Mayhem in Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  I recognized Linda’s caller ID. Though it was her dime (as we used to say) I started with my agenda and asked about Jason’s plans for the weekend.

  “We made a deal,” she said. “He’ll come to the ball if I take him driving every day for a month. He really wants his permit.”

  We were raising a generation of negotiators. “What’s he wearing?”

  “He’s being very original. He’s going as Abraham Lincoln. Do you think Lincoln was short and chubby as a kid?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I have a request,” Linda said.

  I glanced at Maddie and Beverly, who were engaged in intense conversation. “Sure, Linda. What is it?”

  “Can I bring Jason by tonight? You know, you said you’d interview him.”

  So soon? I hadn’t meant immediately, but I didn’t dare suggest putting it off too long. “I’m looking forward to talking to him, Linda, but how about tomorrow morning instead? We’ll start fresh.”

  “I’ll take him by about ten. Thanks, Gerry!”

  Linda sounded so relieved, as if she’d just been handed a ticket to Lourdes (the miracle site with healing waters, not my GED student). I was glad I’d acquiesced.

  Time to face Maddie, who was sitting on the chair, her pretty little mouth all folded up in tiny ridges, her skinny legs kicking wildly. Apparently Beverly had not been swayed by her charms.

  Without warning, Maddie’s lips formed a smile, her legs calmed down. She bounced off the chair and pointed to a mannequin above a circular rack. “That’s it. There’s my costume.”

  We left the shop a half hour later, ready for a ball. Beverly had the most elaborate hat I’d ever seen, one that would be a beacon for a large bird looking for a nest. I had settled on a red-and-green caroler’s outfit, having been attracted to its shoulder-length cape and white fur-like muff.

  As for Maddie—she was going to be our Little Drummer Boy.

  Back home, after midafternoon snacking on cookies from my freezer, Maddie and I got to work on the Bronx apartment dollhouse. There were many more pressing things, like preparing the house for the arrival of her parents in less than a week. However, I’d never pass up a chance to do crafts instead of housework, especially when Maddie had a special request, starting with a history question.

  “My dad was born in the Bronx, wasn’t he?” Maddie asked me.

  “Yes, at Fordham Hospital, remember? We drove around there a few years ago with Grandpa and pointed it out to you.”

  “Uh-huh. So you and Grandpa brought him home to the apartment we’re making?”

  “That’s right.” I placed my hand carefully in the dollhouse and rested my finger on a spot in the miniature bedroom, next to a yet-to-be-lacquered dresser. “We put his crib . . .” Aha. “You want to make a model of your dad’s crib,” I said.

  Maddie smiled and nodded. “Could we?”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said, blinking back a tear. She gave me a tight hug and the tear fell.

  We sat at the workbench in my secondary crafts room (which soon needed to be an operating guest room) and searched through my scrap basket for fabric to spread on the bottom of the crib. We found several pieces of flannel with floral and other designs that were tiny and close together, suitable for a miniature crib pad.

  Not good enough for Maddie, however. “Didn’t you have sports things for a boy?” she asked. “I see them all the time when I have to go with my mom to get a baby gift. They’re always in blue and they have, like, pink ribbons for girls.”

  There was that freckled nose again, screwed up, at the idea of pink. “Maybe your mom and dad put a sports-theme pad in your crib by mistake and that’s why you’re such a great T-ball player,” I said.

  “Soccer,” Maddie said, missing my humor. “The little kids play T-ball.”

  “Sorry. Let’s do another part of the crib and tomorrow we can shop for the kind of fabric you want.”

  “The bars. We can do the bars,” Maddie said.

  She pulled a box of nude wood pieces toward her and found a bag of three-inch rods with a sixteenth-inch diameter. We decided we’d need sixteen rods, eight for each side of the crib, and two solid panels for the head and foot.

  “We’re almost done,” Maddie said.

  “If we want this to look real, we’ll have to paint the wood,” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” she said, not thrilled.

