Test Pattern by Marjorie Klein, Majorie Klein

From the Publisher

When a new TV set arrives in the Palmer household in Newport News, Virginia, in 1954, change is in the wind. Eleven-year-old Cassie has a secret. Only she can see moments from the future within the hypnotic test pattern: snippets from President Kennedy's assassination, the Beatles' debut, man's landing on the moon, the O. J. Simpson trial. Meanwhile, inspired by the popular entertainers television has brought into their home, Cassie's starstruck mother, Lorena, decides to pursue her dream of becoming famous as a tap dancer." "Lorena soon plunges into an affair with an old flame whose cousin happens to be a talent scout for Arthur Godfrey and risks her marriage to Cassie's father, a depressed, accident-prone shipyard worker. As Lorena learns that the path to fame and fortune is strewn with obstacles, Cassie's own eyes are being opened to the world outside of provincial Newport News -- and to the even richer world within herself.

Publishers Weekly

The boob tube becomes an oracle in this smart but uneven debut that fails to do justice to its inventive premise. Part sentimental coming-of-age tale, part screwball comedy kitsch-fest and part magical realist fable, the novel suffers from stylistic overload. Chafing at her "dull as dog food" life in 1954 Newport News, Va., housewife Lorena Palmer is sure that the arrival of the family's first TV spells her salvation from biscuit-making and supermarket shopping. Programs like The Arthur Murray Party reawaken dashed show-biz dreams whose pull Lorena cannot resist, even at the expense of her marriage to moping shipyard worker Pete. Lorena initiates an affair with an old high school crush whose cousin Wally works for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, the program that (Lorena imagines) will bring her fame as a dancer. Never mind that Lorena is comically untalented; she will stop at nothing to join the pantheon of small-screen gods and goddesses whose lives seem more real than her own. At the same time, Lorena's 10-year-old daughter, Cassie, sees another kind of future in the hypnotic test pattern that appears between shows. A sort of pop-culture Cassandra, she catches glimpses of the Oprah Winfrey Show, Ronald Reagan's election, the Apollo moon landing and the Kennedy assassination. When a harbinger of immediate domestic disaster appears on the test pattern, her strange gift finds frightening validation. Cassie's prophetic power (a literalizing of TV's Greek root, "far-seeing") is a clever conceit, but the sacrificing of subtlety for name-dropping kitsch vitiates the novel's impact. (Feb.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In 1954, the Palmers of Newport News, VA, are the first on their block to own a television. Eleven-year-old Cassie not only gets to watch her favorite shows (Howdy Doody, Ozzie and Harriet) but discovers that events from the future appear in the TV's test patterns. She watches American Bandstand and Roseanne and learns, for example, about the election and death of JFK, the move of the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, and Ronald Reagan's metamorphosis from actor to politician. She also watches with horror as the test pattern reveals a serious argument between her parents. For Cassie's mother Lorena, the new set offers a way out of her boring life as a housewife and mother: a chance to audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts and strut her stuff as a dancer. Lorena's and Cassie's stories are told in alternate chapters, with Lorena's chapters told in the third person, and Cassie's in the first person. One unfortunate result is that mother and daughter seem to be existing in different novels that never quite cohere into one. In addition, because the adult characters are uninteresting stereotypes, and Cassie remains firmly one-dimensional, few readers will care what happens in either story. Not recommended.--Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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Mom is dancing the tango in front of our new TV. Her silhouette dips and glides, slides flat as a shadow across the silvery screen. She's one step behind Arthur Murray, who is demonstrating the Magic Steps That Open the Door to Popularity.

"Come on, dance with me," she says to Dad. She grabs his hand, tries to pull him off the couch. He scrunches down, crosses his arms, shakes his head. Dad doesn't believe in dancing.

Maybe he's tired. He started moving the furniture as soon as he got home and saw the TV was here. Mom directed, pointing here, no here, no maybe it'd be better over there, until finally everything was lined up, TV on one wall, couch on the other, Naugahyde chairs parked so they'd face the TV, too. Now our living room looks like the Paramount Theater.

Dad's still in his work clothes, his Dickies shirt smeared with dirt and stuff from the shipyard, hair all sticking out and sweaty. Mom couldn't wait for him to change, just rushed us through dinner so she wouldn't miss The Arthur Murray Party. She's so bossy about it, you'd think it was her very own TV.

