“Isn’t there a new library up near—”
“I hear raccoons around here can actually read. Is that true?”
In between shouting out the headline and using her big paws to point to the papers, Pearl talked back:
“Closing because the city thinks nobody cares!”
“Closing because nobody believes in our neighborhood!”
“Losing our library unless it gets the vote!”
“Raccoons wrote this newspaper!”
To each person who picked up a paper, Tallulah said, “District voting place is the Lancaster Avenue Public School, neighbor!”
And as each neighbor walked away, Pearl yelled, “Don’t forget to vote!”
Jonathan Yoiks arrived, his Reading Raccoon hat on his head. He stood panting before the newsstand, and said, “The head Reading Raccoon, I presume.” Pearl made a little bow. “What are you up to this time?”
“Purposeful publishing to promote the library. We can only stay open if the library gets the votes!”
“Then why does this headline say the library is closing?” said Yoiks.
“To warn the neighbors what might happen if they don’t vote!” said Pearl. “Haven’t you ever heard of reverse psychology?”
“Then you believe they will approve it?”
“I believe they will, but I don’t know they will,” said Pearl. “The neighborhood still has to prove they’re really Reading Raccoons.”
“Uh, you mean—”
“I mean they have to put in their vote. It’s a Reading Raccoon Referendum.”
She explained what would happen if the library won the vote, the way Mom and Bruce had explained it to her: Bruce was going to City Wildlife. Ramón would take partial retirement, working part-time. Alice was going on maternity leave, and Simon would take up the slack—with help from Pearl and Francine—until she returned. “Reduced staff means reduced costs. And Mom would take over as library manager.”
“She’s going to be the fearless leader?” Yoiks said. “That would be so great.” He stared up at the papers. “‘Neighborhood Lady Leads Library’ . . . ‘Reading Raccoon Roots, Library Wings’ . . .”
Pearl added, “‘Reading Raccoons Rise, Become Library’s Leading Light.’”
“That’s long,” said Yoiks, “but it’s great.” Then he leaned closer to Pearl. “I’m going to see your mom right now.” Then he looked at Tallulah, to make sure she was listening, before asking Pearl if she’d seen Christopher Nichols. “I’ve got an idea about security—and construction, too,” he said. “Stay tuned.”
He picked up a Noon Raccoon, then he took a photo of Pearl sitting in the raccoon suit, posing like she was casually making notes as if she was running the newsstand, to make it easy for anyone looking at the photo to suspend disbelief. When he was done, he snapped his fingers.
“What?” said Pearl.
“Done,” said Yoiks.
“Done with what?” asked Pearl. But he was gone before he told her.
49: ELECTION DAY
NOV 7
All day Election Day, when school was closed to host the voting, Pearl stayed at the newsstand in the raccoon costume, handing out the Noon Raccoon from morning ’til evening.
That night, Mom invited Bruce, Ramón, and Simon over to eat big deli sandwiches, drink beer or root beer, and watch the votes come in. And, even though it was a school night, Oleg and Francine were allowed to come, too.
“What’s this poster mean?” asked Oleg, pointing at the In the Night Kitchen poster, at the skyline in it made of bottles and cartons, the fat, mustachioed bakers, the naked little boy falling into the milk.
“It’s about how the city never sleeps,” said Bruce.
“Raccoons are awake all night,” said Francine knowledgeably.
“Some people are, too,” said Ramón. “Trying to get everything set for the daytime. Keeping things safe and making the bread.”
“Or up worrying,” said Mom, shaking her head. The circles under her eyes were so dark, she could have had raccoon blood herself.
“But that’s not why you love this poster, Pearl.” Simon’s deep eyes invited her. “It’s your favorite book.”
“I used to pretend I was in it,” said Pearl.
The buzzer buzzed. Who else could it be?
“It’s Jonathan Yoiks!” came the voice through the intercom. Pearl buzzed him in and opened the door.
Yoiks was traveling light: in a hooded sweatshirt with just a camera around his neck, his beaming face as round as the full moon.
