A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon

by Karen Romano Young

  He walked to the file cabinet. With his big hands he picked up the heavy stone head and gently lowered it to his desk chair. He cushioned it in some old Moon pages, and said softly, “Think back to summer. Think back to spring. Think back to nobody coming, no circ, to the Knickerbocker library opening, and no new budget, to an inevitable slow death for this library, which your mother loves before everything else in the world, other than you.”

  Pearl scrunched her body small and climbed into the book elevator. Bruce lifted the statue’s old head and set it on her lap. It was a very tight fit in the old elevator.

  “Okay?” said Bruce. He bent his knees and squatted down to look into Pearl’s eyes, grasping her hand. “Pearl—I’m leaving the library.”

  At this point, she was not surprised. She’d known this was coming. It was just the first of the rest of the bad things that were coming.

  “Where?” She held the head in her hands, heavy as her heart.

  “Back to the parks. But not up north—to New York City parks. I’m going to work for City Wildlife. And I have you to thank for that. You and these here Reading Raccoons.”

  “You’re still leaving.”

  “I’m leaving the library. Budget reorganization,” said Bruce. “Somebody on the staff has got to go. I may as well be the weak link, so I wrote myself out. Your mother is the strong one. This library is her passion. She’s the rightful manager.”

  Pearl kicked out rudely, wanting Bruce to let go of her, but he held on tight.

  “Pearl, I’ll be here for her, and for you. I’m not going anywhere, not really.”

  He let the door close. It was pitch-dark in the book elevator. Pearl had never ridden in it at night, when there was no light coming in from the top of the shaft. And she had never ridden it with her arms and legs around the head of her beloved statue, Vincent, a wonderful neighborhood storyteller who was herself responsible for the magic that had led Mrs. Mallomar to begin reading. Weird: Pearl had never touched Vincent’s head before, but her cold, smooth brow felt like something she had always known—like the library around her, and like the city around that, everything divided into fiction and nonfiction, but somehow not divided at all.

  When the elevator door opened on the first floor, Bruce had run down the stairs, and he and Mom were looking in. He reached for the head, and Pearl lifted it into his arms.

  “Oof,” he said. “Tricia, couldn’t you have found some way to save the library that wouldn’t give me a hernia?”

  Mom said, “Next time I’ll make you disappear.”

  Pearl heard something new in their voices. Bruce was leaving the library, but he and Mom were staying together—that’s what he’d told her. Maybe the library would be OK, too. For once in Pearl’s life, she couldn’t think of anything to say. Mom reached into the book elevator and gave Pearl her hand.

  “Now, come here, Pearl, and listen to my confession.”

  Pearl jumped out of the elevator and pulled away. “I don’t want to hear any confession.”

  Bruce carried the head away, to the back door and the wheelbarrow waiting there.

  Mom followed Bruce, turning back to Pearl, insisting, “Come here.” She shifted the newspapers away from the back of Vincent’s head. “Look,” she said.

  Pearl gasped. The back of Vincent’s head was cracked from top to bottom.

  “A tree branch came crashing down,” Mom said. “We’d removed the branch the day before, and it wasn’t until the morning that I saw the crack clearly. So I had Mr. Nichols help me get it down. If it had fallen on someone—kid or raccoon—this head would have done some serious damage.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was going to. Of course. But I knew your heart would be broken. I knew the city would never come up with funds to repair a statue! But before I could tell you, you saw it yourself. And that scream drew people in, and—”

  “And she made me call the paper,” said Bruce. “Once we got the press, people started raising questions about the building. And paying attention to us for the first time, you’ll remember.”

  “You could have told us what was going on!” Pearl bellowed.

  “There was no time to tell you. At first, I just didn’t speak up. But you screamed, and everyone came running, and the drama went down like dominoes—just a little push on the first one, and that one knocked over the next.”

  “It sure did,” said Bruce. “Pearl, I really didn’t know, either.”

  Pearl believed him now. And Mom had gotten quiet as Pearl was getting loud.

  “I just didn’t say anything,” she said in a guilty near-whisper. “I had to see what would happen. And at first it wasn’t a big lie.”

