by Cari Best
Grandma kissed Anna goodbye. “Be okay,” she said to her in Russian.
“You, too,” said Anna.
Luke moved the seven Macy’s shopping bags, one sewing machine, and one Grandma in his light blue Ford Falcon. Shirley went along for the ride.
“Ye can call me day or night, Granny,” said Luke, “whenever ye’re needing help.”
“I vill,” Grandma promised.
To say thank you, Grandma gave Luke a jar of apricot jam that she’d made from apricots on the tree she’d planted more than six years ago in the garden outside their Sparrowood Gardens apartment.
* * *
Shirley loved Grandma’s new apartment. It had furniture and dishes that had been stored in Aunt Rosalie’s garage from her Grandpa days, pillows and rugs from Aunt Claire’s basement, and pots and pans and silverware that Grandma bought new from Macy’s. It even had a small garden out front that caught the warm rays of the afternoon sun like Grandma’s garden in Sparrowood had. Uncle Rod, Steve, and Phillie had delivered and organized everything the day before so that Grandma’s move would be as easy for her as it could be. Everyone in the family knew that Grandma had never lived alone in her entire life. And everyone wanted her new place to feel homey on the very first day.
* * *
Later that afternoon, back at home, Shirley started working on a new diorama before she and Anna had to get ready to go to Aunt Claire’s for Saturday-night dinner. They had arranged to pick up Grandma on their way and walk together as if nothing had changed.
On the wood part of the bedroom floor, Shirley cut out a rectangle from an old white Christmas box to make a block of attached houses. She colored each house terra-cotta red and with a ruler drew straight black horizontal lines and small vertical lines to denote the bricks. Shirley carefully cut out windows and doors that opened, and pasted a smiling paper girl on a paper bicycle with handbrakes and a big basket to carry library books and groceries. She took a long time to get the girl and the bicycle to stand upright, using tape and strips of cardboard attached to the gray paper sidewalk in front of the houses. Shirley was just drawing a yellow paper dog when the phone rang.
Anna said a loud “Hello” into the receiver. And then she didn’t say another word for so long that Shirley found herself stopping what she was doing and going into the kitchen, hoping the news wasn’t half as bad as Anna’s face said it was when she hung up.
There had been a fire. An electrical fire. In the walls. Of the basement. Of the Barretts’ disorganized brick attached house. While the Barrett kids and Aunt Rosalie were out getting their short Lake Winnipesaukee haircuts at Sal’s Barbershop on Main Street. The fire burned the walls in the basement. It ate the floor, the ceiling, and Uncle Rod’s recliner. It melted the washing machine, exploded the Zenith TV, and burned all the games and the books and the toys on the shelves and in the toy chest. It reduced Phillie’s road racing table, his road racing set, and his remaining stash of cash in the cardboard saltwater taffy bank to ashes. And it killed Harry the piranha.
“Can you believe it, Mouse?” Shirley asked, stunned. “An electrical fire. Which no one was at home to stop or to call the fire department about.”
* * *
“Harry couldn’t run up the stairs to the bedroom like Porky did to save himself,” Phillie said, sobbing into his handkerchief when Shirley, Anna, and Grandma got to Aunt Claire’s. “So he died.”
Of course, the fire was the only subject of conversation at the dinner table.
“Thank God no vone vas home,” said Grandma.
Everyone nodded.
“The fire destroyed the kitchen. Turned all the appliances from green to black,” said Aunt Rosalie, while Uncle Rod sat and listened, holding on to Porky’s collar so he wouldn’t eat the beef stroganoff that Aunt Claire had just placed on the fancy Saturday-dinner tablecloth. Shirley saw Uncle Rod shake his head as if to say: How could this have happened to us?
“You should see the piles of ashes,” said Ruthie.
“All our stuff is sooty and charred, and it stinks like smoke,” said Laurel. “Our beds and clothes and dolls and shoes. Even our school pictures.”
“We can’t sleep in our own house,” said Steve. “It doesn’t have any windows anymore.”
“So let’s sleep at Winnipesaukee!” said Scott.
