The Most Perfect Thing in the Universe

by Tricia Springstubb

  When one thing in your life goes wrong, especially if that thing is not a thing at all but your mother, it’s suddenly easy to imagine other bad things happening. Even if you are a person who mostly stays home and avoids bad things as much as possible. Maybe especially if you are.

  A shadow darkened the sunlit road. Loah looked up to see what had caused it, but nothing was there. It was as if the sky had a slit, and whatever had cast the shadow had slipped through.

  A car approached. The wrong car. It was the same car she’d seen parked in front of the house a few days ago. It slowed, then stopped. Out climbed a man carrying a clipboard and wearing a red baseball cap. He touched its brim and nodded at her.

  “Is this your house? Is your mother home?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Loah knew better than to admit she was alone, and yet, alone as she felt at that moment, the words spoke themselves.

  “Not yet.”

  The man handed her a card: Wayne J. Kipper, City Housing Inspector.

  “Wayne J. Kipper, City Housing Inspector,” he said, as if she couldn’t read. His chin wore either a terrible beard or a smear of butterscotch pudding. He gave a tight, all-purpose smile. “If she’s not here, who’s watching you?”

  “I’m eleven and a half.”

  “I see. Mind if I have a quick look at the property?” Without waiting for a reply, he strolled up the gravel driveway. The birds, who’d been doing their usual chittering and chattering, grew quiet. A blue jay perched on the rim of a birdbath and fixed Inspector Kipper with its beady eye. He pushed back his red cap to peer up at the turret.

  “Hmm.” He made a note on his clipboard. “Hmm.”

  They were unfriendly hmms. The jay squawked and looked at Loah as if asking her to do something. But the inspector was an official adult. Loah had defended her house against the Scooter Girls, but this was different. She took a deep breath.

  “You are on my private property,” she said. “Could you please explain your business. Please.”

  Inspector Kipper pointed. “That tower’s angle of inclination is critical,” he said.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s a turret.”

  He was, she could tell, the kind of adult who filed anyone younger than sixteen in the same generic category: kid. But now he looked at her more closely.

  “My niece has lazy eye, too. She wears a patch. You ever try a patch?”

  “I’m sorry to correct you again, Inspector, but it’s not called lazy eye. It’s called amblyopia.”

  “Is that so?” He drew back, frowning. “Will Dr. Londonberry be back soon?”

  “It’s derry.” All right—now she was losing her patience. “And not soon.”

  “Then I’ll just have to go ahead with the on-site inspection.” He pulled a phone from his pocket. “I’ll be taking some snaps.”

  He strolled around, aiming his phone at the turret, the roof, the back steps, even the trees. He covered his clipboard with checkmarks. Something told Loah they were bad, not good, checkmarks. He wore a utility belt with an assortment of things attached: a flashlight, clippers, a canister of something. He stubbed his toe on the fallen roof slate and muttered darkly.

  The birds were watching. They were always watching, of course, because birds are forever on the lookout for danger. They are experts at stealthy spying. A person with an untrained eye could be surrounded by dozens of birds and never guess. It’s not as if birds, under normal circumstances, want anything to do with humans.

  At last the inspector took off his cap and fanned his face

  “Prior code inspections have been done from the street,” he told Loah. “As is legal. Thank you for permission to do this on-site.” The cap had left a dent all around his hair. In the middle, a bald spot shone like a large pink egg in a butterscotch-colored nest.

  “Prior?” she said.

  “This job,” he said. “It’s not easy. On a day-to-day basis, we get attacked by wasps and hornets. Chased by dogs. Bitten by vermin. Don’t even get me started on homeowners who threaten us with bodily harm. One of my colleagues actually got chased off the premises with a load of buckshot.” He pooched his lips. “In point of fact, being a housing inspector is a thankless job.” He slowly shook his head. “But someone’s got to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  The birds began to show themselves. They hopped sideways on branches and peeked out from under shrubs, twisting their heads, flicking their tails. You probably already know that groups of birds have special names. There are gaggles of geese, murmurations of starlings, wisdoms of owls, exaltations of larks. In the oak where Loah’s swing hung, an American crow sounded its warning caw. A group of crows is a murder.

