But today Rose had come alone.
Henry was glad to see her and thumped his tail to let her know.
Then Mr. Duffy had gotten a serious look on his face and told Rose something that made her cry.
MAVIS
Mavis stared out the window of the bus at the sights of Landry, Alabama, beyond the gates of Magnolia Estates. The trailer parks with dirt-stained trailers sitting every which way among the white oak trees. The cotton fields stretched out between farmhouses with sheets on the clotheslines and pickup trucks filled with bales of hay in the gravel driveways. Sometimes children waved to the bus from their front porches.
The sickly sweet smell of her mother’s cologne drifted toward Mavis, making her eyes water. She waved her hand in front of her nose and opened the window of the bus, letting the hot summer air blow in.
“Tell me again why I had to come with you,” Mavis said.
“I want you to see more of Landry, May May.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I think you’ll like it. There’s a lot more to Landry than that snooty Magnolia Estates, you know.”
But Mavis knew there was some other reason for this bus trip. That tightness in her stomach told her this wasn’t a sightseeing trip. She was almost eleven years old. Did her mother think she was still that little six-year-old Mavis who believed everything her mother told her? The Mavis who went along on every new adventure with her mother, thinking everything was going to turn out great, like her mother promised it would?
Well, she wasn’t that little Mavis anymore. This Mavis could smell something fishy a mile away. And in addition to that sickly sweet smell of her mother’s cologne, there was most definitely a fishy smell wafting around Mavis as she sat on that bus.
Before long, the view outside the window began to change. The farms and cotton fields disappeared, and in their place were neighborhoods with tree-lined streets and kids playing in the yards. As they got closer to town, they passed JBJ’s Used Car Lot, Bucky’s Diner, Oak Grove Baptist Church, Ruth Ann’s Cut ’n’ Curl.
“Check it out!” Her mother leaned over and pointed out the window. “That’s your school.”
Landry Elementary School was a two-story brick building beside a dusty playground and a tiny square of blacktop with a basketball hoop. Scattered in the dirt and gravel were remnants of long-ago recesses. Half of a frayed jump rope. A deflated soccer ball.
Finally the bus came to a stop, brakes screeching.
“This is it!” her mother said. “Come on!”
Mavis followed her mother up the aisle and down the steps to the sidewalk. The doors of the bus closed with a whoosh, and the bus drove off, leaving a puff of black smoke behind it.
“Ta-da!” Her mother threw her arms out and grinned at Mavis.
There in front of them were four small apartment buildings. Two on each side of a wide strip of dry, yellowing grass. In the grass strip were a couple of picnic tables and a swing set. Kids played on the swings while grown-ups sat at the picnic tables, playing cards and bouncing babies on their laps.
Some of the apartments on the ground floor had pots of flowers by their doors or bicycles lying beside the walkway. The second-floor apartments had tiny balconies where laundry dried on the railings and old people sat in aluminum lawn chairs.
A sun-bleached, peeling sign out by the road read GARDEN VIEW APARTMENTS.
“Where’s the garden?” Mavis asked.
Her mother frowned. “What?”
“The garden.” Mavis nodded toward the sign, making a clump of curls flop over her forehead.
“Aw, come on, May May,” her mother said. “Can’t you look on the bright side of things for once?”
“Which side is the bright one?” Mavis was trying very hard to act nonchalant, but her insides were stirring around like a swarm of angry bees, and that fishy smell was getting stinkier by the minute.
“They’ve got a couple of empty apartments and I’m telling you, May, they’re really nice inside.” Her mother gave her a little poke on the arm. “Dishwashers and everything,” she added.
Mavis didn’t want her mother to beat around the bush. She wanted her to go straight to the cold, hard facts.
“Why are we here?” she asked.
Her mother shifted her purse from one shoulder to the other. “Okay. I’m thinking of getting me a new job in Landry. A better job. A job where some highfalutin woman doesn’t make me feel like a dumb, worthless piece of nothing.”
