by Ann Hood
Their mother and Bruce appeared, both of them smiley and flushed.
Maybe you did make pot roast for someone you love, Maisie thought in horror.
“Do you know what my specialty is?” Bruce asked.
For some reason, Felix felt like Bruce was asking him, so he answered no.
“Fried turkey,” Bruce said proudly.
“Ew!” Maisie said, at the exact same time that her mother said, “I’ve heard that is the way to make a bird. It comes out surprisingly moist, right?”
“Right,” Bruce said. “The trick is dropping it in without splashing boiling oil and starting a fire.”
“That would be bad,” Felix said.
“Mom always puts the turkey in too late, and we end up eating hours after we’d planned,” Maisie said. Her chest was constricting, the way it did when she felt saddest.
“That’s not true,” her mother said, chuckling. “Well, maybe once or twice.”
“Tell you what,” Bruce said as they all moved toward the Dining Room. “When my kids are home, I’ll fry a bird and have all of you over.”
“That would be great,” their mother gushed. “Doesn’t that sound great, kids?”
It was a rhetorical question, Maisie knew. But still she said, “Fried turkey?”
Bruce Fishbaum pointed at her. He was a pointer, Felix realized.
“Just you wait,” Bruce said.
Neither Maisie nor Felix liked the way Bruce Fishbaum sat at the head of the table, as if he belonged there. They did not like the way he carved the pot roast, or served their mother and then them. They did not like how he poured wine into the Pickworth crystal, or held up his glass and said, “To the beautiful cook.” Nor did they like the way their mother blushed and cast her eyes down when he said it.
Somehow, they ate their pot roast and followed their mother and Bruce Fishbaum into the Cigar Room for chocolate pudding.
Finally, the time came when they could excuse themselves, and they did, eagerly. But all of the excitement of their trip had vanished. Maisie went into her room, and Felix went into his, and they each packed their suitcase halfheartedly. Their vacation would begin tomorrow. But instead of going home to New York City and spending the week with their father doing all the things they would have been doing if their parents hadn’t gotten divorced, Maisie and Felix were going to be with a woman named Agatha. Or Agnes.
Just before Maisie climbed into her very high bed, she opened her closet door and reached into the trunk that had all the possible anagrams for Elm Medona written on its lining. She took out a small crown she’d hidden there. It glistened with what looked like real jewels, and Maisie ran her hand over them.
Then, she placed the crown on her head and slowly—regally, she thought—walked over to the mirror. Ha! she thought. Great-Uncle Thorne had said they weren’t purposeful when they chose the objects in The Treasure Chest. But Maisie had seen the crown and known that it would take them somewhere far away, where kings and queens ruled. Maybe there would be jousting and knights in shining armor. Staring at her reflection, she curtsied.
“Your Highness,” she said in a solemn voice.
Maisie kept the crown on for a while longer, parading around her room and waving her hand in the funny half-swivel she’d seen Queen Elizabeth make. Finally, she took it off and put it inside her suitcase. But wait, she thought. The crown was bigger than most of the items they’d used before. Maisie retrieved her Mets fleece jacket. No, the crown wouldn’t fit in the pocket. Then she remembered that the fleece had an inside pocket that was deep enough to hold her catcher’s mitt when she played baseball. True, it left a bulge there, but so what? She tried, and sure enough, the crown fit. Satisfied, she got into bed and promptly fell asleep.
CHAPTER 2
Back to Bethune Street
Maisie and Felix emerged from their train into Penn Station with a good amount of trepidation. Before they knew about this mysterious Agatha/Agnes woman, the idea of traveling alone by train for three hours and then arriving back in New York City had them positively excited, even though they had time traveled, the two of them tumbling through time and space, always in the exact same way: beginning with the smell of gunpowder and with their favorite smells in the air—cinnamon and Christmas trees and flowers in summer—and the wind whipping around them, then that nanosecond where absolutely nothing happened. They’d landed in a barn, the ocean, a busy marketplace in China, and a roller coaster in Coney Island—even in the midst of a herd of buffalo. There was always the figuring out of where exactly they were, and when exactly it was. And then finding the right person to give the object to. Surely nothing was more exciting than that.
Except, once they returned home, it always felt like they had dreamed it. Life went right back to normal. They went to school or ate dinner. Their mother asked them what they were up to, but they couldn’t tell her. No time had passed in the present. Not even a second. Even though they’d stowed away on a ship or gone on a dream quest, even though they’d had real adventures, as soon as they got home, everything was as ordinary as ever. So, in the oddest way, traveling solo on a train from the tiny station in Kingston, Rhode Island, to Penn Station in New York City felt even more adventurous than time travel.
Maisie had imagined going to the dining car and eating food that she could only get on a train trip. Although she had no idea what that might be, she imagined it came in a tray with special compartments, each one holding its own course. She imagined sitting at a table with a white tablecloth, and watching Connecticut roll past. But instead, adding to her overall disappointment, the dining car smelled like microwaved plastic, and the food was completely dull.
