acting as Mary Mason’s, come to think of it.

  What with the blizzard of thoughts about smiles and kind-acting and mean-acting and ostrich-acting (same thing, I guess), I forgot about the whole point of Mary pretending to be chummy with me until later, after I’d watered Dinah and stowed her saddle and left her in the north pasture with Apple. So Mary was going to be in another picture. Why her and not me? I wondered, heading for the washbasin in the lean-to outside the kitchen. A couple of pangs of hurt pricked at me—Had Mr. Corrigan decided I wasn’t good enough? Was he tired of me?—but then I remembered Mary in that sickbed scene and I had to admit there were things she did better than I could. I shook the water off my hands and went to look for a snack.

  “What’s ailing you, Pearl?” Grandma said, barring my path into the kitchen. “Indigestion? I can mix you up some bicarb and water.”

  “No, ma’am!” I said hastily, shuddering at the thought. “I’m fine. Just hungry.”

  I tried to tack a little plaintive note to the last word, hoping Grandma would offer a slice of cake or maybe some doughnuts. But Grandma saw right through me. She snorted and pointed to the basket of apples on the worktable.

  Doesn’t matter how fine an actress you are—you can’t fool your grandmother.

  I took my apple to the courtyard and sat in the cool shade, leaning my back against our well. A little black phoebe alit on the back of Grandma’s patio rocking chair, where she liked to sit and do her sewing on summer evenings. It tilted its pointy head to eye me warily. It had no need to worry; I felt worn out with questions and wondering, too worn out to move.

  I knew one thing for sure: Whatever this new picture was about, it wouldn’t involve Mary risking her neck. Mary Mason wouldn’t risk breaking a fingernail, let alone her neck.

  * * *

  Turned out I needn’t have worried. Mr. Corrigan wasn’t finished with me. My brothers came home from another day of cowpunching for the camera with a message from Mr. C. New picture, Monday morning, standard rate, wear shoes.

  Shoes! Sounded like a fancy part. All the ranchers’ daughters and poor urchins I’d played so far ran around barefoot. (The best way to run around, in my opinion.)

  Come Monday morning, Mary and I both got a big surprise: We were to play sisters!

  Mary gave me a steely glare, her lips pinching tighter and tighter until she looked quite a lot like her mother, that day on the street. Her hair was curled into long sausages and her blue dress was crisp and fresh-pressed. I could feel her assessing my flyaround hair and my patched boy-pants. Well, let her stare. What did it matter what I was wearing? The costume lady would have something for me to change into. She had a whole trunkful of clothes back at the rooms the picture people used as their offices, at the Henderson Hotel in Lemon Springs.

  “I don’t think we look at all like sisters,” said Mary primly.

  I shrugged. “Ike and Bill don’t look anything alike, and they’re brothers.”

  “Hmm,” said Mary. You could tell she was dying to add a -ph at the end. Hmph, like an irritated horse.

  “All right, young ladies,” said Mr. Corrigan, rushing up to us in his usual hurry. “Here’s the scene. You’re orphan sisters, alone in the world and utterly devoted to each other.”

  Mary and I cast each other a glance. I guessed we were going to find out if either one of us really could act as well as Nell and Bart.

  “You’re down to your last nickel, about to starve. Then you see a sign announcing an exhibition for a hot-air balloon. You reckon all sorts of fancy folks will turn up for it, and maybe you can talk one of them into giving you some work. We’ll shoot that part today. The fella with the balloon should be here tomorrow.”

  “The balloon,” I murmured, feeling dazed. Mr. Corrigan was bringing in a real hot-air balloonist? Was there any chance—my heart quickened—was there any chance he was planning to send us up in it?

  He wasn’t, though. Not us.

  Just me.

  I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath until I heard Mary let hers out. Her eyes were wide, and for a second I thought she was furious that she wasn’t going up in the balloon, too. But then I saw the panic in them, like a horse rearing away from a rattlesnake. She’d been terrified. Her whooshing breath was a gust of relief.

  Mr. Corrigan was eyeing me. “You all right with this, Pearl? I have something pretty nervy in mind for you, but if anyone can do it, you can.”

  I swallowed hard. What could be nervier than going up in a hot-air balloon?

  Coming down from one, it turned out. The story Mr. Corrigan had dreamed up had the sisters wandering around at the balloon exhibition, asking for work and being refused over and over. They wander over to gawk at the balloon with a bunch of other kids. The balloon man is having his picture taken in front of it, preening before the admiring crowd. A rotten little boy in the crowd—to be played by Walter—snatches a rag doll out of the younger sister’s hands. Mary, of course. The doll was made by their mother; it’s all they have left of her. As a joke, the stinker of a boy tosses the doll into the balloon basket. The older, bolder sister—me, naturally—scrambles into the basket to retrieve it. The balloonist notices and starts hollering for the girl to get out. A scuffle breaks out—grown-ups and kids shouting and shoving—and in the ruckus someone knocks loose the tether rope and the balloon sails up into the sky with the older sister in it.

  “Now, Pearl,” said Mr. Corrigan. “We won’t really send you up alone. Your mother would flay me alive.” His mouth screwed up sideways under his mustache. “She might anyway, when she sees the picture. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

  His plan was to have the real balloon operator crouch down in the basket before they released the rope. It would shoot up into the sky, but not too far—he wanted the camera to get a goo
d, long look at my terrified face.

  Terror wouldn’t take much acting, under those circumstances. But it was exciting, too—a ride in a real hot-air balloon.

  “Now, what would be really swell,” Mr. Corrigan mused, gazing at some invisible movie playing in his head, “would be to have you toss the anchor rope over the side of the basket and shinny down it. But—” He sighed regretfully. “But I suppose that would be too much to ask of anyone, even a spunky gal like you.”

  To this day I don’t know if he was being sincere, or if maybe Mr. Corrigan was the best actor of us all.

  It’s fitting that Mr. Corrigan was always calling out “Action!” to signal to Gordy and the actors that it was time to start filming a scene. Action could have been his middle name. He barreled directly from telling us the balloon story to setting us up to shoot the first scene. There wasn’t time to wonder or worry about the balloon ride; I had to learn my part in the first bit of the story. Which meant working with Mary Mason—which was maybe more nerve-wracking than the idea of climbing out of a hot-air balloon.

  The costume lady got us changed, and fussed with our hair. At least, she fussed with mine. Mary’s perfect ringlets defied any interloping. Personally, I didn’t see how it made sense for a poor orphan kid to have fancy curls and a hair ribbon, but I kept my opinion to myself. I reckoned I might tell Jezebel about it when I got home, just to see the disdain in her eyes. Ostriches make a satisfying audience if you pick the right story.

  We practiced the scene a couple of times—huddling together on the ground against a barn wall, the Mary-sister crying and the me-sister comforting her. Both of us staring into the camera with big woebegone eyes. I pulled a little money purse out of my pocket and opened it, acting sorrowful and worried because it was empty. Turned it upside down and shook it, as if that could conjure up one last coin to buy us some bread.