What Happened on Fox Street (7 page)

M
R
. W
REN DROVE ALONG
the shore of Lake Erie, beneath a sky heavy with clouds. Far out on the water, whitecaps rolled and broke. Any other time, it would have looked like rain, but this summer, rain was an impossible dream.

He took the long way round, careful not to pass the water-main project. They parked on a side street, in front of a shoe store with a
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS
sign in the window. Next door was a restaurant plastered with
FOR RENT
signs. Peering in, you could see tables still set with plates and silverware and plastic flowers in vases.

“Cool,” said Dottie, flattening her nose against the glass. “A ghost restaurant.”

A scrap of paper blew against Mo's legs.

In the lobby of the building, the elevator wore an
OUT OF ORDER
sign, so they climbed three flights of stairs.
UCKMAN AND BUCKMA
read the peeling sign on the door. As they entered, a young woman with a worried, bunched-up face looked up from her desk.

“Mr. Wren, right?”

Mr. Wren grinned his movie-star grin, and Mo could see he was flattered. “How'd you guess?”

“If you ask me,” Mercedes muttered, looking around, “they don't exactly get hordes of customers up here.”

“Mr. Buckman Senior is expecting you.” The secretary bit her bottom lip. “In fact, I better tell him right this minute that you're—”

The door behind her swung open, and a large belly barreled out. Behind it came a man with a broad red face, wearing a tie the yellow of caution tape.

“Mr. Wren! Bob Buckman!” He grabbed Mo's father's hand and pumped it up and down. “I apologize for my assistant keeping you waiting!”

The secretary reddened. “I'm sorry, I—”

“It's so hard to get good help these days.” Buckman
said this to Mr. Wren as if it were a great joke.

Mr. Wren frowned. “We just got here.”

At the “we,” Mr. Buckman noticed the girls for the first time. He swung back around to his secretary.

“Take good care of these children while we confer.” He gestured toward his inner office. “This way, please!”

Mr. Wren threw Mo an inquiring look, but when she gave him the thumbs-up, he and Mr. Buckman disappeared through the door, which shut behind them with an emphatic click.

The secretary pulled open a drawer and produced a bag of peppermint patties. “He's mean,” said Dottie, helping herself. “You're nice.”

Mercedes paced up and down the room—approximately seven paces each way. The carpet was worn, as if lots of people had paced here.

“If you don't mind my asking,” she said to the secretary, “are there really two of them?”

The woman smiled for the first time, showing dimples in both cheeks.

“They're clones, only Junior's even stingier. Whoops, did I say that?”

Mo looked out the window, whose sill was speckled with pigeon poop. The clouds still hung heavy and dark.

“And what's their business again?” Mercedes kept her voice cool, as if these were just idle questions to while away this boring time they had to wait

“Developers. They buy and sell. Or, as Mr. B Senior likes to say, they turn things around.” She chewed her lip. “Or upside down. Or inside out.”

Dottie helped herself to two more chocolates. “He's mean. You're nice.”

The secretary unwrapped a patty for herself. “No comment,” she said.

“Why do you think he's so interested in a little house on Fox Street?” Mercedes went on.

“It's not so little,” Mo couldn't help saying.

The secretary gnawed her bottom lip. Lipstick and chocolate flecked her teeth. “That's confidential information.”

The phone rang.

“Yes, Mr. Buckman,” said the secretary. “No, Mr. Buckman…today? This afternoon? But you specifically said the deadline was…Yes, yes, I mean no, no…”

Mercedes halted in front of the desk. Time was short. Mr. Wren might be out any minute. She raised her chin, doing her steeple imitation.

“It doesn't make sense that they're so eager to buy
the Wrens' house,” she said as soon as the secretary hung up. Her voice was low and calm. Here at last, the Mercedes Mo knew! Loyal. Courageous. Smarter than nine out of ten grown-ups. Mo's ancient love for her friend came rushing back. “I get the feeling something shady's going on. But you don't seem like a shady person to me.”

The secretary looked insulted, then pleased, then confused. “I just work here. Do you have any idea how hard jobs are to find?”

Mercedes clasped her hands to her chest. She nodded toward Mo and Dottie.

“They're motherless,” she said, and now that calm, cool voice trembled. “A tragedy. They're half orphans.”

“Shoot,” said the secretary, her face filling with pity. Hey, Mo wanted to burst out. No need to feel sorry for us! Hey! We're perfectly fine! Hold your tears! But Mercedes shot her a look that made her bite her tongue.

