In the Country of Queens Read online

  Shirley joined Phillie, swinging on the other good swing. She didn’t go nearly as high as he did and instead let the back-and-forth motion of the swing calm her. Shirley preferred her feet on the ground or as close to the ground as possible. When they’d had enough, they went to Shirley’s apartment for breakfast: French toast made just how they liked it—crisp not soggy, topped with Grandma’s apricot jam.

  “I’m glad you like it,” said Grandma, wiping her hands on her apron.

  Anna was already ironing a special tablecloth in preparation for Hal’s visit.

  Shirley then retrieved her bike and tennis racket from the bedroom. She checked her pocket for the ball. It was there.

  “And by the way, Phillie, there is no way on earth that I need you to let me beat you. I can wallop you with my eyes closed,” Shirley said as she maneuvered her bike outside to where Phillie had parked his.

  Phillie smiled.

  Shirley flew with him down the steep hill directly to Park Drive, her tennis racket secured under her right arm. There wasn’t much traffic on Sunday, so Shirley and Phillie rode in the street. They blew giant bubbles like champions—bubbles that popped in the air and not all over their faces.

  “When’s your last day of school?” asked Phillie, who went to a different public school in his neighborhood.

  “Same as yours,” Shirley answered. “I don’t go to school in Milwaukee, you know. New York City schools are all the same, unless you go to Our Lady Queen of Peace or to reform school, which you should, because you withheld information from your best friend—and you need to reform for a crime like that.”

  “Hardy har har,” said Phillie.

  Chapter 8

  SHIRLEY’S WINNING SMILE

  Shirley and Phillie left their bikes in the bike rack at the park near the water fountain.

  “Don’t put your mouth on it,” Phillie said, mimicking both his mother and Shirley’s.

  Shirley stuck her tongue out at Phillie. “Who asked you?” she said.

  He stuck his tongue out at her and said, “I asked me.”

  “What would happen if I did put my mouth on the water spout?” she asked.

  “Probably nothing,” said Phillie. “Our mothers just like to tell us what to do.”

  They both laughed and spit their gum in the trash bin on their way to the court.

  Then a fierce combination of tennis, squash, and handball ensued, Shirley and Phillie each smashing the high-bouncing blue ball against the cement wall with the wooden rackets they’d received under Phillie’s tree last Christmas. Shirley loved her racket. It had a picture of Pancho Gonzales, the world-famous tennis player, on the neck just beneath the racket part. Phillie’s racket once had Rod Laver on it, but because he had to share it with Steve and Scott, most of Rod’s face had worn off.

  Seventy minutes later, the last of three close, grueling games, made even more grueling by the unbearable heat and humidity, was nearly over. Phillie served his best serve. But Shirley was ready for it. She hauled her racket back, and then, with all her strength and determination, whacked the ball as low and as hard as she could, aiming for the inside of the singles line.

  “Lucky!” shouted Phillie, dripping with sweat, as Shirley’s ball grazed the cement of the court, sealing her win by the required two points.

  “Couldn’t have done it without Pancho,” she said, smiling, as she headed for the water fountain.

  “How about we trade rackets next time?” said Phillie.

  “In your dreams,” said Shirley.

  They pedaled home side by side. As they rode through the shade underneath the overpass to the highway, Phillie said, “Reminds me of the day we rode to LaGuardia on our bikes and went under the belly, wings, and tail of that parked jet, and my bike chain came off and you fixed it, and no one even told us to get lost.”

  “During Easter vacation,” said Shirley. “That was fun!”

  Then Phillie said, “Speaking of fun, I just got new goggles for Lake Winnipesaukee, so I can open my eyes underwater. They had three colors at Wainwright’s: red, green, and blue.”

  Before he had a chance to tell her, Shirley knew Phillie had picked green.

  “I wish you could come,” he added, looking her way. “We’d have the greatest time, but…”

  “But what?” she asked.

  “But your mother won’t let you go. I heard my parents talking about it last night. My mother said”—here Phillie assumed his mother’s voice—“‘Shirley would adore Lake Winnipesaukee!’” Then Phillie said, “I didn’t tell you before in the laundry room because I thought you might not feel like going to the park. You’d be too mad.”