  I’d already discerned the kind of crafter Maddie would be: my kind, always looking for a quick and easy fix. A can of spray paint instead of a small brush and a set of bottles and tubes of acrylics. A pinked edge on a blanket instead of a neatly faced hem. I should really have Linda train Maddie, I thought. Linda didn’t own spray paint and would have fashioned tiny wheels for the crib instead of slapping beads on the ends of the legs.

  Here was my chance to set a good example. “Your dad’s crib was kind of yellowy beige,” I said. “We can mix yellow and brown until we get it close to the real thing.”

  Maddie took a breath that amounted to rolling up her sleeves and got to work. She covered the table with newspaper and set out the rods in a long row.

  “It looks like a jail,” she said.

  I stood and looked down on the array. “Yes, it does.”

  I took another look, this time as one who was practiced in seeing things not as they are, but as they might be on a different scale. What if this design were on a life-size van? It would look like a jail.

  Chapter 10

  My dilemma: I needed Maddie’s computer expertise, but I couldn’t let her know exactly what we were doing. I didn’t want to give her the idea that we were seriously engaged in an investigation that was better left to the police. She’d warmed too much to the idea of being a sleuth already, and I was enormously worried that she’d go off on her own and put herself in danger. How had Nancy Drew’s grandmother (did she have one?) coped?

  But I needed Maddie’s help to get information from the World Wide Web. I’d long ago realized that many research activities were done more efficiently online, but that didn’t mean I was at home with software beyond e-mail and the occasional business letter. The same was true for Beverly and Linda, so they’d be no help to me.

  Sometimes I regretted not having mastered search engines or online shopping. But I was confident that virtual shopping would never be the pleasant experience for me that it was to some. My legs and arms were too long for me to be able to buy clothing without trying it on; and between the library and Rosie Norman’s bookstore, I could order in person any book I wanted (though they probably all went online to fill my request).

  Certainly it would be less fun to order miniatures online than to browse in crafts stores. Or better yet, since my particular style called for a lot of improvisation with found objects, to keep my eyes on everyday throwaway items. How would I search online for leftover floor tiles (to use as bases for freestanding scenes) or scraps of wide ribbon (to fold over, stuff, and turn into a pillow)? Deep down, I knew that even if there were a way to search for such “junk,” I’d still rather keep my eyes on the gutters as I walked around town.

  The thought of approaching Skip with my van theory swept through my mind, but I had to have more than a fleeting idea before he’d listen (if then).

  No way out. I needed Maddie. I toyed with the idea of making it a game. We could pretend to play “find the bars.” No, she’d see through that. Or I could pretend I wanted her to give me a computer lesson. “Can you show me how to find a Lincoln Point business with bars on its company van?” I could ask. Too obvious. I might as well just plunge in, telling her as little as possible, but not making up a story.

  “What a smart observation you made about the crib, sweetheart,” I started. “These rods do look like the bars of a jail.”

  She moved the wooden rods closer together. “Even more now, huh?”

  “Even more. You’re right. It reminds me of something a friend of mine said about a van that looked like a jail. Is there a way to search on
the computer to see if there’s such a van in Lincoln Point or a city nearby?”

  Maddie’s eyebrows went up to the top of her red bangs. “Is this for the case?”

  My landline phone rang before I could launch into a speech about law enforcement officers versus ordinary citizens. I picked up the phone.

  “Hi, Mom. I’m calling to give a status report,” my daughter-in-law Mary Lou said.

  My heart skipped. “Is something wrong?” I asked her, the red Stanford Medical Center design looming large in my mind.

  “Not at all.” Mary Lou sounded understandably confused. She called often, so there was no cause to think this was an emergency or bad news of any kind. “We’re just starting to pack. Well, to think about packing, and I thought I’d give you a call. See what the weather is.”

  “The weather’s great,” I said. “Not lower than about fifty degrees. No more rain for a while.” I cleared my throat. “How’s everyone?”

  “We’re both fine. Busy. Rushing everywhere. You can’t imagine what this house looks like. Wrapping paper and bows all over the floor. Packages everywhere. Half of them have to be shipped to the East Coast, the other half to be stuffed in the car for Lincoln Point. It’s a good thing I like Christmas!”

