What Happened on Fox Street (6 page)

“M
O!”

Mrs. Petrone, power-walking past, paused to unhook the earbuds of her iPod. She was always testing new beauty products on herself, and today her hair was gelled up into a sort of picket fence. In the heat, her round face was shiny and pink as her track pants.

“Isn't it about time for a visit to my shop?” The way she eyed Mo's hair, Mo knew it wasn't really a question.

The next thing Mo knew, she was in Mrs. Petrone's kitchen, which smelled like strong coffee and coconut shampoo, not to mention was delectably air-conditioned. For as long as Mo could remember,
Mrs. Petrone had cut her hair. Her cheery kitchen had shelves full of cookbooks and a special album of cards and letters from the grateful families of people whose hair and makeup she'd styled at the House of Wills. “You made Grandma resemble an angel,” one letter said. “We hardly recognized Uncle George, and that is a total compliment,” read another.

“Business is slow,” she told Mo, lining up her bottles and combs and scissors. “People don't die in the summer if they can help it. Winter, that's a different story.”

When she washed your hair, Mrs. P was more or less a hypnotist. You never had to be nervous she'd dig into your scalp, or tug too hard, or do anything but massage firmly yet gently, so before you knew it, she'd thrown you into a sort of trance.

“
Bella, bella
,” crooned Mrs. Petrone. “You've got the best hair on the street—don't tell anyone I said so.”

She didn't ask Mo how she wanted her hair cut. She knew—not too short, not too long, just right. Mo's eyes drifted shut. The chair cupped her like a big, warm hand. Mrs. Petrone talked and talked, her voice a lullaby. Murmuring how when she was a young girl, her hair was so long she could sit on it, how every night her mother brushed it one hundred strokes, how those
were some of the happiest moments of her life.

“That was a lifetime ago, but I remember it like it happened yesterday,” she said. “But oh, don't ask me where I put my keys!”

She set down her scissors and pulled the lid off a big red tin on the counter. A plate of golden pizzelles, dusted with sugar, appeared on the table in front of Mo. The cookies were thin and crisp, fragrant with vanilla. All at once, Mo felt sick.

“Go on—I remember how you like them.”

But here Mrs. Petrone remembered all wrong. Mo could no more eat a pizzelle than a fried worm. Just the sight of one filled her ears with the terrible wrenching wail of sirens.

Sirens! They blared on Paradise all the time. Mo had hardly noticed them that summer afternoon. She'd been too happy, thinking of ice cream, imagining her mother's smile when she saw the rocks Mo had collected.

That was almost the worst part. It was too terrible to think that she'd heard those sirens and never guessed. Heard them and ignored them, blissful and ignorant as a baby. That afternoon, someone drew a cruel line down the center of the world and left Mo on the wrong side.

Now she gripped the arms of her chair.

“Dottie's the one who loves pizzelles,” she managed to say.

“Dottie looks more like your mother every day. That head of hair, wild and red as a little fox!”

Mo couldn't remember how she and Dottie had wound up at Mrs. Petrone's that afternoon—had their father brought them here, after the hospital called? Had Mrs. Petrone come and fetched them, squashing Dottie to her big, cushiony chest? Sometimes Mo thought that, if only he'd brought them to Da's instead, things would have turned out differently. Da would have warded It off, she'd never have allowed It to cross her threshold.

But Da's husband had died. Her daughter had gone away and not come back. Four of her toes had wound up in the hospital incinerator. Maybe even Da couldn't have protected them.

“You bring that little sister over, and between the two of us we'll hold her down and give her a nice cut.”

Dottie hadn't understood. She'd watched cartoons till her eyes fell out and eaten one pizzelle after another, scattering sugary golden crumbs everywhere. Mo had sat frozen on Mrs. Petrone's scratchy living-room couch, the pockets of her shorts heavy with stones.

Because Mo and her mother were going to paint those stones Mo had collected, turn them into bugs and flowers and tiny people. They were going to do it in the backyard, beneath the plum tree. Afterward they were going to sit at the wooden table in the kitchen, the one printed with the secret language of all their dinners together, and eat the ice cream her mother had gone to buy.

