The Mortification of Fovea Munson

by Mary Winn Heider

  We pressed our backs against the front windows of the flower store, chameleoning ourselves into the dark. I am a flower, I thought. Nobody here but us daffodils. I tried to think over the deafening sound of my heart beating. Who would be following us? Inko Fredrickson? The police? A random mugger? Please let it be a random mugger, I thought. Random mugger was just hands down the best option. A random mugger would have no interest in what we were carrying.

  I heard a noise. Danger had totally been lurking, and now it was lurking around the corner, turning the corner, heading right toward us with a low electric hum.

  Danger stopped in front of us. Danger was in a motorized scooter, wearing all black, including a face mask that revealed no more than an extremely wrinkly forehead and a pair of drugstore eyeglasses. In the wire basket attached to the front of the chair was Grandma Van’s purse and a box of crackers. The masked driver of the scooter looked around and, spotting us, froze.

  What the heck, indeed.

  “Grandma Van?” I asked.

  The masked driver sighed a gravelly sigh.

  11:47 p.m.

  So the random mugger was, in fact, about as random as possible.

  “Is your grandma in the club?” asked Em, her goggled face resting sideways on the cooler. “Seriously. This is the weirdest club.”

  “She is not in the club,” I said sternly.

  “You have a club?” Grandma Van asked. “What, a kidnapping club?”

  “Thank you,” said Em. “See, people? This is clearly a kidnapping. Mrs. De Leon, could you please untie me? I am currently the unwilling participant of some sort of weird club hazing, and frankly, I think Fovea is setting herself up for a life of crime with all this, so it’s really in everybody’s best interest—”

  “Grandma Van, what are you doing here?” I asked, preferring to avoid the subject of kidnapping.

  Grandma Van pulled the black face mask off, dropped it into the wire basket, and sighed again. “I’m not on some sort of pathetic elderly lockdown, just because I’m closing in on my dirt nap,” she said. “I can leave the Swan Song whenever I like. All of us can.”

  “Her dirt nap?” Howe asked out of the side of his mouth.

  “She’s been gearing up to die for a long time,” I explained.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s any day now,” Grandma Van said.

  “You look awfully spry to me,” said Howe.

  “You take that back,” she said indignantly.

  He glanced at me and I nodded. “I mean,” he said politely, “you look like you’re on your last leg.”

  “Thank you,” said Grandma Van. “And that’s your little friend Em riding behind you in the goggles and vegetables?”

  Em huffed. “Little nothing. You may be older, but I’m still taller than you, Mrs. De Leon.”

  “Not all kidnapped like that you aren’t,” Grandma Van snorted.

  I was glad they were getting along and all, but this was still a standoff. “Grandma Van, it’s good to see you, but we need to be going.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s late, you kids shouldn’t be out like this. We should all go back home. To bed.”

  “No!” I said, glancing at Em and the cooler of heads. My crackpot grandmother wasn’t stopping me now. No, I was making this happen. Sure I wanted to turn back, but I couldn’t do it until Em was having fun with me again and the stupid heads had gotten their stupid favor and my parents were saved. And none of that had happened yet.

  “I’ve got this,” Howe said under his breath. “I took a class.”

  “In arguing with people’s grandmothers?” I asked.

  “In being a negotiator. It was part of the Children’s Refinement Undercover Detective class. How to be a spy. We learned a lot of valuable things. How to walk silently. How to use a shoe as a recording device. The only way to combat chaos is with more chaos.”

  “CRUD,” observed Grandma Van. “Total CRUD.”

  “Well, no, it was pretty useful information,” Howe said.

  “It’s an acronym. You said you learned it in a CRUD class. Children’s Refinement Undercover Detective.” She shook her head. “You know acronyms? I’ll give you another example: HRHKHVIII.”

  “I’m sort of following you,” Howe said diplomatically. “Almost.”

  I did not feel like this negotiation was going well. I stepped in. “She’s talking about His Royal Highness King Henry the Eighth. She’s a big fan.”