It came this afternoon when we kids were playing kickball. "Yay!" we cheered as we spotted the delivery guy balancing the big box on his cart, then we jitterbugged behind him in a wacky parade up the sidewalk to our house. Mom waved him through the doorway, her hands all white from- making biscuits. I wanted to die. She was wearing her ratty gray robe and those deadsquirrel slippers. Her hair was knotted in pincurls stuck to her head like snails.

The guy grabbed one corner of the box with a hairy fist and ripped off the side of the carton. There it was, our new TV, wobbling onpointy little feet like a dog that's been bumped by a car. "Magnavox," Mom whispered, reading the gold letters beneath a screen that shone silver as a nickel. The guy plunked the rabbit-ears antenna on top like a beanie, fiddled around with some wires and stuff, then plugged it in.

"Not much on right now," he mumbled, flipping channels, wiggling and stretching the rabbit ears in every direction. Circles and lines appeared on the screen, faint and fuzzy at first, then clearer until he stood back, squinted, and said, "Pretty good picture."

The test pattern stared back: a giant's eye, round and square at the same time. "That's all, folks," the guy said before he snapped it off.

After he left, the kids stayed outside, quiet. Then Margaret asked, "Can we watch?"

"Go on home," Mom said, shooing them off with her flour-stiff fingers. "Nothing's on."

"Come back later, okay?" I yelled as they straggled away. "Come back when it's Howdy Doody time."

"Never you mind," Mom said so they couldn't hear. "And keep it off till Dad gets home." Sometimes she acts like I don't count, like what I think doesn't matter.

Soon as she went into the kitchen, I clicked on the TV. I couldn't get much, just a bunch of snow, but the test pattern came in clear. Black-and-white. Bull's-eye. Spider's web. Round and spoked as a wheel. I stared. It seemed to breathe. I couldn't get away. And then it spoke to me: Hmmmm, it said. Hmmm hmmm, grabbing my ears like the pattern grabbed my eyes.

I heard Mom talking. Far far away.

"Cassie, Cassie---Cassandra. What is the matter with you?"

I stared into the eye of the test pattern. Saw me looking out at myself, looking in at myself. I couldn't get away from me.

"Cassie!" Mom's hands, big and warm as cats on my shoulders, turned me around to look at her. Her mouth moved around my name. I blinked like I just woke up.

"That's enough," she said with a frowny face, and switched the test pattern off. She didn't turn the TV on again until after dinner when it was time to tango with Arthur Murray.

I CAN'T SLEEP. The house is still. Bony branches of the chinaberry tree clack witch fingers against my windowpane. Nights like this I'd stay warm in bed, but this night things have changed. There's a TV in our living room, and I hear it calling to me.

I tiptoe barefoot down the stairs, creep into the darkened room. In the gloom, the couch seems alive. It cradles its cushions in its arms like fat babies. Deep shadows from the porch light shift and hide like small quick animals.

I change my mind, turn to go back upstairs. The TV stops me with its silvery face. I get that same loopy feeling I get on the Tilt-A-Whirl, like I just ate a handful of jumping beans. I touch the knob of the TV. My hand seems to belong to someone else. My fingers and toes prickle like they've fallen asleep, and my whole body freckles with electricity.

I hear its hum before I see it, the circle with spokes like a wheel. The blacks get blacker, the whites get whiter and then I see it clearly: the test pattern. It starts to spin, then whirs like a pinwheel and sucks me into its eye. I'm inside a space that's inside of me.

I hear voices. Music, weird music. Flash of red, flicker of green. Somebody---just my reflection, just me? Or ... ?

"What the bejesus do you think you're doing?"

Yikes. It's Dad.

And here comes Mom in that ruffly cap she wears over her pincurls at night, eyes all pooched with sleep. But her mouth is wide-awake. "Get your bee-hind upstairs. Are you out of your mind, watching the test pattern?"

"There's nothing else on," I mumble.

"Get to bed," Dad says, and snaps off the TV.

Even when I'm back in bed, the test pattern is still with me. Sharp and clear and real as a dream, it presses against my closed eyes.