The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street

by Karina Yan Glaser

  “What happened?” yelled Oliver impatiently, pulling at her arm.

  “Were you scared, Isa? You saw him, right? He looked like a werewolf, right?” Hyacinth asked, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

  “Are you okay, honey?” asked Papa. He cupped Isa’s chin in concern.

  “That was the most excellent ‘Les Furies’ I have ever heard,” Mr. Van Hooten said, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. “I wish you would play like that in your lessons.”

  Miss Josie ushered Isa inside the apartment while Mr. Jeet patted Isa’s hand.

  The only person who didn’t have a word to say or a hug to give was Jessie. In fact, she had disappeared. After looking around the living room, Isa wandered into the kitchen in search of her. A movement out the opened window caught her eye. Isa stuck her head out the window, then climbed onto the fire escape.

  “Hi,” Jessie said. She was sitting on the first step. The wind and rain had stopped, but fat drops fell onto her head from a tree branch.

  “Hi,” Isa said, lifting her eyes to look up at the water wall. Pieces of tubing were torn from the wall, and two water wheels and all the wind chimes were missing.

  “Damage from the storm,” Jessie said, watching Isa survey the destruction.

  There was a long pause.

  “You were awesome up there,” Jessie finally said.

  Isa didn’t reply.

  “Isa, please . . .”

  Isa shook her head. “I want to know why you did it.”

  Jessie swallowed, then stared down at her scuffed sneakers. “I never meant to hurt you. I honestly didn’t think you wanted to go to the dance. And when I found out you did want to go . . . I don’t know. I felt like I was losing you. It scared me even more than moving.” She finally looked up.

  “Jessie . . .” Isa trailed off before stepping closer to her. “You’ll always be stuck with me.”

  Jessie looked up, her eyes hopeful.

  “I’m still upset,” Isa informed her. “I don’t know if I’ve forgiven you yet.”

  “I’ll make it up to you,” Jessie promised. “I’ll cook Tuesday dinners for the next month.”

  Isa contemplated. Then she shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve been wronged,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever recover . . .”

  “Okay! Fine! I’ll clean the bathroom when it’s your turn.”

  “For how long?”

  “A month?”

  Isa fixed her eyes on a point beyond Jessie’s shoulder.

  “Fine! Three months!”

  Isa finally cracked a tiny smile. “Okay.”

  “Okay to what?” Jessie asked.

  “Okay to everything.”

  Papa cleared his throat. “Please, may I give a toast?” When the room quieted, he lifted his wineglass. “We have loved living here. I cannot imagine better neighbors”—he nodded to Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet—“better family”—then to Auntie Harrigan and Uncle Arthur—“or a better teacher”—and finally to Mr. Van Hooten.

  “I have always believed that raising kids means more than just being a good parent and trying to do the right things,” Papa went on, his voice beginning to wobble. “It means surrounding your kids with amazing people who can bring science experiments and jam cookies, laughter and joy, and beautiful experiences into their lives. From every part of my being, I want to thank you for giving me and my family the gifts of friendship and love.”

  Miss Josie cried into a lace handkerchief, and Mr. Jeet hiccupped as tears pooled in his eyes. Mr. Van Hooten blew his nose into a dinner napkin, and Auntie Harrigan wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Uncle Arthur disguised his own tears by picking up Laney and burying his head in her neck.

  Isa looked at her siblings. Operation Beiderman had officially failed. But beneath the sadness, her heart felt too big for her body.

  “We didn’t win over the Beiderman,” Isa said, “but this made me realize that home is much more than a place.” She smiled at her siblings. “It’s good to be a Vanderbeeker, wherever we live.”

  With the speeches done, Laney ran around distributing hugs and kisses, and soon everyone drifted back to the dining room table, taking another helping of food now that appetites had returned. As people finished off dinner and started in on dessert, Isa cleared the table of dirty dishes and was on her way to the kitchen when Mr. Van Hooten pulled her aside.

  “Isa, I must tell you something about Mr. Beiderman.”

  “What about the Beiderman?” asked Oliver, who was walking by with a piece of chocolate cake as big as the plate it was on.