  Shirley suddenly couldn’t breathe. Her first impulse was to pretend she hadn’t heard what Phillie said. To save face. Her face. To make light of the situation. She should have known all along that it was Anna who, every year, stood in Shirley’s way to Lake Winnipesaukee like a roadblock, and not Aunt Rosalie wanting to keep the trip for her family only.

  “I don’t really care, Phillie,” Shirley answered with a shaky laugh.

  It’s always Anna, Shirley thought. Being ridiculous, being overly cautious, insisting on her Safe-at-Home Doctrine. Anna, who thought that not telling me that my father was dead was protecting me. Protecting me from the truth that I had a right to know. One day I will find a way to get her to see how mistaken she’s been all these years, but right now it’s hard for me to speak up. Especially to a hurricane.

  So Shirley changed the subject.

  “Maybe we can give Hal the pink bubble-gum cigar,” she said, “so he won’t reek of real cigar.”

  “Are you kidding?” said Phillie. “No way!” And he broke the last bubble-gum cigar in half, handing Shirley her share while each of them continued riding.

  With his mouth full of bubble gum, Phillie told a joke. “Hey, Shirl,” he asked, “why do vampires need mouthwash?”

  Shirley didn’t answer.

  Phillie filled the pause. “Because they have bat breath.”

  “Ha ha,” Shirley said, not at all in the mood to laugh.

  “Am I your boyfriend, Shirley?” Phillie asked.

  “Phillie, you nut!” Shirley answered. “Cousins can’t be boyfriend and girlfriend except in the case of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor. Besides, I already have a boyfriend.”

  “Who is it?” asked Phillie.

  “A kid in my class named Maury,” said Shirley, trying to sound casual. “He saves me a seat on the bus every day.”

  “I have a girlfriend, too,” confessed Phillie. “Her name is Vivian. She brings green Lik-m-aid for me in her lunchbox. She’s not as pretty as you, and she doesn’t have eyes with yellow sunflowers in them like you. But she’s still pretty.”

  “You lie like a rug,” said Shirley.

  “Remember we used to pretend we were husband and wife going to Florida in that old car in the abandoned lot across from my house?” Phillie asked. “It was a blue Olds with two doors and a ton of rust.”

  “Yeah,” said Shirley. “You always hogged the steering wheel.”

  “Yeah,” said Phillie. “Bet that was a really nice car before the mice ate the seats.”

  “Blech,” said Shirley.

  After that they rode in silence until Phillie had to turn right onto 75th Avenue, which would take him home to the fun and disorganized Barrett house while Shirley continued straight ahead to the mini museum that was not at all fun and way too organized.

  “See ya, Shirl,” Phillie said.

  “See ya, Phil,” said Shirley.

  Chapter 9

  THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB SONG SUNG SADLY

  Later that Sunday afternoon, behind the big basket of meticulously folded laundry—towels on the bottom, pajamas next, followed by dresses, then underwear and socks, with shirts and shorts on top—Shirley walked through the clothesline area. She ducked under Maury’s Boy Scout uniform, his father’s mailman uniform along with six white shirts, Grandma’s friend Augusta’s big black
brassieres and matching slips, Mr. Bickerstaff’s hunting vests, and Luke’s gray Sparrowood Gardens overalls with the pockets turned out like elephants’ ears—and started home.

  Shirley was thinking how absurd it was that she knew everyone’s garments, outer and inner, when she suddenly heard Beryl Abbie singing a song from TV. The problem was that Shirley couldn’t see Beryl Abbie over the big basket of laundry she was carrying.

  “I went into the water, but I didn’t get wet. I didn’t get wet. I didn’t get wet. I went into the water, but I didn’t get wet. Yet.”

  “Watch out!” Shirley yelled. It wasn’t that she was concerned that she was headed for certain smash-up with Beryl Abbie. It was more that Shirley had seen something on the ground that she was afraid Beryl Abbie might step on if she didn’t alert her quickly and in a big way.

  What Shirley saw was a mouse: an unexpectedly still, solitary, perfect mouse.

  Shirley put the basket down in the grass to investigate, and then both girls bent over the little creature lying peacefully on his side. Shirley looked for signs of life in the mouse: a rise and fall in his tiny chest or a twitch of his whiskers. She thought for sure that he would run away. Shirley was a giant compared to the mouse. But there was no movement at all. It occurred to Shirley that he was the biggest dead thing she had ever been so close to.