  “Well, eventually it was!” said Pearl.

  “But look what happened because of it.” The glance they exchanged held months of—what? Trouble. Worry, sadness, work. Changes. And now, possibly, triumphs. Almost triumphs.

  They gently rolled the statue in the wheelbarrow toward the pedestal so it could be found there in the morning as if, out of some new resolution made by some criminal, thief, punk, or vermin on Halloween night, the head had been returned as stealthily as it had been removed in the first place.

  “Was I wrong?” asked Mom. “Doesn’t it seem like Vincent was trying to help us? Maybe giving us a story, the way your story says she does? Look how you made the story into something that could give the library new life!”

  What could Pearl say? She examined Vincent’s sad old broken head as it sat in the wheelbarrow, ran her fingers along the crack, along the tendrils of her wavy hair, along her blank stone eyes and her nose and her lips.

  “Poor Vincent,” she said.

  “Look at the new head,” said Bruce. “She’s gorgeous.”

  Pearl had to admit—the stonemason had done a good job of copying the head from the photographs.

  “What are we going to do with the old head?” said Pearl.

  “Memorial Room?” Bruce suggested.

  “We’ll have to see what happens with the district vote,” said Mom. “There may be a need to come up with some kind of alibi.”

  “What’s an alibi?” said Pearl.

  Too bad Ramón was nowhere around. Mom shrugged. “A story.”

  Bruce put his arms around both of them.

  Mom said, “Pearl, will you ever forgive me?”

  Over Bruce’s shoulder Pearl saw Vincent’s head in the wheelbarrow, not stolen and lost.

  “I guess” was all she said.

  Later that night, Pearl descended the basement steps with a battery-lit jack-o’-lantern under her arm for illumination, some moo shu pancakes from the giant platter Simon’s mother had sent in the van, and two books: Guess What?1 and Heckedy Peg2—gifts for the raccoons’ Great Masking celebration at midnight.

  “Psst!” she said as she pushed open the door into the basement.

  Mrs. Mallomar loomed up in the orangey shadows. She pushed her humped back against the elevator door to hold it open and stood eye to eye with Pearl.

  “I brought some books for Arak to use to teach the other neighborhood kits!” Pearl said.

  Mrs. Mallomar shook her head.

  “Nothing junky, not garbage or anything,” Pearl rambled on. “These are some of the best Halloween books. They’ll definitely make Rax Rex, and listen, the Moon is—”

  The old raccoon went on shaking her head. Her eyes were sad, tired. Pearl stopped talking, realizing the basement was empty.

  “They’re gone?”

  Mrs. Mallomar nodded and waved a weary paw at Pearl to indicate that she should go back upstairs.

  “Mary Ann?” Things were awfully quiet around here. “And Arak?”

  Another nod.

  “But where?” Pearl asked again.

  Mrs. Mallomar’s paw waved again, a big circle that seemed to indicate the whole city.

  “Out of town? Like where Eloise is? Or where Matilda went?”

  Mrs. Mallomar sighed, as tired a sigh as Bruce ev
er sighed on his lowest day.

  Pearl felt her confusion and oldness. She knew how it felt to think a family member would act on her own and leave you wondering why, as if what you’d prefer didn’t concern them.

  The old raccoon pushed the door closed. But Pearl stuck her foot in the door and jammed the elevator. She stuck her head out. Mrs. Mallomar paused as she was walking away, and looked back over her shoulder at Pearl.

  “I know you’d rather have Mary Ann, but she’s taught me a lot. I’ll help you,” said Pearl. “I can write things now. And—” She hesitated, appalled at her own daring. Would she? Could she? “I have a really good idea.”

  Maybe Mrs. Mallomar smiled a raccoon smile, even though her teeth didn’t show; Pearl couldn’t be sure, but she felt hopeful. “Okay?” she added.

  Mrs. Mallomar nodded a different, quicker, more accepting kind of nod. She waved Pearl back into the elevator.

