Figgs & Phantoms

by Ellen Raskin

  Florence made his stage debut at the age of two. His fame spread quickly, and by the time he was six his name was in lights. Due to his short stature, he was billed for the next ten years as “Baby Flo, the six-year-old tap dancing wonder.” The highlight of his career came when he starred opposite Judy Garland in the motion picture The Wizard of Oz. Florence Figg played a Munchkin.

  As the Figg family grew, the act was expanded to include his prodigious brothers. “The Fabulous Figgs” became an entire show of their own, and when vaudeville declined they traveled across the country in their bus (now parked in Newton [“Newt”] Newton’s used-car lot), performing in carnivals and local extravaganzas.

  The Figg family settled in Pineapple, thanks to three simultaneous flat tires. Florence went on to become a highly respected dealer in rare colorplate books.

  He has left the book business to his niece, Mona Newton, his house in Acorn Alley to his sister, Sister Figg Newton, and the bus to Newton Newton. Also surviving are his four brothers: Kadota, Romulus, Remus, and Truman the Human Pretzel.

  Florence Italy Figg will be sorely missed by friends and book collectors alike. He is mourned by all the people of Pineapple, who heartily applauded his dancing at Fourth of July pageants.

  Florence Figg has taken his last bow.

  IV

  1. MONA MOURNS

  THE FIGGS WEPT. The Newtons wept. They wept for things they had said and done; they wept for things unsaid, undone. They wept, each in his own way, privately and in one another’s arms. Kadota’s dogs howled every night for a week, then were silent. And the Figgs and the Newtons ran out of tears.

  “Florence is in Capri,” they agreed, and resumed their living, filling their loss with memories.

  Not Mona. Her tears were still unshed.

  Newt stared out of his office window at the spring-green bus, remembering Flo, worrying about Mona. Mona had gone to bed the day Florence died, and she was still there, jealously guarding her loneliness. She barely ate, and she hardly spoke. She rejected everyone as she felt Florence had rejected her. She even rejected her cat, Noodles, who finally ran away in wounded pride.

  Newt was startled out of his concern by a figure emerging from the bus’s shadow. He called out, but Fido ran off when he heard his name.

  Sissie shook her head dejectedly when Newt walked in the door. The furniture was in place; the playbills hung plumb. His wife had not given a dancing lesson since Florence’s death for fear of disturbing Mona. She had even put Band-Aids over her metal taps.

  Newt tiptoed up the stairs, followed by the even quieter Sissie. He had brought Mona flowers for a week until he had denuded Mrs. Davenport’s garden. He had brought candy, a weaving set, bookends. Now he carried a hatbox. Newt rapped lightly on the bedroom door and waited for the response he knew would not come. He looked forlornly at Sissie.

  “Your father’s home, Mona,” she announced cheerfully as she opened the door.

  Mona turned her face to the wall.

  “I brought you a present, princess,” Newt said, placing a box at the foot of the bed.

  “My, my, I wonder what it could be,” Sissie said, lifting the lid.

  Mona sat up slowly, her face pale and impassive. A cat peered out of the box and blinked at her. It was Noodles.

  “Gracie Jo found him, and....”

  Mona sank down into bed and buried her face in the pillow. Noodles sprang out of the box, ran out of the room and out of the friendless house.

  Unexpectedly, Mona spoke.

  “Was Phoebe at the funeral?” she asked in a flat voice.

  Sissie and Newt stared at each other. The funeral had taken place weeks ago, and they had been too enveloped in their own grief at the time to have noticed who was present.

  “There were so many people there, princess,” Newt said hesitantly. “Your Uncle Florence was a much-loved man.

  “Was Phoebe there?” Mona repeated.

  “We don’t know, honey,” Sissie replied. “It would have been hard to see Phoebe; she’s only four-feet four-inches tall, you know.”

  Mona pulled the blanket over her head.

  Newt tried to reach his daughter again. He spoke of the book business and the heap of unanswered mail. He told her about his latest trade, a black Cadillac for a sky-blue Studebaker. Mona didn’t even groan.

  Shoulders hunched, Newt left the room.

