I paused. Barrett was on high alert, excitement all over his face. “Let me guess,” he said. “I’m the one at school.”
I nodded, amazed that he got it so fast. “Yes, I think you are.”
“And the girl?”
“She was in the garden this morning.”
He gasped. “You’re giving me chills! I think I know what you’re going to say next.”
“You probably do. I looked at the platter before I left . . .”
“And she was gone.”
“Yes!”
He sucked in a huge breath and let it out with a long “Woooowwww!”
“I feel like maybe I’m losing my mind.”
“Yeah, I can imagine! Okay, let me think. What if I went home with you this afternoon to borrow the Sherlock Holmes? I could look at the platter and, you know, maybe see the girl in the garden?”
“Oh, would you please?”
“Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
10
The F-Word
MOM WAS IN HER ROOM as usual, typing away. I knocked on her door.
“What is it, Joplin?”
She sounded snappish, which made me want to snap back. So I opened the door without asking permission.
She looked up, her face set in annoyance. Then it changed to surprise when she saw this very tall, unfamiliar boy standing right behind me.
“Mom, this is my friend, Barrett Browning.”
I figured the f-word would give her a charge. Apparently it did. She sprang out of her chair like she’d sat on a cat. I could practically read her thoughts: Joplin has a friend?
“Hello, Barrett,” she said. Big, warm smile.
“In case you’re wondering,” I explained, “he isn’t related to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, because actually she was Elizabeth Barrett before she married Robert Browning, so technically Barrett Browning is a combo of the two—”
“Got it, Joplin.” She was smiling the way parents do when their kids say something silly but cute, like “I’m not really a monster, Mommy. Don’t be scared!”
It was kind of embarrassing.
“Anyway, since his mother is a poet and their name is Browning, she couldn’t resist.”
Mom nodded, looking at Barrett. “I like names that come with stories.”
“Also,” Barrett added, “my mom liked the alliteration.”
The gears in her brain were turning even faster now: What a smart kid, just the right amount of geekiness. They’re a perfect match.
“Can Barrett borrow our set of Sherlock Holmes? He wants to read The Hound of the Baskervilles but the library copy’s checked out.”
“Of course he can.”
“Thanks,” Barrett said. “I’ll take good care of it, I promise. And I hope you don’t mind, but I couldn’t help noticing your typewriter. It looks seriously vintage.”
“It is. It belonged to my father.”
“You mean—Martin J. Camrath?”
“Yes.”
“That is so awesome!”
“She’s writing a mystery,” I said. “But she publishes under a pseudonym, Millicent Clark, because she doesn’t want her father’s fame to define her.”
At this point Mom laughed out loud. “Actually, Barrett, I’ve put the mystery aside. I’m working on a memoir now.”
“On Martin J. Camrath’s typewriter?” Barrett said. “That is so extremely cool!”
“Yes, well, it’s only an exercise for now. I’m afraid it’s not very good.”
I was starting to feel anxious, worried that Sofie might not be there. So I nudged Barrett gently away from the door.
“We won’t bother you anymore, Mrs. Danforth,” he said. “But it was a tremendous pleasure to meet you.”
I closed the door.
“I just saw Martin J. Camrath’s typewriter!”
“I know,” I said. “Get over it. Come on.”
I led him into my room, raced to the window, and heaved a sigh of relief. Sofie was still there, sitting on the same bench where I’d left her that morning. It was as if she hadn’t moved at all.
“Is that her?”
“Yes,” I said. “But first let me show you this.” We stood in front of the platter and I touched the place by the pond, empty now. “She was right there,” I said. “Beside the geese.”
Barrett was leaning in, squinting as he studied every detail. “It’s like she was on a different layer—you know, the way they do in animation? The background was on one layer and she was on another. That’s why there isn’t a bare space where she used to be. She was transported out of the platter, but everything else stayed the same.”
“Transported?”
“I don’t know what to call it. Sounds right.”
“Want to meet her?”
“What do you think?”
“This way.”
Sofie looked up when she heard the door open, same as before. This time she got to her feet and smiled.
“Sofie, this is my friend, Barrett.”
That was the second time I’d used the f-word in the last ten minutes. It was starting to feel normal.
“Hi,” she said, and reached out her hand.
Barrett’s face flushed, and for a nanosecond he seemed to freeze. I couldn’t tell if he was afraid to touch her because maybe she was a ghost or whether he’d noticed her sea-blue eyes, glossy blond hair, and creamy complexion and was feeling a little weak in the knees.
Whatever it was, he got over it pretty quickly. He took her hand in this formal, old-fashioned way, like some heroine’s elderly father out of a 1930s movie.
“Have you been waiting here all this time?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sofie said. “I didn’t mind. But I should tell you that a man came over and spoke to me this morning. He was concerned that I was sitting so close to your door. He asked me a lot of questions, like whether I lived in one of these . . .” She indicated the brownstones that circled the garden, as if she couldn’t find the right word.