“The way it works, B and B acquire homes at market prices. They develop properties that generate much-needed tax income for municipalities.” The secretary gave Mo an apologetic look. “But don't worry, they only pursue eminent domain as a last resort.”

“Domain? What's that?” demanded Mercedes.

“Whoever has domain over something owns it.” She tried to straighten a pile of papers. “In certain extreme situations, the city can exercise ownership over private property.”

“What kind of situations?”

“If it's for the good of all.”

“That's bogus!” Mo jumped to her feet.

“Is that legal?” Mercedes demanded. “It doesn't sound legal to me.”

“Lots of bad stuff is legal!” The secretary swept her hand through the air, knocking over the papers she'd just straightened. “Shoot! The world is full of necessary e—”

“That's not true!” Mo said

“That's not true!” echoed Dottie, slipping a few more patties into her pocket.

The door behind the desk swung open, making the woman jump half out of her skin. Mr. Wren, his tie crooked, came out first, Buckman's big belly following close behind.

“I'll shoot you those figures pronto,” he said, clapping Mr. Wren on the shoulder. He beamed at the three girls. “I trust my gal here kept you out of trouble?”

“I
T'S COMPLICATED,”
Mr. Wren replied to every question Mo asked. He turned on the radio and hummed along, not saying anything more till he'd edged the car up the driveway, which was so narrow you could touch Mrs. Steinbott's house as you went by, if you were Dottie and dumb enough to want to. He shut off the car but didn't get out. He sat gripping the wheel for a long moment and at last turned around to face the backseat.

“You girls only need to know one thing. Whatever I do is for the good of us all.”

This sounded alarmingly familiar. “Like eminent domain?”

“What?” He gave Mo a distracted look, then climbed out of the car. “I need to think.”

But instead of thinking, he changed his clothes and went to softball practice. Mercedes had to go help Da, and Dottie threw herself down in front of a hospital-emergency show with the fan blasting directly on her.

That left Mo to do the thinking.

She tried, while sprinkling the plum tree with water she'd saved from Dottie's bath, but all her brain got was static. When she told Dottie she was going out for a little while, her sister didn't take her eyes from the TV screen.

“Give me strength. Ashley's in the hospital. She crashed her car and fell into a compost.”

“Do you mean coma, and are you allowed to watch those shows? Don't bother to answer and do not move. I'll be back in a few minutes—I have to check something.”

The air was a sponge begging to be wrung out, but the sidewalks and grass were dry as ever. It was late afternoon by now, the day paused between day and evening, Mo's favorite time. She loved to feel the world simmering down, breathing slower. As she slid down the hill into the Green Kingdom, a blue plastic bag fluttered gently, high in a tree. Mo tried, as always,
not to make a sound.

She walked up one side of the stream, jumped across, and patrolled the other as far as she could before the brush got too dense, all the while peering at the slick mud. Fox tracks were hard to distinguish from a dog's. Four ovals and a little pad, with sharp, pointy claws. Foxes moved like dancers, so their tracks didn't go as deep as most dogs', but still. Unless you were a real expert, it was hard to tell.

A group of dogs was a pack, of geese a gaggle, of lions a pride. A group of foxes was called an earth. That was perfect, if you asked Mo.

Just before the nettles and weeds grew too thick to penetrate, the stream curved and widened out a bit. Mo squatted to look more closely. The mud was a mishmash of indentations—fat and needle thin, deep or barely a thumbprint, crescents and rays, ovals and lines. A group of something had been here and left behind this record, like a secret language. Another secret language, alongside the one imprinted on the Wren kitchen table.

By this time in summer, kits would be big enough to come out of the den and play. Their mother would still catch all their food, but when she was sure the coast was clear, she'd lead them to water for a drink.

Mo's eyes searched the hillside, looking for a hole. Oh, they were so smart—so foxy! If a den was nearby, it was perfectly camouflaged. Though a fly landed on her knee and a mosquito buzzed in her ear, Mo didn't move. The mother would be watching. She'd be sizing Mo up, deciding whether to trust her or not.

You can.
Mo shut her eyes and concentrated, sending her thoughts out into the dusty air.
You can trust me. I promise.

She kept her eyes shut as long as she could, then slowly opened them.

Nothing. The hillside stared back at her, empty as far as she could see.

Motherless.
Mo remembered that dumb-butt secretary's sad-eyed look when Mercedes said that.
Half orphans.