  “Wake up, Mouse,” Shirley whispered, just in case her diagnosis was wrong. Gently, she prodded him with her finger, but the mouse fell back as he had lain before, fur still warm from being recently alive. He had tiny white teeth and tiny nails, pointy and sharp, and whiskers the color of bluish milk. His feet were longer than Shirley had imagined a mouse’s feet would be, and there was a pink, wormlike tail at the end of his body. The mouse’s fur was gray, with some brown mixed in. And he was soft.

  “He’s mine, Beryl Abbie,” Shirley said, thinking, So that’s what it looks like when you’re dead.

  “Oh,” Beryl Abbie answered, readily accepting the fact that the mouse now belonged to Shirley. “Can I touch him, please?”

  “Sure,” said Shirley.

  But then Beryl Abbie jumped back without touching him.

  “There is nothing to be afraid of,” Shirley said. “Being dead is not catching.”

  Then, using both hands, Shirley picked up the mouse as if he were one of Aunt Claire’s fragile Saturday-night dinner glasses and placed him on the mountain of folded laundry as if he were a king. Anna’s short shorts were on top and served as a pillow for the little body. Then Shirley and Beryl Abbie, who began singing a heartfelt hymn to the poor soul, walked toward Shirley’s apartment. The dirge was actually the theme song from The Mickey Mouse Club on Channel 5. Shirley knew it well and joined in.

  “M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E,” they dolefully sang.

  Then Beryl Abbie went her way and Shirley went hers.

  When Shirley got to her stoop, she lifted the mouse and put him in the shade under Grandma’s rambling rosebush.

  “Wait here. I’ll be right back,” she told him, brushing some dirt off Anna’s shorts before she opened the door to the apartment and went inside.

  A few minutes later Shirley returned with an empty checkbook box. There was a picture of a globe on the outside over the words See the World in black letters. Shirley had made the inside of the box into a bed with cotton balls as soft as clouds, quite appropriate, she imagined, for a creature about to float upward on his way to heaven. Actually, Shirley wasn’t sure what happened to dead things or how long it took to go wherever it was you went when you had no life left inside you to live. She was new to the whole dead thing.

  Maybe being dead isn’t so terrible, Shirley thought, studying the mouse. He looked as calm as if he were listening to music. The kind of soft, dandelion-puff music Madame Macaroni sometimes played on the old piano at ballet class when she wasn’t pounding on it to get everyone’s attention.

  “Are you okay, Mouse?” Shirley asked as she settled him into his checkbook-box bed.

  Shirley had written This Mouse Belongs to Shirley on the inside of the lid because it was painfully sad to think that he belonged to no one. Born: 3/6 (her father’s birthday) Died: 6/18.

  “I might not tell Phillie about you, Mouse, although he specializes in small animals. Case in point: Harry the piranha, who follows Phillie’s pencil by swimming back and forth when Phillie does his homework. That is, if Phillie does his homework.” Phillie was not what Shirley would call an especially studious student. “I might not even tell Grandma, who is still the smartest person I know.”

  And she certainly wasn’t going to tell Anna, who would insist that Shirley immediately flush the dead mouse down the toilet.

  “No one would understand about you, Mouse,” Shirley said. “By the way, I have decided to make you my father in honor of Father’s Day. To keep you near me. So I will always know where to find you, like other kids always know where to find their fathers. Isn’t it better to have a dead mouse for a father than no father at all?”

  When Shirley returned inside, Anna said, “Here’s the card for Hal, Shirley. Aren’t the sailboats and the palm trees dreamy? He’ll love the ‘Dear Big Daddy’ you’re going to write at the top, too.”

  Shirley did not want Hal for her father, but she wrote Dear Big Daddy anyway.

  I will never say those words out loud, she thought. Not ever. I have a father now. Even if he’s a make-believe one under Grandma’s rosebush.

  Chapter 10

  YCDBSOYA

  “Hiya, Skinny,” Hal said when Shirley let him into their apartment.