“And what job is that?”
Her mother flopped down on the bus stop bench.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “But I’ve made some calls, and I’ve got a couple of prospects. I got a good feeling about this, May May.”
Mavis’s swarming-bee insides turned into one big ball of dread.
Her mother had had a good feeling about a lot of things before. But most of the time, those things had turned out to be a long way from good.
ROSE
“I’m quitting, Rose Petal,” Mr. Duffy said.
“Quitting?”
Mr. Duffy nodded.
“This job?” Rose asked.
He nodded again.
Then all the worry that had been swirling around Rose for so long came crashing down.
Boom!
She sat in Mr. Duffy’s desk chair and sobbed.
Mr. Duffy put his hands on the arm of the chair and said, “Don’t cry, Rosie. It’s not the end of the world.”
But it felt like the end of the world to Rose.
At least, the end of her world. She couldn’t imagine Magnolia Estates without Mr. Duffy.
“Aw, now, you don’t need to be hanging around an old whomper-jawed geezer like me,” he said. “You got yourself a fine new friend in Mavis.”
But Rose kept sobbing, taking big gulps of air and swiping at her tearstained face.
Mr. Duffy continued in a soft voice.
He was too old for this job, he said.
He had outlived his usefulness with this job, he told her.
He might as well get out while the gettin’ was good, he explained.
“I never really did feel like the folks behind this gate took a shine to me,” he said. “I reckon I’ve always felt like I was hanging around like a hair in a biscuit. You know, not fitting in with these uppity folks.” Then he gave Rose’s shoulders a little shake. “Not that your folks are uppity, Rosie. They raised a fine girl like you, so that means something in my book.”
Rose’s head was spinning, and her heart was breaking.
The day had come.
Mr. Duffy was leaving.
“But wait’ll you hear the good part,” he said, giving her knee a little poke.
Rose wiped her nose and looked at him through teary eyes. “What good part?”
“The part about my new job,” he said.
“What new job?”
“At Wonderland!”
“Wonderland?”
Mr. Duffy nodded. “Wonderland.”
Then he went on to explain that Wonderland was closing and that the bald man, Roger, needed help finding homes for all the greyhounds there.
“We’re gonna be busier than a moth in a mitten,” he said.
“But why is Wonderland closing?” Rose asked.
“Well, you know, dog racing just ain’t that popular anymore,” Mr. Duffy said. “A lot of folks think those dogs don’t have such a good life, cooped up in kennels half the dang day. Spraining their knees and working so hard.”
He glanced over at Henry, asleep on Queenie’s bed beside the desk. “Dogs need homes with folks who love ’em and give ’em tuna fish sandwiches once in a while. They need to sleep on a couch and have room to run free and chase real rabbits instead of fake ones around in circles on that dang racetrack.”
He gazed out the window and nodded. “This is a good thing for those dogs.” Turning back to Rose, he added, “And the job’s only two days a week. Just think about all the fishing time me and Henry are gonna
have.”
“You and Henry?”
“Well, yeah, you know, till I find somebody to adopt him,” Mr. Duffy said. “And I’ll be able to make sure he gets a good home.”
“But what if you don’t like that job?” Rose said. “Will you come back?”
Mr. Duffy leaned down and took Rose’s chin in his hand. It was warm and smelled faintly of fish. “The corn’s off the cob, Rosie. Too late to come back.”
Then the two of them sat for a while, not talking.
Just listening to Henry snore, until Rose said, “I better go.”
MAVIS
Mavis sat on the log in the vacant lot and stared glumly at the wildflowers and the bramble bushes and the small gold sign that read BUILD YOUR DREAM HOME HERE.
Dream home.
Ha!
Mavis had never had a dream home in her life.
Her mother had always made her think that each new place they landed in was their dream home.
The condo in Atlanta.
The apartment over the Chinese restaurant in South Carolina.
