The doorbell rang, and Franz’s howling increased ten notches.
“Now, who could that be?” Mama said, glancing at her watch and then peering out the peephole. It was eight thirty.
Oliver caught a glimpse of the person out the living room window, and his stomach spun upside down. “Don’t answer it!” he yelled.
But Mama had already turned the deadbolt and opened the door.
In the doorway was Mr. West and his clipboard.
Twenty-Three
Mr. West looked warily inside, and Franz took the opportunity to jump up on him, knocking his clipboard right out of his hand. Meanwhile, New Dog came trotting down the stairs, followed by Isa, who was saying, “Make way for New Dog! She needs to go to the bathroom!”
Angie, who was standing next to Oliver, volunteered at once. “I’ll take her for a walk!” She grabbed New Dog’s leash and ran out the back door.
The chicken, sensing Papa’s temporary distraction, flapped her wings so aggressively that Papa lost his grip. Going airborne, the chicken headed straight toward Mr. West, who was still standing by the door. The inspector was so focused on retrieving his clipboard and avoiding Franz that he didn’t duck and got a face full of chicken feathers. Mr. West blurted out a word that Oliver’s parents had forbidden him ever to say, then backed up and tripped on a pile of walking sticks that Laney had been collecting and storing by the door all year long. The chicken was relentless, continuing to peck at Mr. West. Papa and Jessie ran outside to help, and after three attempts, Jessie finally pinned the chicken down with a move that would have made any wrestling coach proud.
Mr. West stood up, holding his clipboard in front of him like a shield.
Mama coughed. “You must be Mr. West. We weren’t, uh, expecting you.”
“I sent you an email last night saying I was coming at eight thirty a.m.,” Mr. West retorted.
“I’m sorry. My kids told me this was rescheduled for Monday,” Mama said. “Do you want to come in, or—”
“I am not coming in. I have seen all that I need to see.” Mr. West scribbled something on his clipboard, ripped off a piece of paper, and handed it to Mama. “I’m shocked that you would reschedule the appointment without having addressed any of the many issues I brought up at the last appointment.”
“The last appointment?” Mama said slowly.
“I gave the inspection notice to your children. Animals are a violation, and the kitchen needs to be a separate workspace from the rest of the apartment.” “Wait, what? We didn’t know about the workspace thing!” Jessie said. The chicken gave a heave against her chest, and Mr. West flinched and backed up two steps.
“Your home processor’s license remains revoked,” Mr. West said, “and I will be writing a detailed report for your file about my last two visits. You have now two failed inspections and are hereby restricted from having another inspection for one year.”
He turned and made his way down 141st Street at a fast clip. The Vanderbeekers watched in silence as his silhouette got smaller and smaller until it disappeared around a corner.
* * *
It was a long time before Mama said a word.
“There was an inspection this past Monday, wasn’t there?” Mama asked, turning to the kids.
They nodded.
“And it went badly, didn’t it?” Mama asked.
Jessie, who had just released the vagrant chicken into the backyard, swallowed. “He told us the pets were a health hazard. And we thought we could fix it before the next inspection so you didn’t have to worry about the Perch Magazine photo shoot, but we didn’t know about the kitchen needing to be a separate workspace—”
Mama held up a hand. “Have I been operating my business illegally this whole week?”
Isa looked at Mama. “Yes. We’re so, so sorry.”
The Vanderbeekers knew that people showed anger in all sorts of ways. Some people yelled, other people stomped their feet, and some people’s faces got red and sweaty. On those rare occasions when Mama got mad, she did not yell or stomp her feet or get red in the face. Instead, she got very, very quiet.
Mama closed her eyes and shook her head. “I just need time . . . to think.” She turned around and headed up the stairs to her room. Papa followed Mama, and everyone else followed Papa. When Mama and Papa closed their bedroom door behind them, the Vanderbeeker kids found themselves alone in the hallway.
“I can’t believe that happened,” Isa whispered, her face pale. “What are we going to do?”
