Andi Unexpected (10 page)

When Amelie had said
that Bergita organizes a two-day neighborhood garage sale every year, I’d pictured a few houses selling mismatched furniture and moth-eaten clothes. Boy, was I wrong. It was so much more than that. She got the entire street involved. Up and down Dunlap Avenue, neighbors scrounged their garages and basements for anything that might earn a buck. The neighborhood mothers rushed around their yards and yelled to their children to “get that dented flatware from under the buffet,” “go find that broken synthesizer,” and “bring out every empty hanger.” Everyone hoped to make a profit off the out-of-towners who visited Killdeer during the university’s annual Endless Summer Festival.

Bergita went so far as to ask the town council to close off our street to thru traffic on Friday and Saturday,
and she even borrowed all of the church’s eight-foot rectangular folding tables.

It was now early morning on the first day of the neighborhood garage sale. As Colin and I flipped over another table and set it upright on its legs in the middle of the street, I said, “Bergita doesn’t mess around, does she?”

Colin grinned as he spread a yellow vinyl tablecloth over it and secured the table cover with masking tape. “No way. You should have seen her the year Killdeer celebrated its bicentennial—she was the committee chairperson. There was a parade that weekend, and the elephant rides were the best.”

“Elephant rides?”

“Oh yeah,” Colin said seriously. “Bergita borrowed the elephant from a friend who’s an animal trainer.”

Bethany rolled a wheeled cooler over to us and stopped. She put a hand on her hip. “Bergita wants the pop on this table.” I noticed she wouldn’t look me in the eye.

Colin looked from one sister to the other. Finally, he said, “Thanks. We can do it.”

Bethany nodded and walked away.

“Is something wrong between you and Bethany?” He paused. “I mean, more than normal?”

I ignored his question. “Let’s just unload this pop.”

Colin opened the cooler without another word.

“Back up!” Bergita yelled. Colin’s grandmother stood in the middle of the street, waving her hands in the air as she directed a food truck between two parked cars. The truck’s hazard lights flashed on and
off like angry red eyes, and the truck made a soft
beep-beep
sound as it backed into the space.

“Cut to the right!” she cried.

The back wheels shifted.

“Okay, keep coming back … a little more! A little more! There! Stop!”

The truck jerked to a stop. Bergita seemed pleased with the truck’s placement and walked over to join Colin and me at the pop table. She wiped her hands on her shorts. “I do have to say that every year this event gets better and better. It’s hard to top myself, but somehow I manage.”

“Do many people from the festival come over to the sale?”

“It varies from year to year, but we’ll have a good crowd. Don’t you worry.” She gestured up and down the street at the piles of sale items peppering the green lawns of Dunlap Avenue. “I know the type of people who go to the festival. They’re mostly older alumni who like to go antique shopping on the weekends and love a good deal.”

I watched as Amelie and Bethany helped a neighbor across the street set up a table filled with her kids’ unwanted McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys. “Do you have any antiques to sell?” I asked Bergita. “I mean, what makes something an antique, anyway?”

Colin said, “An antique is a collectible that’s considered to have some type of value because of rarity, craftsmanship, the materials used, or a connection to a significant event. Typically, things that hold their value are considered ‘antiques’ if they’re a hundred
years old or more. Newer stuff is considered to be just collectibles.”

Bergita shook her head at her grandson. “No more
Antiques Roadshow
for you.”

At three o’clock I was moving a metal rack filled with old clothing from one end of our driveway to the other and back again. My mind drifted. What if Miss Addy didn’t really know Andora? Where else could I look for her? I couldn’t wait any longer to go to Miss Addy’s house.

I found Colin emptying a box filled with old jelly jars. Each jar had a cartoon on the front of it: the Flintstones, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and more. “I’m organizing them by parent company. See? Hanna-Barbera, Looney Tunes, and Disney.”

“Are you ready to go?” I interrupted.

He looked at his watch. “It’s only three o’clock.”

I gave him a stern look. “Remember what Mr. Finnigan said. We shouldn’t show up late.”

He set aside his jelly jars. “Just let me grab the casebook.”

“Hurry up,” I said.

Colin ran inside his house. While I waited with my bike on the sidewalk, I noticed some of the neighbors were taking advantage of the current lull in potential customers. They headed inside their air-conditioned homes to escape the late afternoon heat and cool down. I kept looking back at Colin’s front door.
What was taking him so long?

When he finally reappeared, his hair stood on end and his T-shirt was askew. He had a notebook in his hand, but it wasn’t the casebook.

“Where’s the casebook?” I asked.

“I can’t find it. Did you take it home last night?”

“No. I remember leaving it with you.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But I can’t find it anywhere. I hope it didn’t get mixed in with the garage sale stuff.”

“Where did you have it last?” I asked.