That day Mo had sat perfectly still on the Petrone couch, eyes on the door, certain Mr. Wren would burst in any minute to fetch them home. Maybe their mother would have a big Band-Aid on her head. Or her arm in a sling.
That's what I get for my daydreaming!
She'd laugh and they'd hug, but carefully, in case she was still sore.

Mo had sat on the couch and waited. Her foot fell asleep. Her nose itched, her empty belly ached, Dottie tipped over sideways, sound asleep and drooling on her shoulder. But Mo forced herself to stay still. Still as a stone herself. Because if she froze her own self, she could make the rest of the world stand still, too. If things couldn't go forward, nothing bad could happen.

When at last her father had come, Mo jumped up from the couch, but she'd forgotten about her rock-heavy pockets and lost her balance, tipping over
backward. It was exactly like some invisible bully, big and stupid as a furniture truck, had plowed into her.

She should have held still. Still as a stone!

Now Mrs. Petrone was pouring Mo a glass of milk.

“You're too pale. You need to eat! My mother always made her pizzelles with anise. You know anise, it's like licorice? I never could stomach it. Chin up, please. I remember…”

Their father had put his arms around her and Dottie and lifted them, one in each arm, as if they were made of feathers. How strong he was! Even then, never more than then. Back home he took them both into the big bed, where they slept burrowed against him.

“…though that I'd just as soon forget!” Mrs. Petrone tossed her head and gave her hearty laugh. What had she just said? Mo had lost track. “But what can you do? Some memories you cherish and some break your heart. We don't get to choose. Our memories choose us.”

With that she whisked the beauty cape from Mo's shoulders and handed her the mirror.

“Look what a beauty you are!” she exulted. “Your father's eyes, dark as midnight! Ah, I remember how your mother wept when I gave you your first haircut! You kept patting her arm, saying, ‘I don't hurt,
Mama!'” She crushed Mo, mirror and all, against her embarrassing chest. “Let me wrap some pizzelles for you to take home.”

Before she knew it, Mo found herself back out on the sidewalk, her clipped hair lifting in the breeze. The foil of the wrapped-up cookies glinted in the sunlight.

She'd never heard the story of her first haircut before.

Fox Street. Here was where all the memories lived. Up on Da's porch. In Mrs. Petrone's kitchen.

Most of all in the Wren house. They snuggled in every corner, rode the air itself. They hovered, just out of sight but near, watching over you with wise, almond-shaped eyes.

Not a single car or person was in sight in this stifling heat, yet Mo looked both ways before she crossed the street. Walking up her driveway, she heard Mrs. Steinbott's radio, but in place of the angry voices that usually raged twenty-four seven, music spilled out. Mo stopped, astonished, to listen. A woman's voice, smooth as cream, sang about long-lost love. A skinny, hopeful voice warbled along.

M
R
. W
REN CALLED IN SICK
the next day, too. He whistled as he dressed, not in his uniform but in a good blue shirt.

“Help On-the-Dot get dressed, could you?” he asked Mo. “Shoes, underwear, the whole deal. The Wrens are taking a trip downtown.”

“Cool!” Mo faked enthusiasm, even as her radar for surprises began to beep. “What for?”

He slipped a necktie under his collar. A necktie! Mr. Wren pulled the knot tight and stepped back to look in the mirror. He was dazzlingly handsome. Could she really look like him?

“I'm taking a meeting with the illustrious Buckmeister.”

Mo put her hands to her own throat.

“Can…can Mercedes come with us?”

“Porsche? She's family! But tell her to move it. I can't be late.”

Mo grabbed a pair of underwear, a top and shorts that actually matched, shoes and socks, and laid them out in a row on Dottie's bed. She threatened her little sister with a gruesome death if she didn't get dressed immediately, then raced across the street.

She found Da sitting at her kitchen table, where the pill bottles clustered like a miniature plastic forest. One by one Da sorted the capsules and tablets into a tray with boxes labeled for each day of the week.

