Falling into Place

by Stephanie Greene

  “Too bad.”

  She hesitated at the bottom of the steps.

  “We’re going to have to give them food,” said Roy. “Did you think about that?”

  Margaret put her finger on the doorbell. “First things first,” she said, and pushed.

  Chapter 5

  “Maybe they’re not home,” said Roy hopefully. “Maybe we should come back tomorrow.”

  Margaret put her ear against the door. They were home, all right. She could hear a faint sound from somewhere inside. A television, maybe.

  “There’s someone in there,” she said determinedly. “Come on.” She jumped off the steps and bolted around the corner of the house.

  “Hey! Wait for me!” Roy jumped blindly off the stoop after her. He limped noisily around the corner of the house, with blood beading up along a new scratch on his shin. Margaret turned to look at him from where she was peering through the glass door on the back terrace, and put a finger up to her lips.

  “Shh,” she said quietly. She pressed her face back against the glass.

  “You can’t do that,” Roy said. He limped over to her. “You’re being a peeping Tom. You could be arrested.”

  “You’ve got to see this!” Margaret whispered. “You won’t believe it.”

  Roy inched up next to her and peered fearfully through the glass.

  There was a woman inside. She was sitting on a stool in the middle of the room. Her feet were planted wide apart and her hands were resting on her knees. She had on bright green sneakers and a flowing purple dress. But they couldn’t see what her face looked like, because she had a bucket over her head.

  A gray plastic bucket. Muffled, droning sounds were coming from underneath it.

  “What do you think she’s doing?” whispered Roy.

  “I don’t know.” Margaret’s voice was hushed.

  They watched in silence for a minute. Then Roy said, “Do you think she’s stuck?”

  “No.”

  More silence.

  “Maybe she’s bald, and she doesn’t want anyone to know,” he said.

  Margaret dragged her eyes away to look at him. This was the weirdest thing she had ever seen.

  “Maybe she’s trying to kill herself,” she said. She paused dramatically. “By suffocation,” she added, and was pleased to see Roy’s eyes grow huge.

  “Do you think she could?” he said.

  “I don’t know.” They turned their faces back to the window again. “It doesn’t look like there’s very much air in there,” said Margaret.

  Suddenly, the woman coughed. The bucket wobbled around on her broad shoulders, and then stopped. She sat up straighter and moved her feet closer together. The droning noise started up again.

  Margaret let out a puff of air that left a perfect circle on the glass. She didn’t know whether she should run inside and pull the bucket off the woman’s head—thereby saving her life—or simply run. It might be kind of interesting, saving a person’s life.

  But what if the woman was trying to suffocate, and her eyes were bulging out and her face was all blue and swollen? What if she had been in a terrible accident, and her face was so scarred that she wore the bucket so that no one would see? What if … ?

  When the woman coughed again, Roy clutched her arm. This time, it was a whole string of coughs. When the bucket began to wobble again, the woman reached up with both hands to steady it. Except this time, she didn’t just steady it, she lifted it clean off her head.

  Roy let out an ear-piercing shriek.

  The woman turned to them with an astonished face and caught them staring at her with their noses pressed up against her door. It was hard to tell who was more surprised.

  The woman recovered first. She stood up and came toward them, a mountain on the move. Everything about her was big: her bright red hair piled up on her head like a whirl of whipped cream, her shelflike bosom, and her face. Her face was enormous. Her cheeks were as round as hamburger buns and her chins led down to her neck in steps. Her mouth—the biggest, widest mouth Margaret had ever seen—was open wide.

  Margaret couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or shouting until she opened the door and Margaret, who was still leaning against it, frozen, fell into her outstretched arms. When she had finally pushed herself up and away from the woman’s massive arms to stand on her own two feet again, she glared at the woman’s amused face indignantly. “It’s not funny,” she said. “You almost gave Roy a heart attack.”

  The woman made a string of loud barks that sounded like a seal. “I can’t imagine what you children must be thinking. You should see your faces.”

  “We thought you were suffocating,” said Roy.