“I remember putting it in the middle of my desk this morning.” Colin stuck the new green notebook and his football pencil in my backpack. He picked up his bike off the lawn and climbed onto the seat.

I glanced at my watch. It was now 3:45 p.m. “We’ll look for it when we get back. We’d better leave now or we’ll be late getting to Miss Addy’s.”

Miss Addy’s house was a few blocks away
from our neighborhood, but on the other side of the university. Colin led the way. We pedaled hard across campus, where many people busily finished preparing for the weekend’s Endless Summer Festival, which would start later tonight. Tables and booths covered the campus grounds. In front of College Church, audio-visual geeks plugged in speakers and microphones on a newly constructed stage for Friday evening’s symphonic band concert.

I hoped I could escape day two of the garage sale for an hour or so tomorrow—just to see what the festival is all about and maybe spread the word about the great sale happening on Dunlap Avenue.

Miss Addy’s white house was shaped like a barn, and her yard was one huge flowerbed. The flower names
came to me: impatiens, sweet woodruff, and bachelor’s buttons. I bit my lip. My mother taught me those names. In the summer she would ask me to name the flowers we saw during walks around our old neighborhood. I was always eager to play this game with her. Bethany was not.

Behind me, I heard Colin trip on the bottom porch step at Miss Addy’s. I screeched as I suddenly felt him grab a hold of my T-shirt and pull me down with him. Together we tumbled onto the steps in a heap.

“Ouch!” I yelped and pushed Colin off of me.

At that moment the front door opened and Miss Addy loomed above us. All four feet nine inches of her.

“I see you’ve found my home,” she said, her voice hard like steel.

After Colin and I brushed the dirt off our clothes, Miss Addy led us into the house and invited us to sit on a tiny couch in the living room, which looked like it had been copied from some scene in a historical movie.

Mr. Finnigan was already sitting in an armchair that matched the couch.

Miss Addy disappeared into the kitchen to get the tea tray. I offered to help her, but Miss Addy shook her head with pursed lips. I suspected she thought I would trip and drop the tray.

After she’d left the room, Mr. Finnigan’s head wagged back and forth between Colin and me. He chewed his lower lip. “What happened?”

I rubbed the side of my leg where Colin had bruised it with his elbow during the fall. “Colin tripped on the steps and fell on me.”

Colin flushed red with embarrassment. “It was an accident.”

“Did she see you?” Mr. Finnigan whispered.

“Yes,” I whispered back.

“She won’t—”

Just then, Miss Addy toddled back into the living room. “I won’t what, Patrick?”

Mr. Finnigan grabbed a blueberry teacake from the tray and stuffed it into his mouth. Colin did the same.

Miss Addy looked at me and raised her thin eyebrows. I accepted the cup and saucer of tea from her and tried to smile the sweetest smile I could muster. I had mastered this kind of smile for those times when my parents hosted Science Department meetings at our house. Usually, our parents asked Bethany and me to make a brief appearance before our parents sent us to our rooms for the night.

One year I sat at the top of the stairs, listening to my parents laugh and talk with professors and students about the latest biological theories and research, and wishing I could join them. On those nights I longed to be more like Bethany who had no interest in science and could quietly go to her room and draw the night away. I, on the other hand, wanted to hear everything they had to say. I admit I didn’t understand most of it. But I consoled myself by thinking that if I studied hard, then someday I might receive an invitation to one of my parents’ gatherings when I was older. Now that would never happen.

“Andi, are you all right?” Miss Addy croaked.

My teacup almost slipped through my fingers. I
jerked it upright and spilled a hot drop of tea on my hand. “I’m fine.”

Miss Addy handed Colin and Mr. Finnigan a teacup each, and then she sat down in an ancient-looking chair with wooden arms. She got right to the point.

“Patrick tells me you want to know what happened to Andora Boggs who was born in December of 1929. I have to say first off that I don’t know anyone named Andora Boggs except for you.”

I opened my mouth to speak. Mr. Finnigan shot me a glance, and I remembered his warning to let Miss Addy tell her story in her own way. I snapped my mouth shut.

Miss Addy took a sip of her tea and placed the teacup and saucer next to a ceramic figurine of a child playing the violin on the lace-covered coffee table.

“When you’ve lived as long as I have, the things that happened yesterday aren’t as real to you as the things that happened decades ago.” She threw us a beady look as if daring us to question her mental capabilities. “Many people today look back on the Great Depression with something like a fondness. And maybe I do too, a little. Maybe we feel that way because we made it through. But living through that time was difficult; and for some, it was unbearable.”

Colin made notes in the green notebook. I hoped we’d be able to find the real casebook when we returned home.

