The Bank
Iput that thought about a rich dad in my back pocket, along with the twenty dollars Winky and I made over the weekend, and I went to the Anchor Bank.
I pushed my way through the revolving door and stood in line for the next available bank teller. There were two. One was nice Mrs. Gagne. The other was Mr. Beebe. I hoped I would get Mrs. Gagne when it was my turn at the counter.
The bank is an old brick building with tiny white-and-black honeycomb tiles on the floor, and a high ceiling with lights that dangle on chains longer than I am tall. I looked up and counted the lights. I looked down and counted tiny tiles. I read over the pamphlet from the tables in the back, the ones with pens on chains so nobody will take them. I read words like deposit and withdrawal and saving for your future. Then Mrs. Gagne called me over to her window.
“Hello, Josie,” she said. She had pretty earrings about the size of the bank’s chandeliers. “How may the Anchor be of service?” she said.
“I’d like to make a deposit to my grandfather’s account,” I said. “Is that… lawful?”
“Yes,” she said, “making a deposit is perfectly lawful.” I slid the money we’d made, all in single dollar bills, across the counter. I had saved a lot more in the Keds box under my bed for a rainy day, but this was a good experiment.
“Savings or checking?”
“Huh?”
A line formed behind me while Mrs. Gagne told me all about checkbooks and check stubs and keeping records of checks and how people use checks to pay their bills.
She told me about credits and debits, and how citizens record their credits and debits to be sure their spending is in line with their earnings.
“Check!” I said.
“Debits are your monthly expenses, utility bills and so on,” she explained. As if that needed explaining!
“Credits are things like Social Security, pension, and income from other sources.”
“Income from other sources—that sounds mysterious,” I said.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Gagne, “it can be a very forgiving category.”
None of this helpful information was explained in that Child Millionaire book from the library, by the way.
Then Mrs. Gagne gave me a receipt. (Also a bright green lollipop out of the For Our Little Piggybankers bucket.) On the receipt was jotted: Account Balance: $314.42. Bingo!
I sucked on the lollipop all the way home, green-apple happy now that I knew how to pay all the bills out of all the money in Grandpa’s bank account. I was practically a banking expert already! From now on, it would be easy: I’d just write checks. Wicked!
Not So Fast
All I had to do was find Grandpa’s checkbook! I had already practiced Grandpa’s signature from a couple of notes I’d written to get out of school, once because I’d had enough of Becky Schenck and I went to the cemetery and talked to Mom, and another time because I’d had enough of Becky Schenck and I went home and watched game shows. No more stuffing cash into envelopes. Paying the bills would be a piece of cake.
I ran down the driveway, and when I did, squirrels scattered every which-a-way, over the stone wall, up onto the picnic table, off behind the garage. There really were a good many squirrels. Through the open garage doors I could see Grandpa busy at his workbench, sawing and banging and blurting.
I dropped my jacket on a kitchen chair and went into the den to Grandpa’s secretary. I lowered the slanted panel that, once dropped, becomes the desktop part. I rooted around in the little drawers and slots, looking for a checkbook. I found a postcard from Big Deals Clearing House: You May Be Our Next Big Deal! Watch for the Winner-Wagon! I found some slips of paper with numbers on them. Maine State Lottery MEGA MOOLAH tickets from the Pay ’n Takit.
Then I saw an envelope with a return address that made me wonder. It’s a federal offense to tamper with the US mail. The envelope was sealed, and it was not addressed to me. But that ship had sailed way back in January, so I criminally opened the envelope with barely a second thought. Inside was a color brochure and a letter from the new Downeast Best Rest Home for Retirement and Assisted Living on Route 4. It promised Dear Martin Bloom excellent care, a lively social life, and a nightly salad bar. One picture on the brochure was of a smiling nurse with a nametag: NANCY. Another one showed an old man and an old woman about to slosh their glasses of wine because of laughing their heads off. Another one was of some vegetables.
Why did Grandpa have this brochure?
