Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2)

by Charlotte Roth

“IYAM?” Mom and I had both said at the same time.

  “If you ask me,” she had said, all proud.

  “I do,” I said, looking down at her perfectly straight handwriting. BBF meant forever, but why, then, hadn’t she told us she was dying? Why hadn’t she told me that forever would only last a summer? “I remember,” I added with a voice drowning in tears. I looked up and found Cruella still openly staring at me. I so did not want to cry in front of the “wicked one.” Miss T would have hated that.

  “Go on,” Mom whispered, “open the box, honey.” She bent down and grabbed a little package of Kleenex from her purse. Once again, she had come prepared.

  “Thanks,” I whispered and grabbed a tissue.

  “Go on,” she said, looking at me and Dad.

  “Uh-huh,” I think I said, still trying to will away the tears. Carefully, I removed the ribbon and opened the Christmas decorated lid. When I realized what it was, I was sure I was going to faint from crying: My old Winnie the Pooh PJs, the ones Miss T had worn that rainy night with a hair of meatballs, had miraculously been altered into tiny little baby pajamas with little baby feet and everything. On the front it said, “JENSEN JUNIOR” in little capital letters made with gold stitches. I looked at Mom and grabbed onto her arm. This time I was sure that I was actually drowning—drowning in a conference room with images of Abraham Lincoln looking down at me from every angle. When I looked at Mom for help, she just smiled and wiped a few tears off my cheek.

  Mom grabbed my other hand and squeezed it tight. “Take a deep breath, baby,” she whispered.

  When I finally calmed down, she smiled and ran her fingers over the little baby pajamas. “Oh, baby,” she whispered, “I can’t believe she made this for you.” She turned and looked at Dad. A tear was making it all the way down her neck.

  Dad leaned over and kissed her. Then he looked at me and smiled. “Remember when I gave you that?”

  How could I not? I had wanted those pajamas for as long as I could remember. All the other girls had either Winnie, Elmo, or Barbie PJs, so when we had PJ day in school, I was the only girl dressed in boring, old-fashioned, one hundred percent cotton PJs. “It’s all so commercialized,” Mom had said when I begged her for it again. “These days it’s all about getting parents to spend more and more money on commodities and things kids don’t even need, just so they can sell more.”

  Dad had agreed, probably looking up from some scientific magazine about the habitats of some endangered kind of Amazon frog. No matter how hard I tried, Mom and Dad had no intention of caving in to their daughter’s wishes, so clearly fueled by the advertising industry. I was furious with them. I didn’t speak to them for a whole week, only breaking the silence once to announce that I had decided to move in with Grandma, where I was certain Winnie the Pooh PJs were not such a terrible and capitalist thing to wear. Of course, it never happened.

  On day seven of my silent week, my neighbor, Maria, invited all the girls from the class to a slumber party at her house the following weekend, and I spent the next three days crying my eyes out in my room for not having Pooh PJs to wear and simply refusing to go. I guess that was it for Dad. He left all their principles about capitalism and consumerism at home and went to the mall and got me Winnie the Pooh PJs two sizes too big, which was the only size left. I didn’t care, though; I was as happy and felt like the luckiest girl in the entire world as I walked down the street in my new and shiny (and three inches too long) polyester Pooh PJs, waving goodbye to Mom and Dad. I never really figured out whether Mom had been in on it, too, but I guess she would have. Somehow Mom and Dad always agreed.

  “How you loved those pajamas.” Dad leaned over and kissed me on my head.

  I nodded. “And how I loved you for it,” I whispered. I smiled and held up the little PJs. There was an index card stapled to it in the back. I turned it around and grabbed the card: “Baby boy. Size six months,” it said.

  For a moment, my blood turned to ice. She couldn’t possibly have known! She couldn’t have, but then again, she had known that I was pregnant even when I had had absolutely no clue whatsoever, not even the slightest suspicion. Maybe her sixth sense had an opinion on the gender of babies as well? Maybe when she had looked me in the eyes that day—with Mount Rainier looking down on us—she had somehow sensed it, somehow known what I had just found out myself a few days earlier?