Aunt Rosalie did not say, “Who asked you?” because she may have thought Scott had a good idea. Or maybe she couldn’t bring herself to say, “There will be no Winnipesaukee this year, kids.” Shirley couldn’t tell. The room was already overflowing with sadness; no one could add any more. No hahahas came from Aunt Rosalie tonight. Only tears.
Shirley sat in the chair next to Phillie, thinking about the different kinds of grief there were in the universe, and how terrible each one was to the person experiencing it. She would have easily given up her best wish—to go to Lake Winnipesaukee—to reverse the tragedy of that afternoon, just so the fire would not have destroyed the Barretts’ house. Fizzled before it started. Changed its mind. Was put out by a sudden, heavy downpour.
Conflagration was a big word for “fire.” It was the same word in French, but with a French accent. Shirley hated that word and refused to say it. I will never light another conflagration in the sink in the Palace of Light ever again, she promised.
* * *
“I’m so sorry, Phillie,” Shirley said, her arm around Phillie’s quivering shoulders as they walked Natalie and Porky down to the park after dinner. Porky was attached to one of Natalie’s rhinestone leashes since his leash had been lost in the fire.
“At least you have fire insurance, so you guys can get all new things.”
“I guess,” said Phillie. “Dad says we might get air conditioners in every room.”
But they both knew without saying that no fire insurance could ever replace Harry.
* * *
“So did Natalie do her big business?” Aunt Claire asked when Shirley brought Natalie back.
“Nope, she didn’t. Not today,” said Shirley, looking right into Aunt Claire’s big, scary eyes. Without flinching.
It was decided that Aunt Rosalie and Uncle Rod and Steve and Scott and Porky would stay at Aunt Claire and Uncle Bill’s house. Grandma took Laurel and Ruthie home to her new apartment, happy to help—happy for the company in her cozy quarters. Phillie went home with Shirley. Anna invited him to sleep on the couch that had just been vacated by Grandma.
“Until your house is ready to be lived in again, sweetheart,” she said. “You are welcome to stay for the whole summer.”
Maybe Hurricane Anna was finally weakening. Blowing out to sea. Shirley certainly hoped so.
“Let’s play train before we go to bed,” Shirley said to Phillie. “You can decide where we go, and I won’t argue. Come and help me carry the box down from the high dresser.”
But when Shirley and Phillie went into the bedroom and looked up, the big brown box was not there. It had been replaced by a silver mermaid.
“Where are my trains?” Shirley asked Anna. “Where did you move them?”
It was then that Anna admitted she had given Shirley’s beloved Lionel train set to Scott only the day before. The big carton had been picked up by Uncle Rod, after yet another all-out cleaning of their apartment by Anna.
“I thought the top of the dresser was the perfect spot for the mermaid I just polished the other day,” said Anna.
Shirley glared resentfully at the haughty mermaid.
“I didn’t think you still played with those trains,” Anna continued. “I thought they were just something else that needed to be dusted.”
Anna is so oblivious to important things, thought Shirley, remembering well the last time she and Maury set up the tracks in the bedroom while Anna was busy on the phone in the kitchen. Hadn’t she heard the choo-choos?
“That must have been the box my dad put under the road racing table in the basement,” said Phillie, “as soon as we got back from Grandma’s apartment.”
Anna covered her face with both hands, seemingly filled with genuine remorse, while Phillie cried again over one more thing that had been lost in the fire.
Since they couldn’t play train, Shirley and Phillie watched Tarzan on Channel 9 until their eyes began to close. It happened that Tarzan was one of Phillie’s favorite movies.
Phillie chose to sleep in his clothes that night because he had nothing else to sleep in except for his underwear, which he didn’t want everyone to see. He brought his pillow and blanket into Anna and Shirley’s bedroom and asked if he could sleep on the floor so they would all be cooled off by the fan in the window and because he was so used to sharing a room with two other people that he didn’t think he could fall asleep without someone snoring.
“I will try to make you feel right at home,” said Anna, who had been told on more than one occasion by Shirley that she snored like a bear.
“Did you tell Mouse what happened?” Phillie whispered, half-asleep, when Anna turned the other way and began breathing heavily.
“Yeah,” said Shirley. “I did.”
