“Escapology.”
“Right. You don’t need a degree to pursue escapology as a career.”
“I love escapology. And I love performing. But I still want to be a historian.”
She steepled her fingers on the table. “What do you like about history?”
“The stories, mostly. Most people my age see history as a dry, crumbly thing. You know, words on paper about dead people. But those people were young once. They were like us, up against the world, ready to make it their own. The past grounds us, places us on a timeline, but it’s always open to interpretation.”
“Is there a particular historical period you’re interested in?”
“I’ve loved the Jazz Age for as long as I can remember. But I can find something worthwhile in almost any historical period. Even in the face of tragedy, there’s always something to connect with, some forward momentum to cling to.”
“Hm, that’s an interesting answer.” She cleared her throat. “Your grades and your test scores fall a little bit below average for Bristol.”
“I’m aware.”
“Can you reassure me that you’re academically prepared for a school like Bristol?”
“I’ve always done well in subjects that interest me. As long as I’m engaged, I think I can handle it.”
She clicked her pen one last time, scribbling a final note. “Mattie, I can’t make any promises during this interview. But I can say I think you’ll fit in nicely at Bristol.”
The octopus gave me another round of applause while Ginger did a few cartwheels through my mind. I wouldn’t have been able to wipe the grin off my face if my life depended on it.
I’d been dead for only three weeks when the social workers showed up on the snow-dusted porch of my villa in Grayton. They hadn’t been able to find The Hummingbird’s father or get in touch with my family in Japan. No matter—her father was a deadbeat, and her grandparents didn’t even know she existed.
But a lack of relatives willing to open their homes meant The Hummingbird would be swallowed by a nebulous entity known as “the system.”
“Did you pack some clothes? a thirty-something in business casual asked. She sounded like she was trying to affect an air of compassion, but she’d done this too many times. She wanted to care, but no longer had the energy.
The Hummingbird slumped her shoulders and shook her head, a curtain of dark hair guarding her tear-streaked face.
The thirty-something sighed. “I know you don’t want to leave. And I know packing will make it real. But you’ll want your own stuff when you get to the group home.”
“Fine,” The Hummingbird huffed. “But I’ll pack what I want to pack, and you’ll shut up about it.”
She took her time stomping up to the attic and filled a suitcase with locks and chains.
– Akiko Miyake, Grayton, December 24, 1999
Will With Two Ls Gets Crafty
Two weeks before Mattie’s All Hallows Eve performance, I drove to Miyu’s to help Frankie with construction. I might not strike most people as a handy guy, but my mom had sent me to more than enough art classes as a kid to prepare me for a papier mâché apocalypse. No matter the medium, I can squeak by in a pinch.
Miyu greeted me at her front door without a hint of a smile. “Jehovah.”
“What’s the word, Hummingbird?” I waggled my eyebrows for emphasis.
Her non-smile dropped to a sneer. “Yes, you think you’re cute. You’ve made that quite clear. Cub Scout’s in the garage.”
“Groovy. Where’s Mattie?”
“Training in the living room. She needs concentration so please keep your dimples outside.”
“Understood. Hey, Miyu, is there a sewing machine up in that attic?”
She blinked her dark eyes at me. “Probably yes. Why?”
“Um, I need one for a thing.”
Her nostrils flared. “I don’t know why teenagers feel the need to be so vague when they want to withhold information. If you don’t want to tell me what you need the sewing machine for, then just tell me it’s none of my damn business.”
“It’s none of your damn business.”
“Very good, Jehovah. I’ll have Mattie dig it out for you.”
“No! I mean, the thing is kind of a surprise. For Mattie.”
“Ugh. Fine, I’ll drag my ass up there and dig it out myself. You owe me, Jehovah.”
She shut the door and I moseyed off the porch and into the garage. The squeal-and-buckle of a drill filled my ears as I gave Frankie’s makeshift workshop a once over.
“Sandpaper, stat.” He didn’t even look up at me.
