Uncle Wim moved farther away and kept his back to them. Kobi tried to shake off the feeling of the installation so she could have a cheerful visit with Grandmamma.
When Uncle Wim got off the phone, he said he needed to talk to them. His eyebrows were very still. An ice cube started to melt in Kobi’s stomach.
“Is Grandmamma okay?” Brook asked. “And Mr. Gyver? Are they in China?”
“They’re in Paris,” Uncle Wim said. “And they’re going to be staying there for now. Mom’s tiredness turned out to be more than jet lag. She may be ill with a condition called myeloma.”
Kobi didn’t want Grandmamma to have myeloma, whatever it was. Squelch, squelch, squelch! She wanted with all her heart for Grandmamma to be just a little tired and not sick.
“What’s myeloma?” Brook asked, looking pale.
“It means Mom’s bone marrow isn’t working right. They need to do some tests to be sure.”
“But Grandmamma will feel better soon, won’t she?” Kobi said.
“Her only symptom is that she’s tired,” Uncle Wim said. “And Leonard and the housekeeper are taking good care of her.”
Kobi needed to feel Grandmamma’s arms around her. She needed to go back to Paris. Ragout.
“We should take care of Grandmamma,” Brook said. “I’m good at taking care of people.”
Kobi nodded. “She needs us. We have to go.” Ragout.
Uncle Wim put his hands on their shoulders. “Mom said you’d want to come home. But mainly she just rests and has tests. Actually, she’s going into the hospital for a few days next week. So here is the best place for you girls.”
“I want to be with Grandmamma,” Kobi said, unable to hold back tears.
Ms. Hancock rushed over. “Don’t cry, pretty Beatrice!”
Somehow, Grandmamma’s illness felt like Ms. Hancock’s fault. “Leave us alone!” Kobi said.
“Let’s go inside, Mom,” Sally said, taking Ms. Hancock’s arm.
“Mom really does want you to stay here,” Uncle Wim said. “She convinced me of that. I told her we could all come. But she wants you to stay in school, and she wants me to take care of you.”
Kobi sighed. Grandmamma expected people to do what she wanted. She got cross if they didn’t.
“Grandmamma and Mr. Gyver will come for us at Christmas, won’t they?” Brook asked.
“Almost certainly.”
“Why almost?” Brook asked.
“Nothing in this life is absolute,” he said.
“Some things are,” Brook insisted. “They have to be.”
As they left the Hancocks’, Kobi turned her face so she didn’t see the chairs. Everybody was silent in the car.
At Uncle Wim’s, Kobi went upstairs and shut the bathroom door. She sat on the floor by the window and watched Uncle Wim rake leaves in the growing dusk. His pile kept blowing away. A squirrel ran across the roof and Uncle Wim’s rake scraped the sidewalk.
If her parents would come back everything would be fine. Her dad would do magic tricks. Her mother would make ramen noodles and create wonderful characters and make them do anything she wished. Grandmamma would be well. Sally Hancock would marry Uncle Wim. Ms. Hancock would remember them all.
Why was it taking her parents so very, very long?
She had been horribly mean to Ms. Hancock. Kobi’s heart ached to say she was sorry. But Ms. Hancock, all wrapped up in her illness, wouldn’t understand.
When the bells tolled seven o’clock, Kobi wondered if Sally and Ms. Hancock were listening. Carillon was a pretty word. She’d tried to use it for magic many times, and nothing had come of it, but this time she felt a tremor. Her sorrow at what she’d done filled her heart. Carillon.
After a while, Kobi stood up, knowing it was okay. That what she’d done was forgiven.
In the hallway, she heard a terrible sound, like the squeak of a dry marker on a whiteboard, coming from their room. She ran. Brook stood rigidly, in an almost dark room, staring at socks on her bed.
“What’s wrong?” Kobi cried. Squelch.
And then she saw.
Brook swayed back and forth. “Take it away,” she said. “Hurry. Before something terrible happens.”
Kobi picked up the sock that had no mate and put it behind her back. “Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of it.”
“Forever? Absolutely?” Brook asked.