  I guessed Howe knew a little something about all Henry VIII’s murdering, both wife and non-wife, because his nervous hand went up to twist his hair, and he shifted the cooler into his other hand. As he did, he tipped it onto its side.

  At which point Lake promptly started screaming.

  I leapt for the cooler, set it upright in Howe’s arms as quickly as I could, but I was too late. From inside, Lake said very clearly, “Oof. For goodness’ sake, let’s not do that again.”

  Grandma Van stared at the cooler. Howe and I stared at her. Everybody who was not blindfolded stared. I tried to think of anything to say, anything, because somebody was going to have to say something soon.

  That somebody turned out to be Lake. His voice drifted out from the cooler. “Since there’s a lull in the conversation, I’d like to say that I’m feeling just a bit claustrophobic. Also, something in here smells like mayo. Can I get a little air?”

  That wasn’t what I’d been hoping for.

  Howe halfheartedly shushed him.

  A streetlight buzzed. It flickered off and then on again.

  Finally, Grandma Van spoke. “What is in there? And what exactly are you doing here, Fovea?”

  “Oh. You know.” If I could have melted into the sidewalk, I would have gladly done it at that moment. But at this point, the only way I could see out of the mess was straight on, driving right into the eye of the storm. It was going to be impossible to get past her otherwise. Unfortunately, the person who would have been perfect for dealing with this type of situation was tied up and blindfolded behind me, so I was going to have to make it work myself.

  “Howe,” I said, quickly examining the jammed cooler and pulling out a blue bit of plastic that had wedged itself against the wheel. “I need to have a private conversation with my grandmother. Would you take Em for a short walk?”

  “I am not going anywhere!” Em declared, and vigorously tried to free herself, but only succeeded in shaking off a couple of radishes. They dribbled across the sidewalk and came to rest at one of Grandma Van’s wheels. Howe carefully handed me the small cooler and rolled the big cooler, along with Em, down the sidewalk. As they left, Em announced, “This is, just to be super clear, the worst secret club in history.”

  “It will get more exciting,” I called back, hoping that was true. “I mean, good exciting.”

  Howe was still shooting me warning glances over his shoulder, but I ignored him. He didn’t understand: this had to happen. Grandma Van couldn’t be distracted. She’d smell a distraction and go in for the kill. This was the only way.

  As soon as I was sure they were out of earshot, I turned to Grandma Van. “I have some bad news,” I said. “It seems…that maybe death is a little…iffy.”

  Grandma Van looked at me suspiciously. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve already bought my pine condo. Paid in full. Just waiting to move in. Nothing iffy about that.”

  “I didn’t make the rules,” I said. “I barely understand them.”

  “The rules are simple, kiddo. Room temperature is coming to us all.”

  “Well,” I said, bracing myself. “Maybe. But maybe not. I’m going to show you something, all right? This is for your eyes only. You can’t tell anyone.”

  I waited for her to agree, which she did. I hoped she meant it.

  I took the top off Lake’s cooler.

  “Oh, much better!” said Lake as he peered out.

  Grandma Van’s jaw dropped.

  “This is your grandmother, Fovea?” asked Lake. “
A pleasure to meet you! Enchanted! Are you, by any chance, a patron of the arts?”

  Grandma Van didn’t respond. Her mouth was still open. I waved my hand in front of her face. It was like somebody paused her. I nudged her shoulder a little. Nothing. I hadn’t expected nothing. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I called Howe and Em back.

  “I think you might have broken her,” said Howe, after waving his own hand in front of her face.

  “What’s going on?” Em demanded. “In case you forgot, I still can’t see!”

  “She’s just being…thoughtful,” I said.

  “That doesn’t sound like her,” said Em.

  “She’s turning over a new leaf. A sort of sudden leaf. And we have to go,” I said to Howe. “We’re already late.”

  “Well, we can’t leave her here,” he said.

  “Can’t we?”

  11:52 p.m.

  Finally, we were on the way again.

