by Laura McNeal
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE - Baked in a Pie
CHAPTER TWO - Three Selkirks, No Alexanders
CHAPTER THREE - Older Boys
CHAPTER FOUR - Jeeps
CHAPTER FIVE - Plebes Like Us
CHAPTER SIX - The Wooden Lady’s Walnut Tidbits
CHAPTER SEVEN - Night Owls
PART TWO
CHAPTER EIGHT - Passer Domesticus
CHAPTER NINE - The Eternal Husband
CHAPTER TEN - Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho
CHAPTER ELEVEN - These Minutes with Maurice
CHAPTER TWELVE - Soldier on a Roll
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - The Community of True Inspiration
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Dough
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Sunday Drive
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - How Does Your Garden Grow?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Trunky
PART THREE
CHAPTER NINETEEN - Alarm Systems
CHAPTER TWENTY - Joe Keesler
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Propensities
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Retrieval
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - Home Park Gardens
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - Penal Code
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - Mail
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Perambulation
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - Suggestions
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - Resolutions
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - In Which Janice and Maurice Exchange Gifts
CHAPTER THIRTY - Detour
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - Pine Needles
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - Faces
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - Maurice Steps Out
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - Sleepwalking
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - Illumination
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - Night Stroll in Lilliput
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN - Three Steps from the Bottom
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - The View from Above
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - Kiss Me, She Thought
CHAPTER FORTY - The Last Time He Saw Myra
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - The Last Chapter
EPILOGUE - Six Months Later
ZIPPED
Readers Circle
Also available: Crooked by Laura and Tom McNeal
Copyright Page
For Hank
And in memory of Bert Rhoton
With thanks to the following for inspiration and expertise: Susannah Duckworth, Miryam Hernandez, Cynthia Hunt, Bill Jennings, Barbara Kalisuch and her students Vicky, Sally, and Araceli, Thomas Ross McNeal, Jane Morris, Master Sgt. Joe O’Gallagher, Dave Persch, Eric Portigal, David Suggs, Dale Wight, and Maggie Wittenburg. For hospitality near Jemison, we are indebted to Sorayya Khan, her family, and the whole Williams clan. And with gratitude to those who made the manuscript a book: George Nicholson, Joan Slattery, and Jamie Weiss.
PART ONE
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye;
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn’t that a dainty dish
To set before the king?
CHAPTER ONE
Baked in a Pie
It wasn’t a normal Thursday, but all day long it had seemed like one, so when the final bell rang, Mick Nichols did what he normally did. He walked from Jemison High to Melville Junior High by way of the athletic fields, fast-walking at first, but then, as he neared the muddy grass where the girls’ field hockey team was collecting for spring practice, he settled into something closer to a purposeful stroll.
He hoped he wasn’t too early, and he wasn’t. Lisa Doyle was there—he caught a flash of her coppery red hair through the shifting shoulders and sticks, and suddenly everywhere and all at once a strange prickling sensation began spreading across his skin. She bent down to pick up her stick, and when she happened to flick a glance in his general direction, Mick’s face went wooden. He kept his eyes directly forward and walked stiffly on without another look her way. Beneath his old bomber jacket, beneath his khaki T-shirt, a cool bead of sweat coursed down his rib cage. Dink, he thought as he reached the chain-link fence that marked the boundary of the high school. Dink dink dink.
Melville Junior High was located just across the street to the east of Jemison High, so by this time of day Jemison’s shadow already reached across Melville’s front lawn. Mick cut through Melville’s parking lot and wandered down to the art room, where his stepmother, Nora Mercer-Nichols, was cleaning up after a day of what she liked jokingly to call “teaching art to the artless.” She was stuffing dirty wool into black Hefty bags. When she saw Mick she pushed her sandy blond hair up with the back of her hand and said, “Hello, Maestro!” Then, “Hi, Mick.”