  “Do what?” Loah repeated.

  The inspector turned his melancholy gaze on her. “How old did you say you are?”

  “Eleven and a half.”

  “And you’re here by yourself?”

  Loah could have explained about the Rinkers, but they weren’t any of this nosy man’s business. She drew another breath. “Not at the moment,” she said.

  “There’s been no progress on the violations.” He tapped his clipboard. “When did you say your mother’s coming home?”

  The jay screeched. The inspector frowned and settled his cap low on his brow.

  “I didn’t say,” Loah replied. “But she will! Come home.”

  His look was dubious. “When was the last time she had someone look at these trees?”

  “I look at them every day.”

  “An expert, I mean. In point of fact, tree roots can totally mess up a sewer system, not to mention compromise a foundation. Especially an old one like this. In addition, all this shade is causing moss and fungal growth on the roof, which can lead to further deterioration. And see that branch right there? It weighs half a ton, easy. If that thing fell, it’d take out your tower.”

  “Turret,” she whispered.

  It was one thing to notice for yourself that your house could use tender loving care here and there. And there, too. It was a completely different thing for an inspector with a clipboard and a car emblazoned with an official seal to point this out in an unfriendly, slightly menacing way.

  The birds flickered and fluttered, darting about. The crow gave a cry like a rusty hinge swinging in the wind. The inspector nervously fingered the canister hanging from his belt. What was in there? Loah drew yet another deep breath. Maybe the inspector didn’t understand.

  “My mother says trees are the best weapon against climate change,” she said. “They pull carbon from the air and store it. Humans are still trying to develop the technology to lock up carbon, but trees have been doing it for three hundred and fifty million years. In addition, trees capture particulate pollution.” For someone who disliked talking, especially to strangers, this was an exhausting speech, but she managed to add, “Also, they are beautiful and noble.”

  “I thought your mother was a doctor. How does she know so much about trees?”

  “She’s an ornithologist.”

  “Hmm.” He took off his cap again and scratched his sweaty bald spot. “Is that so.”

  A confusion of warblers, a quarrel of sparrows. You didn’t need to be an ornithologist to understand the birds were sounding an alarm. Loah’s mother said that even a bird the size of an olive would defend its territory.

  “I suppose your mother likes birds, too,” he said.

  “Likes?” Loah blinked. “Birds are her life.”

  “Really?” He snickered. “Birds?”

  The jay jetted down and grazed the top of his head. Blue jays are large for songbirds, and they can fly at up to twenty-five miles per hour. Their bills can crack acorns with absolutely no problem. In other words, you don’t want a jay for your enemy.

  Alarmed, the inspector waved his cap in the air. As if it were a matador’s red cape and they were the bulls, more jays and a hairy woodpecker joined the attack, zeroing in on his bald spot. The inspector flailed. The birds shrieked. Th
e cap flew.

  “What the—”

  He fumbled for the canister on his belt and managed to unhook it, but as he took aim, Loah lunged forward and knocked it away.

  He stared in disbelief. “You shouldn’t have done that, young lady!”

  “Don’t you dare hurt the birds!”

  “Tell Dr. Londonberry she needs to contact my office immediately. She’s ignored our notices long enough. Irresponsibility has consequences!” He charged down the driveway.

  “Derry!” Loah ran after him with his cap. He grabbed it, then dived into his car and slammed the door. He rolled his window down.

  “And tell her she better teach her daughter how to behave! Obstructing city business is punishable by law.”

  He jammed the cap back onto his head but not before Loah saw, with a small thrill, the beak-sized puncture in the middle of his bald spot.

  “Till we meet again!” he said, and the car sped away.

  Dizzy! The yard was dizzy with bright eyes and feathered breasts puffed with triumph. (In addition to lungs, birds have numerous air sacs.) Loah picked the canister up from the ground. THE TERMINATOR, said the label.

