A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon

by Karen Romano Young

  “Let’s see what we can do about it,” said a more measured, businesslike voice.

  The doors opened, and two men came into the library, one in a button-down shirt, one in a sweatshirt, both in baseball hats.

  Up until then, Pearl hadn’t realized that the library could be yanked out from under them, like a skateboard whipping out from somebody’s clumsy feet.

  After they came, she gave them names in her mind, Mr. Bull and Mr. Dozer, in self-defense: If she couldn’t somehow make fun of them, she might have exploded.

  “May I help you?” Mom materialized behind her desk as the men came up, defending her territory by saying, “There’s a hook here for your hats.” Pearl watched Mom’s code work: The men took their hats off.

  “Just looking,” Mr. Dozer (in the button-down shirt) said dismissively, but Mr. Bull (in the sweatshirt) was smiling with one corner of his mouth, as if he thought taking off your hat inside was a silly rule that wouldn’t be a problem for long. The two men stood off to one side of the desk, gazing at the ceiling and walls like Mom wasn’t there.

  “Square footage is great,” Mr. Bull said.

  “Fourteen units, affordable for families,” said Mr. Dozer. “Little kitchenettes, two bedrooms. Great space!” He twirled the cap on his index finger. “Rewiring, casement windows . . . I can see it.”

  Pearl wanted to shout something disruptive. Mr. Bull dropped his cap right on the circ counter and got busy punching the buttons on his phone and making sketches on a little pad. “Three-quarters of a million. We could market it as housing for professionals with families. Something like that,” he muttered.

  “Be doing the city a big favor.”

  None of the rest of the words Pearl caught—“bidding . . . electrician . . . December 1 if the city goes along”—made much sense. Then it was over. The two men brushed past, calling, “Thank you, folks!” Pearl made a motion with her foot behind the men, as if to kick them out the door. Simon put a death grip on her elbow. Mom swept past and followed the men, and everyone watched through the window.

  When Mom came back in, they swarmed her.

  “Those guys have some nerve. They parked right on the sidewalk,” Francine piped up from behind them. “They blocked the whole driveway. A fancy car, with a lion on the front. And a pickup truck with ‘G.C.’ on it.”

  Mom said, “‘G.C.’ means ‘general contractor.’ They’re developers—people who figure out how to make money from land or buildings.”

  “Can people just decide to build something new where a library already is?” Pearl cried.

  Simon said, “Those two don’t care if this is a library or a log cabin.”

  Mom said, “They want to make it into apartments. Four two-bedrooms, four one-bedrooms, and six studio apartments.”

  Francine and Pearl both screeched, the first thing they’d ever done together. Mom looked worried. She smoothed the front of her skirt. “I’ll tell Bruce,” she said, and headed up the spiral stairs.

  Francine didn’t even have the politeness to leave. It was as if she thought she had the same stake in things as Simon and Pearl. The three of them stood silently, waiting for an explosion from Bruce’s office above.

  When it came, it wasn’t from Bruce’s office, but from the sky. Thunder boomed in loud startling cracks, lightning flashed, and Pearl stared at her own reflection in the glass of the front door and counted off the miles. “One elephant, two elephants, three elephants.”

  Francine said, “You’re supposed to say, ‘One, one thousand,’ not ‘one elephant.’”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Simon said. “It just has to be three syllables, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, Francine,” Pearl said sarcastically. “Are you even supposed to be here? Kids are usually here with parents.”

  Francine said, “My parents are in Brazil. Got a problem with that? And I’m ten—same as you, right?”

  “Do you have permission from your grandmother?” Pearl found herself feeling vicious. “You’re short,” she added.

  “Pearl,” said Simon. “What is your problem? Nothing that’s happening is Francine’s fault.”

  “Fine, I’m leaving,” said Pearl. “I have things to attend to.” She grabbed Ramón’s huge red umbrella from the can by the door and took it out front to look for Alice, who was coming with coffee. Then she realized that copycat Francine might tag along, so she stepped into the alley, out of sight of the library, the rain tumbling around. Immediately she felt jealous that she’d left Francine alone with Simon!