Nora Mercer-Nichols was in her early thirties, but she seemed younger. She’d married Mick’s father four years before. The first time Mick had met her, she and his father had come in quietly behind him when he was playing the piano in the living room. He’d thought he was alone, and when he finally got through one of Bach’s Inventions without a flub, he leaned back on the piano bench and exultantly shot a fist into the air, which drew sudden laughter from Nora and his father. Mick had swung around, surprised and embarrassed. When his father introduced her, he said, “Nora, this is my son, Mick,” and she’d smiled and said, “Well, I think I’m going to have to call him Maestro,” which she still did. Mick had heard a lot of Bad Stepmother stories, but he liked Nora. He never thought of her as his mother or even his stepmother. She was just Nora, and almost any room was more interesting if she were in it.
Today, standing just inside her classroom door, next to a cabinet lined with bird’s nests in clear Plexiglas boxes, Mick read for probably the hundredth time the English and Latin labels he’d helped Nora make one night last fall: BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE (Parus atricapillus). HOUSE SPARROW (Passer domesticus). CHIPPING SPARROW (Spizella passerina ). A few of the nests held faintly tinted eggs, some freckled, some not. Nora had been asked about the eggs so often that she’d made a small sign that said DON’T WORRY, YOU BIRD LOVERS YOU, I ONLY COLLECT ABANDONED NESTS.
Mick found himself staring at some faintly freckled eggs, which made him think of Nora’s shoulders in summer, a thought he tried to shake off.
“So,” Nora said. “Gimme the daily Doyle report.”
Mick shrugged. “Brief visual contact.”
“Really? Well, did you smile back?”
“Not exactly.”
They both fell silent. About three weeks ago, while driving home with Nora, Mick had told her in a matter-of-fact voice about “this kind of weird effect” that the sight of Lisa Doyle had on him. A laugh had burst from Nora. “ ‘The heart is the tyrant who spares no one,’ ” she recited.
“Who said that?”
Nora grinned and nodded toward a small, red ceramic devil that she’d recently set on her dashboard. “Probably little Beelzebub,” she said. “Either that or some dead white guy.”
Mick didn’t know why she called the figurine Beelzebub. All he knew was, he didn’t like the little guy. At first it just seemed like a toddler in a devil sleeper, but it always seemed to be peering at you with its black, curious eyes.
“Where’d you get that thing anyway?” he said.
“School,” Nora said. “On desktop treasure trading day.”
Mick stared at it for a second or two. “It’s kind of grimy.”
Nora chuckled. “The word I’d use is ‘puckish.’ ” Then, after a block or two had passed, “Weren’t we on the subject of one Lisa Doyle? What do you and Lisa talk about?”
“That’s kind of the problem,” Mick said, and felt his face co
lor slightly. “I haven’t actually ever talked to Lisa Doyle.”
Nora shot him a look of surprise and then became serious. “Okay, Maestro. Here’s the deal. You’ve been smitten. It may be a foolish infatuation or it may be the real thing. What you have to do is get to know her, and vice versa, which means something more extreme than hockey field walk-bys. You need proximity. If she’s on the debate team, join the debate team. If she plays tennis, buy yourself a racket.” They were at a stoplight and Nora had fixed Mick with her winsome smile. “If she plays pinochle, take up pinochle.”
“I hear she’s Mormon,” Mick said.
Nora had laughed. “Then say your prayers, and make sure they’re good ones,” she had said.
The wool they were bagging this afternoon was surprisingly dirty, snagged with twigs and seeds and even clusters of what looked to Mick like sheep dung. He broke a silence by saying, “This stuff’s pretty disgusting. What’s it for anyway?”
“A new enrichment class.” Nora pointed at the near bulletin board, where in large letters it said WOOL: FROM SHEEP TO SWEATER. She laughed again. “You’ll be happy to know it’s open to students of both genders. The early colonists taught all their children to spin, including boys.”