Kobi nodded. “Forever. Absolutely.”
How would she make a sock go away forever absolutely? There were no magic words for such a thing. She had never wanted a word that made things disappear. She pulled on a sweater and went outside with the sock balled in her fist. The toolshed door was open.
Inside, she found a trowel. In a nook of the yard on the north side of the house where ferns grew, and where Brook couldn’t see from the windows, she began to dig.
“What are you doing?” Uncle Wim asked, coming up behind her and making her jump.
“Burying Brook’s sock. Socks have to be in pairs. This one is a stray.”
Uncle Wim leaned against his rake, watching.
“And I have to be able to tell Brook that the sock is gone for good,” Kobi said. “That I am absolutely sure. So if you come across the mate, don’t let her see it.”
Kobi put the sock in the hole, scooped the dirt back in, and stomped the mound flat.
Uncle Wim took off his cap, smoothed his hair, and put his cap on again. “You’re a good sister, Kobi Alighieri.”
Uncle Wim was a good uncle, too.
SEVENTEEN
ON Monday, Kobi put the autographed postcard in a padded envelope that Uncle Wim gave her to keep the card from getting crumpled.
At school, Anna slid the card out of the envelope, saw Ms. Hancock’s signature, and grabbed Kobi’s hands and danced her around. “Thank you, thank you!” she said. She plucked Dante out of Lily’s arms and put him in Kobi’s.
Lily looked startled and then very angry.
“Oh” was all Kobi could say. She’d been longing to hold him for so long. She remembered exactly how he felt nestled against her. She gathered him to her face and kissed him between the ears. “Hello, sweet Dante,” she whispered. If only the Great Alighieri were here.
She petted Dante, seeing the memory in his eyes. All this time. And such a long way from San Francisco to Des Moines. She wished he could tell her how he’d gotten here. It was a sign. A sign that everything was going to be all right. Soon Grandmamma would be well and her parents would return.
The little square envelope was on her chair when she came in from afternoon recess the next day. She almost sat on it. A similar envelope was on Norman’s chair.
Kobi opened the invitation. She didn’t really want to go to Lily’s party. She just wanted Anna and Lily to be nice to Norman.
Anna and Lily watched her from across the room. Kobi waggled the invitation and nodded. She mouthed, Thank you.
Anna looked pleased, but Lily’s smile was icy.
Kobi pointed out the invitation to Norman before he could sit on it.
“What is it?” he said.
Kobi shrugged. “Open it.”
He nudged it with his knee. “I think it’s on the wrong chair. I don’t get things like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like invitations to parties,” he said very quietly. “It’s a mistake.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said. “Look. I have one, too.”
His eyes filled with embarrassment and she knew she’d made a mistake. “It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to go. Say you’re busy that day. Or say you’ll go and then get sick at the last minute.”
He picked up the invitation and put it in his desk. Then he sat down and opened his spiral notebook and began to write as if she weren’t there. His shirt was striped brown and tan and he blended into the desks and chairs.
A few days later, Anna came into the classroom without her pretty blond ponytail.
“What happened?” somebody cried.
Ann
a flipped her ponytail that wasn’t there anymore. “I donated it. Ten inches whacked off. Mom took a picture of me holding it. It looked like an animal. And then I decided to get a Parisian cut like Kobi’s.”
Kobi thought Anna looked very pretty in the new style. But later, she heard Lily say to Anna, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were going to do that! Why didn’t you?”
“I was afraid I’d chicken out.”
“Well, you look . . . strange,” Lily said. “I can’t believe you’re copying her.”
Anna’s face turned red.
Kobi acted like she hadn’t heard.
Anna and Lily behaved decently to Norman now, though Kobi didn’t trust Lily. At lunch each day, Norman sat on one side of Kobi, and Anna sat on the other. Lily sat on the other side of Anna. Lily looked as if she had a stomachache that was somehow Kobi and Norman’s fault.