“Did you hear?” he asked. “It just came over the wire.” He held up his cell phone so they could all read the text from his editor:
Hurrah!
Giant cheers, clapping, stomping, and the spilling of root beer.
“Mrs. Library Manager! Speech!” announced Ramón.
“My people,” began Mom, joking, glancing from one face to the next—and then stopped on Pearl’s. Pearl considered the secret Mom had kept to save the library. She didn’t exactly shrug it off, but she knew what she had to do. Now, for a little while longer, Pearl would help her mother build and rebuild. Mom pulled herself together. “We have people to thank, plans to make, problems to solve. What a story!” She started giggling. “Where do I even begin?”
“Begin with Vincent,” said Pearl. “If she wasn’t here, the library wouldn’t be half as beautiful.”
“Begin with her head being stolen,” said Bruce. “If that hadn’t happened, the library wouldn’t have gotten any publicity.” He smiled at Mom.
“Begin with the Rock Lady,” said Oleg. “If Francine hadn’t come up with that, the kids wouldn’t have started coming.”
“Begin with the Reading Raccoons,” said Francine. “That’s what kept them coming.”
“But now listen,” Yoiks said to Mom. “The construction guys mentioned your staff had an unusual idea for what’s next. Have you given it any thought? Have you put it to any discussion?”
“About Mr. Nichols,” Mom said, nodding around the room to include them.
“We approve,” said Bruce.
“It’ll work,” said Ramón.
Pearl’s suspicion rose. She hadn’t been included in any discussion.
“If it works out, you’ll love it, Pearl. There’s just one thing,” said Mom. “Nobody knows where to find him.”
“I do,” said Pearl.
It was as she’d expected. The rubber-banded wad of papers in the shed-shaped box were enough to track down Nichols’s lawyer—who conveyed the city’s offer to Nichols. (If he was going to use his credit card, he was going to have a post office box where he could get his bill.) And now Nichols was going to be a consultant to Mr. Bull and Mr. Dozer.
That’s right. The architect Christopher Nichols, his name now cleared, was back and hired to consult on the library renovation. Instead of new housing, Mr. Bull and Mr. Dozer had put in a bid to restore the old library. With Mom, Ramón, and Mr. Christopher Nichols, they pored over the plans. Francine and Pearl weaseled in around them—Francine, to see how people made things, and Pearl because she thought she owned the place. Mom put a finger on the sketch of the security officer’s office that they were building in the basement, along with office space and conference rooms for tutoring.
“Look,” said Mom, looking into Pearl’s eyes, “a bedroom for our new security guard.”
“Like Mike Mulligan living in the basement of the new town hall,” said Francine.
“That’s me, for a bit,” said Nichols, bowing shyly.
But he hadn’t been too shy to suggest something else for the library basement: a section of lockers where homeless people could keep their belongings safe so they wouldn’t have to carry them everywhere they went—and maybe a public bathroom down there, too, that homeless people would be welcome to use. And the staff agreed—if homeless people were part of their neighborhood, then the neighborhood branch should have services for them, too. In the face of this, Pearl couldn’t bear to ask wher
e Mary Ann and Arak would live if they ever came back.
But what was that noise? Bruce was bellowing Pearl’s name from the garden door. She skidded down the hall and stopped short at the door, squeaking her sneakers. At the foot of Vincent’s statue . . . was a middle-sized raccoon.
Pearl ran into the garden. “You got bigger,” she said, grinning.
Mary Ann put up a paw in greeting and smiled back.
Pearl pulled out a catalog card from the stack she always kept in her pocket now, because she never knew when an idea for a story might hit her. The raccoon grabbed the card.
Couldn’t stay away. Too much to write.
“I get it,” said Pearl. “You can take a raccoon out of the neighborhood, but you can’t take the neighborhood out of the raccoon?”
Mary Ann shook her head.
We need writers in the city and the country. I’m the new editor in chief. Grandmar will be reporting from the field. She’s ready for a change of pace.