  “How’s Richard handling it all?”

  “Richard is out getting the car tuned, tires checked. You know the drill. His Porter trip rituals. We’re actually looking forward to the drive. Richard needs to relax.” Mary Lou laughed. “I’m going to put him in the backseat with a juice box like I used to do with Maddie.”

  Another jolt. “Is Richard sick?”

  “No, just busy as usual. Really, Mom, what makes you think anyone’s sick? Is Maddie okay?”

  Great, now I’ve gotten Mary Lou worried, I thought. “No, no, she’s fine, busy working on our dollhouse apartment. It’s just that sometimes I’m so focused on Maddie that I forget to check on how you two are doing.” Not exactly true, but I hoped Mary Lou would buy it.

  “Okay. Can’t wait to see you! Fa-la-la-la-la and all!”

  I tried a joyous laugh. “Same here. I’ll put Maddie on.”

  I handed the phone over and took a deep breath.

  It said something that Maddie was willing to forgo another snack break to get right to the computer. As we were waiting (Maddie said “forever”) for my computer to boot up and connect to the Internet, I made some notes about what I was looking for.

  Businesses with bars, I wrote, smiling at the image of liquor bottles lining a long shelf in front of a wall-length mirror.

  I drew a line, then started a list.

  Handlebars: a bike shop? I made a check mark next to the item. Lincoln Point had a bicycle shop in the new section of the strip mall.

  I looked around the room, temporarily Maddie’s. She kept it neater than her father had done, I noted, with her suitcase tucked inside the closet and her clothes on hangers. It helped that she no longer traveled with a troupe of stuffed animals. I was searching for vertical shapes and found them on the windows.

  Vertical Blinds. I made another check mark. I knew the owner of a window-covering store on Springfield Boulevard.

  I thought of and wrote, car and truck grilles. I hoped this was not it; that would eliminate no one over sixteen years old.

  While I was laboring with pen and paper, Maddie had managed to fill my computer monitor with bar-shaped images.

  “I got one hundred twenty-five thousand hits,” she said. I checked the display. Bars everywhere. “I just used the image function and Googled ‘vertical bars.’ ”

  Yet another new verb, I thought, mentally conjugating. I Google, you Google . . . I could hardly wait to hear a noun, Googlization, from someone.

  I peered at the screen. There were lots of vertical bars on graphs, the kind used by newsmagazines where they try to make the national budget understandable to English teachers.

  The images were varied and interesting: a room-divider screen made of thin bamboo bars (good idea for a modern miniature layout) and a white sports jersey with wide purple stripes. Also the alticorpus fish with vertical bars on its body, and a beautiful staircase that made me wish I had a two-story home.

  Maddie scrolled past charts, more fish, and a rack of fishing poles (a possibility?). I had visions of sifting through one hundred and twenty-five thousand “hits” as Maddie called them. Until, finally, on virtual page five, a new set of images made sense: vertical bar fencing.

  “Stop there, please,” I said to Maddie, whose itchy, practiced fingers had been clicking through the pages. These images were of metal bar fencing, picket fences, and gates constructed of vinyl rods. The van’s logo could have had an image of any of them and looked like the bars of a jail.

  I thought about the Lincoln Point businesses I knew. No fence company that I could think of. It had been a while since I’d been in a home improvement store. Lourdes’s son, Kyle, could be called on for small chores, and Skip had graciously taken over the heavy-duty maintenance Ken had seen to, even installing a new furnace for me in the last few months. And all for a few dollars (in Kyle’s case) and a steady supply of ginger cookies (for Skip).

  My mind reeled at the thought of searching in neighboring towns. Police work was harder than most of us realized.

  “Look,” Maddie said, tugging at my shirt. She’d been busy while I was distracted by the enormity of the task. “There’s Abe’s Hardware store, 4571 Springfield Boulevard, Lincoln Point, and they have an annex”—she pronounced it anneck—“named Field of Dream Fences.” Apparently I’d walked right by Abe’s and never seen it. Too focused on Sadie’s Ice Cream Shop or Rosie’s Books. “Let’s see if they have a special van.”