“Apartments?”
“Yes, apartments. I told him I was your friend and I was waiting for you. He’s watching us now, from over by the church. Maybe he won’t be so worried, now that he’s seen us together. But if you’d like for me to wait somewhere else . . .”
“Wait—hold on! Are you saying that you don’t have any place to go? I mean, don’t you live somewhere?”
“I live here.”
“In the garden?”
“Well, it seemed better than suddenly appearing in your room. I didn’t want to frighten you.”
I just stood there and stared. I could feel the blood pulsing through my arteries. I felt light in the head, like I was going to faint. “Are you here just for me?”
“Yes.”
“Because I wished you could be my friend?”
She nodded.
“And Barrett? Did you have anything to do with him?”
She was blinking back tears now. “I’m sorry if I made a mistake. You said you wanted a friend at school.”
I was momentarily speechless. Barrett’s mouth was open, like he was getting ready to say something, so I put a hand on his arm to stop him. An important thought was trying to form in my mind and I didn’t want to lose it.
“Sofie, I didn’t say I wanted a friend at school. I thought it. Silently. In my mind.”
“Well, it’s sort of the same thing.” Her voice was perfectly calm.
“Does that mean you can hear my thoughts?”
“If you want me to leave, you have only to wish it.”
That was too much. “I need to sit down,” I said.
I must have gone pale because Barrett took me by the arm, and since there wasn’t room on the bench for three, he led me over to a plot of grass. “We can sit here,” he said, guiding me gently as I stepped over the boxwood border. He didn’t let go till I was safely seated. He waved Sofie over to join us and we sat in a circle.
“Okay,” I said, still breathing hard, still
feeling my whole body on high alert, “can you hear what I’m thinking now?” I looked down at my hands and forced myself to focus: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, East Lansing, Fredonia—
“No.”
“But you said . . .”
“It’s confusing for me too,” Sofie said. “And I don’t exactly know how it works, except that when you wish something, I become aware of it.”
“Why?”
“Because you own the platter. And”—she looked embarrassed, as if what she was about to say was indelicate and embarrassing—“I guess that means you own me too. I am compelled to give you anything you wish for.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. For a moment I simply sat there, openmouthed with astonishment over what had just been said.
That’s when it came to me, loud and clear, that reality as I’d known it was only part of a much bigger picture. There were other realities that followed different rules—and we had just entered one of them. Barrett, Sofie, and I had just passed through the wardrobe into our own personal Narnia.
“Are you all right?” Sofie asked.
“Yeah. Sort of. Making some mental adjustments, that’s all.”
She nodded. She understood.
I noticed again the little bundle of white cloth. Sofie had carried it with her when she left the bench and had tucked it under her skirt as we sat on the grass.
“What is that?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I already knew.
“My clothes.”
“Your apron and your little cap?”
“Yes. I took them off because I was afraid they would look peculiar. It’s not how people dress now.”
“May I see?”
She pulled out the bundle and handed it to me. I studied the cap, with its carefully hand-stitched edge. “Did you make this?”
“My mother did.”
Barrett leaned over to see. I handed it to him, watched as he studied the shape of it, the way it folded back and hung down at the sides.
“Where is she now?” I asked. “Your mother.”
Sofie flinched, but she answered. “That was long ago,” she said. “She’s gone. I have no mother now.”
Of course. Her mother would have lived in the 1600s. And all this time since then, for hundreds of years . . .
“Joplin,” Barrett said, handing the cap back to Sofie. “Do you mind if I ask her a question? I think it’s important.”
I nodded.
“Sofie—before last night, when Joplin wished you were her friend, what was it like for you? Being a picture on a platter, I mean.” It sounded so bold for him to say it out loud like that.
“I was looking out at Joplin and the room. I have always looked out at whatever place I was.”
“And before that? When the platter was broken? What was it like then?”
“Nothing,” Sofie said. “Just darkness and forgetting. Like a dreamless sleep.”
Like death. I shuddered.
Barrett leaned over and covered his face with his hands, then ran his fingers through his hair, clutching at his head like it was in danger of falling off. “Sofie, can you tell us what you are?”
“I am a person.”
“An actual flesh-and-blood person?” Barrett asked. “You need to eat, and sleep, and . . . all the rest? Do you feel pain?”
“Yes. I am like any person.”
“But you’re not. You—”
“Barrett, wait!” I said. “Sofie, if what you say is true—”
She nodded.
“—and you’ve been sitting here since last night, you must be starving.”
“I am hungry,” she admitted.
I got to my feet on trembling legs, using Barrett’s shoulder for balance. “You eat regular food?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to go make you a sandwich. Do you need to use the bathroom?”
She blushed. Of course she did. She was like any other person.