“What did he say?” Phillie asked, lifting his head from the pillow.
“He said not to worry. You’ll live,” said Shirley. “And he said he was really sorry.”
* * *
That night Shirley dreamed she was being chased by hostile jungle people like the ones Tarzan and Jane met up with in the movie. As Shirley ran her fastest, she desperately tried to grab on to one of the many overhanging vines that appeared to be too high for her to reach. And when she finally did catch one, she struggled mightily to shimmy up, as scared as she’d ever been in her entire life, knowing all too well that pull-ups had never been her best unit in gym at P.S. 606Q. But with her unfaltering determination Shirley, in her dream, made it to the very top of the vine in the end. When she’d swung her legs over the edge of the ledge she realized, with great relief, that she was in, of all places, heaven.
“That was close!” said Shirley when she woke up, all of her covered in sweat.
“What was close?” asked Phillie.
Shirley told him about her dream.
“I think you’re scared to be away from home for the first time when we go to Lake Winni Pee,” he said. “If we’re still going.”
“We’re going,” said Shirley, trying to sound upbeat for Phillie’s sake.
Then Phillie said, “Who asked you?” and they both burst out laughing.
* * *
That day, while Phillie and Shirley were outside playing catch with the blue ball on the No Ball Playing field, taking turns with Shirley’s new baseball glove, Maury came over with his own glove, his brother’s glove, and a real baseball. Then the three of them tossed the baseball around instead of the blue ball. Shirley loved the pounding sound the baseball made as it worked itself into the pocket of the leather glove. Phillie’s glove, of course, had been roasted to a crisp by the fire.
“When’s camp?” Shirley asked Maury.
“Day after the Fourth of July—Wednesday,” said Maury.
“Are you excited?” Shirley asked.
“Yeah,” said Maury, adding, “I know my camp address by heart. Want it?”
“Sure,” said Shirley.
“Can I have it, too?” asked Beryl Abbie. She had seen Maury from her window and couldn’t resist coming out to see him.
So Maury told Shirley his camp address, which she easily memorized because it was so simple: Maury Gordon, Camp Eureka, Liberty, New York. Then Maury recited it again for Beryl Abbie, who had gone home to get a pen because she wasn’t good at memorizing addresses, only songs. She wrote it all down on the palm of her hand because she had forgotten to bring paper.
“You can borrow the baseball if you want,” Maury told Shirley. “We’ll play when I get back from camp in August.”
There was no mention of the fire. If Maury had heard about it, Shirley figured, he probably knew in his heart that Phillie didn’t want to be reminded over and over about something as terrible as that fire.
Then Anna called out to Shirley and Phillie from the bedroom window to come in and get ready to go shopping for some new pajamas, shorts, and shirts to tide Phillie over until he could collect his smoky clothes from the smoky bedroom that he shared with Steve and Scott.
Anna, Phillie, and Shirley walked over to catch the bus to Queens Boulevard. Then they hailed a taxi to Alexander’s Department Store, down the road from P.S. 606Q. Shirley looked at the schoolyard from the taxi window. She smiled.
“I got the deposit back from Breezy Bay Day Camp yesterday,” said Anna, “so we can splurge! And I have my vacation pay besides.”
Anna’s vacation had always been the same: the first two weeks in July. Her vacation of choice had always been the same, too: a trip to Lake Layaway. Shirley knew she would have to take matters into her own hands to get Anna to start contributing to her Attached House Fund until Anna’s ship came in. Whenever that would be.
“I’ll wash all your smoky clothes for you when you get them from your house, Phillie,” said Shirley, seated between Anna and Phillie in the taxi. “Then I’ll hang them outside so they’ll smell really fresh—I’m an expert, you know—and you can sing with Beryl Abbie on the swings.”
“I can’t wait,” said Phillie.
Without being asked, Anna bought Shirley a new bathing suit. Shirley chose blue. And as a special treat, she got Phillie and Shirley goggles from the five-and-ten-cent store on Queens Boulevard, after she heard Phillie mention the demise of his green ones in the fire. Shirley suspected Anna’s generosity might be a clue to the Winnipesaukee trip: that it was still on. Maybe Anna knew something that she and Phillie didn’t. Shirley hoped so. She wanted to believe that Anna had given Aunt Rosalie and Uncle Rod the okay—and wanted Shirley to be surprised when she found out.
