Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2)

by Charlotte Roth

  Mom jumped down from the counter and sat down on the table in front of me. Then she whispered, “I love you, Ella, my winter baby,” and tucked a few curls behind my ear.

  “I love you too, my spring mom.”

  Hair of meatballs

  I guess Dad wasn’t right about Seattle summers after all. After three weeks of mostly sunny days, it began to rain—not sprinkle—back to back for five days. In July! Both Dad and all the nice-looking weather report people on King 5 News assured us that this was very unusual for this time of year. Like that would bring out the sun.

  I called Grandma to get the weather blues off my chest, and she invited me to come spend a few weeks with her, like in the old days. Her voice bellowed through the phone unintentionally—she never realizes how loud she speaks. “Here, it’s nice and warm. The best summer in years.”

  Go figure! We had moved from the East coast, where the weather was next to perfect, to the West coast, where the weather was next to unusual. I lied to her and said that I thought it was best to stay with Mom and help her with the new house. How could I tell her that my new best friends—little Miss T, a shorter and peachier version of her; and Martha and Fredrick, whom I had never met in real life, were keeping me here? She would never understand, and who could blame her? So instead of heading back East to hang out with Grandma, sipping lemonade in the sun, Mom and I headed back once again to the eighties, leaving the nice-looking news people, drizzle, and sleeping Dad behind.

  Mom whispered, “I know, technically, it’s still his birthday but, I mean, he’s off to bed anyway, right?” as we walked down the stairs.

  I responded in a matching soft voice, “Well, yes. Besides he had the best day ever.”

  He had. We spent the entire evening sucking up to Dad with pizza, Chianti, and chocolate cake. We didn’t serve one single weird-looking vegetable, and the birthday boy’s overindulgence of cake was not even accompanied by a pair of rolling eyes or a heavy sigh. I guess someone was feeling guilty.

  “I’ll go back and check on Dad. You get the stuff,” she instructed, halfway up the stairs again.

  I nodded and headed downstairs where I started to gather and organize all the necessary gear: tea, cookies, and the pink and yellow human-sized condoms. Blinds down and flashlights on, I grabbed the mailbox from the back of my closet and placed it on the bedroom floor.

  “Thank God he’s an early riser.” Mom giggled as she jumped on the bed next to me. She started the almost-impossible task of squeezing into a sleeping bag sitting down

  “And thank God he doesn’t know what we’re up to.” I stood up on the bed and jumped into my own sleeping bag. “And thank God no one sees us like this.” I sat down next to her and smiled. She was almost absorbed by the big yellow sleeping bag, only her head and arms sticking out. Intent painted her face as she balanced a cup of hot tea in one hand and a handful of cookies and a flashlight in the other.

  “Oh, hell yes, that too,” she said, almost choking on her cookie. Then her voice adopted a teenage whine. “Oh no.” (I can see why she hates it when I talk like this).

  “Oh no, what?”

  “The mailbox.” She pointed with her tea cup. We both looked at the mailbox—ten feet away from the bed. “I’ll get it.” She stood up in her sleeping bag, jumped off the bed, and started to walk, taking tiny mincing sleeping-bag steps toward it.

  “Careful, Mom, your tea.”

  “I know. I’m trying but...” She stopped and looked at me with wide eyes. “I thought I heard something. Did you?”

  I sat perfectly still and listened. The only noise I heard was Dad snoring from above. “Well, at least it’s not Dad for sure.” I bit my lip. “I guess it’s the big scary trees moving a little closer to the roof.”

  “I’m sure I heard something.” She took a few more sleeping bag steps and then stopped again. “There. I heard it again.”

  I sat still again, listening. “Nothing’s there, Mom. Maybe it’s just your oversized synthetic condom making squeaky sounds as you walk in it.”

  She offered a slight smile. “Maybe.” Carefully, she tried to bend over and reach for the box when there was a loud tapping on one of the windows. “Shit,” she cried as she tripped over in her sleeping bag, knocking over hot tea, flashlights, and cookies. “The flashlights. The flashlights,” she announced in a way that made me think of someone crying “mayday, mayday” in one of those old black and white World War II movies.

