Bigger than a Bread Box (8 page)

Lew had fresh-squeezed tangerine juice and part of my mom’s scone, and he made a huge mess all over the carpet, but nobody seemed to care. While I helped him clean up the crumbs, Mom read the paper and Gran just settled back into the couch. It all felt very Sunday.

After a while, Gran winked at me and said to my mom, “I think maybe Rebecca would like to go off by herself for a bit. Poor kid’s been stuck with us old folks and babies all morning!”

“I not a baby,” said Lew, pouting.

Mom set down the paper. “I’m not so sure. She doesn’t know the area at all.”

“I’m twelve, Mom,” I said. “What do you think will happen to me if I leave for a measly hour? Anyway, Baltimore is way rougher than Atlanta!” I wasn’t so sure if that was actually true. The guy in the biker jacket, muttering to himself by the door, kind of gave me the creeps.

“Give her an hour, Annie,” said Gran firmly, laying a hand on my mom’s arm. “The village runs only two blocks in either direction. Not much trouble to get into, and she’ll be careful. Right, Rebecca? Look both ways?”

I nodded.

With a big, exasperated sigh, my mom said yes and
went back to her paper. So I walked out of the coffee shop. The door creaked behind me when I shut it.

On the street, I felt invisible but also tingly at the thought of being completely on my own in a place like this. Most of the buildings housed funky-looking bars that weren’t open yet, and most of the people who walked past me looked like they were in rock bands. Everyone seemed to be either moving too quickly or too slowly. A lot of people were walking dogs. The dogs all looked strangely related, shovel-headed, with thick, strong bodies, either black or brown.

I stopped to pet one of the dogs. The pretty lady holding his leash smiled at me. “His name is Petey. He likes you,” she said as the dog licked at my face. His warm breath and his whiskers tickled me, and I decided that if I ever got home, I might ask my dad for a dog.

After that, I walked slowly down the line of shops, staring in the windows. In the only bar open at eleven o’clock in the morning, a woman with purple hair was playing a banjo while the guy beside her, in overalls and an old-fashioned mustache, played an electric guitar. The people watching them were eating omelets and drinking cans of beer. I thought that was weird, but I liked the music. The lady had a soft, pretty voice that reminded me of campfires.

I walked past the window of a gift shop and was drawn in by some blue pottery. I wandered around in the shop for
about five minutes, but even with the amount of money in my pocket, it was too expensive for Mom’s gift. If I spent fifty dollars on a vase, Gran would wonder what was going on. Before leaving the store, I took a deep whiff of the warm candles-and-wood smell. It was a nice place, and I wished I had someone with me to show it to. They had a wall of goofy, dirty greeting cards by the door. I knew if Mary Kate were here, we’d read them to each other and laugh at the bad words and funny photos. I made a mental note to email Mary Kate later. For some reason, I was nervous to call her. I didn’t know what I’d say. There was too much to say.

I passed another bar and a sushi restaurant. They were both closed. Then I came to a tiny store that smelled spicy, like the Indian dress shop in Baltimore where Mary Kate’s big sister Colleen bought her clothes. It made me homesick, that smell, but happy too. I went in.

The store was crammed full of knickknacks and old clothes, junky jewelry, and bad, dusty art. I pawed around for a bit before a woman in a lacy vintage party dress came out from the back and asked if she could help me.

“I need a present,” I said, “for my mom.”

“Well, what does she like?” asked the woman, fiddling with a dangly silver earring.

My mom worked at the hospital and she made dinner and she went to the grocery store and she read to Lew, and that was about all I could think of. When she was
really tired at the end of the day, she watched reruns of
Law and Order
on TV and had a glass of wine. “She likes wine,” I said.

I knew that wasn’t really true. She didn’t like wine any more than she liked coffee, really. Coffee and wine were just the way she started and ended most of her days. But I didn’t know what else to say.

“Oh, I have just the thing,” said the woman, digging around on a shelf until she found a dusty glass vase kind of thing. She held it in a funny, careful way, lightly, because her fingernails were really long and pointy. They were also dark purple.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a decanter,” said the woman.

“What’s it for?” I asked.

“You pour your wine into it,” she said.

“Then what?” I asked.

“Then you pour it into your glass and drink it,” said the woman.