  “Are you talking about the Beiderman?” Jessie called from the kitchen.

  “Don’t talk about the Beiderman without us!” Hyacinth said, pulling Laney away from the dessert table, where she was sticking her fingers into the carrot cake frosting.

  Mr. Van Hooten took the stack of dishes out of Isa’s hand and set them on a side table.

  “I didn’t know . . .” Mr. Van Hooten said, his voice lowering, “that your landlord was Mr. Beiderman.”

  The kids held their breath.

  “I knew him . . . a long time ago,” Mr. Van Hooten began. “I didn’t even remember that this was the building he lived in . . .” He stopped abruptly.

  “We know about his wife and daughter,” Isa said. “About the car accident.”

  “What car accident?” Jessie and Oliver and Hyacinth and Laney said at the same time.

  “Mrs. Castleman gave me a newspaper article about it,” Isa said. “They died in a car accident.”

  Mr. Van Hooten breathed a sigh of relief. “So you know about that. But what you might not know is that his daughter, Luciana, was a violinist. She was my student.”

  “A violinist?” the kids echoed.

  “She was very talented. Isa, you have always reminded me a little of Luciana. Especially when you were younger.”

  “Creepy,” breathed Jessie. The kids nodded in agreement.

  “Well, I wanted to tell you that the violin you’ve been playing . . . you know it’s been in my family for many generations, right? Well, I had lent Luciana that violin too. But then, when she died . . .” Mr. Van Hooten paused. “Well, her father didn’t want anything around that reminded him of his daughter, so he returned it. It’s been sitting in my closet, shut away . . . until you came along.”

  Isa let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

  “I thought you should know.”

  Mr. Van Hooten’s voice sounded as though it were coming from far away, as though he were talking to her from the other end of a long tunnel. The Beiderman’s daughter. Mr. Van Hooten’s violin. Isa’s violin. Luciana’s violin. Luciana touching the same wood, feeling the same vibrations, hearing the same sounds.

  And just like that, the story clicked together.

  When the last of the guests had gone and Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet’s apartment was returned to its original condition, Mama and Papa gathered the children and ushered them downstairs to get ready for bed.

  Isa changed into her pajamas before heading to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Jessie and Oliver were already there, and Oliver mumbled something with a mouth full of frothy toothpaste.

  “What did you say?” Isa asked.

  Oliver spit.

  “I feel sorry for the Beiderman,” Oliver repeated.

  “I never thought I would say this, but I feel sorry for him too,” Jessie said, rinsing her toothbrush under the faucet.

  “I wish you could have seen his face when I went up there,” Isa said as she squeezed toothpaste onto her toothbrush. “When he opened the door, his face was all red from yelling and being mad, but when I finished playing ‘The Swan,’ his face had turned so white. I’ve never seen anyone look like that before. Like he had seen a ghost.”

  Oliver rinsed his mouth. “He sort of did see a ghost. The ghost of Luciana.” He shook his head. “Geez, that’s so creepy.”

  “That’s too weird that she played vio
lin with Mr. Van Hooten too,” Isa said. “With the exact same violin. Did you know that violin has a different sound from other violins? The wood is so old it makes this really beautiful ringing sound. The Beiderman must have recognized the violin. When Mr. Van Hooten said the Beiderman didn’t want anything that reminded him of his daughter, I felt this chill. Now I feel terrible going up there and playing the same violin his daughter did, right in his face. Like I was throwing all these bad memories at him.”

  Jessie put her arms around Isa and Oliver. “You didn’t know. Anyway, it’s probably best we’re leaving so he can have some peace. I spent so much time avoiding him, and now all I want to do is make him feel better.”

  “Me too,” Isa said.

  “Me too,” echoed Oliver.

  Not too much later, the twins were alone in their bedroom, snuggled under their thick comforters.

  “I guess this is it,” Isa said. “The last Christmas Eve in the brownstone.”

  The pipes that carried heat to the radiators banged restlessly within the walls.

  “Do you think we should do anything else for the Beiderman? Now that we know . . .” Jessie trailed off.