  Quietly, I unzipped my sleeping bag. Mom stood by the window, nodding. She was right; there was something or someone outside. Instantly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

  There was another tap. It was definitely someone!

  In barely even a slight whisper Mom pointed at me and said, “You go look.”

  I whispered, “Me?” staring at her, “but, but, but, you’re the mom,” I insisted.

  “Well, you’re ... you are not the one trapped in this thing, looking like this.” Both her hair and yellow sleeping bag were soaking wet with Earl Grey orange tea. “Besides,” she argued, “it’s your room.”

  “Well, it’s your house. Let’s go wake up Dad,” I suggested.

  “Yes. No! No, let’s not.”

  There was another tap on the window followed by a voice we both recognized. “Are you in there? Hello, Ella?”

  “The midget,” we both said at the same time, beaming with relief.

  I grabbed the Earl Grey-flavored flashlight and opened the blinds, and there she was—with curlers in her hair, wearing nothing but a housecoat and slippers.

  “Oh, you’re out of power, too?” she questioned.

  “Say what?” Mom responded.

  She pointed at the flashlight.

  “Oh, no, not really, we were just, um...” Mom faltered. She got up on her sleeping bag feet and climbed the chair next to the window.

  “Oh, hi, Miss Johnson,” she said, waving at her with her Early Grey-soaked hair.

  “Miss T,” she corrected and then looked at me and smiled. “Right, Miss C?”

  I nodded. “Yes, Miss T.”

  “Is everything all right in there?” Miss T took a few steps back and gave us a dubious look.

  Mom smiled. “Everything’s fine. You just took us by surprise, and then I fell over in my man-sized con ... um, I mean my sleeping bag ... and I had a cup of tea in my hand ... the flashlight hit the floor and, whew, then it was just little you, Miss Johnson, um, Miss T, I mean. I thought it was a ghost.”

  Wow, Mom, way to smooth things over. You don’t sound suspicious or nervous at all, I thought to myself.

  “Well, you sure look like you’ve just seen one, dear.” Miss T smiled. “But what on earth are you doing with sleeping bags and flashlights in the middle of the night? Are you having a campout? Or a camp-in? Or what would you call such a thing?”

  “No ... we ... we...” I was blank. Suddenly I sucked at lying.

  “Book night,” Mom interrupted.

  Saved by my lying mom.

  “Oh my, I love book nights. I used to go whenever I had the chance.” She took a few steps back and stepped down into a puddle of mud in the flowerbed. “Oh my.” Miss T loved to say that, I was realizing.

  Mom and I looked at her muddy pink slippers. I guess with all the commotion, we hadn’t realized that it was still pouring down, and the poor little midget with curlers in her hair would soon be more soaked than Mom.

  “Come on in, Miss T. We can’t have you standing out here.”

  “Yeah, it’s freaking raining, Miss T.” I held out my hand and felt the rain cascading big time.

  Miss T looked up in the dark night and then touched her hair. “Oh my. My curlers. I will look like one giant meatball in the morning. My hair.”

  “You’re soaked. Come in and we’ll find some dry clothes for you,” Mom said in her best Mommy voice.

  “THIS WILL HAVE TO DO. This is the smallest size we have in the house.” Mom held up my old favorite PJs—a two-piece flannel Winnie the Pooh
set. It was all wrinkled. She had told me years ago that it had to go. It was faded with holes on both sleeves. “Probably from lying on the floor watching too much TV,” Dad had said when she showed it to him. I hadn’t seen it since. I thought it had died along with the smelly, singing Elmo.

  I reached out and touched Pooh. “You kept it?”

  She nodded and smiled. “How could I not? You practically lived in it. You loved it. I’ve been meaning to cut it up and make it into a pillow or something. It’s a piece of history, you know,” she said in Miss T’s direction.

  “But how? I mean, the U-Haul truck, the load. How?”

  She smiled and sat down next to me and told me how she had found it in a box in the attic, next to my old bike with training wheels. Mom and Dad had pretty much kept all of my baby and little-kid stuff just in case they would need it one day. But this time around Mom had taken all the stuff to the Goodwill behind the school, except for my Winnie-the-Pooh PJs.