“The last time I heard the name
Andora
was in 1933, and I was twelve years old.” Miss Addy paused and slowly hoisted herself out of her chair, a tapestry-covered
recliner with pieces of delicate lace pinned to the arms. She shuffled across the room to a roll top desk, lifted the wooden top, and removed something wrapped in brown paper. After she sat down again, she didn’t say anything for a few excruciating seconds. I sat on my hands to stop myself from leaping out of my chair and grabbing the item from her hands.

On her lap she unwrapped a thin, red leather book with soft gray pages. She ran her wrinkled hands over it and said, “This is something very precious to me, which I will trust you to keep safe, Andi. Patrick tells me you are a bright and responsible young lady.” She gave me a keen look, assessing my brightness and responsibility.

I felt my face burn, wondering what Miss Addy would think if she knew I’d just imagined ripping the book out of her frail arms. I hoped my most charming smile, which showed off my full set of braces, looked trustworthy.

“I’m encouraged that young people like you and Colin,” she nodded toward him, “are interested in history. And your interest encouraged me to share this with you. I’m in my nineties, and it’s high time I stopped holding on to things and started sharing them. I won’t be around forever. Before long, my grandniece will pitch all of my belongings into boxes and send them off to the dump.”

Mr. Finnigan shook his head. “Miss Addy, you have years ahead of you.”

Miss Addy gave him a small smile. “That may be true, Patrick, but I no longer have decades ahead of
me—nor do I want them. When it’s time to go home to my great reward, I’ll be ready.”

She tapped the cover of the book with her fingernail. “When I was young, I fancied myself a writer. I wanted more than anything to write a great novel like
Gone with the Wind
or
The Grapes of Wrath
—both were bestsellers when I was a young woman. Lord knows nothing came of my desire. But at the advice of my English teacher, I kept a journal. I wrote in it quite a bit on the days that I couldn’t go to school because I had to stay home and help Mother with the younger children. I thought of my journal as my schoolwork for the day. I desperately loved school.”

She paused a moment and patted the journal on her lap. Her eyes had a dreamy look to them, and her voice was high and wistful when she continued, “In this journal I recorded my day-to-day activities. I hadn’t read it in years. But after you-all stopped me after church on Sunday, I decided to dig it out and look for the answer as to why the name
Andora
startled me so much. And I found it.”

My breath caught
as Miss Addy carefully turned the delicate pages of the journal and nodded with satisfaction when she found the page she sought. In a sure, clear voice she read:

My head spun as Miss Addy closed her journal. My heart ached with the pain of a lost friend—a friend I thought of almost all the time now, even though I never knew her. Andora was dead.

I shook my head and tried to sort out my thoughts. The proof was right there in Miss Addy’s journal. Great-Grandma Emily lost her first child. But then, why haven’t we found any mention of Andora’s death in the archives? Maybe the obituary is still there, but we didn’t search long enough for it. After I found Andora’s birth announcement, we stopped looking through the newspapers. We shouldn’t have stopped.

I glanced at Mr. Finnigan and waited for permission to speak. He nodded. I swallowed. “Miss Addy, are you saying Andora died?” I needed to hear it spoken out loud, to know for certain.

“I’m afraid that’s what happened, child.”

Another person I’d grown to love, gone.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Then I bit my lip and opened my eyes again. “So searching for her was a big waste of time?”

I could feel Colin’s eyes on me. But I couldn’t look back at him, not yet. My voice broke as I said, “Why didn’t the newspaper mention her death?”

Miss Addy shook her head.

Mr. Finnigan jumped into the conversation. “Maybe the family asked the newspaper to leave it out. Everyone in town would have known already.”

“It could still be there,” Colin piped up, echoing my thoughts. “We just need to keep looking. Do you know when Andora died, Miss Addy?”

She opened her journal again and flipped through the pages. “Well, based on this entry, it sounds like it happened around the winter of 1930.”

“She died as a baby.” My fingers balled into a tight fist. I tried to relax my hand, and my knuckles cracked.

Miss Addy leaned toward me and took my hand in hers. “I’m starting to remember Mr. and Mrs. Boggs a little better. Andi, let me assure you that your Great-Grandfather Patterson was crushed when Andora died. Truly crushed. But his heartache was nothing compared to that of Emily’s. Mothers and daughters always have a special bond between them, and Emily lost her chance to have that bond with her baby girl.”

I thought of my own mother. I pictured her chipped fingernails caked with mud from digging in the compost pile in our backyard, and her secret wink meant just for me. I pushed the memory of Mom away before she could overcome me, and I concentrated on Andora. Andora. Baby Andora. Dead.

“Your great-grandmother fell into a state of denial. Everyone copes with death in a different way,” Miss Addy said, not knowing that she was repeating what I’d overheard Bergita saying to Bethany earlier that week. “Some people said she forgot the child ever existed or that the baby ever lived with her.” Miss Addy’s black eyes, now soft with compassion, made her look so different than that stern, tiny woman I’d met at church.