I stared at her. “You pour your wine from one bottle into another bottle, just so you can pour it into your glass?”

The woman nodded. She looked amused with me. I didn’t like amusing her, so I didn’t say anything else. I just turned and left. I didn’t think my mom liked wine like
that
.

After that, I passed a used bookstore with an orange cat in the window, but I was pretty sure my hour was about
up; besides, I didn’t have any clue what books Mom hadn’t already read or what she’d want. She read a lot, mostly books with women on the covers, but I couldn’t exactly walk in and say “I need a book with a woman on the cover” any more than I could say “I need a book for a mom.” I stared through the window at a guy behind the counter, fiddling with his glasses. He couldn’t really have any idea what Mom wanted, unless he was psychic or something.

I didn’t think that was very likely, but wishing he was psychic gave me a brilliant idea. I left the window of the bookstore right away and hurried back to Joe’s, where I plopped down next to Lew and drank the last slurp of his juice.

“Vroom zoom zoom!” said Lew, holding up a red race car.

“Zoom!” I said back.

He giggled.

“Mission accomplished?” asked Gran in a whisper as we walked home.

“I think so,” I said, nodding and walking faster.

At the house, I went to my room and shoved the chair back under the door. I was getting good at that trick. Then I turned to the bread box.

“I wish …,” I said. “I wish I had the perfect present for my mom.”

I wasn’t sure if this would work. It felt like cheating to have the box do the work of thinking up a gift, but when
I opened the door, there
was
something inside: a tiny little spoon, tarnished and bent. A spoon? Of course! A spoon!

I never would have thought to get her one, but the minute I saw the spoon, I knew she’d love it. I almost didn’t want to give it to her, knowing how happy she’d be when she saw it. Mom had collected spoons forever. She had a wooden miniature shelf thing on the wall in the living room at home, where her spoons hung. She’d been collecting them since she was a kid.

I reached into the box and wondered what made this spoon so special, so perfect. Why
this
spoon? I took it out and held it up to the light for inspection. It was cold, like it had been sitting outside somewhere. The bowl of the spoon was thin and fine, like paper almost. The silver had a yellowish sheen to it. It was a nice-enough old spoon, but it wasn’t nearly as fancy as some of the spoons she already had. Some of them were engraved with windmills or had vines creeping up them. When I was little, I’d played with Mom’s spoons. My favorite had been one that looked like a boat.

I turned the spoon over. On the back was a little scrawl of cursive. It said,
To Adda. From Harlan. With love
. Who were Harlan and Adda? The spoon looked pretty old to me.

I was a genius. The
bread box
was a genius! My mom would love this. She’d love that it was old, and she’d love
the inscription. Most of all she’d love it because I’d thought of it. Which of course I hadn’t, but whatever …

I went to find a piece of paper to wrap it in. I didn’t have a card, but there was nothing I wanted to say to her that you could put on a birthday card.

That night, Gran served steak and cake. “Steak and cake!” she shouted as she brought the cake, covered with candles, into the room. “That’s what makes a party. Am I wrong?”

I didn’t know about that, but the steak was perfect, hot off the grill in the backyard. The meat sizzled, juicy and tender. Beside a mound of homemade mashed potatoes. We never had steak at home. Dad said we couldn’t afford steaks worth eating.

I have to admit: It’s hard not to be happy when you’re eating a big steak.

And the cake! The cake was incredible. Towering and rich and dark and covered in tall, skinny candles. My mom looked happily at me through the candles as we sang, and I managed not to scowl back at her. The candles were shining and her eyes were shining and she clapped her hands like Lew does when he’s really excited.

I couldn’t help thinking that Mom was usually the person who lit the candles, and baked the cake too. I wasn’t even sure what we’d done for her last birthday, now that I thought about it. I watched her, and then I looked over at Gran and saw that Gran was just as happy as Mom.

We tore into that cake. It tasted as amazing as it looked. Three layers of moist cake with chunks of bittersweet chocolate and fudge icing. A ribbon of raspberry ran through the cake, and Lew managed to smear it all over his nose somehow. We all laughed.

“This is the best cake ever,” I said to Gran.

“That’s because nobody you know made it,” said Gran. “I leave important things like cake baking to the experts.”

Then it was time for presents.