“You got it, kid. Four-hundred grit?”
“That should be sufficient.”
We sanded and sanded and then sanded some more until I feared we might sand away the whole project. The Karate Kid had been among Betsy’s dad’s old VHS tapes, and I kept hearing Mr. Miyagi’s instructional mantra in my head. Sand the floor, sand the floor.
“We’re gonna be able to kick some serious ass when we’re done with this,” I said.
Frankie glanced over at me. “Huh?”
“Karate Kid? No?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
Once all that sanded wood reached a state of sheer splinter-less-ness, Frankie opened a few windows and busted out a can of varnish. Maybe it was all the fumes going to my head, but an hour into varnishing, all I could think about was wood grain and even coats and polish-polish-polish. It reminded me of coloring as a kid. It didn’t even feel like a chore after a while. It just felt like everything.
The clack of boots on concrete pulled me out of my varnish-trance. Miyu and Mattie stood in the doorway, eyeing our progress.
“Wow,” Mattie breathed.
Miyu just scowled.
“What?” Frankie asked.
“Yeah, what?” Mattie said. “I think it looks great.”
“The craftsmanship isn’t the problem. You did a lovely job, Cub Scout. I’m just not sure your muse understands the gravity of this.”
Mattie huffed. “First, please don’t ever refer to me as a muse. Second, it’s not like this is my first rodeo.”
That line made me picture Ginger the intrepid orphan as a rodeo clown, complete with blood-red overalls, but that’s beside the point.
“This is fundamentally different from everything you’ve done before,” Miyu explained. “You understand that, don’t you?” A little edge had crept into her voice. With most people, it would’ve made me squirm, and maybe pretend to take a call on my cell so I’d have an out. But getting her knickers in a knot was Miyu’s way of showing Mattie she cared. I’m not ashamed to admit it warmed my heart as much as the possibility of Mattie’s demise scared the ever-living shit out of me.
“I understand that I could die, if that’s what you’re trying to say. But my last two acts also involved real danger. You said so yourself.”
“Not like this. If you’d really gotten into trouble in the aquarium, you know Monty or I would’ve fished your ass out and pumped the water out of your lungs. I can’t help you with this one. If you fuck it up, it’s irreversible.”
That word hung in the air like an ice-cold mist.
“Technically, I’m an adult,” Mattie argued. “So if I fuck up, it’s on me and no one else.”
Miyu squinted at Mattie. “You still haven’t told your parents, have you?”
Mattie buried her face in her hands. “Ugh. Miyu, if even ten percent of that diary is true, then your mom, who built her whole life around escapology, had second and even third thoughts about training you and putting her own kid in harm’s way. And my parents aren’t world-renowned escape artists. They’re Mr. and Mrs. Suburban Rhode Island.”
I expected Miyu to throw up her hands or bark at Mattie—You know nothing, Girl Scout! Instead,
she crossed her arms and tapped one of her knee-high boots on the concrete floor. “I’ll just say this. If my mom were alive when I was your age, there’s nothing I’d have hidden from her. You never know how long you have.”
Instead of responding, Mattie glanced over at me—Please help.
I replied with a shrug. If I had any sage-isms or words of wisdom rattling around in my noggin, my mouth couldn’t find them. I was still too shocked by Miyu’s rare display of genuine feels.
A deep sigh escaped Miyu’s permanent non-smile. “Cub Scout, I need your help with something.”
She clacked out of the garage with Frankie trailing after her.
Mattie sank down onto a reclining beach chair, shut her eyes, and rested her clasped hands in her lap.
“Tell me about your mother,” I quipped in a terrible Austrian accent.
“Oh, Will.” She didn’t laugh but I got a smile out of her.
“If you do decide to tell your parents and they disown you, you could always move in with me.”
That made her laugh. “Marjorie would love that.”
“She’s your biggest fan.”