I looked off into the distance, like people do on The Sands of Time when they’re thinking about the future or the past or something else that’s disturbing.
My eye landed on the photograph of Grandma Kaye in the silver frame on the shelf above Joe Viola and the Pope. In her photo she looks grim and gloomy, just like the Irish grandma in the canned beef stew commercial does not. Grandpa says I take after her, on account of I look Irish—her side of the family was the McPhee clan.
Right then her face made me feel guilty about going through Grandpa’s secretary. And about opening his mail. And lying to him. And forging his signature. And hiding his money.
Then I thought, maybe me taking after Grandma Kaye, looks-wise, makes Grandpa miss her. Maybe I make him sad, that way. Or maybe he wants a new wife, not a possibly-stinky old granddaughter. Well. I would have to save that worry for another day.
I put the letter from Downeast Best Rest back in the secretary and opened up the little drawers until—wicked!—I found a checkbook.
A Family Portrait
By then it was near suppertime. I closed up the desk and went to pull the curtains, happy I’d solved our money problems. That was good. That was wicked. But my thoughts were as bouncy with question marks as Winky Wheaton’s hair. Was Grandpa thinking about moving to the Downeast Best Rest? Did he want a social life and salad? Was Nancy a real nurse, or just an actor for the picture? Would the Winner-Wagon really come to our house?
There I went again, looking off into the future or the past or something. This time, my gaze crash-landed on the picture of me and Mom at a Hot Dogs game. In the picture, Mom had on a funny paper hat for selling hot dogs in the concession stand. Her blond ponytail was flipped forward over her shoulder like a fashion model. She looked like Sporty Barbie Goes to the Baseball Game.
I took up the picture from the shelf.
“Hi,” I said to the picture. I touched my finger to the glass over Mom’s face. Then I touched the spot where a dad would be.
* * *
As soon as I was able to wonder about fathers, I wanted to know where mine was. “Atlantic City is where we met,” Mom told me. “I was only there on my way to somewhere else, but there he was. I very much do not know or want to know his permanent address.”
But I wanted to know. And I wanted to know who he was.
“Oh, he was a real player, that guy, fairly famous,” is how Mom described him. “Charming, handsome, and a first-class jerk. We married in a rush of love, Josie-honey. Soon I was pregnant with you! When I told him about the baby, he was so excited he grabbed his coat, ran out for champagne, and never came back.”
And that would always be that. “End of story, Josie.”
* * *
I squinted at the picture. There I was, three feet tall and looking not a thing like Sporty Barbie’s Daughter. My hair was in two thick red braids, which Mom used to do. In the picture the braids were frizzed and the ends looked like old toothbrushes. My face was covered all over with freckles. If I inherited his looks, my dad must have looked more like Raggedy Andy than Sporty Ken.
Just then I heard Grandpa coming in the house. I set that picture back on the shelf, and shoved the checkbook in the back pocket of my Toughskins.
The very next day I wrote out a check to Red Flag Mortgage and dropped it in the mailbox on the corner of Pine and Maine. If only I had an address for a dad, I thought, I could send him a letter. But that was okay, perfectly okay, because now our money problems were over.
What’s Insufficient
Funds?
Our money problems were not over.
“What’s ‘insufficient funds’?” I asked Winky. I showed him the letter that came two weeks after from Red Flag Mortgage.
“Not enough money,” Winky said. He let his magnifier fall back onto his stomach.
I guess I figured that, from the place where the letter had a “penalty fee,” and an even bigger amount due than before.
We were meeting in the secret fort. I opened the fridge and pulled out a can of fruit punch. The Coleman cooler had been stocked up again, and since neither of us had dropped dead from eating the magically appearing food, we just kept eating it.
I learned from the pickle I was in with Red Flag Mortgage that just because you write a check doesn’t mean the money is actually available to spend. Maybe Grandpa had taken money out of the bank account. Maybe he had written a check without marking it in what Mrs. Gagne had called “the check register.” Maybe he put a dollar figure in the credit column when it should have gone in the debit column. For whatever mysterious and confusing reason, the money that was in the account the day I wrote the check, was not there to cover the check by the time it got to the offices of Red Flag Mortgage. That spoiled-rotten Child Millionaire kid from that book had none of these problems! Every time I turned around, somebody with a red stamp and a temper wanted money we didn’t have.