  Isa looked over at her violin sitting on her desk. “I think the only thing we can do now is give him what he’s wanted all this time: peace.”

  “I keep thinking about how he lost his whole family in one night,” Jessie murmured from her burrow beneath the blankets. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  Isa reached over to turn off the lamp next to her bed. Darkness took over the room. “Me too.”

  “Good night, Isa.”

  “Good night, Jessie.”

  Isa lay back on her bed and gazed at the familiar sights. There was the crack in the shape of Eastern Europe on the ceiling. There was the light that fell in a long rectangle onto the floor between their beds from the street lamp right outside their window. There was the warm air from the radiator making the right side of her comforter toasty and cozy. There was the whoosh of a car heading down the street.

  There was Jessie, her breathing becoming steady and deep as she drifted off to sleep.

  There were the rough grooves of the bricks lining the wall behind her headboard.

  There was the whistling of the pipes in the walls of the brownstone; there was the sound of her parents’ low murmuring as they climbed the stairs and quietly peeked into the kids’ bedrooms; there was the sound of a distant car alarm and a dog’s bark.

  This was home, and soon there would be goodbye.

  Wednesday, December 25

  Twenty-Two

  Oliver was the first to wake up. He had never outgrown the habit of getting up early to scope out the gift situation under the tree on Christmas morning.

  He crept downstairs—avoiding the squeaky step—and glanced at Papa, who was snoring on the couch, to which he had been displaced since Uncle Arthur and Auntie Harrigan had taken his room and Mama had bunked with Laney and Hyacinth. Satisfied that Papa was sound asleep, Oliver searched under the tree for gift tags that had his name. There was a compact, heavy box from his parents, which he assumed was a boxed set of books, hopefully the Lord of the Rings trilogy (plus The Hobbit). There was a gift from his twin sisters, plus a paper-thin one from Laney. A lumpy present from Hyacinth was tied prettily in one of her much adored ribbons.

  Oliver looked at the presents from his family and a strange feeling settled over him. It was a newish feeling; he had felt it the day before when Papa had scolded him and his sisters for the way they had treated the Beiderman. He looked at his offerings: hand sanitizer and rubber bands and an old piece of candy all wrapped messily in tired newsprint. He hardly felt proud of them, nothing like the books his parents had chosen for him or the bizarre knitting he was sure Hyacinth had spent hours working on. Those presents had love in them. His presents had . . . well, nothing.

  Oliver scooped up the presents he had planned to give and ran upstairs to his bedroom. He dumped the gifts in the trash, took out six pieces of paper, and started to write.

  On Christmas morning, Jessie opened her eyes and was relieved to find herself in her own bed, in her own room. Across the room, Isa stirred.

  “Oh, hey,” Isa said in her groggy I-just-woke-up voice. “What’s up?”

  “It’s Christmas morning,” said Jessie. On cue, they heard Hyacinth and Laney burst out of their room and run giggling down the stairs followed by Mama’s steady footsteps, to where Papa woke abruptly on the couch, yelling, “Down with foxes and meerkats!” Franz followed suit a few seconds later, his claws clicking on the wooden steps as he raced downstairs to see why there was a commotion that he was not yet a part of.

  The twins heard little feet run up the stairs and then up and down the hallway. “It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas! Time for presents!” yelled Laney as she bounced down the stairs again.

  The twins shrugged on hoodies and ran into Oliver, who was leaving his bedroom at the same time.

  “What’s that?” Isa asked, pointing at the envelopes in his hand.

  “You’ll see,” he said cryptically.

  Downstairs they found Laney yanking on Mama’s arm, begging her to let them open presents before breakfast. Hyacinth sat by the tree, adding flourishes to her gift wrapping.

  “Might as well open the family presents now,” Mama relented. “We’ll let Auntie Harrigan and Uncle Arthur sleep past six thirty.”

  The Vanderbeekers surrounded the tree.

  “I’d like to give out my presents first,” Oliver announced.

  The family was speechless. Oliver, in the whole entire history of his life, had never offered to give out his presents first. He passed out the mysterious envelopes while his family watched him in stunned amazement.