Before I left that night, Frankie snuck a portable sewing machine he dug out of Miyu’s attic into my parents’ Lincoln. When I got home, I flipped through the sketches I’d done the night before, tracing the lines with my finger. Then I did a few test projects with the sewing machine. A quilt square I’d probably never turn into a quilt. A little felt messenger bag for Mr. Crankypants, Mattie’s ceramic gnome. I just wanted to get a feel for it. My stitching on the quilt square came out all helter-skelter, but I’d settled down by the time I got to the strap on the mini-messenger bag. All that stuff from Home Ec 101 and the zillion arts and crafts workshops my mom sent me to started coming back, like the instinctual dynamics of riding a bike.
My phone buzzed as I was slicing through fabric with a pair of shears. I should’ve ignored it.
>Hey. Did you want to see me at all this week?
It was from the Bonnie to my Clyde, of course. Only there was no dearest adorbs boyfriend or love you oodles or XOXO. She knew something was up.
>Of course. Brunch on Sunday morning?
>Fine. Pick you up at 10:00.
I thought about texting back an I love you or posting a cute photo of the two us on LifeScape. But the end was coming, I could feel it. Adding more lies to the giant pile of lies wasn’t going to accomplish anything at this point other than making me more of a liar.
So instead of trying to placate my main squeeze, I took a deep breath and picked up the shears. I fell into that same all-consuming space I had in the garage while varnishing Frankie’s construction project. Only this time, it was even better. Because this was my project.
In her childhood on the road, The Hummingbird had learned to tune out the noise of highways and city streets and cabarets and amphitheaters. But the dingy group home the thirty-something brought her to was host to a chaotic chorus that set her teeth on edge. I could see it in her face, in the way she set her jaw as she sat on her bed with its little pancake mattress. There was the chitter-chatter chitter-chatter of all those white girls, punctured by the occasional shout or curse word. The incessant squeak of sneakers on lineoleum. And, underneath it all, the rattle and hum of the air circulator.
When it got unbearable, she’d pull out a padlock and pick it with a bobby pin.
– Akiko Miyake, Providence, January 12, 2000
Mattie vs. That Old Kernel of Fear
On the night before Halloween, known to most New Englanders as Cabbage Night, I slipped the following hand-written note under my brother’s bedroom door.
Dear Mr. McKenna,
You are cordially invited to an evening of Halloween merriment. Please bring yourself and your two dearest friends (you know who they are) to five hundred fifty-five Atwells Avenue in the sparkling city of Providence in the great, sea-kissed state of Rhode Island on October thirty-first. Arrive no later than eleven o’clock, post-meridian, and do not speak of any spectacles you witness. If you can keep a secret and an open mind, you and your cohorts will, in all likelihood, thoroughly enjoy yourselves.
Sincerely,
Your sister, Mattie Ross McKenna
The second my fingertips pushed the note out of reach, I wanted to snatch it back. I jiggled the doorknob. Locked. I considered picking it but that kind of invasion of my brother’s lair made my stomach turn.
I paced around my room for a few minutes, then pulled out my phone to text Stella, Will, and Frankie.
>I just did it. God help me.
Stella replied:
>Don’t second guess yourself, Ginge, After it’s all over, you’ll be happy you did it.
Will texted:
>You are going to blow their minds
Frankie chimed in:
>Now I’m even more nervous. Do I have to be onstage?
I set my phone on my antique nightstand, put on a Hank Mobley record, and crawled into bed. I must have lay there for a full hour, letting that kernel of fear deep in the pit of my stomach squeak and scream and huff.
When I’d had enough of my insomnia, I got up and flicked on the stained-glass lamp on my desk. Like a beacon of hope promising glorious distraction, the gold cover of Akiko’s diary glowed under the yellow light.
I picked it up, slipped back under my quilt, and let those precious snippets of Akiko’s life wash over me.
***
“It’s going to be fine, Mattie-O,” Will said as we drove to my house after school on Friday, also known as D-Day.