At first, Pearl just laughed a little huh. “Literally from the field,” she said. It made her remember. “Did you find Eloise?”
Mary Ann nodded, and cocked her head, asking Pearl a question with her eyes. Pearl didn’t ask how, but she could tell: Mary Ann had somehow gotten the truth out of her cousin about who had stolen Vincent’s head. Pearl looked at her feet, at her hands, over her shoulder—anywhere but at Mary Ann. Then she felt her friend’s paw on her toe.
Your Mom is the future of the library.
As for you?
Mary Ann did her raccoon smile, showing her little teeth.
Pearl understood: Who knew what she’d do? Maybe she’d be a librarian herself, or maybe she’d write, or maybe she’d be a professional master of ceremonies with a show of her own.
“You won’t tell anyone who stole the head?” she asked the acting editor in chief. What a scoop that would be! But the raccoon was her friend first, reporter second, and Mary Ann shook her head.
“Thanks,” whispered Pearl. “I’m glad you’re back.” And then she thought about what it meant, that Mary Ann would be here alone. “I’ll be the best coauthor I can be,” she said, thinking of Mary Ann having so much work to do, running the midnight Moon by herself. “And friend.”
Just then, a kit peeked his head out from behind Vincent’s feet, smiling with all his teeth showing.
A Sidebar About Friendship
It takes plenty of worms to make a good bin of compost, that’s what Grandmar says. That’s her way of saying don’t expect all your friends to be just like you in every way. Just hope they are in the ways that matter.
—M.A.M.
“Hey! Look who showed up!” said Pearl.
The little raccoon grabbed the pen. He wrote:
Arak
I rit.
“Nice job!” said Pearl.
But where were the raccoons going to live? She ran to her nook and huddled there, considering. She barely looked up when Nichols settled beside her.
“Pearl,” he said. “I’m the one that showed you those reading raccoons in the first place. Did you really think I wouldn’t consider them in the plan?”
“But Mr. Bull and Mr. Dozer and the city and—”
“What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” said Nichols. “They wouldn’t believe it anyway, if I told them there was raccoon space built into this plan. And naturally the renovated basement wouldn’t be up to code without a storage closet or two.”
“Mary Ann has to live in a closet?” Pearl said, but she felt hopeful.
“A closet with a back a foot or two short of the wall behind it, with, say, a small door so the plumber can access the heat pipes. See what I mean?”
She saw. She smiled.
The very next day, Ramón splayed an open copy of the morning Moon across Pearl’s lap. There Pearl was, photographed at last, although she was pretty well hidden by the raccoon costume, not to mention upstaged by Mary Ann, standing on the newsstand ledge at her shoulder.
UNIQUE NEW YORKERS: MARY ANN MALLOMAR AND PEARL MORAN
In “the city that never sleeps,” one reason New Yorkers are so uniquely nocturnal is doubtless the midnight Moon. Not the one in the sky—the one on the newsstand. In a city that’s a symphony of language and literature, it’s little surprise that the brains behind this deep, dark edition is a raccoon with a command of both.
Among the midnight Moon’s recent headlines, courtesy of reporter Mary Ann Mallomar, were tales of a cooperative cleanup after a Halloween party, as local rodents pitched in to squirrel away leftover pumpkin rind; newcomer park ranger Bruce Chambers led a Central Park animal census, revealing 212 species; and a string report covered a reunion involving a raccoon relocated weeks ago by Havahart trap.
Go looking for Mary Ann Mallomar, and chances are slim that you’ll find her. What you will find is her spokesperson, Pearl Moran. Pearl is the daughter of the librarian in charge of the Lancaster Avenue branch library, recently threatened by the swing of the wrecking ball. The Unique New Yorkers reporter caught up with Pearl, dressed in the striped furs of the Moon editor herself, as she notified the neighborhood “Reading Raccoons”—a brand-new city symbol to rival Lady Liberty, or at least Mr. Met—of the need to vote for the library’s new budget. The fastest-growing crowd south of Times Square, Lancaster Avenue’s Reading Raccoons rally around a good story—such as the recent weird overnight reappearance of the stolen head of a beloved statue.