“There's small choice in rotten apples, Mo Wren.” She dropped a big white pill into Thursday and waved the fruit flies off a bowl of bananas. “Old age isn't fun, but it does beat the alternative.”

The way fingers can't resist a scab, Mo's eyes drifted down to the floor. In the heat, Da had left off her big black shoes. Instead her feet wore a pair of toeless slippers.
Eeek!
Mo squashed her eyes shut just in time. She clapped her hand over them, for good measure.

“Are you all right, child?”

“It's just a little…a little hot in here.” Mo inched her fingers down.

“In more ways than one.” Da arched a brow. “Am I mistaken, or does Mercedes Jasmine seem especially moody to you?”

“Woo. You said it.”

“Just like her mother. Give me strength—that girl could sulk.” Da snapped Thursday closed. “It stems from excessive pride. Not that I'd know anything about that. Get yourself a cold drink, go on.”

“I'm all right. Where is she?”

“‘The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.' Give me strength—not
our
Mercey.”

“Umm, I'm kind of in a hurry, Da. May I be excused?”

“She's out back. If anyone can cheer her up, it's you, Mo Wren.”

Mo crossed the little yard, sending an iridescent pigeon rumpling up from the grass. Mercedes slouched on Da's metal glider, arms crossed, lower lip stuck out at least half a mile.

Mo sat beside her. Back and forth they went, Mercedes's foot thumping off the ground hard. Mo rummaged through her brain, trying to think what
it would take to get Mercedes to agree to come downtown. At last she settled on the truth.

“I really need your help. I've got something I can't do myself.”

There it was—two sticks rubbed together, sparking a light in Mercedes's eyes. It was the same spark as last summer, when the city closed down the pool's high dive, which Mercedes adored. She and Mo staged a sit-in demonstration, and even though the high dive never reopened, they got their photos in the paper, plus a personal letter of regret from the mayor. The same spark as two summers ago, when Leo Baggott blew off half his finger with a Fourth of July bottle rocket. Mercedes was the one who found it in the grass, and knew to put it in milk and give it to Mrs. Baggott, who fainted dead away. Later Mercedes and Mo held a bake sale, to help pay the medical expenses.

“What's the problem?”

“My dad got a second letter from Buckman.”

Mercedes halted the glider with such force, it nearly dislocated Mo's head.

“The plot thickens,” Mercedes said.

“Did Da get a letter?”

“No. I've been watching the mail. As far as I can tell, he's targeting your dad.”

“My dad's on the way down to meet with him. It's getting serious.” Mo swallowed. “I'm afraid he…I'm just afraid.”

“Let's go.”

Skipping the details, they told Da they were headed downtown with Mr. Wren. Da gave Mo an appreciative wink. Mercedes flung open the door, then stopped abruptly.

“What the…”

A bucket brimming with roses sat in the middle of the porch. Red roses, white roses, roses the pink of a baby girl's blanket. A trail of scattered petals, like Hansel and Gretel's bread crumbs, led down the front walk and out into the street.

The porch across the street stood empty. But the lace curtain at the front window twitched.

“Rose bubble bath. Rose roses. I guess…” Mo remembered Mrs. Steinbott leaning over her porch railing, yearning to hear that Mercedes had appreciated the bubble bath. “She really did,” Mo had promised. Not to say lied.

That lace curtain quivered. “I guess she thinks you like roses, Merce.”

“Once again proving she doesn't know the first thing about me! Roses make me sneeze.”

The scent of those roses was a fragrant river. Lift one to your nose and it flooded you, swept you right off your feet. Mo held one out. “Smell! It's heaven!”

But Mercedes's ridiculously sensitive nose accordioned up, her eyes shut down, her shoulders heaved, and out flew a deafening sneeze.

Beep beep!
Mr. Wren was backing the car down the driveway, the side mirror missing Mrs. Steinbott's house by approximately one inch. Dottie waved merrily from the backseat. Just before climbing in, Mo turned and waved to the lace curtain.