Mick said, “So this class would be a serious opportunity for any guy who might want to be a colonist when he grows up.” He hoped this would be good for a chuckle from Nora, and it was. Then he said, “Well, maybe Dad or me’ll get a sweater out of it.” This was a joke. Although Nora had been working on something that was supposed to be a sweater, she wouldn’t say who it was for or what it was supposed to look like, and more often than not she seemed to be unraveling it to correct a mistake.
“Ha,” said Nora. “That’ll depend on who does the supper dishes.”
The drama teacher, Mrs. Van Riper, poked her head into the art room, gave Mick a cheery hello, and then said to Nora, “You coming to the curriculum committee, sweetie?”
“Oh, God,” Nora said. “I forgot completely.” She turned to Mick. “I’ll be pretty late. Wanna wait?”
He glanced up at the clock—3:32; the city bus had already left—then shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll just walk.”
He was at the door when Nora said, “Oh, wait! I’ve got something that might interest you.” She pulled open her desk drawer and presented him with a bright yellow flyer that said
Attention
Reliable Self-Starting Youths
Ages 14-19!
Saturday & Summer Employment
Outdoor Entry-Level Positions Open
Wage Plus Bonuses
Apply At The Village Greens Seniors’ Community
Interviews and orientation were scheduled for this Saturday. The contact person was a Mr. Blodgett.
Mick said, “Since when did I strike you as a reliable and self-starting youth?”
Nora was gathering materials from her desk, but her mood was still perky. “Always saw you that way,” she said. “Always. Never faltered.”
Mick started to put the flyer back on her desk, but Nora took it, folded it, and tucked it into his shirt pocket. “You should apply for this job,” she said, close to him now and looking him in the eye. Her breath smelled minty. “Take my word for it, Maestro.” It was a cool, pale blue afternoon. Jemison was a village-turned-suburb of Syracuse, New York, and April was mud season. The air was warm sometimes, but you couldn’t trust it. The ground was visible, finally, but you couldn’t trust that, either. Mick had once done a report for his science class that tracked annual snowfall (nine and a half feet, on average) and rate of soil absorption. Today it looked like ten feet of snow had melted, eased its way in, and then frozen again.
Mick kept his hands jammed in the pockets of his jacket, a faded brown bomber he’d bought from a store called Plan B with most of the hundred silver dollars his father had given him for Christmas. He’d returned to Plan B four times, trying on the same coat each time, before he finally made the purchase. Now it was like his own little room, snug but portable.
For a while, Mick walked past rich people’s houses—Georgian this, Revival that, long spreading yards behind fieldstone walls— yet even these looked slightly dazed to him, as though they, too, were standing in ice water. He was always happy to cross Chestnut into his own neighborhood, where the houses were tattered and closer together, but friendlier.
It had always been Mick’s nature to come to ideas slowly, turning them in his mind this way and that before either accepting or rejecting them. Today as he made his way home, he began mulling the job deal. There were a bunch of pluses. He didn’t mind working outdoors. It would be actual job experience. And it would be actual money. The only minus was that it meant he wouldn’t spend the summer hanging out with Nora, which was what he’d pretty much done the past two summers, and which, to be truthful, he was looking forward to doing again.
But maybe Nora wasn’t.
Maybe that was why she was trying to find him a job.
Maybe she was trying to get him out of her hair.
Mick began absentmindedly running the zipper of his inner jacket pocket open and closed, then abruptly turned up Morris Avenue, away from home and toward his father’s shop. He turned west on Brook past O’Doul’s and Twelve Brothers grocery (Nora had preferred to call it Dozen Brothers before finally shortening it to Duz-Bro), then cut through a vacant lot to Central and crossed the street to Shammas Auto Repair. He picked his way through a small parking lot packed with Volkswagens, Mercedes, and BMWs. The shop was owned by two brothers, Essa and Hana Shammas, who had both emigrated to Jemison from Lebanon and promptly set up shop fixing German cars. Their card said IF YOU’RE HERE AND YOUR CAR’S GERMAN, YOU’RE IN THE RIGHT PLACE! Today Essa and Hana were in the near repair bay sitting in a squatting position drinking thick black coffee from small cups, an afternoon ritual Mick had seen before. “Hello, Mister Mick,” Essa called out. Essa was the outgoing one; his brother was handsome and shy. Both, according to Mick’s father, were crackerjack mechanics. “You want good coffee?” Essa said.