Jessie sighed. “I don’t know. He wasn’t supposed to come early. We had such a good plan . . .”
Mama’s voice drifted through the cracks of her door, and the Vanderbeeker kids leaned in to listen.
“Hi, Nina. It’s Maia Vanderbeeker . . . I’m sorry, but I have bad news. We had a run-in with the New York State licensing inspector, and our apartment is not up to code for a home baking business . . . Yes, I figured it would be canceled . . . I’m so sorry . . . Thank you so much for the opportunity . . . Goodbye.”
There was a long pause; then they could hear Papa’s low voice.
“We’ll work this out,” he said.
Then Mama’s voice. She was so, so quiet that they had to strain to hear her. “Sometimes,” she said, “sometimes things are just not meant to be.”
* * *
When Mama and Papa opened the door to the bedroom a few minutes later, they found all five kids sitting on the floor. The kids jumped up.
“We’re so sorry,” Isa and Jessie said at the same time.
Laney ran to her mom and hugged her tight. “Are you super mad at us?”
Oliver and Hyacinth couldn’t bear to meet her eyes. Mama hugged Laney back, then looked at the kids. “You should have told me about the inspection,” she said. “I know you were trying to help, but I could have gotten into huge trouble by operating without a license.”
“We know,” Isa said. “We’re so sorry.”
“Is the photo shoot canceled?” Oliver asked, still not meeting her eyes.
“It is,” Mama said. “My business is officially closed.”
“No!” Hyacinth said. She started to cry.
Mama stroked Hyacinth’s hair. “I’ve never been inspected all these years of operating a business. I should have known pets aren’t allowed, but every time I went online to check on updated regulations, the website was under construction. After a while, I stopped thinking about it.”
“It’s our fault,” Isa said.
“The things that made me fail the inspection are things we can’t fix,” Mama said. “The pets are a part of our lives, and a long time ago we looked at closing the kitchen off. Unfortunately, that type of renovation requires a building permit, which would also mean getting a licensed architect to prepare construction drawings to submit. The waiting list for building permits is long—it could take years. There’s nothing to do at this point but acknowledge that this wasn’t meant to be and move on.”
“But Mama—” Jessie said.
Mama shook her head. “I’ll figure something out, but right now Papa and I are going to take a walk. I need to clear my mind. Can you clean up the chicken mess?”
The kids nodded and watched their parents go down the stairs and out the door. And slowly, slowly, they made their way downstairs and began to clean up the living room. If only they could figure out how to clean up the mess they had made of Mama’s life.
Twenty-Four
It took nearly two hours to clean the kitchen and living room. When they were done, the apartment would have been an ideal place to have a photo shoot. The floor was free of dust, the kitchen appliances gleamed, and the couch cushions were perfectly fluffed. Oliver even cleaned the bathroom, a chore he had managed to avoid for the last four years. Hyacinth clipped some buttercup winterhazel and a few blooms of forsythia from the backyard and arranged them in a vase on the kitchen island.
The brownstone was officially photo-shoot-worthy, but no magazine photographer would ever c
apture it.
Jessie looked around at her siblings.
“We need a mood booster,” she said. “Let’s go to Castleman’s.”
Everyone brightened for a second before Isa said, “We shouldn’t. We need to save up for the flyer fine.”
The Vanderbeekers sank back into their dark moods.
“Hey!” Jessie said. “What happened with the recorder?”
Oliver stood up. “Jimmy L had it. He brought it inside . . .” He went to the back door and found the recorder kicked into the corner, probably from when Jimmy L had encountered the chicken chaos that morning. “We need to charge it.”
They plugged it in, and when it turned on, they gathered around the device and played it on high speed. It ran for only a few minutes before the screen turned black.
“Darn,” Jessie said. “We should have charged it before you used it.”
“This stinks,” Oliver said.
Laney, tired of the dreariness, got up. “I’m going to introduce Mr. Jeet and Miss Josie to New Dog,” she declared. No one responded.