  “It was hot in there,” she said. She fanned her face with her hands, making the bracelets on her arms tinkle together like wind chimes. There were necklaces around her neck, too, and dangling earrings that matched her dress.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re still with us, Roy,” she said cheerfully. “There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation, I assure you. Come in, come in. Let me explain.”

  Margaret already was in, and Roy didn’t look as if he was sure he wanted to be. But when the woman pulled him in gently and shut the door, he immediately tilted his head and started sniffing the air like a hound dog. “You smell good,” he said approvingly.

  “Bay rum. I’ve worn it for years.”

  “Bay rum’s for men,” said Margaret. “Tad wore it.”

  “Tad’s our grandfather,” said Roy.

  “Was our grandfather,” Margaret said. “He’s dead. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Dead?” The woman slapped a hand to her chest dramatically. “You mean now? At your house?”

  “No, no,” said Margaret quickly. “He died almost a year ago.”

  “Oh, thank goodness.” The woman set the wind chimes going again. “I thought you were having a medical emergency, looking for a nurse or someone, with your noses pressed against my door like that.”

  Margaret had the grace to blush.

  “No need to be embarrassed.” The woman was already heading back into the room. “Come and sit down. Roy what?”

  “Roy Parker.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m Margaret Mack. We’re cousins.”

  “Nice to meet you, Roy and Margaret. I’m Agatha Nightingale.” She sat down and waved a hand toward the couch. “Please. No standing on ceremony.”

  Whether it was because of her open, smiling face, or her familiar smell, it suddenly felt like they were old friends.

  “If you don’t need me to help resuscitate your grandfather,” Mrs. Nightingale said when they were settled, “what do you need me for?”

  “We came to invite you to a party at our grandmother’s,” Margaret said. “Mrs. David Mack. She lives across the street.”

  “Ah, yes, the renegade.”

  “She’s very nice,” said Roy defensively. Then he frowned. “What’s a renegade?”

  “Someone who goes against the grain,” said Mrs. Nightingale. “And I’m sure she is. Nice, I mean. I admire her spirit. Sheets on the line, banana peels in the garden.” She barked again. “You don’t have to look so surprised. We all know everything about one another at Carol Woods. And I’d say being a renegade runs in your family, Roy. Most people around here use the front door to extend party invitations.”

  She could have been mad at them, but she wasn’t. She thought it was funny. Margaret suddenly liked her very much.

  “We rang,” she said, “but no one answered.”

  “Ah, yes.” Mrs. Nightingale bent down and picked up the bucket. “That’s because I was under this.”

  Margaret had forgotten all about the bucket. Now she looked at it in wonder. “What were you doing under there?” she said.

  It was Mrs. Nightingale’s turn to look embarrassed. “You may find this hard to believe, but I was trying to learn how to sing.”

  “Under a bucket?” said Margaret and Roy in unison.

 
; “I know, it sounds ridiculous.” Mrs. Nightingale sighed. “But you’re looking at a desperate woman. I’ve promised myself for a year now that I would sing at the Recreation Club’s karaoke evening, and tomorrow night, I’m going to do it!” She pounded a fist into her palm.

  “What’s karaoke?” said Roy.

  “It’s where you get up on a stage, and they hand you a microphone and put on some music, and you sing.”

  “How can a bucket teach you how to sing?” said Margaret.

  “Several weeks ago I saw a picture in the newspaper of a singing class in Korea,” said Mrs. Nightingale. “All of the students had buckets over their heads, and the caption said that by listening to the sound of their own voices, the students were learning how to sing. So I thought, Why not give it a try?”

  “It kind of makes sense,” Margaret said doubtfully.

  Roy was eyeing the bucket as if it was an intriguing scientific experiment. “What’s it like under there?” he said.

  Mrs. Nightingale held it out to him. “Be my guest.”

  He took it very gingerly and lowered it over his head as solemnly as if he were an astronaut about to hurtle into outer space.

  “What’s it like?” said Margaret.