Anna invited Kobi home with her one afternoon after school. Kobi was nervous, especially since Lily was also invited. But Anna’s mother was nice, and Anna’s house reminded Kobi of Grandmamma’s apartment. The rooms were big and full of comfortable, beautiful furniture. There were fresh flowers on a table in the foyer and pictures of people in silver frames.
Anna took Kobi and Lily to her room. Lily made herself at home. Kobi wasn’t sure where to sit or what to do.
“So when will your parents be back from their trip?” Lily asked from her perch on one of the twin beds.
“Soon, I hope.”
“Has a National Geographic crew been traveling with them?” Lily asked.
“Sometimes,” she said after a pause.
She saw the look Lily threw Anna. Anna flopped down in a beanbag chair and kicked off her shoes. She motioned for Kobi to sit in the other one.
Kobi kicked off her shoes, too. The thick carpet between her toes felt nice.
Anna pushed her feet over until her toes, polished a sparkly purple, touched Kobi’s. “We should paint your toenails,” she said.
“Okay,” Kobi said.
Anna leapt up to get the polish.
From her seat in the beanbag chair, Kobi thought Lily looked kind of silly sitting on the bed like an angry egg. And she had gum on her shoe. Kobi saw Anna looking at it when she came out of the bathroom with the nail polish.
“What?” Lily said, scowling.
Anna pointed.
Lily took off her shoe and looked. Her face turned red. She jerked a tissue from the box on the nightstand and began to scrub. The gum stretched into dirty pink strings and the tissue shredded and made balls.
Kobi watched, and Anna looked up now and then from her polishing. Lily glared at them as if the gum were their fault.
“Some afternoon I’ll have to come home with you,” Anna said.
Kobi caught her breath. She would die if Anna met Ms. Hancock. And she certainly didn’t want Anna to see Uncle Wim’s house.
“We’ll have to do that sometime,” she said.
“Soon,” Anna said. “Your life sounds so interesting.”
Lily went into the bathroom and flushed the mess of shredded tissues and gum down the toilet. When she came out, she sat on the edge of the bed. “What does your mother write?” she asked Kobi.
“Books.”
“What kind of books?”
“For grown-ups.”
“Why don’t you bring them to school?”
Kobi didn’t want to take any more of her mother’s books to school. “I’d rather not.”
“Why?”
“I only have a few, and they’re special.”
“But if I went to the library or a bookstore, I’d find them?”
“I guess,” Kobi said.
“Or I could find them online, right?”
“I think.”
One of Lily’s eyebrows went up with a don’t-you-know? expression.
“I’m pretty sure.” Kobi felt her armpits get sweaty. She wished Lily would stop shooting questions at her. “She hasn’t written any new ones for a while.”
“What’s her name?”
“Beatrice Alighieri.”
“There,” Anna said, standing up. “Don’t your toes look nice.”
“How was it?” Sally asked when she’d picked Kobi up and they were in the car on the way to the Hancocks’. “Did you have fun?”
Kobi took her first deep breath in a long time. She leaned her head back. “It was okay.”
Instead of taking the usual way home, Sally got on the freeway and headed toward downtown.
“Where are we going?” Kobi asked.
“To look at a vacant lot. Eileen is with Mom and Brook.”
Eileen was Sally’s cousin visiting from Philadelphia for a few days. She was going home tomorrow.
“Why are we looking at a vacant lot?” Kobi asked.
“For a garden.” Sally sounded so happy. “But Wim said not to get our hopes up.”
“Why do you love gardening so much?” Kobi asked.
“When Wim and I started dating, there was a garden in San Francisco. Downtown, kind of like this.” Sally waved at the warehouses and shabby apartment buildings in the neighborhood they were driving through. Downtown felt deserted in the evening. “Wim spent a lot of time at that garden. It seemed very foreign to me at first, but then I got hooked. I realized the aesthetics of the garden, and the complexity if you do it the right way. The balance. I think the garden became for me what Mom’s installations are to her. So Wim and I have had this dream . . .”
They bumped over railroad tracks, and Kobi saw Uncle Wim’s car parked under a streetlight. He stood waiting for them. Sally was out of the car almost before it stopped moving. Kobi hurried to catch up.