  Once Howe had convinced me that it was uncool to leave in-shock Grandma Van there, I’d realized that bringing her with us would actually speed up the process. We put the small cooler into the wire basket, resting it gently on top of the purse. Howe and I hopped on the back of the scooter. With his long legs and arms, he could reach the control buttons, while I just held on to the rolling cooler’s handle, pulling it after us. Em kept her spot on top of it. I’d been worried the whole Grandma Van thing would get us to Nussbaum’s late, but now we were making great time.

  “Sorry if I’m crowding you,” I said to Howe. “My costume is a little bulky.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “What is it, anyway? A jelly bean?”

  “A left kidney,” I said as we motored on.

  “It was part of her parents’ Halloween costume,” Em explained loudly. “They plan something as a group every year, and every year Fovea chickens out. Last year, they went as kidneys and tried to get Fovea to be the spleen.”

  “The costume didn’t fit,” I said quickly.

  “You could have made one that fit,” said Howe, missing the point that I didn’t want to be a spleen in the first place. Which is not the same as being a chicken, thank you.

  “I don’t really know how to make things.”

  “It’s not that hard, you know,” he said. “Making stuff. There’s a Children’s Refinement Independent Art class. We invent projects and then do them.”

  “Like what kind of projects?”

  “Like I don’t know. One time I sewed this T. rex, stuffed it, and then made a diorama of myself being eaten by it.”

  “ADORABLE,” said Em. “But seriously, are you kidnapping me to Michigan or something? Aren’t we there yet?”

  “Soon,” I said. “Soon. About ten more blocks.” I was really ready for Em to go ahead and realize she was having fun.

  “Gun it!” called out Lake. “You know, if that’s a possibility.”

  “Let me see what I can do,” said Howe.

  “We should probably keep our voices down—” I started to say, but then Howe did, in fact, gun it, and the scooter choked and whiplashed us forward, zipping down the dark sidewalk, the night wind whistling around us. Em whooped, which seemed like a possible good sign. I gave Howe the directions I’d looked up earlier that day, and within a minute or two, we’d left the downtown I knew. We crossed over into another part of downtown: grungier, dingier. This wasn’t offices or apartment buildings—it was bars and empty diners with flickering lights. It looked like this was where the city kept all its skeletons.

  Hopefully, not real ones.

  A girl has her limits.

  12:04 a.m.

  We rolled to a stop in front of an old, dirty two-story building. Warehouses on either side loomed over it.

  The windows on the top floor had been completely postered over from the inside, and one floor down, the front door was covered, too—a lot of old band posters, layers and layers of them. Over the door, swinging slightly in the night breeze, a metal sign said: NUSSBAUM’S MUSICALA RIUM.

  I stepped off the chair and was about to go to the door when Grandma Van surprised us, breaking out of her petrified condition to say: “I’m all in.”

  “Grandma Van?” I asked nervously. Did her eye just twitch? If she was completely losing it, my mom was not going to be happy with me. “All in for what?”

  “Whatever we’re here to do,” she said slowly. “I’m in. Is it a fight club? I can fight. A séance? I know dead people. Are you using that”—she pointed a crooked finger toward the small cooler—“for some kind of bait? Is it like that movie, where you’re going to put it under somebody’s pillow to scare them?”

  “Ew,” said Howe.

  “Absolutely not!” came Lake’s voice. “Unless we’re talking those Egyptian sateen sheets, maybe a five hundred thread count. I wouldn’t mind—”

  “What is everybody talking about?” asked Em, shifting under the veggie yarn impatiently. “I honestly haven’t understood a single word that anybody has said in the last two minutes.”

  “Tell them what we’re doing,” Howe said. “You’ll have to sometime.”

  “We’re doing a musical recording session,” I announced to Em and Grandma Van. “And we have arrived.”

  “Well, let’s get in there,” Grandma Van said, grinning. She waved me closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I haven’t felt this alive in years!”