“I learned about embezzlement on The Sands of Time,” I told Winky. “Maybe Grandpa embezzled.”
“You can’t embezzle from your own bank account. That’s just called spending.”
“Well, what is Grandpa spending on, as you call it, if not to pay the bills?”
I asked Grandpa that very question that very night, and I don’t know if his answer was a real one, or just a blurt:
“Peanuts!”
Soccer
Peanuts.”
I kicked the soccer ball to Winky.
We were walking around Hamburg, passing a soccer ball back and forth so Winky could practice his vision. That’s what he calls it, practicing his vision. He got a foot on the ball and kicked it back to me.
I trapped the ball and passed it back.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes the thing he blurts makes sense, pretty much, once you think on it.”
“Over here!” came a shout across the recess field. It was the mailman. Winky kicked the soccer ball in Mr. Grigg’s direction, but it went wide.
“I got it!” yelled Sandy from Dippin’ Donuts. She must have been late for work because after she kicked the ball to Mr. Grigg, she kept on running in the direction of Maine Street and the ties of her pink bib apron were flapping behind her. Too bad because pretty soon we had a little game going, and that Sandy can really run.
“Hey!” hollered Mr. Grigg. Mrs. Blyth-Barrow stole the ball right out from under him and dribbled it fast away. She must have snuck up on him in her sensible shoes. It was wicked impressive. She dribbled it across the field and kicked it straight between the trash can and the water fountain.
“Gooooaaaalll!” shouted Mrs. B-B. She jumped up and down and pumped both fists in the air. Her hair stayed in place the whole time.
“Who said that’s where the goal is?” I said to her.
“Clearly that’s the goal,” she said. I’m telling you, she wasn’t even winded.
I elbowed Winky. “Is that the goal?”
“I call Mrs. B-B!” Winky said.
So I got Mr. Grigg for my team. Mr. Grigg is a reliable, friendly person, but he is not what anybody would call speedy. Also he was weighed down by the postal bag, which he refused to take off and drop on the ground. I asked politely, three times. I also got Grandpa when he showed up. I won’t say I “got stuck with” Grandpa, but that is what I mean.
Then Chief Costello came by, walking his little yappy dog, Sparky. Sparky was not on one team or the other, but Chief Costello played on Winky’s team to even up the sides.
The score was three to two when I saw a perfect shot to Grandpa to tie it up.
I kicked the ball to Grandpa, go, go, come on, go, and wouldn’t you know he picked that moment to stop and take a good long look at his watch. “Gin rummy!” he blurted. He gave a sharp salute, turned on his heel, and let the ball roll right by.
“Grandpa! The game!” I hollered, but he was in a hurry, wherever he was going, and he didn’t even look back. Everybody watched him go.
“That wasn’t very sportsmanlike,” I said.
“Well, neither snow nor rain nor soccer will keep me from my task,” said Mr. Grigg. Too bad, I thought, since I knew that big sack always held bad news. Mrs. B-B tightened her shoe straps and walked off with what you might call gusto. We really needed some players under age fifty. What with jobs and oldness, it wasn’t much of a game.
Thanks to Mrs. B-B and her Velcro-fastened orthopedic shoes, my team didn’t stand a chance anyway. But I did not appreciate Grandpa abandoning me in the middle of the game. What was more important, and where was he going?
Plastic Flowers
We kicked the ball back and forth some more and ended up at the cemetery.
Winky Wheaton is the only person in the world who knows I sometimes go to the cemetery and talk to Mom. For one thing, it’s private and personal, and only a best friend can be trusted with private and personal things. For another thing, I do something that might be slightly illegal, when I’m there. When I see old plastic flowers on some grave that nobody’s visited for a long time, I take the ones that are still good, even though they were meant for some other dead person, and I rearrange them and put them on Mom’s grave. In terms of grave robbing, it doesn’t seem that bad.