  “Listen to me, Mona,” Sissie said. “It’s time you came out of your funk and realized there are other people in this world with feelings. I want to see you downstairs at dinner in ten minutes, do you hear?” Sissie tore the tapes off her taps and danced noisily down the stairs, hoping a new approach would have some effect.

  It didn’t. Mona remained in bed, wrapped in grief and self-pity, for another week.

  It was neither gifts nor threats that roused Mona from her bed; it was Fido. Newt found him stalking the bus again and convinced him to speak to Mona.

  “Maybe if she talks to someone close to her own age,” he suggested, noticing that Fido looked almost as gloomy as his gloomy daughter.

  Fido no longer smiled; he no longer laughed. He didn’t even leer. Even Mona noticed his hangdog expression. She sat up in bed and spoke to him.

  “You’re a fink, Fido Figg,” she said. “I know they made you come to talk to me, but it won’t do any good, so you can just go back to your ball game.”

  “I quit the team,” Fido said, blowing his nose hard and loud. “I wanted to talk to you about Uncle Florence. About how he died.”

  “Uncle Florence didn’t die,” Mona replied angrily. What right did Fido have to be sad, she thought bitterly. She was her uncle’s favorite.

  “He’s dead,” Fido insisted. Unable to control a sob, he turned and ran down the stairs.

  “He’s not dead,” Mona shouted after him. “He’s in Capri. Uncle Florence is in Capri, and I’m going to find him.”

  “I’m going to find him,” Mona repeated, listening to her own words. She stepped out of bed.

  2. THREE KEYS

  THE SEARCH BEGAN. Mona was certain of one thing: Uncle Florence had sought Capri in books. She opened the door to the second bedroom, where Uncle Florence kept his books. The floor-to-ceiling shelves sagged with books, the long table was piled high with books: books to be mailed to customers, books to be unwrapped and catalogued.

  Which book or books?

  A book Uncle Florence had recently seen, Mona thought, or he wouldn’t have left so suddenly for Capri.

  Butterflies. Mona remembered the last book Florence had shown her at the auction. She quickly dismissed the possibility of finding Capri in a spot on a purple butterfly’s wing. After all, it was a colorplate book, and colorplate books were his specialty.

  Joseph Conrad. Two were still on Bargain’s top shelf; two were sitting, still wrapped, before her on the table. Uncle Florence had not read any Conrad lately, but he might have recalled some scene that described Capri. Mona sighed. She would have to read those four books, and one more. He had wanted her to read Nig ... , no, Children of the Sea.

  Resigned to a long, hard search, Mona unwrapped the auction purchases. Youth lay on top. She opened it and read the quotation Conrad had chosen for his title page:“... But the Dwarf answered: No; something human is dearer to me than the wealth of all the world.”—GRIMM’S TALES.

  Mona blurted a loud sob. The dammed-up tears flooded out.

  Mona studied each book on the table, scanned every title on the shelves. She had handled these books before, had helped catalogue them and price them. She couldn’t believe they would help her find Uncle Florence’s Capri.

  Early the next morning she accompanied Newt to the used-car lot, and together they ransacked the Very Private Office.

  “What am I looking for?” Newt asked when they were half done. Mona had not told anyone of her plan to join Uncle Florence.

  “Just anything unusual,” she replied, closing the closet door on the long black cloak and her memories of the Figg-Newton gi
ant.

  “How about this?” Newt held up two yellow sleeve garters. “I wonder how they ended up in the waste basket?”

  “I don’t know,” Mona said, but she did know. Uncle Florence no longer needed elastic bands to shorten his sleeves. He could be whoever and whatever he dreamed of being in Capri. He would never again be “almost a midget.”

  Except for the sleeve garters, nothing unusual was found in the shack. There was one more place to look.

  “Can I have the keys to the bus, Newt?” Mona asked in a strained voice. That search had to be hers alone.

  Reluctantly Newt handed her three keys on a ring.

  Mona stumbled down the aisle of the bus, trying to ignore the cot where she had last seen her lifeless uncle. She sat down in the cold chair and focused her attention on the desk.