  Pearl couldn’t think what would happen if they built apartments in the library. All of it—her mother losing her job, the rest of the staff splintering apart, her whole world shattering down like dropped dishes—could not be allowed to enter her head, and the effort of keeping it away made her dizzy.

  Pearl sniffed hugely. She stepped carefully along the narrow strip of grass that bordered the building, past the dark basement windows. And then: Up against the window, in a flash of lightning, slapped a tiny scrabbling hand—a paw—with long claws like those prints in the garden.

  The paw inside the window had creases like a person’s palm. It looked like it was pointing—right at a small slip of paper on the ground. By the time Pearl looked back up at the window, the paw had disappeared, replaced by a black nose and two dark eyes. The eyes met hers, then blinked off.

  She bent quickly, grabbed the paper, looked back at the window. The raccoon had disappeared.

  She told herself that she hadn’t really seen what she thought she’d seen. Raccoons did not live in the library basement. They lived in the trees! And even if one did happen to be down there, why would it be pointing out a note to Pearl?

  And yet the note was real. She uncrunched it and read it.

  Ask Mrs. M.

  No, she hadn’t been seeing things. It really did have Sharpie writing on it, and it was another catalog card. Was this note written by the same person who had written the note about the mysterious Arak Lancaster? As soon as she could, she’d compare the two catalog cards side by side. Maybe they had been written by the same hand.

  Or paw.

  Nonsense! Pearl told herself.

  But who was Mrs. M? Mom, Mrs. Moran? She flashed on Mom’s fantastical raccoon stories. Mrs. Mallomar? Oh, stop it.

  Just then, Alice came bounding through the rain in her sneakers, her wet sari plastered around her sticking-out belly, her ponytail flopping down her back, her gigantic black umbrella crooked around her upper arm. It was her day to get snacks for the four o’clock meeting, and she wouldn’t let anyone do it for her, no matter how pregnant she was. A box of doughnuts in a carrier bag was looped over her lower arm; one hand balanced a coffee tray and the other held the paper coffee cups steady. Pearl wondered what Alice would say if she told her a raccoon had just sent her a note, but it looked like Alice was already dealing with enough.

  “Are you supposed to run like that?” Pearl pocketed the card to think about later and took one of the trays from Alice’s hands.

  “Thanks, sweets,” said Alice. She put a hand on her baby bump and said, “She slept through the whole thing.” The staff gathered at the circ counter and Pearl passed out the coffee: light with sugar for Bruce. Milk and sugar for Mom. Cream only for Alice. None for Ramón, who made himself green tea in the staff room. And black for Nichols, out of the kindness of Alice’s heart, since he couldn’t pay.

  A Sidebar About Due Dates

  People worry about due dates for their library books. Due dates are three weeks after the day you take a book out. Three weeks is a worry for some people who are slow readers.

  You can measure your whole life by when something is due: books, or writing assignments, or babies. It’s a leap of faith: The idea that you take out a book or sharpen your pencil or start a baby growing means that by the time its due date rolls around, you’ll be ready, willing, and able. But what are you going to do, not take out a book or write a story or have a baby? What kind of way to live is
that?

  —M.A.M.

  It seemed clear to Pearl that Francine was dying to be part of the library. Right now, for example, she was pretending to read the dictionary. Alice gave Pearl a nudge, so Pearl said to her, “Want half a doughnut?”

  “Thanks,” said Francine, and they both smiled a little, but only a little.

  Mom asked Francine, “Francine, right? Do you have a library card?”

  Francine shook her head.

  Pearl said, “Why not?”

  Francine swallowed. “How much does it cost?”

  “Perfectly free,” said Mom.

  “All you need is an address,” said Pearl.

  “You ought to tell the kids at school that,” said Francine. “Nothing else is free. Nothing.”

  Before Pearl could finish thinking up a reply to that, Bruce cleared his throat and looked around the room. “Friends, thanks for meeting. I need to bring you up to date. Those men you all saw this morning have been making inquiries at the city building office about repurposing this building. And if they can get it approved for affordable housing, they may have a case.”

