“Tell me what’s going on, kid,” Mom says, facing me.
“I’m hungry.” It’s not a lie but it’s not the whole truth either. I know I shouldn’t be as mad as I am at her—I wasn’t supposed to overhear her this morning. But Sandy—keep an eye on me? Ha. Other way around, Mom.
The sign over us reads GREENERY: VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT AND BAKERY. Sandy’s waiting in line. Cal—I don’t know what Cal’s doing, but he’s wearing a smock that reads GREENERY, so my guess is he works here, but if he stays on the floor like that, waving, this job won’t last long.
“Just hungry?” Mom tries again. “Is this about—?”
“What? I’m— Look.” I point at the window, glad to have her eyes off me.
The pastries on display are like the Sirens of Greek myth, luring in underfed passersby, and it’s hard to concentrate on Sandy or Cal with all that butter and sugar staring back. The croissants alone could feed a small town—almond, chocolate-filled, and plain. My jaw aches from lack of use and over-salivation. This is the closest restaurant to us, I think, but we’ve never stopped here, maybe for this reason: It’s too much.
Mom stands with her hands jammed into her armpits, trying to appear unimpressed. A slice of toast costs five dollars, a fancy coffee costs four dollars, and a sandwich with avocado costs fifteen. And that’s just breakfast. There’s a whole other menu and dining area for lunch and dinner. We could afford crusts from this place, maybe. So, what’s our scrappy neighbor Sandy doing here?
Every item is accompanied by a sign that includes the pastry name, its price, and a sketch with, weirdly, wings. They resemble the butterflies—the arrows with wings—that Cal was drawing on the sidewalk a week ago, pointed in this direction.
Oh.
Click.
Now I stare at Cal.
What’s this kid’s deal?
“Is he deranged?” Mom says. She doesn’t recognize him from our ticket night.
“Dunno.”
“Do you think he gets paid to do that?”
“Dunno.”
Cal is stuffing his face, mime-style, on the other side of the Greenery display glass. It’s very distracting. I’ve lost sight of Sandy.
Cal begins tipping pastries in our direction and raising his eyebrows to near his hairline after each tip. First an éclair, then a cinnamon roll, now a cupcake. He’s really going to get himself fired. He must guess that we prefer the cupcake (I do), because suddenly it’s flying through the air and—splat—crashing against the display glass.
“Cupcake giveaway! Damaged goods. Totally unsalable!” He’s slipped the smashed thing into a bag and is now leaning out the front door, pretending to look both ways for a taker.
“You work here?” I say, sliding toward the door.
“Sometimes. When I have to.” He looks from Mom to me. I can feel her eyes on my back. “It’s sort of a punishment.”
I can’t imagine this kid making trouble. I can’t imagine food as punishment. “For what?”
He looks at the clean-swept cement—“Painting stuff,” he answers, shifting his hips, holding out the cupcake bag.
Mom grunts and turns away. Cal takes a small step back into the restaurant, pushing the bag into my hands in one last effort to make me take it. I want to, but if I do, something will become official. I won’t be taking it as a bribe or because he’s just being nice. I won’t be taking it because he’s curious about me. He’ll be giving it out of pity, and I’ll be taking it out of desperation.
“You were sitting on the floor,” I say, stepping back.
Cal flicks his eyes side to side like he might be under surveillance. “Your next-door neighbor. He was in line.”
“Yeah.” I push the bag away one last time. “He’s my new babysitter.”
* * *
• • •
Cal returns to the counter, and Mom and I find a seat at a picnic table, facing the water and bridge. This is the back side of Greenery. Nearby, a man dressed in a rubber smock hoses down the restaurant’s floor mats, and a delivery person unloads sacks of flour.
“I thought you were hungry,” she says.
I shrug.
“You didn’t take the cupcake.”
“It didn’t seem right.”
Mom nods. “Yeah. But.” She doesn’t finish the thought. A moment later she says, “A waste of a beautiful location,” and pulls at her lower lip. I think she’s trying to lighten the mood. “No meat.”
Just as she says it, the hot dog cart rolls by, turning the air savory. Mom and I give it an approving nod. I look around for Sandy—disappeared like a fly in the dark. Mom pokes a finger through a curl of my hair.
I wish she wouldn’t do that. It makes resentment very hard.
Behind us, someone harrumphs. We twist around. A pink-haired woman in a green apron is standing with her legs spread apart, leaning her back against the building, pliers in one hand, mug in the other—like she just hotwired the place. She looks like a punk Rosie the Riveter. She and Mom could be cousins. “When I lived in Ohio,” she says, “I used to think there was no point in going to a baseball game if you couldn’t order a hot dog or a sausage. But then I moved to San Francisco, where the vegetable is king.”