Gran gave Mom a new red leather wallet to replace her ratty old one, which had ink marks all over it from being in her gigantic purse with a lot of leaky pens.

Lew gave Mom a card he’d made (which meant that Gran had made it and forced Lew to draw on it, but still …). Mom oohed and aahed and tickled him and gave him a kiss. He giggled a lot and said, “Welpum! Welpum!”

After Lew was done being cute, I gave Mom my tiny present, folded in newspaper. She held it lightly in one hand, like she was weighing it with her fingers. “I wonder what this could be?” she said with a smile.

I stared at my cake plate and used my fork to draw a flower in the frosting smeared there.

“So do I!” said Gran, sounding more excited than Mom. “Open the darn thing!”

Mom pulled the piece of tape off one end and peeked in. Then she stared up at me, without opening it the rest of the way. “Rebecca! Oh. Gosh. Really?”

“What
is
it?” asked Gran.

“Yah, wha is?” said Lew, peeking curiously over her arm.

Mom slid the spoon out into her palm and held it up for the others to see. “It’s a Gorham!” she said. “It’s a really rare spoon. A really special spoon. And look, there’s writing.” She read it aloud: “ ‘To Adda. From Harlan. With
love
.’ ” She looked at me and then back down at the spoon. “Wow,” she said. She looked stunned.

I was almost happy that she was so happy. She seemed so grateful. I was also a little surprised at just
how
happy she was. It didn’t take much with moms, I guess. She was
really
happy.

“It’s just a spoon,” I said with a shrug. “I remembered you like little spoons.”

“It’s not just a spoon,” said my mom. “It’s
the
spoon. The perfect spoon. The spoon I’ve always wanted. How did you know?” She turned to Gran. “Did you remember? Did you help her pick this out?”

Gran shook her head. “Nope. Not a bit. What do I know about spoons?”

Mom turned back to me and shook the spoon in the air, seeming almost a little angry. “How did you afford this?” she asked me. “This spoon is worth more than—Well, it’s worth a lot!”

I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t thought that part through. I shifted in my chair.

“Rebecca?” My mom was now staring at me in a
not-entirely-happy way and holding out the spoon. “Just how did you buy this?”

Then I remembered the junky little store in the village and that silly wine bottle lady. “A junk store!” I said quickly, with relief. “I bought it at a junk store. I didn’t know. I mean, I just thought it was an old spoon, like your other spoons. It hardly cost anything at all. Gran gave me the money.”

“Wow,” said my mom. “Really?” She smiled again, and the wrinkles disappeared from her forehead. “That’s a lucky find. I mean,
really
lucky. These are rare!”

I squirmed. I wasn’t a very good liar, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell them about the bread box.

“Well, then, good job, kiddo!” said Gran, standing up to clear the table. “You outdid me for sure!” She winked.

“Yay, Babecka!” said Lew.

My mom looked at me thoughtfully as she ran her thumb around the worn bowl of the spoon. “You know, I’ve been hunting thrift stores and yard sales all my life for one of these. For this very spoon. My grandma Molly collected spoons before me, and I inherited her collection. That’s how I got started. But this was the one she was hunting, and here it is, waiting for me, here all the while. Back in Atlanta, just a few blocks from home. It’s almost like … almost like a good omen. Almost like we were supposed to come home—to find it. Almost like we’re supposed to be here.”

“Um, yeah, I guess …,” I said. That didn’t sound
good to me at all, but I had to admit that it was interesting to hear Mom talk about her grandmother, the same way it had been interesting to hear Gran talk about my grandfather the day before. Something about being in Gran’s house was bringing these long-gone people to life. Molly? Was she the same Molly from the picture in the attic? Molly with the red dress and the sad eyes? I’d never heard a word about her before. I wished, not for the first time, that my parents talked more about their families. I liked old pictures. I liked stories. I liked other people’s relatives, and if I ever had a chance to meet them, I was pretty sure I’d like my relatives too. I only had Gran. Oh well.

Later, I was lying in bed in the dark when the door opened. Mom hadn’t tried to tuck me in since we’d gotten to Gran’s house. I hadn’t wanted her to, but I was almost glad to see her dark shape in the doorway, outlined with light. It looked … familiar. I wasn’t ready to talk to her about anything that was going on with me, but if she wanted to thank me for the present again, I guess I’d let her.