That shabby old house they shared with that crazy lady someplace Mavis couldn’t even remember.
That brick house owned by her mother’s hotheaded boyfriend in Hadley, Georgia.
On and on and on.
Dream homes?
Hardly.
And every single time, Mavis had tried to have a best friend. But every single time, they hadn’t stayed long enough for that to happen.
Now, finally, they had a nice place here in Landry, Alabama, and she really did have a best friend.
Mavis felt sure that if her mother quit her job with the Tullys, Rose wouldn’t want to be her best friend anymore.
Why would she?
They wouldn’t be able to see each other every day.
They couldn’t have any more adventures like the one they’d had when they went to Wonderland.
They couldn’t visit Mr. Duffy and play checkers.
Besides, Mrs. Tully would be so mad at her mother for quitting, she wouldn’t want Rose to play with Mavis, anyway.
Then a thought popped into Mavis’s head.
School would be starting in a few weeks.
They would see each other at school!
They could still be best friends.
They could eat lunch together and have club meetings at recess and choose each other as partners in science class and stuff like that.
But then another thought popped into Mavis’s head.
Did Rose even go to Landry Elementary School?
Probably not.
She probably went to some fancy school where the kids wore uniforms and went on field trips to Disney World and the lunch ladies served them fried chicken and apple pie on china plates.
Mavis had been avoiding Rose the last few days, staying up in the apartment or dashing down here to the vacant lot. Not even going to see Mr. Duffy in case Rose was there. But now she looked at the empty spot on the log beside her and felt that loneliness come creeping back.
She needed to see Rose.
Mavis made her way up the street, her thoughts weighing her down and making her walk slow and slump-shouldered. Unfortunately, walking up the street toward her was Amanda Simm, wearing a bathing suit and carrying a towel.
Dang!
Mavis was not in the mood to talk to her.
“Hey,” Amanda called when she saw Mavis.
Mavis said, “Hey,” and tried to keep walking, but Amanda stopped beside her and said, “So, I guess I was right about Mr. Duffy.”
“What do you mean?”
“About him leaving.”
“Leaving?”
Amanda nodded and flicked her cantaloupe-colored ponytail over her shoulder.
“Where’s he going?” Mavis asked.
“I don’t know.”
“How do you know he’s leaving?”
“My mother told me,” Amanda said. “Is he keeping that dog y’all took up there?”
“Yes.” Mavis’s fib came out fast and easy. But if her plan worked, and she was sure it would, Mr. Duffy was going to keep Henry.
Now her thoughts were racing. Did Rose know about Mr. Duffy? If she did, she would be really upset. Mavis suddenly had guilt poking at her from every direction. She had been so busy moping about her mother’s new job that she hadn’t even thought much about Rose. A best friend wouldn’t do that. Why was she so bad at being a best friend?
“What’s Rose going to do?” Amanda asked.
“What do you mean?”
“All she ever does is stay up at the gatehouse with Mr. Duffy,” Amanda said. “There’s lots of other stuff to do in Magnolia Estates. The Junior Garden Club, the mother-daughter book club, the tennis team, the—”
“Rose doesn’t want to do any of that stuff,” Mavis said.
“She could do gymnastics in my yard with me and Mimi Fay,” Amanda said. “You can come, too. Unless y’all would rather play with those lions on Rose’s porch.”
Mavis’s face burned with anger. She wanted to give that cantaloupe ponytail a good yank. But for once, self-control tapped her on the shoulder and told her to cool it.
Then she stood up straight and lifted her chin and walked away from Amanda Simm. She needed to check on her best friend, Rose.
HENRY
Henry didn’t know what Mr. Duffy had said that had made Rose cry, but things hadn’t been quite the same since.
Rose didn’t come to visit as often, and when she did, she seemed a little sad.
And Mavis hadn’t come to the gatehouse at all.
And Mr. Duffy just wasn’t himself.
For one thing, he’d stopped whistling.