“We’re from Chicago,” I say. I feel a sideways pull toward this wide and sturdy person from Ohio. Ohio isn’t so far from Illinois.
“It’s cold there. People think they need the extra meat layer. What they really need are thicker sweaters and better vegetables.”
I am offended by this remark. I am offended on behalf of Illinois, brats, and salami.
Mom grunts.
The woman smiles and hums out a high laugh that sounds like it comes from the top of her head.
We turn away but are interrupted a second later by a terrible screeching. The pink-haired lady has pulled a wire from a ten-slot toaster.
“We’re lookin’ for a line cook.” She snaps a part into place, then wipes a bit of grease on her apron. “In case you know anyone in need of a job.” She’s studying Mom, like maybe she wants to challenge her to an arm-wrestle or something. She points to the scars on Mom’s arms. “I can always tell.”
She holds out her hand, wide as a baseball mitt. “Come on. You can wash off my vegetarian germs after.”
* * *
• • •
Her name is Mac Papideux. Her office looks like someone built a janitor closet around a desk. It’s not big enough for two people to stand in. A string dangles from a plain bulb in the ceiling. Mom’s in the doorway with me tucked in behind her, trying to see around. An ocean breeze passes over the empty tables behind us, mixing salt and sun.
“What’s going on?” Cal whispers; he’s abandoned his post again and stands behind me, craning for a view.
“Shhhh,” I say.
Mac sits at her desk, leafing through papers. She finds what she’s looking for and lifts her head. “So,” she says—directing all of her attention to Mom—“you wanna talk for real about this job?”
I pinch the side of Mom’s leg, which earns no response. I think Mom will know how to talk to Mac. I think this could go well.
“You can start by giving me your name,” Mac says, then stands and points at Cal: “You! Back to the mines!”
Mom glances back at me. Neither of us expected this. Maybe we’re lucky after all.
* * *
• • •
I wait outside. I climb onto an old wooden railing near the restaurant; it separates land from sea. I lean out over the foamy water and catch a breeze. I can see a mountain, a bridge, an island, and a bazillion sailboats. A pelican or something lands on a buoy a few feet beyond me, its long beak dipping in and out of the water.
A pelican!
Sailboats!
A city on water!
A restaurant at the edge of the city!
* * *
• • •
I wait thirty minutes, going back the way Mac led us before, through the kitchen. The chefs are hovered over a menu. I hear the words deglaze and julienne, and then someone orders someone else to “prepare the stock.”
I like the sound of this, whatever it means.
I pass through and out to the other side of the dining room, and around to the café entrance. Cal is working. His eyes are on his book, sketching something. He looks up, waves, but there’s something about the way his hand rises—like in slow motion—stops, and then sinks, that gives me a bad feeling.
“Is the interview over?” I ask Mac. I look for Mom behind the office door.
Mac stands, hitting her head on the lightbulb string and swatting it away. “She left ten minutes ago.”
“Oh.” I look at the employee roster taped behind her head and pull at my overalls, which suddenly itch. “Did she get the job?” I meet her eye for just a second, which is all it takes.
“She wouldn’t fill out this work-history form. She got halfway through it and then took off.” Mac holds it up. “We just need to know what she’s been up to, you know, in life.”
* * *
• • •
I find Mom in the van, stretched out on her sleeping bag. I slam the door.
She’s staring at the pots and pans dangling from the ceiling.
I fall cross-legged on the floor and wait to burst. I glance over at my books. I could use one right about now—a Pride and Prejudice or a Harry Potter, where everything magically turns out all right, against the odds.
“I didn’t want to work there anyway,” she says, anticipating my complaint.
“You wouldn’t fill out the forms.”
“That—that was just the last straw. You know how I feel about forms.”
“Mom!”
“Don’t yell.” She pushes herself up by her elbows. Her face looks like it’s going to crack. The top layer hard like marble and the under-layer trembling.
“You’re not even trying! You turn them down before they do anything.”
“I am trying. I’m trying so hard. But . . . they know.” The marble layer slides off. “They know.”
“Know what?”
She shrugs an inch, looks away. “Nothing.”
“Mom.”
She exhales a huff. “That I’m nobody, from no place.” She speaks with her teeth clenched tight. “I doesn’t matter what I do—balance a ball on my nose, complete their forms—because they already know. They can see it, smell it. They’ll never hire me, kid.”
“Who’s ‘they’? What will they see?” She’s scaring me.
“All of it.”
I don’t understand. “Mom. Mom, did someone say something to you?” She’s still got her head down, but she’s shaking it. “Mom.” I lean forward. “You’re definitely somebody, from someplace.”