Laney left Paganini behind—she figured having one animal visit at a time was enough for her neighbors—and she coaxed New Dog up the stairs to the second-floor apartment with small dog treats Hyacinth had made the week before. Laney knocked on the door, and Mr. Jeet’s home health aide opened it.
“Hi, Miss Laney,” Miss Fran said, opening the door and letting her in. Jazz music drifted from the speakers in the living room.
“Hello,” Laney said. “I have a new dog to introduce to Mr. Jeet and Miss Josie.”
“They’re in the bedroom,” Miss Fran said. “Go right on in.”
Laney led New Dog to the bedroom. The window was open, and Mr. Jeet was awake. He smiled when he saw her.
“Laney!” Miss Josie said. “How nice to see you today. And who is this cutie pie?”
New Dog beelined for Mr. Jeet’s bed and rested her head next to Mr. Jeet’s hand.
“It’s New Dog. She was left in our backyard. We’ve also gotten chickens, guinea pigs, and kittens.”
“Goodness,” Miss Josie said. “What are you going to do with them all?”
Laney shrugged. “We tried to find them homes, but it’s really hard. And then the health inspector came and said no animals were allowed in the kitchen and he took away Mama’s baking license.”
“Oh dear,” Miss Josie said. “That is terrible news.”
“It is,” Laney said. “I think New Dog really likes Mr. Jeet.”
New Dog had her eyes closed in bliss while Mr. Jeet petted her on the forehead. Mr. Jeet’s hands began to slow as he drifted off to sleep, his hand still on her head. New Dog didn’t move a muscle, even when Miss Josie and Laney went into the kitchen to have tea and lemon cookies. When they came back, New Dog was in the exact same position as when they had left.
“That is a very nice dog,” Miss Fran commented as she straightened up the bedroom.
It was time for Miss Josie to take a rest too, so Laney kissed Mr. Jeet’s cheek, kissed Miss Josie’s cheek, and hugged Miss Fran before going back downstairs. New Dog whimpered as they left, casting a look toward the bedroom.
“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Laney said to New Dog. “Mr. Jeet needs us.”
* * *
After the terrible inspection, Isa was too upset to practice. The audition was just a day away, but she had no desire to pick up her violin. Instead, she lay on the couch, staring out the window. Their ground-floor window had the perfect view of people’s feet walking by, and she wondered how other people’s lives could go on as if it were a completely normal day and not a terrible, no-good, awful day, like it was for them.
The door that led from the first floor to the second opened, and Isa could hear Laney’s bouncy footsteps and New Dog’s nails tapping on the wood floor. The ground floor opened a few seconds later, and Mama came into the brownstone and went right to the entryway closet, opened it, then began pulling out every item stashed inside. Isa dragged herself from the couch and watched things spill out of the closet: shoes that Hyacinth had outgrown but were still too big for Laney, heavy winter coats that had yet to be packed away, two squishy basketballs, Papa’s toolbox, three pairs of galoshes, and an economy package of toilet paper.
“What are you doing?” Isa asked Mama. She and her siblings gathered around the growing mess.
“I’m looking for . . . Ah.” Mama pulled out a dusty box that had been in the deepest recesses of the closet and opened the flaps. “Yep, here they are.”
“What’s going on?” Oliver said with suspicion. He picked up the squishy basketball and attempted to dribble it. It fell to the ground with a sad thud.
“There are my roller skates!” Laney cried, then immediately put them on and hobbled onto the living room carpet.
Isa peeked inside the box Mama had pulled out. It was filled with books, and the book on top was Accounting Best Practices.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Isa said. “Why do you need these books?”
Mama stood up. “I ran into my old boss just now. You remember Ms. Bachmann, right?”
“Ms. Bachmann?” asked Isa. “Like, Ms. Boring Bachmann?”
“Oh my gosh,” Jessie said, her eyes wide. “I completely forgot we called her that.”
Mama shoved the toilet paper back into the closet. “She’s not that bad.”
“Um, yes she is,” Jessie said. “Also, she always smelled like medicine. There must be some scientific reason why a person would always smell like medicine.”