We slipped quietly into the house. I showed Sofie where to go, left Barrett standing watch at the door, and went in the kitchen to make her a sandwich. While I was spreading mayo and mustard on bread and piling on the ham and cheese, I was trying to think in a logical way about something that defied logic so completely as to be totally unbelievable.
Yet there Sofie was, in the flesh, using our bathroom.
The first and most obvious question I faced was: Should I tell my mom?
I wanted to, desperately. But my instincts said no. She’d been weird ever since our week in Maine, off in her own private world, thinking dark thoughts and on the verge of tears most of the time.
Jen kept saying she was “fragile right now” and begging me “not to make things worse.” Telling her that the girl in the platter had come alive and was living in our garden—well, that probably would make things worse.
But there was something else, something even more important. If my mom knew that Sofie had no place to live, she’d call child services or whatever you call it. They’d take her away and put her in a foster home.
That’s not what I wanted. I doubted Sofie wanted it either. She’d appeared for only one reason: to be my friend. I understood that it hadn’t been her choice. She had to obey my wishes because the platter belonged to me. But that no longer mattered. She felt like my friend, and I wanted to help.
So before we told anybody anything, Barrett and I needed to figure things out.
I looked in the fridge for something to go with the sandwich and found a couple of tangerines. Then I got a snack-size bag of potato chips from the cupboard, put everything in a lunch bag, and went back to the fridge for a bottle of water.
Done.
But that was just one meal. And if Sofie really was a “regular person” (when not living in a delftware platter), then she’d need three meals a day. She’d need shelter from the weather, a place to sleep, the use of a bathroom, and clothes to wear.
She was, by definition, a homeless person.
And she was my responsibility.
11
Someplace to Live
“WE BELIEVE THIS, RIGHT?” I whispered to Barrett, who was standing guard at our bathroom door. Inside, water was running in the sink.
“I think we have to.”
“It’s not a hallucination?”
“She seems pretty real to me.”
“Yeah, she does.”
The door opened and Sofie peeked cautiously out. And suddenly all my doubts were washed away.
“Come on,” I said, taking her hand and leading her through Jen’s empty room and out the back door, Barrett following close behind. “We need to talk.”
We sat in our circle on the grass while Sofie ate her sandwich. As I watched, I couldn’t stop thinking of all those hours she’d spent in the garden with nothing to eat or drink. All night, alone, as one by one the lights went out in the apartments around her. Listening as the sounds of traffic gradually faded away, until it was dark and quiet—or as dark and quiet as it ever gets in New York—and more than a little bit scary.
Did she lie down on the bench to sleep? She must have, though it wasn’t really long enough. Her legs would have dangled off the end. She must have been stiff and cold from lying on that hard stone slab with no blanket or pillow.
And then, come morning, I’d appeared, but just for a minute and totally clueless. That was followed by six or seven more hours of tedium, the sun beating down on her head and back while she sat there waiting, waiting, waiting—hungry, thirsty, bored, and sad.
It made me sick to imagine those things.
“Sofie,” I said, “this is all my fault. I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head, gulping down a mouthful of sandwich.
“No!” she said. “I’m glad. I would much rather be a person than the way I was. I can speak, and feel things, and talk with other people after all those years of just looking out at the world.”
I pictured that too—hanging from a wall or propped on a shelf, watching people come
and go, hearing their conversations, but mostly just staring at the same scene for hours, days, years. “It must have been awful,” I said.
“Yes. But I used the time well. I learned English by listening to conversations. I learned about people too. They’re so different, you know, one from the other. And more complicated than I ever could have imagined before I saw so many lives unfold.
“And then, when things were quiet—the nights and often the days as well—I spoke to myself in Dutch so I wouldn’t lose the language. I thought about my family, so I wouldn’t forget them. But I do sometimes wonder whether I actually remember them or just the facts I kept telling myself over and over.”
“Sofie,” I said, seeing Barrett ready to jump in and start asking a million questions, the same questions I wanted to ask. “We really, really want to hear your story. And even more than that, we want to figure out how we can help you. But before we do anything, we need to find you a place to live. You can’t stay here in the garden. It gets cold, and it rains, and people will notice. You need food and shelter and a place to sleep.”
She nodded, peeling a tangerine with practiced hands, as though she’d done it before.
“The obvious thing would be for you to live with me. But then I’d have to explain you to my mother, and that would cause all kinds of problems. More than you can imagine.”
“I understand about the problems.”
“Right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Now, the good news is that this is a Friday. There’s no school on Saturday or Sunday, so I’ll be here all day.”
She was eating again, but she nodded to say that she understood.
“I’ll introduce you to my mom as a new friend. I’ll say I’ve invited you to spend the weekend. That’ll give us a couple of days to come up with something.”
She nodded again, swallowed, then studied the plastic cap on the water bottle, perplexed. Barrett took it from her and twisted off the top. “Like that,” he said, handing it back. Sofie took a long, deep drink, then heaved a little sigh of relief.
Joplin, Wishing Page 6