“Does this mean we’re still going?” Shirley whispered.
“What do you mean we?” Phillie asked, wrinkling his brow, trying to look sinister, trying to be contrary.
Shirley loved the excitement all over Phillie’s face because this year, if the trip was still on, she would be going, too.
* * *
When Luke heard about the fire, he offered to help Phillie build a new road racing table.
“I happen to have lots of extra pieces of wood left over from various projects around Sparrowood,” Luke said. “I’ll be glad to let ye have them fer yer table. Maybe I can even have me own racing car!”
Phillie knew Luke was kidding. But he said anyway, “It’s a deal!”
Shirley loved sanding the wood and hammering the nails. Luke let Phillie try his electric saw. Shirley said, “I’d rather not,” when Luke held the saw out to her.
* * *
When Shirley’s twelfth birthday arrived on July 6th, Uncle Rod drove everyone to Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey. Because that’s where Shirley wanted to go. Shirley thought the Barrett kids could use some fun. She thought everyone could use some fun. Grandma went, too, and rode a white horse on the little kids’ merry-go-round, her fat legs barely reaching the stirrups, her smile wide every time she came around to where Shirley was watching. Anna rode the roller coaster like she always told Shirley she had at Coney Island—probably, Shirley thought, when she was that eighth-grade daredevil girl, that girl in the autograph album whom everybody loved.
It was on the way home that Uncle Rod informed everyone that he and Aunt Rosalie had decided that the long-anticipated trip to Lake Winnipesaukee was a definite go. “The timing couldn’t be more perfect,” he said, “since our house has a bunch of strangers in it anyway.” He meant the construction people.
Then he added, winking at Shirley in the rearview mirror, “Do you think I’d pass up a chance to spend a couple of weeks on my favorite lake with my favorite niece?”
Shirley’s cheeks turned carnation pink with delight.
With mild cheers of her own, Anna joined the wild cheers that filled the car.
When they got home, it was Shirley’
s turn to give Phillie a present. She’d paid for it with money she’d taken out of her Attached House Fund. The present was a brand-new Aurora Road Race set with the same extra cars they had chosen before the fire: a Batmobile for Phillie and a silver Corvette for her. There was a third car, too: a Ferrari for Luke. There would be a time one day, she thought, when they could set up the tracks and cars in the storage room before Phillie’s new basement would be finished—when Luke could play, too. Shirley had ridden her bike to Wainwright’s Department Store the day before, when Phillie went home to get his clothes. She carried the box on her handlebars in a giant Macy’s shopping bag, pedaling slower than a tortoise could walk.
“If I had my stash of cash,” said a very surprised Phillie, “I would have bought you a year’s supply of Good & Plenty for your birthday.”
Before Phillie could cry again at the thought of all the things he’d lost in the fire, Shirley reassured him. “Knowing you, your stash will be built up again in no time, just like your house,” she said.
* * *
“I got the idea from Pippi,” Shirley told Mouse while she packed her bag for Lake Winni Pee. “In the chapter called ‘Pippi Celebrates Her Birthday,’ Pippi gives her friends presents because she says she should be allowed to do whatever she wants to on her birthday.”
Then she told Mouse: “I hope you’ll be okay under the Birds Eye frozen spinach while I’m away on vacation. I’ll be doing everything for two, you know: you and me. I absolutely can’t wait!”
Chapter 20
SMILING BACK AT THE GREAT SPIRIT
It was a mid-July morning crowned by so much sunshine that the dewdrops on the grass gleamed like diamonds as Shirley and Phillie stepped all over them to get to the Barretts’ station wagon which, at seven o’clock, was already waiting by the curb. The Palace of Light is outside today, thought Shirley as Aunt Rosalie asked from the front seat, “Got your toothbrush and bathing suit, Shirley girl?” and Phillie, running to the back of the car, lifted the big window of the trunk and flopped over onto the pillows, joining Steve and Scott, who were already sprawled out.