  “It had that funny moldy attic smell to it, so I took it to the dry cleaners a few days before we left. I had actually forgotten all about it until now. Dad picked it up on the way back from picking up the notorious U-Haul truck. I had it in my purse the whole time.” She held it up in the air like some kind of trophy. “The remains of the Jensens.”

  “The remains?” said Miss T, wrapped in a colorful towel.

  “Remember we told you about the mix up with the U-Haul trucks?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, this is the only piece saved.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Go on, put it on. I’m sure Pooh looks amazing on you.” Mom smiled and tossed it to me. A quick smell and I handed it over to Miss T. Despite a trip to both the attic and the dry cleaners, it still smelled like home.

  I whispered in her ear, “Thanks, Mom.”

  She shot back a warm whisper, “Welcome.”

  “WELL, WELL. DO TELL me about your book night.” Miss T had returned from the bathroom, wearing my old PJs. They were about two inches too short on both her arms and feet.

  Mom looked at me and smiled. I could tell she was trying hard to hold back a giggle. “Well, Miss T, maybe I did underestimate your size. Is it comfy?”

  “Marvelous. It’s really soft.” She ran her fingers over the fabric and smiled.

  “Please sit down,” Mom offered. “Tea?”

  “Oh yes, please.” Miss T sat down on the edge of the bed. “If it’s not too much of a bother.”

  “No bother at all. Thermos?” Mom looked at me and nodded toward the chaos on the floor.

  I reached underneath a few Earl Grey-stained pillows, found the thermos, and handed it to her.

  “Cup,” she demanded.

  I found a somewhat-clean cup on the table next to the bed—probably a leftover cup from the night before—and handed it to her as well.

  “Thanks,” Mom said, and started pouring. She looked at Miss T and smiled. “Well, I guess we better start explaining all of this.” She pointed at the mailbox, the flashlights, the sleeping bags, and the tea-and-cookie-mess all over the floor. “Book night is maybe not the best way to describe it.”

  “No?” Miss T looked up at Mom.

  “No,” Mom confirmed, and then she told Miss T about the mailbox and all the events that had led us to it.

  Besides a few “oh my’s” and “oh dears” Miss T didn’t say much; she just sat there listening in her little Pooh outfit, blowing on her tea.

  “You see, that’s why we were acting a bit strange back then. I guess you’re always a little more jumpy when you’re doing something you really shouldn’t be doing,” I said. Mom raised an eyebrow me.

  “Well...” Miss T cleared her throat and put her cup down. I held my breath and looked at her, thinking, here comes the verdict: guilty as hell.

  “Well,” she repeated. She looked up, smiling the widest smile ever seen on such a tiny and narrow face. “As I said, I love book nights.”

  I looked at Mom, still holding my breath. She was staring at Miss T with her mouth wide open.

  “Now, do please tell me a little bit more about Martha and Frederick. It sounds quite intriguing.” She looked at me and smiled. Mom stared at me and we both exhaled at the exact same time (in sync, as Dad would have observed), feeling relieved for the second time that evening.

  “For real?” I asked, moving a little closer to friendly territory, the smell of my old Pooh jammies.

  “Yes.” Miss T nodded. “For real,” she said, trying to sound like me.

  Mom and I moved even closer and, taking turns, we gave her a summary of what had happened so far back in our other time zone, back in eighty-one. And we briefly filled her in on the last two M-letters we had read the day before.

  “M-letters?” Miss T asked.

  “Short for Martha letters,” Mom clarified.

  “Oh.”

  “There are M-letters and C-letters,” I explained.

  “C-letters? I thought his name was Frederick?” she said, her eyebrows furrowed.

  “It was—” I started to explain.

  “—was? As in past tense?” Miss T interrupted. “Is he dead?” She stopped smoothing her pants and looked at me.

  “We hope not,” Mom placed a hand on my thigh and squeezed it tight. I looked down at her hand as I realized that for all we knew he could be dead. They both could. The mere thought was devastating.