He used to whistle while he made hot dogs for supper.
He whistled when he gathered his fishing gear and headed for the lake, calling for Henry to come with him.
And he whistled when he tidied up the trailer, putting his old leather slippers neatly under the bed, taking wet towels out to the clothesline to dry, and washing the plastic bowl that Henry ate out of beside the kitchen table.
Lucky for Henry, Mr. Duffy still tore off pieces of his hot dog and tossed them into the bowl, but things didn’t feel the same as they had a few days ago. Henry was pretty sure it had to do with whatever Mr. Duffy had told Rose that made her cry.
So when Mr. Duffy went for walks down by the lake, his head down and his hands clasped behind his back, Henry made sure he stayed right beside him.
And when Mr. Duffy sat on the lumpy couch and watched TV until he fell asleep, Henry lay at his feet, resting his head on Mr. Duffy’s slipper.
And when Mr. Duffy woke up in front of the TV and ambled off to bed, Henry followed along and settled in among the sheets next to him, waiting until he heard Mr. Duffy’s snoring before he allowed himself to drift off.
Some nights, while he waited for Mr. Duffy to snore, Henry thought about this new life he was living.
He had never slept in the glow of a television before.
He had never snuggled in the sheets of a person’s bed before.
He had never even eaten a tuna fish sandwich before.
This life sure was different from his life at Wonderland.
More than anything, he hoped he could stay here with Mr. Duffy in the little trailer by the lake.
ROSE
Rose stabbed a few grains of wild rice and nibbled on them. Then she mashed her fork into her spinach soufflé and waited for her mother to say, “Stop playing with your food, Rose.”
But instead, her mother said, “Miss Jeeter has given her notice, Robert.”
Rose’s stomach did a somersault. She froze with her fork in the air, looking down at the spinach soufflé. She wanted to cover her ears so she wouldn’t have to hear what came next, but she stayed there frozen like that.
Her father raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“She’s found another job,” her mother said.
“I guess that’s just as well,” her father said.
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“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Then they argued for a few minutes.
Rose’s father saying how her mother had never seemed happy with Miss Jeeter, and her mother saying, “Well, do you blame me, Robert?” Then she asked what she was supposed to do now. She couldn’t be expected to have no help.
When there seemed to be a lull in the conversation, Rose asked, “What’s her new job?”
Her mother looked surprised to see that Rose was still sitting there. “Receptionist at Clyde Waterman’s insurance agency.” She glanced over at Rose’s father, who kept quiet, then she added under her breath, “That ought to be good.”
“Will she and Mavis stay in the apartment over the garage?” Rose asked.
Her mother sat up straighter, her back pressed against the mahogany chair. “Of course not!” she said.
Rose set her fork down. “May I be excused?”
Her mother opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Rose’s father said, “You may.”
Rose placed her perfectly ironed linen napkin neatly next to her plate and went upstairs to Grace’s room.
MAVIS
Mavis rang the “Ode to Joy” doorbell.
Mrs. Tully opened the door and looked surprised to see Mavis.
“Is Rose here?” Mavis asked.
“She is.”
“I need to talk to her.”
Mrs. Tully lifted an eyebrow and opened the screen door. Mavis fought the urge to hopscotch across the gleaming marble tiles and take the stairs two at a time. Instead, she hurried up to Rose’s room, her bare feet sinking into the soft, thick carpet.
But Rose’s room was empty.
So Mavis went down to Grace’s room, and there was Rose, sitting on the window seat, hugging her knees and looking pitiful with a capital P.
Mavis sat down beside her and said, “I heard about Mr. Duffy.”
Rose’s chin quivered, and she said, “I heard about your mother’s new job.”
“And we have to move,” Mavis said.
Then she told Rose about Garden View Apartments.
“But we can still be best friends,” Mavis said. “We can do everything together at school.”
Rose’s mouth dropped open a little, and she stared at Mavis. “What school are you going to?” she asked.
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