We should’ve never left that place. We didn’t have a perfect life, but we were hanging in there. Chicago was sturdy, predictable. Nothing to climb except the flight of stairs to our apartment. Chicago had its glamorous side—the lake, jingly sailboats, the Magnificent Mile, skyscrapers. But it was rusty too. We were rusty. It worked. I miss the screech of L trains. I miss the mid-afternoon thunderstorms that washed the gutters clean. I miss Vienna Beef on every corner. I miss the free butterscotch candies at the branch library and the pillow waiting for me under Mrs. Jablonsky’s desk. Oh, Mrs. Jablonsky! She said I was reading at a twelfth-grade level and should probably just skip middle school and the zits that come with it.
I miss knowing how it would go. Every day. Every hour. Back home, I always knew what would happen next. Good or bad.
Mom’s closed her eyes.
I would like to close mine too, but we can’t both do it.
“I want to go home,” I say. I want it to sound final.
She shakes her head. “No.” She raises a hand. The marble face is back on, eyes up. “I just need a minute to feel sorry for myself.” She reaches for and pats the shelf behind me. “Read.”
“Mom.”
“It’s gonna be okay.”
“How can it be okay?” She won’t take the job she knows she can do, she won’t take the job where the chefs ask too many questions or speak French, or where she has to make pastry, or work with more vegetables than meat. She won’t even fill out the forms. That doesn’t leave anything.
“Read.” It’s somewhere between a plea and an order. “The one about the girl in the falling-down house.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Jeanne Ann.” She sounds firm. “I’ll sort this out. I’ll sort myself out. I promise.”
More promises.
I would rather hear what happens to us now—but I find the book on the shelf. I Capture the Castle. It’s the cover with a close-up of the turret, every window backlit and aglow against the creeping night. This is what we read on the road trip here, when I thought some variety of castle might be in our future. I glare at it now.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she says.
I want to agree. I do. But if this is her taking care of things, I’m on my own. This thought presses me down into the floor.
She rests a hand on the book. She bought it for me before we left. She’d seen me borrow it from the library so many times and said she “felt sorry” for all the “chumps” who wanted to check it out but couldn’t because of me. But that’s not the real reason. She bought it because she loves me. It says so in the inside cover. I stare at her handwriting where she signed it. The letters blur.
Let me do the talking next time, I want to say, and, You’re supposed to protect us! and, How could you not know it’d be like this? And so many other things.
Instead, I place my hand inside Mom’s, flipping it palm up, palm down, palm up until she squeezes it still. Then I begin to read.
FEEDING THE METER
ADDRESSEE INCORRECT OR NO LONGER LIVES HERE, RETURN TO SENDER
From: Chicago Public Library, Sulzer Branch
Re. Notice of Overdue Books
Date: June 23
To: Jeanne Ann Fellows, 798 W. Wilson, Chicago, IL 60622
This is a notice to inform you that the following books, checked out on May 8, are overdue:
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Frankenstein
El Deafo
Oliver Twist
Nooks & Crannies
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Golden Compass
The Night Diary
Hatchet
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Lottery
The Phantom Tollbooth
The War That Saved My Life
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
A Long Way from Chicago
One Crazy Summer
The BFG
Howl’s Moving Castle
When You Reach Me
Pippi Longstocking
Swallows and Amazons
The Littl
e Princess
Born Free
Ballet Shoes
The Penderwicks
The Saturdays
Brown Girl Dreaming
101 Dalmatians
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Merci Suárez Changes Gears
Redwall
The Railway Children
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A Little History of the World
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Way Things Work
Finance for Dummies
Your fine is 25 cents a book, per day, or $180.50 total. If the books are not returned within 8 weeks, you will be fined for their entire value. Please call this branch library if you cannot locate the missing items or if you need to renew. Thank you, The Chicago Librarians
JA, I would file this note under “Rather Concerned,” if we still had a card catalog. Our recent late notice to you came back with an “Addressee Incorrect” stamp across the top. That must be an error. Must be . . . But, where are you? Yesterday was our all-day reading of Matilda, and only five kids showed. You never miss the all-day readings. You would have rolled your eyes at this one, though. I did my best impression of Miss Trunchbull, but you’re so much better at it. We were hoping you’d re-create the chokey in the storage closet, like last year. Such a hit. I can empathize with that Trunchbull woman on some days, though . . . Did you know I found gum in 24 books last week? Appalling. We miss you terribly. Nobody reshelves like you.
—Books with hooks, Marilyn Jablonsky
P.S. if you call in, I can give you a two-week extension on The Lottery. You’re likely reading it for the 400th time, and who can blame you.
JUNE 23
Cal
Jeanne Ann, meet me at Greenery, 9:30 a.m., tomorrow. —Cal
I fold the note into a bird and tuck it under her windshield wiper.
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