  “Mom?” I looked at her for help, for comforting words, but for a moment there, I could tell that she was thinking the same thing as me—tightening her grip on my thigh.

  “Nah,” she said, letting go of me, “this is the nineteen eighties not the eighteen eighties. They are good. Martha and Frederick are just fine,” she said, trying to sound convincing, but I could hear that tiny little bit of doubt in her voice. But it wasn’t unlikely either. The letters were about thirty years old. Martha and Frederick would have to be somewhere between sixty and seventy by now. Not old-old, but not young either. Then again, when Grandma turned seventy-five she was doing a fifteen-K run with me at a school charity event. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s okay, bunny. They are okay.” Mom leaned up against me and smiled.

  “I guess,” I said, still feeling the lump at the back of my throat. I turned to Miss T and forced a smile. “Dad says she’s always right, you know.”

  Miss T nodded, still looking a little baffled. “C-letters?” she asked again.

  “Oh yeah, C as in Copenhagen,” Mom said, pronouncing Copenhagen like it was a French word.

  “Copenhagen?”

  “Well, I know it doesn’t really make any sense, but his letters just ended up being C-letters.” She paused and took a sip of tea. “Maybe it’s because we love all the little stories about Copenhagen. We’re both dying to go one day.” She leaned back and closed her eyes.

  “Dying,” I added, leaning up against her.

  “Well, I’m dying to hear one of those letters.” Miss T sat up straight and kicked her feet up and down like a little girl—making her Pooh outfit totally appropriate.

  “Well, go get the box then.” I nodded at the mailbox beside the mess on the floor.

  Miss T got up and grabbed the box and dragged it all the way to the bed. “Whoa, this is heavy,” she said as she lifted it up onto the bed next to me.

  “Cast iron,” I said, knocking on the box. I opened the lid, took out the stack of letters, and grabbed the two top letters. “It’s another M-letter,” I announced to the crowd before I started to read.

  Dear Frederick,

  I have something serious to tell you. I have fallen in love with another guy. He’s extremely handsome with his blue eyes and blond hair. He’s not that tall, though. He’s a young, up-and-coming artist. And this morning he told me he loves me, too. Yes, you guessed right. It’s Thomas. And yes, he actually said that. We were at the-

  I stopped and showed Miss T the letter. “What does it say, um, right there?” I pointed at the words I couldn’t read.

  “Pleas
e, hold it up a little further back.” She leaned all the way back. “Annual fair,” she said, squinting her eyes.

  “Annual fair,” I said, looking down at the words again.

  We were at the annual fair at the fundraising event, and he and Thelma (one of the older girls from my cartwheel club) were in charge of the Wheel of Fortune. During my little lunch break, I decided to say hi to all of my students and there he was, standing in a shirt and tie and this gray, striped suit way too big for him. I decided to give the wheel a go. I ended up with number seven which, it turns out, is a kiss from the wheel master himself—Thomas. I tell you I could have melted right then and there. He walked up to the front, placed a big wooden box in front of me, climbed it and gave me a kiss right on the mouth (which I certainly didn’t expect). He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Miss Martha, you are the most beautiful woman in the whole world, and I love you.” I couldn’t believe my own ears. I mean, he’s only five. I was so baffled that I didn’t know what to say (yes, you read it right; your wife was speechless), so I just gave the little guy a hug and said something like “well well, now”, you know, a thing my mother would say. He smiled, stepped down, and waved goodbye. Oh, how that boy gets to me. Well, they all do. Maybe it’s because I know how much they need the affection and attention from an adult who won’t let them down. Again.

  Jennifer, our legal adviser, who has access to all the need-to-know information on all the different families and foster homes and kids, gave me all the devastating facts about Thomas and his rough past. His mother, a sixteen-year-old girl raped by her own dad (dear God), left him with a foster family when he was about two months old, and since then he has been placed in five different foster homes. That’s one per year on average. Poor boy.

  He seems fine, though. He always has a smile on his cute freckled face. He definitely has some issues with people touching him, that is, when he’s not prepared for it. I accidently put my hand on his head from behind (when doing a head count), and he almost ran away screaming like someone had hit him. Someone probably did once.