Reality Boy

Joe Jr. sighs. Register #1 Girl is still frowning at him. “Look,” he says. “You go to school, right? You have a girl. You have a house. You have a job. You even have this $%#*ing awesome car.”

“It is awesome,” I say.

“What does that have to do with shit?” Register #1 Girl says. “If Gerald wants to work for the circus, who the $%#* are you to say he can’t?”

Joe Jr. ignores her. He looks at me in the rearview mirror. “Don’t make me tell my dad that you’re not eighteen. I don’t want to bust on you like that.”

In my head, there is a series of explosions—like Joe Jr. and I just blew up all the circus buses and the trucks and my house and the school and the whole $%#*ing PEC Center. But really, it’s not an explosion. It’s an implosion.

Because he’s right. About everything.

And why hasn’t Register #1 Girl told him that she’s not my girlfriend? What’s her deal? And why am I so especially pissed off about Tasha today, anyway? Hasn’t she been calling me g*y since before I ever knew what g*y meant? Hasn’t she been drowning me in plain view since I was born?

27

EPISODE 2, SCENES 7–15

CAMERA NUMBER ONE was on Nanny. “I think we should have one day that’s all for Gerald. He gets his favorite foods, plays his favorite games, and can do whatever he wants so long as his behay-vyah is good.”

Camera number two panned to Mom and Dad. They nodded.

Camera number three was set for a wide shot of all of them at the kitchen table. “I think his ‘outbursts’ are his way of trying to get your attention and because you’re working so much, Doug, and you’re his male role model, he needs to spend more time with you. Not a lot. Just a bit of boy time, you know?”

Camera number two focused on Dad trying not to look pissed off. During this time, Nanny fluffed her hair in a mirror she’d propped against the wall. She took it to all her scenes with her. She had somehow become bonier since the last time she was here, so her cheekbones were jutting more than usual.

Camera number one again. “And Jill, sometimes you’re so busy telling him to hush up you forget to listen to him. I think he feels that. I think he feels like he’s in the way. I think he may even feel like you don’t want him around. You spend so much time with Tasha that the others feel like you don’t want them,” she said. “We need to have a better attitude.”

Mom looked stunned that this had been said aloud. Stunned. She excused herself from the table and went to the bathroom for five minutes.

After a short coffee break, Nanny clapped her hands and clasped them together. Then she got on one knee—which she often did to talk to me—and said, “Well. Today is your day, Gerald. What would you like for breakfast?” Camera one came in close.

I asked for waffles and Mom fixed me waffles. I asked for more maple syrup and Mom gave me more maple syrup. Mom asked me what I wanted in my lunch for all-day kindergarten and I said I wanted a peanut butter and marshmallow crème sandwich, potato chips, and Jell-O.

“We don’t have any Jell-O,” Mom said. “But I have pudding. Will that do?”

“Yes, please,” I said.

Such acceptable behay-vyah. I could tell that Nanny, on the sidelines, was pleased. She kept winking at me the way Real Nanny used to. Camera number two caught my smile, I think. They wanted as many angles of me smiling as they could get during episode two.

I ate all my waffles and I asked for more, and Mom gave me more even though it was against her nature. When I was done, I was allowed to go to my room, not make my bed if I didn’t want to, and get dressed in whatever I wanted to wear. I made my bed anyway, and I wore my favorite camouflage pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt under a cool short-sleeved T-shirt of two T. rexes with boxing gloves on.

Mom hated those pants. She grimaced when she saw I was wearing them, but that was the point. I showed her my perfectly brushed teeth and my unsticky, lemon-fresh washed hands. She acted impressed, but by then she was too busy doing a homework sheet for Tasha to really care.

Nanny stepped in, motioning for a camera to follow her. “Jill? What are you doing?”

“Tasha forgot to do her homework last night,” Mom said.

“Yes,” Nanny said. “But what does that have to do with you?”

Mom looked at her and scowled.

Nanny sat at the table, gently reached over for the paper, and pulled it toward herself. Then she slid it across the table to where Tasha usually sat, and left it there.

“What are you doing?” Mom asked.

“I’m making Tasha do her own home-wehk,” Nanny said. “That’s how we do things now, yeah?”

Mom looked mad. “She just forgot, that’s all.”

“Do you know what my mum used to call it when I’d forget to do my lessons?”

Mom didn’t answer.

“She’d call it hard knocks,” Nanny said. She knocked on the table two times. “Hard knocks for me at school that day, right? Because it’s my job to get my own work done, isn’t it, Jill?”

“I don’t do it all the time. Besides, you don’t understand. This is America, not England. It reflects on me,” Mom said.

“I undah-stand completely,” Nanny answered. “And it only reflects on you because you let it. We’ll talk about it lay-tah.”

My school day was good. I came home to spaghetti and meatballs. I could smell it from the minute I opened the door, and I felt like something had changed.

I was so happy about my dinner, I ignored Tasha humping the couch arm while I watched an after-school cartoon. I was so happy about my dinner, I ignored how she shoved me in the upstairs hallway for no reason. As the garlic bread went into the oven, I was so extra-happy, I stuck close to Mom and the kitchen so Tasha couldn’t do anything crazy to me. Dad came home. We went out and played ball because he asked me what I wanted to do and that’s what I wanted to do. The cameras ate it up.

And as we all sat down to eat dinner, I almost cried about how great this was. The happiest day of my life. The spaghetti was perfect. The meatballs were fried just right. The garlic bread was crunchy.

Cameras one and two caught the whole dinner from every angle. Then they caught Dad tiptoeing over to the counter and grabbing a box of something called fresh cannoli and bringing the box to me for first pick.

“What’s a cannoli?” I asked.

“Try it,” Dad said. “I bet you’ll love it.”