A gulping sound shook out of her. Mo bit the inside of her cheeks but couldn't stop the tears. How dare that secretary pity them! The thought made Mo furious, which was why she was crying, no other reason. If that secretary felt so sorry for them, why didn't she do something to help? Not that Mo needed any help!

Wait. She swallowed salt, choking back her tears. She'd heard something in the distance. A quick barkish sound, but musical, singing a high-pitched
harmony with her crying. There—again! As if trying to tell her something important.

Lift your head. Look around.

And now, wiping her eyes, she saw—what did she see? And how could she have not seen it before?

Just beyond her nose, caught in the thicket, a red-gold tuft glinted in the sun's spotlight. It weighed no more than a snippet lying on Mrs. Petrone's kitchen floor after a haircut. Mo laid it in her palm. The strands of fur were like rough silk, shading from red to creamy white. They were lush and electric at the same time. They felt alive. Like one of Mrs. Steinbott's roses, only more beautiful. Mo closed her fingers around the fur.

The sign she'd been waiting for.

 

Back home, holding her breath, she set the fur on a bit of dark blue tissue, which she carefully folded into a square.

“Is that a present?” Dottie appeared out of nowhere, and Mo quickly slipped the dark blue square into her pocket. “Who's it for?”

“That's for me to know and you to never find out as long as you live.”

Dottie slid her thumb sideways into her mouth,
something she did only when she was really tired, or confused, or hurt. What a long day this had been!

“Ashley never got out of the compost. She's dead and gone.” Dottie chewed her thumb. “Why'd she do that?” She looked at Mo as if Mo would have an answer.

“She…she couldn't help it.”

“That's no excuse.” It was what Mo always told her, when Dottie claimed she couldn't help eating cookies before dinner, or running through the Baggotts' sprinkler with her good shoes on. “Right?”

“Hey, come on,” Mo answered. “Let's go get Daddy.”

At the corner, a passing bus belched a black cloud. Dottie slipped her hand into Mo's without being told. They crossed the street and walked past the Tip Top Club, which breathed its sweet smoky breath out onto the sidewalk, past Abdul's Market, where the sidewalk was peppered with scratched-off lottery tickets, past the drawn pink curtains of Madame Rosa's Fortunes Told Closed for Vacation, past the empty lot where they'd once found a dead dog, which still made Dottie hum loudly every time they passed it, all the way to the middle school, where practice was winding down. Mo and Dottie climbed up in the bleachers just as Mr. Wren stepped up to the plate. When Dottie shouted, he swept off his cap
and bowed to them, then gave their private signal—two fingers touching his brow, then pointing to right field. That meant this hit was just for them.

Whack.

“Yaaaay, Daddy!” screamed the Wild Child. “You the man!”

He hit another, and another, the ball arcing straight and true from the edge of his bat. His teammates high-fived him, and grinning, he clapped them on the back.

Look how happy he was. From head to toe. One big human happiness. A completely different person from the angry man in the water department uniform or the nervous man in the knotted tie.

Sitting in the bleachers, Mo imagined him happy all the time. Behind the bar of the Home Plate, serving cheesy omelets and juicy burgers and ice-cold beer, joking and talking with the customers. His own naturally happy self. The way he was meant to be. The way he'd been, before.

When happiness was his domain.

All day long Mo had struggled to think, and not succeeded, but now her thoughts tugged her down a dark road, leading her somewhere she didn't want to go. Her father would never be happy if things went
on the way they were. His dream would wither and wilt like all of Fox Street's unwatered gardens and grass, all the lovely green life gone out of them.

What'd I tell you about thinking too much? You're going to get yourself in big trouble one of these days.

She slid her hand into her pocket and closed her fingers around the square of dark blue paper.

To leave their house and move away would be to abandon everything, everything she knew and loved, everything that made her feel safe. Not just feel, that measly word.
Made
her safe. Made her Mo.

To go would mean leaving behind her fox. That, most of all. Just when Mo was getting closer, when what she'd longed and waited for so patiently had given her a true sign. How could Mo abandon her?

It was unthinkable, even for a thinker.

“Who's that present for?”

Mo hadn't realized she was clutching the packet of fur in her pocket, but Dottie had. Her X-ray vision penetrated Mo's shorts.

“Me? Huh? Me, right?”

“Mind your own business,” Mo told her, in a tone so harsh that, miracle of miracles, Dottie grew quiet.