  “We showed him,” Loah told a tufted titmouse. It bobbed its tuft in agreement.

  She hurled The Terminator into a trash can and collapsed onto a lawn chair, a little dizzy herself. As she tried to assess the situation, the thrill she’d felt soon gave way to fear and worry. Inspector Kipper disapproved of her mother, her house, her trees, and her birds.

  Not to mention her.

  Punishable by law was not a phrase that had ever been applied to Loah before, as you can probably guess.

  What notices was he talking about? What consequences?

  As Loah’s head whirled, yet another question she couldn’t answer presented itself. The family car hairpinned into the drive and came to an abrupt, juddering stop. Gripping the steering wheel, head barely visible above the dashboard, was Miss Rinker.

  Where was Theo?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Slumped in the back seat, it turned out.

  “He went down,” Miss Rinker said. “In the Bargain Blaster checkout line. He knocked over a big display of beach balls.”

  When Loah opened the car’s back door, Theo gave her a feeble smile.

  “They bounced everywhere,” he whispered. “I wish you could have seen it.”

  Loah tried to help him out, but his legs didn’t want to move. At last she crouched, took his right shoe between her hands, and gently lowered it to the ground. He managed the left one on his own, then clutched her arm and hoisted himself up. The back of his head had a painful-looking bump.

  “The Bargain Blasters called 911.” Miss Rinker wore her going-to-town outfit: a sweater Loah had knitted (Miss Rinker had chosen the wool, which was so prickly it was like knitting a cactus) and a straw hat with a snow goose feather (a gift from Dr. Londonderry). Her hair had come loose from its bun and straggled over her shoulders like gray tentacles. “I told them he’d be fine, but they insisted. By the time the ambulance came, he was sitting up and making sense again. See? I said. Much ado about nothing.”

  Miss Rinker, as you know, took a dim view of doctors. That time she was chopping vegetables and mistook her thumb for a baby carrot? That time her hammertoe hurt so bad she couldn’t wear a shoe for a week? Even that time she tumbled off the stepladder and for an excruciating few minutes believed she was on a hard cot in the chilly, cabbagey orphanage? She refused to see a doctor. It was no surprise she hadn’t wanted Theo to go to the hospital, and yet, as he leaned heavily against her, Loah worried that Miss Rinker had made the wrong decision.

  Watching grown-ups make wrong decisions you are helpless to stop—this is one of the worst parts of being a child.

  “We had to get home,” Theo whispered. “To bring you your present.”

  “Present?” The Rinkers only gave presents at Christmas and birthdays, and then they were always socks or pajamas. Loah’s worry deepened. “What present?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They made their halting way up the back steps (careful on the bottom one, which was rotting) and into the house. Loah guided Theo into his E-Z Boy while Miss Rinker wrapped ice cubes in a dish towel. Loah gently pressed them to the bump on his head as Miss Rinker made him drink some water.

  “The present,” Theo said in a raspy voice totally unlike his real, gentle one. “We need to give Loah her present.”

  Miss Rinker retrieved the Bargain Blaster bags from the car. She set them on the table and began pulling things out. Tins of sardines and jars of pickled vegetables. Paper napkins printed with storks carrying babies in pink and blue blankets. A stack of flat, unidentifiable squares so blindingly yellow they appeared radioactive.

  Theo’s eyes drifted closed. His skin was gray as an old athletic sock. What if he had a concussion? Weren’t you supposed to keep the person awake? Weren’t you supposed to ask him to name the current president of the United States?

  “Are you sure he’s all right?” Loah whispered to Miss Rinker.

  “He lost his balance. He’s very old, you know.” He was younger than Miss Rinker, but arguing with her was as pointless as arguing with the sidewalk. “Theo.” She touched his arm. “I’m about to give Loah her present.”

  It took him a moment to focus, but then he smiled at Loah. “We know you miss your mother. We want to cheer you up.”

  “And,” said his sister, “give you something to think about beside yourself.”