Perhaps, our reporter asked Pearl, Mary Ann Mallomar could shed light on this mystery? Pearl said with a shrug, “The head is back where it belongs—that’s the main thing. As the old saying goes, ‘There is history. There is mystery! It’s a local public library.’”1 In other words: a treasure. You heard it here first—straight from the librarian’s child herself.
“So it is,” Pearl told Francine, finishing her story, “that Mr. Christopher Nichols comes to live in the library—after living with Mr. Gary Gulliver during construction.”
“Gully had to let him,” said Francine. “He’s on the library’s side, after all those baseball cap sales.” Sales of the raccoon-mask baseball caps had gone through the roof since Yoiks’s story in all the Moon editions about the Reading Raccoons. It seemed that Lancaster Avenue had somehow gotten popular.
“This neighborhood was always exceptional,” said Mom. Now everyone wanted a hat to show they were part of it.
“In the spring,” Pearl continued, “Mr. Nichols will become the man of all work—security guard, building inspector, furnace man, and the consultant for other improvements. . . .”
Francine interrupted: “Who lives along with editor, reader, and raccoon Mary Ann!”
Pearl finished: “In the basement of the new library!”
“What a ridiculous story,” said Francine.
Mary Ann, at their side, scrawled a hasty note.
Do tell.
1 These lines are from a jingle advertising the New York Public Library that played on TV in the sixties.
50: THE CHILDREN’S LIBRARIAN’S CHILD
DEC 1
Flash forward to December 1, or, as Pearl had come to call it, Demolition Day. Nichols had told Pearl that everybody would understand if she stayed away. “But I can’t,” said Pearl. “I’ll at least stay in the garden with Vincent. Otherwise, what will she think?”
But she was inside. Why? Because Alice and Danesh were bringing their baby, Rose, to the library for the very first time.
“Rose has to see the cast-iron and glass reading room,” Alice said, “even if she doesn’t remember it later.” The new parents didn’t plan to stay once the demolition began, what with all the noise and dust that would cause. So they came early, passing through the double doors, the baby in a little carrier on Alice’s front, her eyelids heavy.
“Don’t fall asleep yet, little girl!” said Danesh. “Come and see what there is to see!”
They skirted around the cracked spiral staircase, padded softly up the straight stairs to the doorway of the rea
ding room, and peeked under the caution tape.
Baby Rose gazed up at the window light filtering through the cloudy glass floor.
Pearl put her finger on a rainbow refraction on the wall. “Look, Rose!” she said.
“Take her and show her,” said Alice.
Pearl reached for the baby and held her against her own front the way Alice did. She tried to imagine herself as a soft-bodied little cuddle-muffin, being carried around this building in someone’s arms, and surprised herself by remembering one or two things that definitely felt like nonfiction.
Pearl carried Rose to the wall with the rainbow and held her up closer, to see the shimmer of color. Then she walked the length of the stacks. “See?” she told the bright-eyed little baby. “Remember this. You’ve got to. You’re going to be the next librarian’s child.”
After the little family left, there was only a short wait before the trucks arrived. The first thing they did when they came was put up scaffolding around Vincent, and protected her with one of those green net coverings you see on buildings under construction. Workers screened off the reading room from the main room of the library, and children’s and nonfiction from the cast-iron mezzanine.
And at long last, the actual demolition began: the creak of crowbars, then the whirr of power screwdrivers and wrenches, and finally the thud of sledgehammers.
A Sidebar About Stories
A good story will always rise up and get noticed. And good stories come from the strangest places. Not that there’s anything really strange—or even unique—about Lancaster Avenue. Oh, no—the places I’m talking about are the ones inside people.
(Or raccoons.)
—M.A.M.
Pearl was huddled in the open doorway to the book elevator when Francine arrived. Though she knew she was getting too big to travel that way, she sat there with her legs hanging out.
“Come on, Pearl,” Francine said. “Come and take a peek.”
A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon Page 30