  Shirley wanted to tell Hal to shut up. But she couldn’t utter a single word. Not even hi. She took as deep a breath as she could and stepped aside to make way for Hal. Then to avoid what was coming next, Shirley kept her head down. But it came anyway after Hal removed the straw hat from his mostly hairless head and placed it on the ceramic head of Bambi sitting on top of the big console TV.

  Hal then puckered up his slimy lips (his rust-colored brush of a mustache included), placed them on Shirley’s cheek, and left them there for what seemed like an hour. Shirley recoiled in disgust, but the recoil was not so obvious that Anna could object and make Shirley go back for another one of Hal’s kisses. A do-over. Shirley wished Hal would kiss the air around her like Aunt Claire’s friend Huguette did.

  “Hal loves you so much,” Anna whispered in Shirley’s ear.

  But Shirley couldn’t stop saying gross to herself, over and over.

  “You grew some,” Hal said, lifting Shirley’s chin with his hand. Hal liked to play with words to impress Anna, who always thought he was so funny.

  Shirley did not appreciate Hal’s gruesome humor.

  When Hal leaned over to kiss Grandma hello, Grandma skillfully avoided him by rearranging the roses that didn’t need rearranging in the vase on the dinette table.

  Hal had presents for everyone. The pair of summer sandals for Shirley squeezed her pinkie toes as soon as she slid her feet in, but she didn’t dare complain to Hal for fear of incurring Anna’s wrath. To Grandma, he offered a pair of old-lady sandals, which Grandma, as usual, would not accept, whether or not she liked them.

  “Look!” Grandma said, pointing to her feet. “I just got these snazzy sandals last veek from Macy’s. Vhy do I need another pair?”

  Shirley knew Grandma didn’t like anything old-ladyish, not to mention anything Hal-ish either.

  “That man is a vorld-class lying snake in the grass,” Grandma had told Anna when Hal, whom Anna had known back when she was sixteen, had started showing up a few years ago at their apartment after he’d found Anna again in the phone book.

  Anna had informed Grandma that she had better stick to her knitting or there would be big trouble.

  After refusing the old-lady sandals, Grandma said nothing further to Hal, although Anna was waiting expectantly. Shirley knew that Hurricane Anna would not embarrass Grandma in front of Hal the way she would embarrass Shirley, because Grandma was a strong hurricane, too.r />
  “I vill put borscht on your head if you do,” Grandma had once warned.

  “That was so nice of you, Hal,” said Anna, modeling the new navy-blue pumps that looked to Shirley like a serious fashion statement along with Anna’s short shorts.

  Hal sat down on Grandma’s bed, which was dressed up as the couch. He bit off a minuscule piece of cigar and spit it into the air. “Ptwo.” Then quite methodically, he struck a match, lit the cigar, and rolled the bitten-off end around in his mouth, sending putrid puffs up to the ceiling and out the window like smoke signals.

  Shirley watched as he sauntered over to the special Hal cabinet in their one-person-at-a-time kitchen to pour “the usual” as if he had been living with Anna, Grandma, and Shirley for years and did this every night after work.

  Shirley narrowed her eyes. Don’t get any ideas, Hal, she told him silently. This is not your home. And it never will be. Shirley thought of Mouse and stood up taller.

  “Would you care for a drink, Annie?” Hal asked Anna.

  Anna didn’t usually care for a drink, but she cared for one today. “Thank you, love,” Anna said, receiving her drink and sipping it while she straightened the tie clip on Hal’s shirt with her other hand.

  Shirley and Grandma rolled their eyes at the same time.

  “I’m really hungry,” Shirley whispered to Grandma.

  So Grandma said, “Okay, my sunny child. In vone second.”

  Shirley sat next to Hal and across from Anna at the small dinette table. Shirley had put the cracked plate, the dullest knife, and the cloth napkin with the permanent spaghetti-sauce stain at Hal’s place like she did every Sunday when she set the table, hoping he wouldn’t come back. But he always did.

  Shirley suspected that Hal knew Grandma didn’t like him, even though Grandma was careful to say her favorite unflattering things about him under her breath in Russian, like “Go fly a kite,” which when translated literally meant “Go hang yourself up,” as if Hal were a shirt, a telephone receiver, or an oil painting from Mr. Joseph’s.