  The top was bare. No paper was in the typewriter. One by one she emptied the drawers: business stationery, sales records, customer lists, and, lastly, a worn old book. It was the Caprification diary.

  Reverently, as Uncle Florence had done so many times, Mona opened the diary and read the shaky handwriting of Jonathan Figg:

  She turned the page and read the flowing handwriting of Noah Figg:

  She turned the page and read the flamboyant handwriting of Toby Figg:

  Her hands trembling, Mona turned the page and read the new entry, written in the neat, familiar hand of Uncle Florence:

  Mona read the words again and again, then tore her eyes from the page and gazed out of the window, trying to fight off the gnawing emptiness rising from the pit of her stomach. Newt was staring at her from his office; Fido was watching her from the entrance to the lot.

  “Which book, Uncle Florence?” she sobbed in anger and frustration. “Which tree? Which tree is the key?”

  Key. Mona grabbed the key ring and stared at the three keys. One key for the bus, one key for the Very Private Office. What was the third key for?

  Mona resisted the temptation to ask Newt about the third key. This had been Uncle Florence’s search; now it was her search. No one else was welcome in Capri.

  Holding the key in readiness, Mona inched her way up the aisle of the bus. She peered under each seat, between each seat. Nothing. She looked in the overhead luggage racks. Nothing. She repeated her search back down the aisle. She crawled under the desk. Nothing. There was only one place left to look.

  Mona took a deep breath and knelt down before the small cot. She lifted the madras spread.

  It was not a cot at all. A foam-rubber mattress lay on top of a trunk. A locked trunk.

  And the key fit.

  Flinging aside the mattress, she lifted the lid. Books! A trunkful of well-used books, none of which she had seen before.

  Mona tenderly removed the books one by one. Just handling them made her feel closer to Uncle Florence and his Capri.

  500 Self-Portraits. Page after page of people in centuries of costumes; face after face looking out in a strangely similar three-quarter pose, as if she were their mirror. One of these faces could have been taken by Uncle Florence. One of these faces could be Uncle Florence as he now looked in Capri.

  Claude Lorrain: Drawings. A large, thick book containing thousands of tiny reproductions of tree-strewn landscapes. One of them now existed in Capri.

  Wonderful Characters. The frontispiece showed a woman with the head of a pig. Mona quickly decided that this book had found its way into the trunk by accident.

  Songs of Innocence and Experience, by William Blake. Trianon edition. Mona flipped through the exquisitely colored pages; the words, hand-engraved in the plates, were difficult to read:Frowning frowning night,

  O’er the desart bright....

  “Mona .... Lunchtime.” Mona jumped on hearing Newt’s call. “Come, I’ll take you to Flabby’s for a hamburger.”

  Mona picked up a small pamphlet from the trunk and dashed up the aisle, meeting Newt at the bus door. She didn’t want her father treading on sacred ground.

  Mona ignored Flabby Benckendorf’s greeting and darted into a booth.

  “Hi, Flabby, same as usual, for two, and heavy on the French fries,” Newt called out as he followed his daughter to the rear of the store. He sat down opposite her and read aloud from the torn pamphlet that was hiding Mona’s face.

  “ ‘Yeoman of the Guard. Vocal Score.’ Where in heaven’s name did you find that? Your mother’s been looking all over the place for it.”

  Mona couldn’t believe, didn’t want to believe, that Sissie knew about the secret books.

  “It’s Gilbert and Sullivan,” Newt explained. “Your mother sang one of those songs at the funeral.” He paused, hoping he hadn’t said the wrong thing, but Mona was impatient to hear more.

  “She sang beautifully,” he continued, “slow and sad-like, but I think she must have got some of the words mixed up.”

  Mona wanted to hear the song.

  Newt waited until Flabby finished serving and returned to the counter; then, his mouth full of hamburger and his tie in the ketchup, he leaned over the table and sang softly and out of tune:“When a brother leaves his sister

  For another, sister weeps,

  Tears that trickle, ears that blister,

  ’Tis just pickles sister keeps.”

  Mona groaned.