So we did that. I shook out the pinchers and ants and slimy water and bunched the plastic flowers, mostly yellow, into a bouquet. I put the bouquet on Mom’s grave.
“Fresh as a daisy,” Winky said. He picked up the soccer ball and put it under his arm, out of respect, like a hat.
“We’re having a little bit of money trouble, Mom,” I said toward the gravestone, “but there’s nothing to worry about. I’ve got it under control. I’m taking care of it.”
“Do you ever hear anything back?” Winky whispered.
“No,” I said. “Not so far.” But I am ever-hopeful, just like those plastic flowers are ever-blooming.
A Bet with Mr. Mee
About a week went by. The Believers were back home in Boston for the start of the regular season, and the Hamburg Hot Dogs’ Opening Day came and went. Opening Day was always the first Saturday of April, even if it snowed. The whole town was there. If I was smart, I’d have taken the opportunity to rob a few houses while everybody was at the game. But I didn’t, and the mortgage was due the next week. Again.
* * *
“Josephine, can you tell me what the highest mountain is?” Mr. Mee’s mustache wiggled. He likes to play this game he calls “Stump the Librarian” when we have library.
“How much will you pay me if I get it right?” I said.
Mr. Mee scowled.
“I need to make some money.”
Mr. Mee adjusted his eyeglasses. “I shudder at the preposition I’m about to dangle,” he said, “but I must ask: What does an eleven-year-old person like yourself need money for?”
“Girl stuff!” I said at the exact same time that Winky said, “Boy stuff!”
“Answer the question,” said Mr. Mee.
“Mount Everest.” I’d decided to answer his first question and leave the second question alone. I absolutely positively 100 percent knew it was Mt. Everest. I was counting the money in my mind already, assuming we could come to terms.
“Mauna Kea,” said Mr. Mee.
“What?”
“On Hawaii. Mauna Kea is 13,799 feet above sea level, 33,465 feet from its bottom, at the ocean floor, to its summit.” Mr. Mee cocked his head, maybe to fix his mind’s eye on a spot somewhere in the distance, probably the summit of Mauna Kea. Maybe to think about longing and shape poems. “That’s fully three quarters of a mile ta
ller than Mount Everest,” he said.
“Try me again,” I said. “And I really need to make some sufficient funds, here.” Winky’s and my ideas hadn’t earned squat.
“What is the world’s largest living thing, and no, I am not going to pay for your answer.”
“A whale!” I said. “A blue whale.”
“A sperm whale!” shouted Bubba from over in the Juvenile Humor section.
“The largest living thing in the world is… a mushroom,” said Mr. Mee.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! had failed me.
“The fungus is located in the Malheur National Forest, in the state of Oregon. The beast covers more than two thousand acres, mostly underground, all connected. Some say it’s as much as eight thousand years old.”
“I don’t even care about that one,” I said, although it was interesting.
“What were Cinderella’s slippers made from?” asked Mr. Mee.
Even when I was saying “glass,” anybody could tell by Mr. Mee’s evil grin that even this, a known fact of childhood, was about to get ruined.
“Squirrel fur.”
“Oh, brother.”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Mee. “Charles Perrault misheard the word vair, meaning squirrel fur, in the oral tale he recorded and updated, for the similar-sounding verre, or glass. Who invented baseball?”
One thing about Mr. Mee, he isn’t one to gloat. He barrels straight on to the next thing.
Winky started to speak, but I shushed him up by being louder and faster. “Abner Doubleday!”
“Wrong again. It was someone in England.”
“Someone Who? Who Someone?” Winky asked.
“I’m sorry, I can’t be more specific. But the game of baseball was first named and described in 1744 in an English volume entitled A Little Pretty Pocket-Book.”
“That sounds like a stupid book,” said Bubba Davis. For once I agreed with him.
Josie Bloom and the Emergency of Life Page 4