  Pearl tucked her feet in, let the door close, felt the elevator lift. She jumped out behind the circ counter. Mom and Bruce were standing there with their arms around each other. Good, but—

  “I’m going to need the costume again, Bruce,” Pearl said. “Somebody’s going to have to stand in for Mary Ann.”

  Mom and Bruce turned and looked at Pearl.

  How could Mary Ann be gone, after all that the Reading Raccoons had accomplished? What good was it that the library was saved if Mary Ann’s family was pulled apart, if neither they nor Nichols had a nest? How could that be a good resolution?

  So much had succeeded, but major things had failed. Pearl thought if she totaled up the damages, the result might be worse than she could stand. She collapsed at the waist, her head in her arms on the circ counter, distraught, her mind everywhere, her heart exhausted.

  A Sidebar About Reproduction

  That?

  Yes, that. Grow up. Oh, wait. You might be as old as me, but you’re not as mature.

  You think I’m kidding?

  Female raccoons can mate and have kits of their own at just one year old.

  Male raccoons take a little longer to grow up (same with humans)—about two years instead of one for the females.

  Raccoon pregnancies last 63–65 days. Like everything else about our lives, we squeeze more growth and development into less time.

  But regardless of species, when a baby decides it’s coming, there’s no holding it back.

  —M.A.M.

  “Oh, Pearl!” said Mom. “Mary Ann knows what she’s doing.”

  “You hope,” Pearl heard Bruce murmur.

  All of a sudden, there was a shout from the back door. It was Danesh.

  “Hey, you guys! The baby is on the way!”

  1 Guess What? by Mem Fox, illustrated by Vivienne Goodman (Australia: Omnibus, 1988/U.S.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990).

  2 Heckedy Peg by Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987).

  48: THE NOON RACCOON

  NOV 3-4 (THREE DAYS TO ELECTION DAY)

  If Mrs. Mallomar knew where Mary Ann and Arak were, she wasn’t saying. Pearl figured she couldn’t know precisely, but she marched on, and she made sure Pearl did, too. She wrote daily statements about the fate of the library, incorporating statistics provided by Pearl about how many new library cards were issued and how many caps had been sold, while warning readers that these numbers—generated by kids, for the most part—might not be enough to sway the vote. Unfortunately, adult humans were the only ones who could vote.

  Pearl thought it was impossible to tell, in the days after the Halloween Howl, how the vote would go down. November 1 felt like the real start of winter, a steel-gray sky making the early darkness feel even darker and unpromising. “Where are Mary Ann and Arak?” she persistently pestered Mrs. Mallomar. But the old raccoon shrugged as dramatically as Tallulah did when Pearl asked her, twice a day or more, if she’d seen Mr. Nichols. “They come, they go,” said Tallulah, maddeningly. Mrs. Mallomar’s grandchildren had never been anywhere but Lancaster Avenue; why did she have such a calm attitude?

  In the end, her silence forced Pearl to shut up, too. If Mrs. Mallomar wasn’t panicking, she must have faith in Mary Ann. That didn’t stop Pearl from lying awake when she was supposed to be asleep, thinking about Mary Ann out there somewhere in the dark, trying—to do what? After school but before homework each day, Pearl climbed the straight stairs and made a serious attempt to select the very best books to recommend.

  On the way to school in the morning, Pearl dropped her latest Rex in the little mail slot at 221/2 Beep Street. When she came home in the evening, edited pages were neatly rolled and tucked into the big mail slot at 8 Beep Street.

  Since the column was something that was going into print, it had to be just so in terms of writing, and Pearl saw that Mrs. M was doing a lot of tweaks and twists to pull her words up to the style of Mary Ann’s. But as far as the books being recommended went, Pearl seemed to be doing fine. Mrs. M went so far as to write her a note about it:

  Vincent would approve.

  “What about Mary Ann?” asked Pearl, never willing to let a chance to ask slip by.

  Mary Ann is working on a plan of her own, wrote Mrs. M. That’s reality. So she doesn’t get an opinion!