The last time Isa and Jessie had seen Ms. Bachmann was seven years ago, when they were just six years old, but the memories had stayed with them. Ms. Bachmann had a perpetually pinched forehead, and she had always seemed uneasy when Jessie and Isa came to the office. There was one time when they had a random day off from first grade—a teacher conference or something—and Mama hadn’t been able to find a babysitter. She had packed up a bag full of books, art activities, and stickers, dropped then-three-year-old Oliver off at daycare, and brought the twins into the office for the day.
Isa and Jessie quickly grew bored with the activities their mom had packed, and while Mama was on a conference call, the twins explored the office and discovered a box of shiny, brand-new paper clips in the supply closet. They dumped the paper clips out of the box and connected the pieces to make a garland to decorate Mama’s bulletin board.
Ms. Bachmann was supposed to be out of the office that day, but when she stopped by unexpectedly to pick up a forgotten file, she discovered the twins in her paper-clip stash.
Two seconds later, Mama was called into Ms. Bachmann’s office.
Twenty minutes later, Papa arrived to pick up the kids.
It was one of those childhood memories that Isa remembered as if it had happened yesterday. The scruffy brown carpet, the boring beige walls, the smell of stale coffee, and the whir of the printers as they spat out papers filled with numbers and charts.
Mama grabbed another box and shoved it back into the closet. “It was perfect timing to run into her. I have an interview at her accounting firm on Monday.”
“An interview? What about your baking?” Isa yelped at the same time Jessie declared, “You can’t go back to Ms. Boring Bachmann! We won’t let you!” Oliver, Hyacinth, and Laney, who had never met Ms. Bachmann, looked at Mama in horror.
“I can’t bake without a home processor’s license,” Mama told them. “And we need the money.”
“Maybe you could use the kitchen at Castleman’s Bakery,” Isa suggested.
“They don’t have space for me,” Mama said. “Their kitchen is tiny.”
“What about renting a kitchen?” Jessie asked.
Mama shook her head. “We don’t have enough money to rent right now. I’m grateful for the accounting opportunity. Who knows? In a couple of years, maybe I’ll have saved up enough to rent a commercial kitchen space.”
“A couple of years?” Hyacinth squeaked.
“Two years seems l
ike a long time, but it really isn’t. When you’re watching your children grow up, time goes by faster.” Mama looked at her oldest kids, seeming to take in their every feature. “Much, much faster.”
“But Mama—” Isa protested.
Mama changed the subject. “Isa, how are you feeling about your audition? I know you’re going to be awesome.”
Isa didn’t respond. Instead, she stared at the stack of accounting books on the ground, wondering how Mama could be so adamant that they follow their own dreams yet be perfectly content not following her own.
Twenty-Five
Mama needed quiet to study for her accounting interview, so she kicked the kids out of the apartment.
“Get some fresh air,” she told them.
It was too early to pick up the kittens—Herman had told them not to come until after lunch—so they went upstairs to visit Mr. Beiderman with Franz and New Dog in tow.
Mr. Beiderman opened the door before they even knocked. “You sound like a herd of elephants going up the steps. Is the inspector here? Franz has his leash, right? Remember, I’m only watching them for two hours. Wait, what’s that?” He pointed a finger at New Dog. Princess Cutie hissed and dashed into the bedroom.
“That’s New Dog,” Hyacinth told him, walking past him with the two dogs. “She was left outside our door yesterday.”
Mr. Beiderman held up a hand. “Hold on a second. Two dogs was not part of the agree—”
“We’re not leaving them here,” Oliver interrupted, going into the apartment and flopping on the couch. “The inspector already came. Then a chicken attacked him, and he closed Mama’s business for the next year. Now she has to be an accountant.”
Mr. Beiderman was speechless.
“My stomach hurts,” Hyacinth said, sitting down next to Oliver. Franz rested his head on her lap.
“Mine does too. It’s a terrible feeling to ruin Mama’s dream,” Oliver said.
The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue Page 12