  Mom and I had scheduled an ultrasound the same day, just two hours apart. So, we had made it a grand family expedition. Mom was up first. As her husband and the father to be, Dad sat in a chair next to her, holding her hand, and I was standing next to him against the wall. In hindsight, I’m happy she was first, because I was so not prepared to actually experience an ultrasound first hand. I mean, I’ve watched at least a thousand episodes of ER and Baby Stories on TLC, so I kinda thought I came prepared. But I also came pregnant and emotionally loaded, and then to actually see your mom’s little tiny baby waving at you—and knowing that you’re up next with a shot of your own little movie star—it was apparently a lot more than I could take.

  “El?” Mom’s face appeared from somewhere above me. I could still hear a lot of heartbeats. I figured the one going Formula One had to be one of mine.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Are you okay down there?”

  Down where? And that’s when I realized that I was down on the floor on my hands and knees. Next thing I knew I woke up lying next to Mom in the ultrasound room, with Mom’s doctor hovering over me.

  “You okay?” the doctor said with her strong accent, looking at me through a set of heavy glasses.

  I think I nodded.

  “First time, huh?” she said, nodding her head, making her glasses slide all the way down to the tip of her nose.

  Once again, I think I nodded.

  “Well, I guess yours is going to be the second time then. And it’s always so much easier the second time around, especially on the lightheaded people.” She smiled and pushed back her glasses. “You’ll be just fine, Bella,” she said, this time smiling at Mom.

  Even though Mom’s doctor, Francesca Franzini, looked like an angry old Italian woman, she was so much nicer than mine, and she had personally called me up and apologized that she couldn’t take me on as her patient (Mom had gone out of her way trying to convince all the nice people at Maternal Fetal Medicine that they should take me on as a patient with her because of the convenience of having us both with the same doctor. They had turned us—or, that is, me—down flat. Doctor Franzini only takes on high-risk pregnancy patients, and with Mom being over forty and with a history of a thousand miscarriages, she had qualified right away. Mine was just another pregnancy, and I had been referred to the obstetricians on the first floor).

  “Thanks,” I had said, looking up at Doctor Franzini’s heavy glasses. “I sure hope you’re right.”

  She wasn’t. Even though my “second” ultrasound was a lot less dramatic, as in no stars dancing on the ceiling, no fainting on the floor, no waking up next to another pregnant woman with a pair of eyes staring at me through a pair of armored glasses, I still wasn’t prepared for that overwhelming feeling of joy when I turned my head and saw my own little heart of light on the monitor. I didn’t faint this time, but still I had to hold on to Mom’s hand to make sure I was still awake. And then when my own less-smiling and less-specialized doctor came in and told me, I had to hold on to Dad’s hand too.

  “It’s a very healthy baby boy,” she had said, almost smiling.

  I had looked up at the little beaming dot on the screen. “And that’s pretty accurate, right?”

  She had nodded. “An amniocentesis tells it as it is. You are having a perfectly healthy baby boy,” she had said like it was some kind of commercial for newborn babies.

  Just a few days earlier my doctor had convinced me to have amniocenteses because of our family history of neural tube defects. I never really understood exactly what that was, only that it could be life threating to the baby, and that it was something
they recommended I got tested for.

  “A boy! Oh boy!” Dad had cried, looking at me with tears in his eyes. “We get one of each,” he had said, looking at Mom sitting right next to him.

  “A boy. A fine and healthy little baby boy,” Mom had cried, throwing herself on top of me with Dad on top of her. I didn’t care; as usual, I had trouble breathing and everything was a blur. I was having a boy—a healthy, little square-faced boy—and for a second or two I couldn’t help thinking how Martha must have felt that momentous night, when she had carried Thomas all the way to her car, never looking back. At that moment, she had already known she was carrying her little boy home, to keep. He was a keeper, too.