  Pearl didn’t need anyone spelling out reality for her anymore. She was well aware of everything that could happen, that could still happen, even after all that she and Mom and Mary Ann had done. She kept things pushed away as much as she could behind her mental wall, but her fear about the Election Day vote squeaked through like cold November wind blowing through the pine trees: Mary Ann was gone. Pearl and Mom would have to go somewhere else, too. Only Gully would be left to tell the story of the library that was once where the new apartments were, and who could guess what kind of story he’d tell? Pearl brought printouts of Rax Rex to school for Ms. Judge to distribute, complete with voting locations and hours, so kids could take them home. The books, and her words, were going to work, but Pearl was on the lookout for something—anything—more.

  It was all well enough for Mary Ann to go off on a mission, well enough for Bruce to continually crunch numbers, well enough for Mrs. Mallomar to quietly use the midnight Moon to shine a light on good books.

  Pearl felt a growing desire to get loud.

  On the sunny Saturday morning after Halloween, Pearl put on Bruce’s raccoon costume, gathered a sheaf of papers hot off the printer under her arm, and headed for Tallulah’s newsstand.

  “I have a message from Mrs. Mallomar about the special edition,” said Tallulah, indicating a sign she’d hung outside.

  SPECIAL EDITION OF

  THE MIDNIGHT MOON

  THE NOON RACCOON

  SPECIAL LIBRARY VOTE EDITION

  ON SALE FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY

  ON BEHALF OF

  MRS. MALLOMAR

  “Have a seat,” said Tallulah. “I’ll do the honors.” Tallulah switched the Saturday morning Moon stack with the stack of Noon Raccoons, and started clipping them up like they were real newspapers.

  A Sidebar About Suspension of Disbelief

  Successful fantasy writing depends on a suspension of disbelief.

  Readers are predisposed to accept reality. So how do you get them to accept unreality?

  By making everything else except the unreality as believable as possible. It can’t all be unicorns and rainbows. The darker, more fragrant, more real the woods are—the more you’d swear you’ve been in those woods before, the stranger the sudden appearance of a unicorn would be, and the more acceptable. The grayer the sky, the wetter the rain, the more clearly angled the sun is, the more acceptable the rainbow will be.

  So here’s the thing: Lancaster Avenue wasn’t some kind of magical place. Gully’s gate was still rusty, still squeaked when he cranked it up or down. Francine was still separated from her parents, and Oleg still got Cs. The library’s spiral stairs were still decrepit. People still screamed about the rats, the jobs, the subway, the city, the kids . . .


  What better place for the midnight Moon?

  What better place for raccoons who could read?

  What better place for a YES vote?

  What better place for a single mom and her child, who couldn’t keep quiet?

  Believe it, or don’t. But it’s more fun if you do.

  —M.A.M

  LIBRARY CLOSING!

  “Tallulah, do you think this is going to work?”

  “We’ll soon find out,” Tallulah said. Pearl could feel the vibrations from underground as a subway train entered the station, and waited for the rush of footsteps coming up the stairs.

  Lucky she was loud, this librarian’s child. Lucky she’d learned something about drama.

  “Special edition!” Pearl called from inside the raccoon suit. “Check out the Noon Raccoon! Bad news in the light of day!” She took a breath and bellowed out the headline. “LIBRARY CLOSING!”

  “What?” a young father said. He turned back, one kid in a frontpack, one held by the hand.

  “Dad, look at that raccoon!”

  “Library closing!” yelled Pearl. She pointed a paw up at the papers dangling from the newsstand’s eave. “Take one.”

  He dropped a crumpled buck on the counter. Monkey see, monkey do: Everybody stopped because everybody else stopped. Everybody took one. And everybody had something to say:

  “Why’s the library closing?”

  Pearl asked, “How would you feel if it did?” And when she saw the dismay in their eyes, she felt her heart lift in hope.

  “Don’t know when the last time I was there, but still—it’s an institution, isn’t it?” someone said.

  “This damn city, going to the dogs!” another said. “Or should I say the raccoons?” (Laughing at Pearl’s costume.)

  “I heard the statue got its head back. Is that true?”

  “I heard they’re tearing the place down. Is that true?”

  “Tearing it down to make affordable housing.”

  “But replacing a library?”