  The front door let in a roar of rain from the street, and Nichols. He was drenched. His gray-brown hair dripped in wet curls down his forehead.

  Alice said, “Mr. Nichols, was that your black umbrella I saw in the foyer? Someone must have left it here. And you sure look as if you’re missing one.”

  He looked back at the doorway and shook his head.

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Well, take it if you want it,” she said. “People treat this library like it’s the Salvation Army box. Hats, scarves, umbrellas! We’ve got it all.”

  Pearl knew for a fact that Danesh had given Alice that big black umbrella to cover her giant belly. Mr. Nichols refused all gifts, and it wasn’t always easy to get him to take things that might help him. Alice was babbling, trying. Pearl whisked the attention away from Mr. Nichols, awkward in his dripping clothes, and asked Bruce the question that was burning up her heart. “What would happen to the books?” she asked.

  “They’d just get thrown in the dumpster,” Simon interrupted horribly.

  “No they wouldn’t,” protested Ramón. “They’d get trucked to other branches.”

  Nichols asked, “What’s going on?”

  “They want to build apartments—here,” said Bruce, flapping a hand. “I don’t see how.”

  Nichols didn’t seem amazed, or even dismayed. “It’s possible,” he said. “Reinforce the walls, maybe. Drop in a ceiling, frame out the space. You’d fit two one-bedrooms right in the reference room alone.”

  Mom and Bruce exchanged a glance. It was obvious Nichols knew what he was talking about. How?

  “They won’t keep Vincent,” Pearl said, realizing. “They’ll take the rest of the statue away and pave the garden over. There’s no other way to make space for parking.”

  “Hang on,” said Mom. “It’s just a proposal. Just because it could work doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”

  But Bruce shook his head. “It’s going to be easier now that the head was stolen. What’s the point of a statue without a head? What’s the point of a library if it can’t even keep a statue safe? The city would welcome having the library taken off its hands.”

  Pearl’s misery deepened into a sick feeling. Oh help, what embarrassment! Tears came streaming down her cheeks. Simon, sitting on the stair above her, didn’t see. Francine stared curiously, then turned away to be polite. It was Bruce who looked up, jumped off the cart, and put his arms around Pearl.

  Mom watched this and took a breath. “Come on now,” she said. “If we’re going to go down, let’s go down swinging.” She picked up the phone and hit speaker.

  “City desk. Yoiks!” they all heard a thin, reedy man’s voice say.

  “Mrs. Patricia Moran, librarian, Lancaster Avenue branch.” Bruce straightened and confronted Mom with a stare, but he didn’t stop her this time, either. “I wanted to be sure the paper knows what’s going on here today, about the possible sale and development of this historic building.”

  “Historic?” repeated Jonathan Yoiks. “Tell me more. Is it in the National Register of Historic Places?”

  “Well, no,” admitted Mom. “It was turned down because of renovations to the children’s room in the 1960s. But most of the main features of the library are beautiful original elements—you know, the cast-iron balcony in the reading room, the glass floor, the spiral staircase, the mullioned windows. . . . They want to make apartments out of us, but we’re not going to let them do that.”

  Pearl had the sense that Mom was blabbering a little bit.

  There was a slight ruckus in the background at the city desk of the Moon. “Thanks for getting in touch, Ms. Moran,” said Yoiks.

  “It’s Mrs. And may I look for a story tomorrow?” persisted Mom.

  “I’ve got some, uh, breaking news to attend to right now, and a Unique New Yorkers column to file. Tell you what, you check your paper, Ms.—”

  “Mrs.,” said Mom. But he’d already hung up.

  “Who’s this week’s Unique New Yorker?” asked Bruce.

  “Some tightrope walker from France,” said Alice. (That had been one of them.)

  “A Mohawk ironworker,” said Ramón. (Mohawk ironworkers had built the skyscrapers.)

  “An artist who built a cat castle in Brooklyn,” said Mom, rolling her eyes. They had been paying attention to the Unique New Yorkers column while feeling sure they didn’t qualify for uniqueness in Jonathan Yoiks’s eyes. It seemed that you had to be superhuman to be featured.