And Felix imagined that the trip would be so special it would inspire him to write poetry or something. Jim Duncan had given him a book called Moby-Dick to take on the trip, and Felix did try to read it. But the story, about a guy on a whaling ship a long time ago, did not capture his interest. Neither did the journal he’d brought along. Really, all he could think about was his father and Agatha/Agnes. He felt miserable.
By the time they stepped off the escalator at Penn Station and moved toward the big departure board their father had told them to find, the excitement of the week ahead had almost vanished completely.
But then they saw their father standing right where he said he would be, under the big departure board. Alone. He had on his faded jeans and a plaid shirt and the biggest grin ever. As soon as he spotted Maisie and Felix, he ran toward them and swooped them both up at once into his strong arms.
“Is it possible you two are even bigger than at Christmas?” he said into their hair, because he was holding them so tight and so close, that’s where his mouth settled.
“I grew half an inch,” Felix said proudly. He was tired of being shorter than his sister, even though his mother always told him that boys have their growth spurts later than girls.
“At least half an inch,” his father said.
He released them, kind of. He kept one hand on each of them at the shoulder and studied them at arm’s length.
“Boy,” he said, “have I missed you guys.”
For a moment they stood like that. Then, he let them go and took their overnight bags from them, motioning for Maisie and Felix to follow him.
Maisie glanced at Felix.
He shrugged, happily.
Obviously there was no Agatha/Agnes. It was just them and their father. Relieved, they descended into the subway, where they sat, smiling, on the uptown 1 train, their father peppering them with questions the whole way.
“Ta-da,” their father said as he opened the door to a brownstone on West Eighty-Sixth Street.
He unlocked the door to one of the ground-floor apartments. Sunlight streamed in from the bay window, spilling a dappled pattern onto the polished wooden floor.
“What is this place?” Maisie asked, stepping inside.
“A friend in Doha is letting me use it,” her father said.
He tossed the keys in
to a big brown-and-orange bowl as if he’d been tossing his keys there forever.
They stood in a small living room decorated in a kind of shabby-chic style, with big, worn easy chairs and a couch covered with pillows. The kitchen was small, too, and there was an alcove with a round wooden table and four chairs, each one painted a different bright color. In the middle of the table sat a big blue bowl, kind of like the bowl that held the keys, full of shiny apples.
“You guys can take the bedroom,” their father said, heading in that direction with their bags. “And I’ll crash on the couch.”
When he disappeared into the bedroom, Felix said, “Not bad, huh, Maisie?”
“Not bad at all,” Maisie admitted.
Their father came back out and took a menu from a corkboard on the kitchen wall.
“Chinese food?” he said, holding it up.
Felix sighed. It sure was good to be back in New York City, where Chinese food could be delivered anytime, anywhere.
“Sounds good,” he said.
“I trust you still like dan dan noodles,” their father said, scanning the menu. “Kung pao chicken, fried pork dumplings—”
“The usual!” Maisie said.
Their father closed the menu. “The usual,” he said, and his voice sounded as happy as Maisie and Felix felt.
For three days, life was almost perfect. Or as perfect as it could be without their mother with them, too. Maisie and Felix and their father walked over to Central Park and played Frisbee. They went to the zoo there like they used to when Maisie and Felix were little. They spent one whole afternoon at the movies, leaving one theater when a movie ended and buying a ticket right away to a movie at another theater. They ate cheap Indian food. They sat around the cozy living room in their pajamas and just talked to each other—about school and life in Newport and their father’s job at the museum in Doha, Qatar. He told them about the desert where the sand was said to sing, and a trip he took to Dubai.
But on the fourth day, their father sat at the kitchen table with a big mug of coffee and a look on his face that let Maisie and Felix know that something was up. And that something, they both surmised, had to do with Agatha/Agnes. Maisie studied the mug, which was green and blue and in the same style as all the bowls.
“So,” their father said, “remember I said this apartment belongs to a friend of mine?”
“Uh-huh,” Maisie said suspiciously.
“And remember a while ago I told you that I was…um…seeing someone?” he continued.
“You said spring was in the air,” Maisie reminded him.
“Exactly,” he said. “Well, her name is Agatha…”
Maisie and Felix snuck a peek at each other.
“…and actually this is her apartment. And actually, she’s arriving in New York tomorrow.”
Maisie and Felix waited.
“You’re really going to like her,” their father said finally.
They didn’t say anything.
“I know this is…awkward,” he said. “Your mother with Barry—”
“Bruce,” Felix corrected him, thinking how neither of his parents could get the name of the other’s new partner right.
“I wish it were different,” their father said, in a way that made Maisie and Felix believe he did wish it were different.
“Then do something about it!” Maisie said. “It’s not too late. I bet people get divorced and marry each other again all the time.”
“They probably do,” their father said, nodding. “But your mother does not want to marry me again.”
His voice sounded so sad that Maisie grabbed hold of his hand. She liked her father’s calloused hands, big and rough.
“But,” he said, “we got you two out of the deal. How lucky were we, huh?”
They went through the day together doing the things they liked to do, but something had gone out of Maisie and Felix’s mood. The next morning, they announced that they wanted to go off on their own for a while.
“A walk down memory lane?” their father said, in that wistful voice he used whenever he talked about the time before the divorce.