  ★ “That Sister Newton,” the people of Pineapple said. “Imagine singing about pickles at a funeral. Her poor brother’s funeral, at that. And Newton (“Newt”) Newton’s too dumb to even be embarrassed. Figgs!”

  “Hey, Newt, I didn’t know you could sing. Ha, ha!” Bump Popham slapped Newt on the back with such good-natured force that a smaller man would have been dumped on Mona’s lap. “Mind if I join you?”

  Not waiting for an invitation, the coach eased into the booth next to Mona, who grudgingly moved closer to the wall. Newt was done with singing for a while, so the talk turned to Fido.

  “Nothing wrong with his arm,” Bump complained. “It’s his head that worries me. In his last game before quitting the team, he struck a kid out on three pitches. Then he throws another pitch and catches the home-plate umpire smack in the head. Maybe you know what’s the matter with him, huh, Mona?” The coach jabbed Mona with his elbow, knocking the pamphlet out of her hands. It landed open before her on the table.

  SONG.—PHOEBE.

  Were I thy bride,

  Then all the world beside

  Were not too wide

  to hold my wealth of love—

  Were I thy bride!

  Phoebe! If Phoebe really existed, how could she be in Capri? On the other hand, if Uncle Florence had invented her.... Mona closed the pamphlet angrily. “Here, Newt, give this to Mom.”

  “Hey, Mona, you’re looking pretty good,” Bump Popham said. “Looks like you lost some weight.”

  “We’d better be getting back,” Newt said, rising. This was not the time to discuss Mona’s new figure.

  Mona, back in the bus, dug deeper into the trunk. She opened each book cautiously now, stung by her discovery of Phoebe’s Song.

  Colorplate books: violets, hummingbirds, peach trees and plum trees, cottages and country furniture.

  Another songbook: Schubert for voice and piano.

  Literature: Chaucer, Dickens, Hawthorne, Dostoevski, Conrad....

  Mona stared in disbelief at the familiar book in her hand. Joseph Conrad. Typhoon. Dark green binding, decorated cloth with a slight tear at the top of the spine.

  Frantically she dug through the remainder of books in the trunk and found the other first edition.

  Typhoon. Lord Jim. She had thought these two books were still on old man Bargain’s top shelf, yet here they were in her hands. Uncle Florence could not reach the top shelf by himself, and they had not worn the giant disguise since the day she first saw these Conrads, since the day she took down the Spanish map....

  “Las Hazanas Fantasticas!” Mona exclaimed aloud. She furiously searched through the books. Las Hazañas Fantásticas was not in the trunk. It was not in the bus.<
br />
  Sissie was pounding the piano and the sanitation department was practicing a Highland fling when Mona hurtled into the book room.

  Again she scanned every title on the shelves. Again she rummaged through the books on the table. Las Hazañas Fantásticas was not in the house. Stopping her ears with her fingers, Mona tried to think. She was utterly confused, and Scottish garbage men didn’t help.

  There was only one more place to look. Mona grabbed Sex Histories of American College Men off a shelf and ran back to the used-car lot.

  Fido was staring at the green bus, as Mona had expected.

  “Here,” she said, handing him the book. “You can keep it.”

  Fido leafed through its pages with such lack of interest that Mona thought she had taken the wrong book in her haste.

  “Fido, will you do me a huge favor?” Mona asked sweetly. “Please.”

  3. CREEPING, CRAWLING

  THE GROTESQUE GIANT in tattered black cloak, blue jeans, and sneakers staggered down Hemlock Street. Mrs. Lumpholtz, thinking she had seen a ghost, ran shrieking into Harriet Kluttz, Hair Sets and Cuts. The giant, taller than ever, ducked into Bargain Books.

  Old man Bargain was perched on his high stool under the hanging light bulb, engrossed in a book. Mona kept her eyes glued to his shining bald spot as the giant lurched toward the back shelves.

  Fido remembered his instructions well. The giant inched along the stacks on the back wall as Mona matched the titles against her memory. The Romance of Sandwich Glass was still on the top shelf with the rest of the “retirement investment,” but the two Conrads were gone. Another book was in their place.