My pre-interview jitters paled in comparison to these jitters. My hands weren’t just sweating, they were shaking. Everything was set—Miyu and I had checked and rechecked all the equipment for my act, the dress rehearsal at the salon had gone off without a hitch, and Will, Stella, Frankie, and I had all told our respective parents we’d be sleeping elsewhere for the night. But my meticulous pre-Halloween arrangements offered no comfort. I folded myself into my lap and buried my head in my arms.
Will parked the car and untangled me. “Deep breaths.”
My dry throat pinched my airway. “I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can. You can and you will.” He got out of the car, and I heard the trunk pop open. “I have a gift for you,” he said through the driver’s side window. “Let’s go upstairs so you can try it on.” He had a cardboard box tucked under his arm and a garment bag slung over his shoulder.
I let out a sigh of relief once we made it up to my room without running into Kyle. Will put the box on the bed, hung the garment bag on the back of my bedroom door, and placed his warm hands on my shoulders.
“I didn’t do measurements because I wanted to surprise you. So I had to guess, but it’s totally alterable. We still have almost eight hours until show time.”
“You have something for me to wear tonight? But I’ve been training in sweats and a t-shirt, this could—”
He fixed his brown eyes on me. “Relax. I’ve already cleared this with Miyu. She says you’ll be fine.”
He unzipped the garment bag and pulled out a dress. “Dress” wasn’t even the right word for it. Like a tangible fragment ripped right out of a gauzy, jazz-soaked dream, this was the most Mattie-esque garment I’d ever laid eyes on. I couldn’t get my mouth to form actual words. The best I could muster was a quiet “Oh . . .”
“Do you like it? I know you have an aversion to contemporary knockoffs, but I was hoping you could make an exception.”
“Will . . . it’s . . . I don’t even . . . where did you get it?”
He stared at me like the answer was obvious. “I made it. Will you please try it on? I’m dying here.”
I took the dress off its padded hanger and whipped off my shirt.
“Really?” he protested. “Right here?”
“What do you care? Just turn ar
ound.”
“You can’t change in the bathroom?”
“I don’t want to risk running into Kyle.”
Will walked himself into a corner and covered his face with his hands.
I slipped the dress over my head and let the seafoam green satin and black beading fall just below my knees. The dress’s straight lines hugged my hips and the square neckline made up nicely for my lack of eye-popping boobage.
“Can I look yet?”
“Yes.”
Will uncovered his eyes and gave me a onceover. “I should probably take the bust in like a quarter-inch, but I have to say . . . I’m kind of impressed with myself. And I took a cue from Akiko’s old costumes. It looks fancy, but it’s chock full of elastic. You should be able to move any way you need to.”
“What’s in the box?”
“Remember when we were antique-ing in Fall River before school started and Frankie made you go with him into that back room to look at some knives or something but then didn’t buy anything? I asked him to distract you so I could buy this.”
He dipped his hands into the box and pulled out a hat. Not just any hat—a seafoam green cloche hat with a black band and little upturned brim. I imagined the hat’s previous owner as a young girl spending her first year in the big city, working as a typist by day and frequenting galleries and jazz clubs by night. She wasn’t a knockout gal guys would notice right away, but those she ensnared in a cozy, bar-side chat couldn’t get enough of her sharp wit and her sly smile as she batted her lashes beneath the brim of that hat.
“Oh my god, Will. You really shouldn’t have.”
He laughed and gently placed the hat on my head. My dark hair poked out beneath the brim, glistening in the mirror.
“Look at that,” Will said. “You really do have a little bit of red in your hair. The green brings it out.”
I wanted to hug him, but it didn’t seem like enough. Instead, we sat at the end of my bed, my toes skimming the Oriental rug and his hand clasped in mine. My mind fumbled for the right words, but they just wouldn’t come. Instead of solidifying that moment with the perfect words, I mumbled, “You’re like my fairy godmother,” and then immediately wanted to slap myself.
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