  Hyacinth was the first to open hers. “‘Coupon good for half an hour of button exploration,’” Hyacinth read. She tackled Oliver in jubilation, too overwhelmed to say thank you. After he detangled himself from her, he pulled three heart-shaped buttons from his pocket and handed them over. Hyacinth was rendered mute, which Oliver took as a positive sign.

  Laney needed help reading her card. Isa looked at it and read, “‘Coupon good for reading five books aloud.’” Laney beamed her brightest smile, and Oliver felt that reading aloud to her wouldn’t be as bad as he had thought . . . as long as they were short books.

  Isa and Jessie looked at their cards. “‘Oliver will not make fun of Isa and Jessie’s cooking for one month,’” Isa read. The twins were surprised; everyone knew that would be a big sacrifice on his part.

  Oliver shrugged. “I think that’ll be the hardest one.”

  Mama’s coupon said “One morning volunteering at soup kitchen,” and Papa’s coupon said “Help Papa mow the lawn one time.” The look of pride on their faces made Oliver feel itchy.

  “Okay, so what did you all get me?” Oliver said, breaking the moment and reaching for the presents he already knew were his.

  Together the family unwrapped the rest of the presents and exclaimed over each one. Oliver got his Lord of the Rings trilogy (plus The Hobbit), Jessie received a just-released science encyclopedia that easily outweighed Franz, Isa and Laney got matching panda mittens (“I’ll never give these up, never ever ever!” Laney declared), and Hyacinth got a new set of wool yarns in a rainbow of colors.

  Papa was surprised to open his gift from Mama and find a brand-new pair of navy-blue coveralls.

  “I’m sure you’ll need plenty of fix-it mojo wherever we live,” Mama said. Papa gave her a tender kiss on the cheek and put the coveralls on right over his pajamas.

  Hyacinth saved her special present for Oliver until the very end. When it was time, she stood in front of him and held out a shoebox encrusted with plastic gemstones. He stared at it with no small amount of trepidation before lifting the top. He pulled out a midnight-blue hat long enough to go from his head to his waist. The very tip of the hat was knitted with a fluorescent yellow yarn.

  “Did you run out of blue or something?” Oliv
er asked, lifting up the yellow end.

  “That’s exactly what happened!” Hyacinth exclaimed.

  The whole family held their breath to see his reaction. He glanced again at Hyacinth, then pulled the hat on his head.

  “Thanks, Hyacinth,” Oliver said with a satisfied grin. “I’ve actually always wanted a hat like this.”

  The family gave a collective sigh of relief, and Hyacinth beamed with pleasure. Then the kids gathered together to give out the last present.

  Laney held out a thin box to her parents. Mama had preemptive tears in her eyes when she took it, peeled back the tape, and opened up the paper, careful not to tear the wrapping. Nestled inside was a framed photograph of the wall drawing Oliver had made of the family when he was little. It had been printed to be the exact same dimensions as the actual wall drawing. Tears rolled down her face as she lifted it from the box to show to Papa.

  “This is . . . perfect,” she managed to say.

  “We’ll hang it in the same location in our new bedroom,” Papa promised.

  “Nailed the parent presents,” Oliver said with a grin. He jogged around like Rocky Balboa and gave his siblings high fives.

  After the excitement of the Christmas gifts, it was time to get breakfast ready. Laney and Hyacinth headed toward the kitchen, ready to help make pancakes.

  While the twins cleaned up the living room, the doorbell rang. Franz skidded to the door, his tail beating the air at 250 wpm.

  Isa shoved Franz aside and looked through the peephole. To her surprise, she saw the top of a head that looked suspiciously like the top of Benny’s head. She unbolted the door and opened it a crack. It was Benny’s head. He looked up when the door opened, smiling a hesitant, shy smile.

  “Benny?” Isa asked.

  “Hey. What’s going on?”

  Isa glanced at her watch. “It’s seven thirty on Christmas Day. What are you doing here?”

  “I was just, you know, taking a walk. Saw your place, thought I’d stop by and say hi. You know, wish you all a Merry Christmas . . .” Benny trailed off. Behind Isa, Jessie gestured wildly to Benny and he looked at her in despair.