“Maybe next time,” said Mick, who’d tasted their coffee.
“Then please have soda. Plenty of sodas.”
Mick said thanks and went to an old, grease-smudged refrigerator that was always stocked with just two varieties—Hires Root Beer and Mr. Pibb. Mick popped open a Mr. Pibb and wandered down to the far repair bay, where his father was working under the hood of an old Mercedes and whistling absentmindedly. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay. When he glanced up and saw Mick, his face broke into a broad brimming smile. “Well, here comes the Mick.”
Mick grinned and glanced into the dark and mysterious recesses of the Mercedes motor. “What’re you doing?”
His father shrugged. “Just a tune-up, and I’m almost done.”
Mick took a sip of soda. “Nora wants me to apply for a Saturday and summer job doing yardwork at some old folks’ place.”
His father was bent over the engine and didn’t look up. “Yeah, she told me when we talked at lunch.”
Mick had thought maybe she had. It was the reason he’d swung by the shop. “So why do you think she’s all of a sudden so gung-ho on me finding a job?”
From under the hood his father’s voice came out in muffled grunts. “You know . . . Nora . . . she’s death . . . on idleness.” With two more low grunts, he ratcheted something tight, straightened himself, and while wiping his hands on his shop rag shot Mick a grin. “Course with Nora you always got to take into account the possible ulterior motive.”
Which might be getting me out of her hair, Mick thought. “Like what?” he asked his father, who just shrugged.
“Got me,” he said. Then, “Want to start it up for me?”
Mick slid inside the car and carefully did all the things his father had taught him to do. Set the brake, depress the clutch, put the transmission in neutral, turn the ignition. After it started, he climbed out and stared again at the motor while his dad throttled up the rpm’s. Over the di
n his father yelled, “How does it sound?”
Mick yelled back that it sounded pretty good.
His father nodded and cut the engine. “Yep. That’s it exactly. Pretty good.” He gave Mick a wink. “But not perfect.” He pulled out a box wrench and went back to work.
Mick said, “See ya for dinner.”
As he was walking away he heard his father beginning again to whistle quietly the zip-a-dee-doo-dah song. His father had always been a quiet whistler, but there had been different phases. When Mick was little, his father had whistled happy songs like “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” and “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” but then when Mick’s parents had all but stopped talking his father started whistling sad-seeming songs, and the songs got even sadder after his mother left to take a temporary job in San Francisco and a few months later divorce papers showed up in the mail. Then he’d met Nora and the songs turned sunny again. He’d mentioned this once to his father, how the songs had changed from one phase to another, and his father had shaken his head. “Had no idea,” he said. Then he grinned at Mick. “Most of the time I don’t even know I’m whistling.”
When he got home, Mick checked the crockpot (pot roast, his personal fave), bolted down a twin pack of Twinkies, then grabbed a handful of popcorn from a big bag in the pantry. He carried the popcorn into the garage, where a lean, angular black dog leaped up from sleep and began bounding frantically around Mick in canine bliss. Mick began tossing kernels of popcorn, which the dog snapped frantically from the air. Mick laughed and said, “This is why we call you foolish, Foolish.” Foolish was a black Irish setter who had followed Mick home from the park one day and never left. “You name him, Nora,” Mick had said, and once she had, Mick knew his father would never turn the dog out.
Mick grabbed the leash and walked Foolish down the hill to Roosevelt Park, a vast swath of grass that completely lacked the one element that, in Mick’s opinion, you needed in order to call a park a park: trees. Mick unleashed Foolish, then tossed the Frisbee in a long sweeping arc. Foolish tore after it and, catching up, leaped high and snatched it out of the air. It was a beautiful thing to see. When he trotted back with the Frisbee in his mouth he seemed to be grinning.