  “You don’t have to shout. I can hear you.” There was a short silence. Margaret knew he was probably looking around, examining it. Finally, he said, “Actually, it’s kind of interesting.”

  “Roy finds everything interesting,” Margaret said to Mrs. Nightingale, rolling her eyes. Then to Roy, “Sing something.”

  There was another pause, then Roy’s muffled voice. “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer—”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. We’ll be here all day,” said Margaret. She snatched the bucket off Roy’s head and lowered it over her own. It smelled of plastic and bay rum.

  “Testing one, two, three. Testing …”

  It was amazing. It actually worked. There was nowhere else for her voice to go but back into her own ears.

  She lifted the bucket off and handed it to Mrs. Nightingale. “It just might work,” she said.

  “It hasn’t so far,” said Mrs. Nightingale. “And I’m running out of time.”

  “I bet you can sing,” said Roy encouragingly. “Everyone can sing.”

  “Not me. I’m tone-deaf. Completely, utterly tone-deaf.”

  “How about ‘Happy Birthday’?” he insisted. “I bet you can sing that.”

  Mrs. Nightingale didn’t bother to argue. She simply opened her mouth and sang.

  It was incredible. The words were the ones for “Happy Birthday,” but the tune didn’t sound anything like it. It didn’t sound like any tune Margaret had ever heard before. She could feel her face puckering up the way it did when she sucked on a lemon. It was a good thing Mrs. Nightingale was tone-deaf, or she would have been pretty miserable under the bucket.

  Margaret looked at Roy. He had his hands over his ears and his shoulders hunched, as if someone was about to hit him. They sat there frozen like twin gargoyles until Mrs. Nightingale sang the last, horrible note. Then Roy took his hands away from his ears.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” he said kindly.

  “Yes, it was,” said Margaret. “It was terrible.”

  “When I was a girl, every time I opened up my mouth to sing, my brother yelled, ‘I’m telling!’” said Mrs. Nightingale.

  “That was mean,” said Roy.

  “Yeah, but you can’t really blame him,” said Margaret.

  “It’s not easy, having a voice like mine and a name like Nightingale, let me tell you.” With her bright red lips and shiny red cheeks, she looked like a clown who can change from funny to sad in an instant. She was sad now. “All my life, all I’ve ever wanted was to sing on a stage in front of an audience, and hear them applaud,” she said wistfully.

  I wouldn’t count on the applauding part, Margaret was tempted to say. But she couldn’t. Not with the way Mrs. Nightingale looked.

  “You could sing to Roy and me,” she said instead. “We wouldn’t mind, would we, Roy?”

  “Not that much.”

  “You’re both very sweet.” Their sympathy seemed to cheer her up, because she was suddenly her smiling, jovial self again. “Thank you, but no. It’s karaoke or nothing.”

  “Maybe they can turn up the music really loud, to drown you out,” said Roy.

  “And we can come and clap, so people’ll think you sound good,” said Margaret. “We’ll ask Mrs. Tudley, too. And Gran. We’ll all clap.”

  “Then no one will be able to hear you,” finished Roy. “It’ll be great.”

  Mrs. Nightingale threw her head back and laughed so hard, everything on her jiggled. “I don’t know whether to be insulted or encouraged,” she said at last. “But I’ll do it.”

  “Yippee!” shouted Roy, jumping to his feet.

  “Oh, I’m so excited,” said Margaret. It felt so good to try to cheer somebody up and actually have it work for a change that she jumped up, too, and was hugging Mrs. Nightingale around the neck before she remembered they were strangers. She drew back, embarrassed.

  But Mrs. Nightingale had already turned to Roy.

  “Come on, one from you, too, Roy.” She enveloped him in an enthusiastic embrace, from which he emerged red-faced but pleased.

  “There can be no formalities among the three of us if you’re going to help launch me on my new career,” said Mrs. Nightingale. “Now, you two had better run along. I have lots of work to do, and not much time.”

  “Gran can have her party after the karaoke,” said Margaret as Mrs. Nightingale opened the door. “It’ll be perfect.”