  I nodded, not knowing if I was ready to enjoy such quick, easy results. I didn’t want Maddie to be so successful at this that she wouldn’t pursue one of the myriad careers I had in mind for her. A doctor (like her father), an artist (like her mother), an architect (like her grandfather), possibly even a high school English teacher. But not a cop, like her first cousin once removed. And not a computer geek, much as I appreciated their skills.

  This search took longer, but eventually Maddie came up with a photo of the Abe Hardware crew at their annual picnic. Parked in the back of the picnic area was their yellowy beige van. I squinted. There were vertical bars, all right, just as we’d asked for. A thin, black metal spike came up (graphically) from each green letter of Field of Dream Fences, the effect forming a fence in itself. Written on the side of the van was GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS. I couldn’t see the whole sentence, but I caught enough to tell me that’s what they’d chosen. In a throwback to my former career, I winced at the mixed themes: a play on the title of a baseball movie combined with a line from “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost’s famous poem.

  Focusing again on the bars, I had no trouble believing that in a distressed state (I imagined her being dragged into the van) Sofia Muniz might think she was being taken to jail. The same for her sweet old friend, Sandy Sechrest, four floors up.

  What to do with this information, if that’s what it was?

  “Did this help, Grandma? Did we crack the case?”

  “That was amazing. How did you do that?” I asked Maddie, following Skip’s rule of answering a question with a question. I was truly impressed with my granddaughter’s work, but I also wanted to distract her from the case.

  “Someone at Abe’s picnic must have posted this on the Web. I’ll show you.” Click, click, and we had photos of a birthday party Maddie had gone to a couple of months ago in L.A. “There’s Bella,” she said, pointing to a dark-haired girl about her age. “She posted the pictures so her grandmother in Florida could see them.”

  The photo was a candid shot of awkward ten- or eleven-year-old girls in front of a large cake. I couldn’t make out the frosting theme, except to see that it was a reproduction of an animated character. A plump girl next to Maddie held two fingers over Maddie’s head in a “devil’s horns” shape. I was strangely comforted to know
that some old tricks were still around.

  “Once you post it, it’s available to everyone?” I asked, awestruck.

  “Uh-huh.” Maddie pointed to other photographs of Bella’s party, oddly not together, but scattered among other revelers at different events—for example, a bearded guy named Joe held some older Bella who looked like a pole dancer. Who knew there would be so many Bellas partying on the Internet?

  I’d gotten photos of Maddie and the family attached to an e-mail from time to time, and wondered if they were also being sent to the world. Traipsing around town, busy as I was, I felt like a very young middle-aged woman—until I contemplated the changes computers brought. The walls of Richard’s old bedroom seemed to open up to embrace the entire universe; on the one hand, offering opportunity and information and on the other, destroying my privacy. Maddie must have sensed my bewilderment.

  “Don’t worry, Grandma, I’ll help you stay connected.”

  Lucky me.

  To my delight Maddie wanted to watch a movie with dinner. That was the signal that she was tired after a busy couple of days and would probably drop off to sleep before the film was over. Fine with me, since I really needed some time to sort out all the alleged facts I’d accumulated through the day. Maddie had seen Harriet the Spy at least four times in my presence alone, so it would be no great loss if she missed part of it tonight.

  About halfway through Harriet’s snooping, Maddie nodded off. She fought it for a while, then finally let me lead her to bed.

  “No shower tonight,” I told her. She was at the age where this pleased her. I knew it wouldn’t be long before it would take her an hour to get ready for a public appearance, even at the mall. I remembered Richard’s going through those stages. For the longest time, I had to be sure he’d changed his socks every day; then, what seemed like suddenly, he started sneaking a squirt of Ken’s aftershave before going to school.

  Our bedtime reading was from a book on international holidays. I’d picked it up at Rosie’s thinking to teach Maddie about other holidays that occurred around Christmas. Not surprising, she was way ahead of me.