  “What breaking news is there?” demanded Simon.

  “Murder and mayhem, probably,” said Ramón. “That’s what sells papers.”

  “Maybe the president is in the city,” suggested Alice.

  “Maybe the United Nations is in session,” said Bruce.

  “Or something’s on fire,” said Nichols.

  “Or somebody found a finger in his lunch,” said Simon.

  “Maybe a bank had a robbery?” asked Francine.

  “We’ve had a robbery,” said Pearl. She couldn’t imagine a single thing happening that was more important than what was happening right here.

  8: ON THE STOOP

  SEP 2

  A clacking footstep told Pearl that Francine was nearby, so she sneaked to the end of the nonfiction stacks and peered into the children’s room. Francine was in the picture book section, slowly studying the spines.

  “What’re you looking for?” Pearl asked.

  “See if she’ll tell you,” said Alice. “She won’t tell me. She actually came in and registered for a library card this morning, took the oath and everything.” She lowered her voice so only Pearl could hear. “Pearl, this is what we want people to do. It’s what we need them to do! So what if she’s not a big reader yet. Go easy on her.”

  One thing that was aggravating about this library: how everybody on the staff thought they were Pearl’s parents! “Why should I?” whispered Pearl. “She’s weird and annoying and she thinks she belongs here, and she thinks it’s just all so dramatic and exciting that Vincent’s head got stolen, and—”

  “She does belong here,” said Alice. “Anyone in the neighborhood belongs here. Besides”—she put a hand on Pearl’s head—“imagine having no place else to go. Be kind.” Pearl pulled away, but gently, and went and looked out at Lancaster Avenue. She wanted to be kind to Alice. But Francine? Maybe not. Not yet, anyway.

  A Sidebar About Oaths

  Every time someone gets a new library card, they have to take this oath.

  When I write my name in this book,

  I promise to take good care of the books I use at home and in the library,

  and to obey the rules of the library.

  I promise never to take out more than 50 books at a time.1

  —M.A.M., with reporting by Matilda Mallomar

  Up there above Gully’s store where Francine lived, the windows were dark. But it was cozy ins
ide the library, all the lights lit on this cloudy, still-rainy morning. Anyone would like it here.

  She went closer to Francine. “Do you need help finding a book?” Pearl was very formal, like a host.

  “Nope,” said Francine. “I mean, no thank you.” She made a little bow.

  Such a weirdo.

  “Why not?” asked Pearl, insulted. “Recommendations are created by the staff, with inspiration from the spirit of Edna St. Vincent Millay herself.” She had made that up on the spot to impress Francine.

  “I bet,” Francine said with a short laugh. “No, I’ll know it when I see it. I like picking stuff myself personally. And then I’ll take it out with my own personal brand-new library card and take it home to my own personal house.”

  “You can do that with any book in the whole library,” said Pearl.

  “This one has to be the first one. But I don’t know what it’s called.” She took a deep breath and let Pearl help, looking wary. “It’s got construction equipment in it, a shovel called Mary Ann.”

  “Mike Mulligan,” said Pearl, rolling her eyes.

  “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel,” said Alice, swooping past. She bent over, holding her belly, to scan the B shelf.

  The book wasn’t there.

  “Well, I just read it for story hour this week,” said Alice. “Maybe one of the kids who was there took it out.”

  “That’s where I heard it,” said Francine.

  “I’ll put a hold on it,” said Alice. But when she looked up the book, it hadn’t been taken out. It was just missing. Another theft?

  Francine’s face fell. Alice handed her a different book by the same author—The Little House,2 which also had steam shovels in it, but not one named Mary Ann.

  Francine flipped through; Pearl couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder from time to time. The Little House was beloved, too. How could you not love the little house that stayed the same while big houses took over the meadows beside it, as taller buildings took over the houses, as skyscrapers took over the buildings, and the city came to the country? And then the ending, when the little house gets yanked up and put on a truck and taken away—