  “I don’t know whether you’ll all be consoling me or congratulating me, but it will be nice to have the company,” called Mrs. Nightingale from her front stoop.

  Roy was about to lead the way through the gate when Margaret stopped. She couldn’t leave without asking one more question. “Wait a minute,” she said quickly. She turned and ran back to the bottom of the steps. “Mrs. Nightingale?” she said uncertainly.

  “Yes, Margaret?”

  Margaret took a deep breath. “When your brother was mean to you, did it make you hate him for the rest of your life?” she said in a rush.

  “Ronald? Why, I adore him. He’s one of my best friends. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mrs. Nightingale’s face creased in an understanding smile. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you,” she said kindly. “Siblings are resilient creatures. If you’ve done something you’re sorry for, I’m sure you’ll make it up to them. You’re a nice girl, Margaret, I can tell. ”

  Margaret felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She was suddenly as light as air. “Thanks,” she said. She smiled radiantly and ran back to join Roy out on the street.

  “Tell your grandmother I’m looking forward to meeting her,” Mrs. Nightingale called as they crossed the street.

  “We will!” chorused Margaret and Ray.

  “It certainly was a serendipitous event, meeting you two!”

  “Same here,” yelled Margaret. “See you tomorrow!”

  “Ser-en-di-pi-tous,” said Roy. He pulled out his notebook and slowed down so he could write. “That will be my longest word ever.”

  “It means lucky,” said Margaret.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do. Go ahead”—she executed a perfect cartwheel, then kept on walking—“look it up.”

  It did mean lucky, she thought happily. She could feel it in her bones. Mrs. Nightingale was lucky to have met them, and they were lucky to have met Mrs. Nightingale.

  She could hardly wait to introduce her to Gran.

  Chapter 6

  “… and her husband’s name was really Livingston Dudley Tudley …”

  “But they called him Tubby because he was fat.”

  “But he didn’t mind,” said Margaret, “because being fat wasn’t so bad back then.”


  “Being overweight is never a good idea,” Roy said.

  “And Mrs. Nightingale was singing with a bucket over her head, because she’s tone-deaf,” said Margaret.

  “You can imagine how hard it is on her with a name like Nightingale,” said Roy.

  They were standing side by side in front of Gran, soldiers reporting on a successful mission. She had been looking from one eager face to the other like a spectator at a tennis match. Now she put down the pen she’d been using to address an envelope, and smiled. “It sounds as if you two have had a very busy morning.”

  “They’re really great, Gran,” Margaret said. “You’ll like them.”

  “Mrs. Tudley loves to dance,” said Roy. “We told her you might want to go to her dance class at the Recreation Center.”

  Margaret pinched him, but it was too late. Two bright red spots appeared on Gran’s cheeks. Her mouth flattened into a disapproving line.

  “You’re good to think of me, Roy,” she said stiffly, “but I’m not so old yet that I view dancing with a bunch of old women in a cafeteria as something to look forward to.”

  Roy looked hurt.

  The smile fell from Margaret’s face. “That’s not very nice, Gran,” she said. “You don’t even know Mrs. Tudley and Mrs. Nightingale.”

  “Yeah, and when Mrs. Tudley came over to say she was sorry about Tad, you hid,” said Roy. “And she’s shrinking.”

  “Don’t you think you should at least give them a chance?” said Margaret. “Meet them a few times, and see if you like them?”

  “I don’t know… .” Gran picked up the envelope and looked at it thoughtfully in silence for a minute. “I’ve been sitting here for a while, composing a letter to Mr. Whiting. If Tad were here, we’d have a good laugh over all these silly rules. But by myself … ?” She looked at Margaret with a stony face. “I’m afraid I don’t have the energy for any of it right now, Margaret. I don’t even feel like walking this to the mailbox, if it comes to that.

  “Since you have so much energy, Roy, why don’t you take it?” she said suddenly, holding out the envelope to him. “You might even want to take it directly to Mr. Whiting. Maybe he’s another resident of Carol Woods I should get to know.”