  Miss Rinker opened the last bag. There couldn’t possibly be a kitten in there, could there? (If this was One and Only Family, there would be. With a pink bow around its neck.)

  Miss Rinker paused dramatically, then reached inside and pulled out a clear plastic bag containing… a goldfish. Which did not move, but hung in the water as if suspended from an invisible thread.

  “Oh,” said Loah. “Is it… is it alive?”

  “It better be!” cried Miss Rinker. She tapped the bag and the fish flinched.

  They’d also bought a Your First Fish Starter Set, complete with a bowl, sand, colored pebbles, a plant, fish food, and a small net. The instructions said to wash the bowl and pebbles, put the sand on the bottom, fill the bowl with water, add the special water conditioner, and then wait. Fish, the booklet said, were sensitive creatures. Changes of environment stressed them out. Loah felt a rush of sympathy. She followed the instructions carefully, ending by setting the plant at what she hoped was a comforting angle. She lowered the bag into the bowl and, once the temperature in the bowl and bag were the same, she released the fish into its new home. It did a single, cautious lap, then sank to the bottom of the bowl.

  “He’s shy,” said Theo. “Like you.”

  “He’s overcome,” said Miss Rinker. “He can’t believe his luck.”

  They beamed at Loah. Well, Miss Rinker, of course, didn’t beam, but she did look pleased, which was rare enough. A lump formed in Loah’s throat. The Rinkers were trying to make her happy. They knew she was upset about her mother, and they wanted to help. This was kind and good of them, but they’d gone about it in a totally wrong way. You can’t pet a fish. You can’t even touch it. The last thing a fish is going to do is curl up in bed with you like a kitten. Plus, this poor fish looked as if its days were numbered.

  Loah swallowed around the lump. The Rinkers watched her eagerly. Disappointed as she was, she couldn’t disappoint them. She bent over the bowl, where her fish wallowed in bewilderment.

  “Hello,” she said in what she hoped was a cheery voice. “Welcome to your new home! I hope you’ll be happy here.”

  Maybe fish experts (otherwise known as ichthyologists) can tell if a fish is happy or sad, but Loah couldn’t. She turned to Miss Rinker and Theo.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

  That night, while Theo napped in his lounger, Loah and Miss Rinker had barley soup and sardine sandwiches (which Loah hoped the goldfish didn’t notice). Afterward Miss Rinke
r settled into her E-Z Boy and turned on the TV, which was approximately the size of a cereal box. She dialed the volume way up (hearing aids? Miss Rinker would not hear of them) and tuned in to a detective show. Before a single victim could be murdered or kidnapped, she was sound asleep, too, head back and mouth open like a baby bird.

  Only now, when things were quiet, did Loah remember the housing inspector. What with Theo being hurt and the new fish, she’d temporarily forgotten all about Wayne J. Kipper. It was definitely too late to tell Miss Rinker now. Look how exhausted she was. This long, trying day had done her and Theo in. They didn’t need anything more to worry about.

  Loah tucked their Bargain Blaster blankets over them. Miss Rinker’s had footballs and pennants. GO TEAM! it urged. Theo’s had a herd of wild ponies galloping across a plain.

  As she slowly climbed the steps to her room, she studied the carpet’s roses, trying to see cheery, pink faces.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  If you’ve ever gone to a sleepover (Loah had not, of course), you know how much fun it is to stay up all night. The only downside is the next morning. You’re zonked. The smallest thing makes you weepy or giggly. Or both at once. You feel as if you’re poked full of holes. You’re a colander and the world is pouring through you.

  Thus Loah this morning. She’d taken forever to fall asleep, and when she did, she’d had bad dreams: Her fish inflated like an orange water balloon and popped. A slate slid from the roof just as Theo walked by and he crumpled into a heap (it was possible his head was chopped off, but even in a dream, Loah didn’t have the courage to look). Just before she woke, she dreamed of a giant squirrel wearing a red cap and muttering, There will be consequences.