  Back in the moment, in the room with the lawyer, I looked at the little pajamas and ran a finger over the golden stitches. Had Miss T really known all along? I picked it up and sniffed it. It still had that sweet smell of powder and lipstick—the scent of Miss T. I breathed it in a second time and lingered for a moment. I couldn’t believe she would miss out on the next most important months in my life. I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t be able to share every single moment with her. I could still see her—with her tiny sensible shoes and perfect coat of red lipstick—running out of the store with the pregnancy kit hidden under her scarf. It put a smile on my sad face.

  “I know. I know.” I felt Mom’s hand on top of mine. I looked up. All eyes were still on me. Had I said that last part about the red lipstick and pregnancy kit out loud?

  Mom grabbed the tiny Pooh PJs, folded them neatly and was about to put them back into the box when she suddenly stopped. “There’s something else in there,” she said quietly.

  I looked down into the box and reached for whatever else was down there. It was something light and soft, wrapped in another—and brighter version—of the reindeer wrapping paper. I unwrapped the paper, and this time, when I saw what was inside of it, I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Oh,” Dad said, a little too loudly, when he realized what it was.

  “Oh my God,” Mom whispered, already with a new set of tears in her eyes.

  I held it up for everyone to see; it was another little two-piece PJ set, green with little red apples on it. On the front it said, “Sweet as an apple.” I looked at Mom and smiled. “I guess she didn’t know after all. The clever girl got me two, just to play it safe.”

  Mom nodded and blew her nose. “Sweet as an apple,” she whispered and placed a hand over her chest.

  Another index card with Miss T’s perfect handwriting fell out from underneath the fabric. It said, “To the next little MAP: Miss Apple Pants. May her eyes turn out to be as beautiful and green as both her sister’s and mom’s, and may she have a heart like both of them.” I handed the card to Mom, not exactly sure what to make of it. Did it suggest what I thought it did? Had she known about Mom too?

  By the time Mom had finished reading it, tears dropped from her chin like Seattle rain. She reached for the tiny apple pajamas and hugged them. Then she turned toward Dad and showed him what the card said. After reading it a couple times, he smiled. “I told her about the famous apple pants the day she came over and made that delicious lemon pie, remember?” he said, looking all around the table.

  “But how? How?” Mom looked at me like I had the answer. “I didn’t even know myself before she died,” she whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I said and shrugged my shoulders. “I guess she really did have an excellent radar for pregnant women.”

  She nodded. “I guess.” She looked down at the little apple outfit on the table. “She may have been one of the tiniest people I’ve ever met, but she sure had the heart of a giant,” Mom said for everyone to hear.

  “And she would have been so proud of the two of you.” Dad smiled. “Especially today, wearing her favorite pantyhose, or whatever you call those,” he whispered just loud enough for the both of us to hear.

  The Clint Eastwood look-a-like lawyer cleared his throat, this time a little louder. I guess he thought it was time to move beyond our little private Pooh slash Miss T slash Miss Apple Pants moment. All attention went straight back to him.

  “There’s also the changing of the will,” he said as he opened up the envelope he had been waving in the air earlier. “As I said, Charlotte made a few changes right before she passed away so ... so suddenly,” he said with emotion in his voice. He reached for his glasses and scanned the paper in his hand. “She only made two major changes. The first one is the properties she owns with Mrs. Reynolds, that is, she owned,” he corrected and nodded in the direction of Cruella. “She told me that if she hadn’t been able to convince her sister to sell the properties before she died, then she wanted me to sell her part and donate all the money to Amara.” He looked up. “It’s an organization focused on adoption, foster care, and pregnancy counseling, based in Seattle,” he explained.

  Mom grabbed my hand under the table. “Somehow that name rings a bell. Didn’t Martha mention it in one of her letters?” she whispered.

  I nodded. She had. The only reason I remembered that particular name was because, at first, I had thought it had said “amore.” “You’re right,” I whispered, away from Dad’s big ears, “I remember.” And I also remembered how happy Mom and I had been that night when we had learned that Martha and Frederick had become Thomas’ legal guardians, and Mom had made us those disgusting Diet Coke floats. And I remember how excited I had been about sharing the good news with Miss T as soon as she got back from Austin. But I never got the chance; she never made it home again.

  “I believe she was on her way here to see you for that very same reason?” The lawyer looked at Cruella De Vil.

