The Ten Best Days of My Life by Adena Halpern Page A

to me. “Look how pretty she is, just like her mother,” Ruth Goldman would say, but I’d just keep to myself and crack an embarrassed smile at Pen.
    â€œI’ll call you on Monday about that proposal,” the guy would say, trying to land some business from my dad.
    â€œWe’ll have lunch next week,” Carol would say to my grandmother.
    That was my family.
    After dinner, we all went to see Annie . Do you know anything about the play Annie ? You probably do, but just to give you some backstory, Annie is based on this cartoon character, Little Orphan Annie. Annie is chosen by the orphanage to spend Christmas with this really rich guy, Daddy Warbucks (a single rich man, which could make you wonder what some grown man would want from spending Christmas with a little girl, but we all bought it and I digress). Daddy Warbucks takes a liking to Annie (cough, cough—but, again, I digress) and wants to adopt her, but she thinks her real parents are going to come and get her. There’s this whole thing about Miss Hannigan (the head of the orphanage) who is jealous that Annie might get adopted by Warbucks, so she and her brother pose as her parents to get her back, but, as all great stories go, in the end they are found out and Annie stays on and gets adopted by Warbucks and it’s all happy and wonderful.
    Girls my age were consumed with Annie mania when it hit Broadway. Everyone was sure that they would be the next Annie to appear in the show. Dana Stanbury and Kerry Collins started taking singing lessons, and when the talent show came around, it was wall-to-wall renditions of “Tomorrow.” I knew I had no voice though (unlike Dana and Kerry and Olivia). My grandparents asked me to sing to them, but I refused. Once, when no one was around, I sang the song to Penelope.
    â€œYou have the worst voice I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” she said as we both laughed. Pen was the only one who could ever set me straight.
    Still, I loved the show. I loved the story about this little orphan girl getting to be showered with everything she ever wanted. I didn’t realize it then, but I do now. I was what Annie got to be.
    We all sat in the theater’s private side balcony as we watched the show. Grandmom snuck cashews in for us to eat (sans salt, of course). When Annie was forced to leave Daddy Warbucks and go with Miss Hannigan, Grandmom and I both cried.
    What a show. (Just out of curiosity, do they have shows up here? They must. If so, I’d love to see this show again. It’s been years.)
    After the theater, we dropped off Pen, and we went back home and ate chocolate mint ice cream from Baskin-Robbins, my fave, on our patio behind the house. It was a really warm night. You heard crickets and saw fireflies light up in the air, and I sat between Grandmom and Grandpop and listened to the grown-ups gossip about Ruth and Lou Goldman and Richard and Carol and asked who that greasy guy was who was trying to get business from my dad. At some point, someone told me I had to get ready for bed, so I brushed my teeth and went into my pink room with my pink canopied bed and my dolls from all around the world and my Snoopy doll, my constant sleeping companion.
    I went to sleep that night (as I did many, many nights before that) with the sounds of my family laughing and talking outside:
    â€œHow many times do I have to tell you that Mort Gainsburgh is not having an affair behind Sylvia’s back,” Dad screamed at Grandmom.
    â€œI know for a fact that Mort Gainsburgh can’t get it up for anyone,” uncle Morris said.
    â€œWhere do you get your information?” Mom and Grandmom shouted at the same time.
    â€œEveryone down at the bar knows that Mort Gainsburgh has a weak peter. He had that prostate trouble a few years back!” uncle Morris said. “He complains about it all the time—the women he used to cheat on Sylvia with.”
    â€œSo he is cheating on