Agatha was due to arrive that afternoon.
“Be back for dinner, right?” their father said.
Apparently Agatha was one of the greatest cooks ever, and she was making them all dinner tonight. She’d made all of those bowls and mugs and even the plates because apparently she was also a great ceramist. In fact, Agatha seemed to be great at just about everything. She’d made the quilts on the beds. She’d knitted the scarves and hats and gloves that hung on the hooks by the door. She’d painted the bathroom walls with quotes by her favorite writers.
“Of course,” Felix said with forced cheerfulness.
Their father kissed the tops of their heads, made sure they had the key to get back into the apartment, and told them to have a great day.
Without having to discuss their plans, Maisie and Felix walked to the subway, got on a downtown C train to Fourteenth Street, and walked six blocks down Eighth Avenue to Hudson Street. At Bethune Street, they passed by the diner and walked the short block to number 10, where they stood hand in hand, staring at the nondescript front door. They had walked in and out of that front door millions of times, never giving it a second thought. But standing there that day, the plain black door looked almost beautiful.
It opened, and out came Mrs. Morimoro, who had lived next door to them in 1B.
She always seemed angry, but they knew that was just the way her face looked. She had on the brown plaid bucket hat she always wore, and what their father called her uniform: black pants, black turtleneck, black boots, and a tan trench coat. Maisie didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone as beautiful as Mrs. Morimoro in that moment.
Mrs. Morimoro saw Maisie and Felix standing there, and her angry face turned as happy as it could.
“You two? Back home?” she said.
“Just visiting,” Felix said, fighting the urge to hug Mrs. Morimoro hard.
She nodded. “So how is life in Newport? You own a yacht yet?”
“Two,” Maisie said.
“One each!” Mrs. Morimoro laughed.
She motioned to the building. “Looks the same, right? They said they were going to paint the hall, but I haven’t seen anyone doing it yet.”
Maisie smiled. They always said they were going to paint the hall. And change the worn linoleum. And all sorts of things they never did. If she walked through that door, she could point right to the most scuffed-up spots on the floor, and to the black marks she had left on the wall by 1C once when she’d squeezed her bike out from under the stairs. Maisie bet she could find those things blindfolded.
“Good to see you two,” Mrs. Morimoro said. “Tell your mother I miss her singing.”
The bus pulled up to the stop in front of the building, and Mrs. Morimoro boarded it without looking back.
Maisie and Felix watched the bus pull away and head north. Then they looked at each other. The weight of the unfamiliar key in his pocket made Felix feel sadder still. He remembered his Tintin key chain with the big front door key hanging beside the two slender keys that opened the locks on the apartment door, and found himself missing that old thing. If he still had it, he would slip the big key into this black door, then walk inside and up the three stairs to the second door, which also opened with that key. He would walk past 1A, where Mr. Soucy lived with his Scottie dog, Rebecca, and down the hall past Mrs. Morimoro’s apartment with the wreath of fresh flowers she always hung on the door, right up to 1C. Felix knew that to open the first lock, you had to pull the doorknob ever so slightly, and to open the top lock, you had to release it. Once inside, he would make whoever lived there now leave. He would reclaim his childhood home.
The door opened again, and this time a girl about their own age, with curly hair and a face full of freckles, walked out. Maisie and Felix knew who lived in all three apartments on all four floors. This girl was a stranger. Which meant she lived in their apartment.
“Hey!” Maisie said, taking a step toward the girl.
The girl studied her closely, probably trying to decide whether the rule of never talking to strangers included strangers her own age.
“You live in there?” Maisie asked.
The girl nodded. She was skinny, and even though the weather was mild, she shivered in her T-shirt without a jacket on. Felix saw that she even had freckles on her arms.
“In 1C?” Maisie demanded.
The girl narrowed her eyes. “Who wants to know?” she said with a southern twang.
Felix decided to intervene. “We used to live there,” he said.
“When?” she said.
“Only our whole lives,” Maisie said.
“Well, I wish you still lived in that dumb apartment. I wish you lived there instead of me,” the girl said, surprising them by bursting into tears.
The crying, however, surprised them less than the idea that someone wouldn’t want to live at 10 Bethune Street.
The girl flopped onto the stoop, and Maisie and Felix joined her, one on each side.
“I just want to go home,” she said through her sniffles.
“Us too,” Felix said.
At that, the girl managed to smile. “I’m Delila. Delila Monroe,” she said, pronouncing Monroe with the accent on the first syllable: Mon-roe. “And you’re Maisie and Felix Robbins, the famous twins everyone in the building loves,” she added.
“So you moved here from…,” Maisie began.
“Charleston, South Carolina,” she said dreamily.
“And you wish you were back there,” Maisie continued.
“And you moved to…?” Delila said.
“Newport, Rhode Island,” Felix told her.
“And you wish you were back here,” Delila finished. She shook her head. “Isn’t life a puzzlement?”
“Do you think…?” Felix began cautiously.
Delila got to her feet and wiped at her jeans. “Absolutely,” she said. “Come on in.”
As soon as they entered the building, the familiar smells swept over them. Felix took a deep breath, trying to fill his lungs with the wonderful scents.