  Em didn’t say anything, but she’d tilted her head a little to the side, like she was listening extra hard. I was starting to get her point about not being able to have an adventure without seeing anything. Then again, she hadn’t even believed I could get her here, and I’d done that. Somehow, I’d give her the adventure she wanted.

  I stepped up and pulled on the door, but it was locked. Howe and I poked around the area beside it, lifting edges of old posters until we found a bell. He pushed it and we waited to see if anything would happen.

  After a few long minutes, we heard bolts turning on the inside, the door swung open, and a guy in a black T-shirt faced us. Sunglasses rested on his shaven head, like he might need them at any second despite the fact that it was the middle of the night. I wondered if I could get away with wearing sunglasses at the lab. Probably not. He opened the door wider. His muscles practically needed their own zip code.

  A bouncer.

  An actual bouncer. This was who my parents needed. Seriously, those muscles. He examined the three of us. I wished like heck I wasn’t dressed like a kidney.

  12:08 a.m.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  Howe stepped in after the bouncer. Then Grandma Van motored in, driving like a tank over the doorway, and I brought up the rear, dragging the big cooler with Em on top. The door shut behind me, and we were in a dark, narrow hallway. It was lined with posters, inches thick of them, which made the hallway seem even narrower. The almost too-sweet smell of something just on the edge of going rotten hung in the air. I followed the rest of them into a large dim room with a stage and a small checkered dance floor. Across the room stretched a deserted bar with a mirror behind it, and shelves lined with liquor bottles and glasses.

  Aside from us, the place was dead empty. I stood on the edge of the dance floor, checking it all out, although honestly, I felt more like the bar was checking me out.

  “Is this place a bar?” Howe asked nobody in particular. His voice echoed around the space. “We’re underage. Some of us, anyway. I don’t think we should be here.”

  “Ha! I haven’t been in a bar in forever,” said Grandma Van, and I turned in time to see her zoom straight behind the counter and start clanking around.

  “Hey, no,” the bouncer said, chasing after her. “You can’t go back there.”

  “It’s a bar?” asked Em, trying to see through the blindfold again. “We’re in a bar? You kidnapped me to a bar?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Is she kidnapped?” The bouncer almost skidded as he whipped around. “You can’t be bringing kidnapped people into this establishment. We’re a reputable place
, here.”

  “I am! I am kidnapped! Why are you even asking? How is that not obvious? I’m tied up with vegetables and some kind of yarn that is getting a little scratchy, frankly, and I’M BLINDFOLDED. I would really appreciate it if you would untie me right now, whoever you are, because I am not interested in this club.”

  I might have been in trouble had Em been anybody else. But Em made people nervous, and I could see that the bouncer was already weighing whether it was going to just be safer to leave her alone. I jumped in.

  “She’s not kidnapped! She’s…” I reached for the right word. “Joking. She’s the manager of the band. She likes to focus on the music, that’s why she’s blindfolded. She lets her other senses take over, you know.”

  “Kidnapped,” said Em.

  “Manager of the band,” I said.

  “Kidnapped,” said Em.

  “Kidnapped manager of the band?” I offered. I was banking on two things: first, that she wanted me to admit that she was kidnapped as badly as she wanted to actually be untied. And second, that she would never turn down a position of authority.

  She nodded. “I’ll take it.”

  I turned back to the guy, who threw his hands up.

  “Are you the sound guy?” Howe asked him.

  The bouncer laughed gently.

  There was a click, and we heard a woman’s voice come over the sound system. “I’m the sound guy,” she said. I looked around the room and finally spotted a tinted window halfway up one of the walls. I waved a few fingers at it.

  “Yeah,” the voice boomed. “Up here. I’m Nussbaum. That’s Dirk.”

  The bouncer nodded his head at me.

  “I presume the four of you are the barbershop quartet?” She sounded a little bit bored. “We should go ahead and get started, seeing as how you’re late. Who did I talk to today?”

  I raised my hand. “That was me. And before we begin, I just wondered about your privacy policies?”

  “As long as you’ve got money, I don’t care who you are.”

  Whoops.