  Cruella took off her red glasses and exchanged a look with Finn, fumbling with his mustard-purple tie. “I knew no such thing,” she said and gave the lawyer a somewhat-condescending smile, “but if you say so, I guess...” she didn’t finish her sentence, but leaned back and glanced at her long red nails.

  “The market value,” the lawyer continued, staring at Finn’s disturbing tie, “is approximately three point eight million, so I guess a lot of people are going to be very happy in Seattle.” He smiled in the direction of the delegation from Seattle.

  I nodded and smiled back. So, who would have thought that? Little Miss T was not only Mother freaking Teresa, she was a millionaire version of her.

  “Oh my God,” Mom gasped and clapped her hands silently together.

  “Good for you. Good for you,” Dad said in his own Erin Brockovich style.

  Cruella De Vil and mustard-purple tie didn’t say a word.

  “And then there’s the car,” the lawyer continued and looked down at his paper. “The Porsche goes to you, Ella.” He looked up at me with a solemn, handsome face. “Or more accurately...” He looked down again and read: “‘The Porsche goes to Jensen Junior, the son of Eleanor Bridget Jensen.’” And then Charlotte has added something in handwriting.” He turned the paper upside down and squinted. “It says, ‘Hopefully he’ll be better at driving a stick.’” He smiled. “And it’s followed by a smiley—right there.” He held up the paper and placed his finger at the smiley and continued to read. “’But you can drive it until Junior gets old enough. Hopefully he will be able to tell left from right.’ And then another smiley.” The lawyer looked at me and smiled again. “I guess she had grown very fond of you. She wouldn’t let anyone drive George’s old Porsche after he died. Not even me, and I knew him for nearly fifty years,” he said, emphasizing the word fifty. He sat down and looked at his big gold watch. “In a few minutes,” he said, looking around the table, “they’ll be serving some sandwiches and beverages in the room to the side, and that’s pretty much it, well, besides her urn.” He leaned forward and adjusted his tie, looking very formal all of a sudden. “I made a promise to George and Charlotte that they would leave this earth together. So, in about thirty minutes, I have arranged for us to be picked up by a nice limo that will take us all out to Love Field, the old Dallas Airport. This is where George
proposed to the young Miss Ott almost a lifetime ago and also where Charlotte and I, not too long ago, scattered George’s remains. I hope you all will join me. I know she would have wanted you to be there,” he said, looking in our direction.

  Both Mom and Dad nodded their heads.

  I looked at the card in my hand: “The remains and beginning of you.” What a beautiful way to leave the world.

  The final letters

  Mom was staring into the bottom of the almost-empty mailbox. “One, two, three, four, five, six letters. Six!” She looked up at me and bit down on her lip. “How can we do this? I mean, go on living!” she exaggerated. She sat up straight. “Seriously, how can we?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe in a few years, we can start all over again. Or maybe by that time, we’ll have been able to track down The Strangers and the mailbox will be long gone, back to where it came from, back to the actual owners of the piano, the two hundred pounds chandeliers, the heirloom china, the ugly lamps and—”

  “—and back to the writers,” Mom interrupted, looking at me with distant eyes. “The actual writers,” she added.

  “Oh, yeah, that too,” I said, suddenly realizing why Mom was looking at me like that; tracking down the “actual writers” would be the same as tracking down Martha and Frederick. What if that really did happen? That would both be weird and wonderful at the same time. Mostly weird, I guess. I looked at Mom and nodded. “I know.”

  She wrapped the blanket around her feet and leaned back up against the bed with my Indiana Jones cup in her hand. “I know,” she echoed, still looking a little absentminded.

  I looked into the almost empty box. She was right; only six letters left. I looked into the letters-we-have-already-read-box. It seemed like there were almost a thousand letters in there. Had we really read so many? Had we really stayed up so many nights, reading about Martha and Frederick? Had we really spent so many hours together with them?

  I looked at Mom all cuddled up in her blanket. “I say we read them all tonight. I mean, why not?” I held out my hand. “Deal, Mrs. Jensen?”