“But,” I protested with a soft breath. “But …”

“Patterson didn’t want to cause Emily more pain, so he asked the town not to speak of Andora anymore. To act as if the child had never lived.”

Miss Addy’s voice was gentle and she lightly squeezed my hand, but her words still felt like a slap.

“The whole town loved Emily, so they all agreed. That’s why in my journal I wrote that Ma asked me not
to mention it to the Boggs. I imagine that’s why Patterson hid Andora’s things in that little cubby in your attic, Andi. He couldn’t bear to part with them, but he didn’t want Emily to be reminded of the daughter she never had an opportunity to know.”

“And that explains why I couldn’t find an obituary,” Mr. Finnigan added.

I looked at him. “You’ve been searching for it?”

He nodded, looking sheepish. “I’ve searched ever since you kids asked me about her. I thought I could surprise you with a lead, but I came up with nothing.”

“That solves the case then.” Colin sounded disappointed.

I’d finished my mission. I now knew who Andora was and what had happened to her. Yet I felt no satisfaction. Andora’s mystery had helped me to regain a sense of control over my life—something I hadn’t felt since my parents died. I didn’t want to let it go. I didn’t want to let Andora go.

“But after Emily died, why didn’t Patterson say anything?” I asked. “Why didn’t he tell my grandpa that he’d had a sister?”

“Maybe he did but your grandfather decided not to tell anyone,” Colin said.

“Why wouldn’t he tell anyone after his parents were gone?” I snapped.

Colin winced, but I was too distraught to feel sorry about lashing out at him.

“Maybe it was too painful for him too,” Miss Addy said.

I stared down at my sneakers, thinking hard and
trying harder not to cry. What did my great-grandfather fight about with Michael Pike III? What did it have to do with money? And why couldn’t Patterson mention the name
Andora
to Michael Pike III? Something didn’t fit.

“Andora’s death doesn’t solve everything,” I said. “Miss Addy, do you know what Michael Pike III was referring to when he said, ‘You have your fancy education and your money’?”

She shook her head. “No. Men argued over money quite a lot in those days. I suppose they still do. But during the Depression, everyone was so hard up that money literally equaled life or death to a family.”

“I think it means Michael Pike III paid Patterson for something, and I think it was for something more than working in the factory,” Colin interjected.

After some thought, Mr. Finnigan spoke up. “It almost sounds like Michael Pike paid for Patterson’s education at the university.”

“But why would he do that? Miss Addy, would you please read that line again—the one about the money?”

Quietly, she found the page. “Here it is. Mr. Pike said, ‘What do you mean? The deal’s done. You have your fancy education and your money. It’s been three years.’”

I thought hard. Colin and Mr. Finnigan were right. It sounded like Michael Pike III had paid Patterson for something.

Miss Addy sighed heavily, as if the memory of the Great Depression clung to her still.

Mr. Finnigan glanced at the mantel clock above the fireplace. “It’s time for us to go, kids.”

But I had more questions. Where was Andora buried? Did Miss Addy remember the funeral? I opened my mouth to ask, and then I saw how drawn and tired she looked. I held my tongue.

“Can we come again?” Colin asked.

She gave Colin a worn smile. “Of course you can. Thank you for coming to see me today. But I think I need to rest now.” She squeezed my hand with surprising strength. And then she wrapped the brown paper around her journal once again and placed it in my lap. “Honey, take this. It might help you find what you’re looking for.” She made a face. “Although, you’ll have to forgive me for the fragmented thoughts. They’re just childhood ramblings.”

She released my hand at last, and I held the worn journal to my chest. “Thank you, Miss Addy.” I managed a smile.

Mr. Finnigan watched me slip the journal into my backpack next to the substitute casebook. He chewed his lower lip but didn’t say anything. Maybe he was worried that I wouldn’t take good care of it.

I now wished that I’d brought the little blue trunk, the china doll, and the wooden blocks along. Miss Addy would probably like to see them. Next time I visited her, I’d bring them.

Miss Addy insisted on walking us to the door to say good-bye. I hugged my backpack to my chest.

“I’ll take good care of it, I promise,” I told her.

She patted my shoulder with her wrinkled hand. Her other hand had a firm grip on her cane.

Mr. Finnigan said good-bye to us. Colin and I picked up our bikes from the plush green lawn, and Mr. Finnigan walked down the street to his car parked on the opposite side of Miss Addy’s house. Colin jumped on his bike, but I just stood beside mine and watched Mr. Finnigan for a moment.

“Come on,” Colin said. “We have to get back to the garage sale now or Bergita will have a fit.”

“Right.” I straddled my bike and watched Mr. Finnigan drive away.

Colin waited in the middle of the street. “Are you coming?” he asked.

I put my feet on the bike pedals. “We have to make a stop first.”