There was a FOR SALE sign that looked new. A small brick building with broken and boarded-up windows hunkered on one corner of the block. The rest was parts of foundations that stuck up two or three feet high in the weeds and the trash that was blowing around. Kobi turned up the collar of her jacket. Two homeless people pushed a cart along the sidewalk across the street. Uncle Wim and Sally were crazy. Who would want a garden here?
“What do you think?” Uncle Wim asked, grinning.
“The location is perfect,” Sally said.
Uncle Wim nodded.
Perfect?
He put one arm around Sally and one arm around Kobi as they walked toward their cars. “It’s getting cold. We can talk at home. But I wanted you to see it.”
Sally hurried toward her car and Kobi followed.
When they were in the car, Kobi said, “I don’t get it.”
Sally laughed. “Sometimes I don’t, either, Kobi. It probably seems crazy, but this is exactly the opportunity Wim and I have been waiting for. You don’t know how many plots of land we’ve looked at the last couple of years. But none of them were as well located as this. Did you see the building down the hill with the lit-up parking lot and people kind of standing around? That’s a homeless shelter,” she said, without waiting for an answer.
Uncle Wim pulled away in his car, but Sally waited. “Use your imagination,” she said, gesturing at the ratty, weedy patch of ground. “Imagine a block-long row of bean teepees. Imagine an apple tree on every corner. Imagine paths with flowers and a place in the middle for little kids to play. Imagine chickens roaming through it all, eating bugs and laying eggs. Imagine people whose lives are hard, working as volunteer gardeners in the sun and breeze. Imagine the fresh, organic produce: potatoes, squash, tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas—all kinds of those things. We could grow tons of produce in a season. Imagine how glad people who can’t afford healthy food would be to have it for free. Imagine how beautiful it would be!”
Sally finally stopped talking and looked at Kobi and laughed. Kobi had never seen her so happy. She wondered if Sally had always been that way before Ms. Hancock got sick. No wonder Uncle Wim had wanted to marry her for a long time.
Uncle Wim said he was less unfortunate, but Sally hadn’t been able to keep her web design business going. Maybe because the b
lock was so shabby, it didn’t cost much. Temporarily, Kobi said silently. Maybe it was even free to someone who would use it for something so good.
The next morning at school, Anna and Lily were waiting for her by Dante’s cage. Neither of them was petting him, which was unusual. Lily had what Grandmamma called the-cat-who-ate-the-canary expression.
“Kobi, is your mother really a writer?” Anna asked.
“Yes.”
Lily raised an eyebrow and held up the postcard of Ms. Hancock’s melting castle with its autograph on the back. “Did Patricia Hancock really sign this?”
Kobi nodded.
“Are your parents really on a long, exciting sailing trip?”
Kobi wished they would stop throwing questions at her, but she nodded.
“Is National Geographic really making a program about them?” Lily demanded.
“No.” Kobi had to get free of the lie. It was making her crazy. “I told Norman that because he said the sailing trip sounded so interesting they should make a special, and I said they were. It was a lie that popped out. I wish it hadn’t.”
“So you do lie,” Lily said quietly, as if she’d never actually met a liar before—just heard about them, like sinkholes or Bigfoot.
“Haven’t you ever lied?” Kobi said.
Anna’s head swiveled to Lily.
“We’re not talking about me,” Lily said. She put her hands on her hips. “Isn’t it true you’re also lying about your mother being a writer?”
Ms. Carlson was watching them. Kobi saw her coming toward them. And suddenly, Norman was at her side. “What are you guys talking about?”
Lily’s voice was loud. “Kobi said her mother has written books that are in libraries and bookstores.”
Kobi felt everybody watching them.
“So?” Norman said.
“It’s not true. And she admitted National Geographic isn’t doing a special on her parents. I’ll bet she’s not even French. I’ll bet she’s from Idaho. Or Peoria.”
“Her mother is a writer,” Norman said.
“No, she isn’t!” Lily was practically yelling. “I went to the bookstore and the library last night. They checked for me. No Beatrice Alighieri who writes books.”
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