Is Anybody There? (4 page)

I dropped the sheet over Mom’s bike and left the door open so Nick could put the mower back when he finished.

That wasn’t till after six.

The pizza van came and I saw Nick take the big, white box and run up the stairs and back down with money for the delivery guy. I watched him put the mower away and heard the door hiss closed.

I took the meat loaf from the fridge. It seemed to have shrunk. Had we really eaten so much last night? Robbie says in his house things shrink overnight because his dad likes to sneak out of bed for a midnight snack. Mom doesn’t do that. I don’t either. I was still staring at the meat loaf when the phone rang.

“Is Anjelica still there?” Robbie whispered.

“She didn’t come.”

“Shoot! I thought you’d have great things to tell me.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said sarcastically.

“You sound in a great mood,” Robbie said. “You’re disappointed, that’s what. You’re bummed out because you
like
Anjelica Trotter and she didn’t come.”

“I am
not
!?

He was still saying “Anjelica Trotter, Anjelica Trotter” as I banged down the phone.

Grief! It was seven o’clock. Pretty soon
Mom would be home and I’d been OK, not nervous about being alone or anything. Big deal. Well, it was a big deal, considering the missing-key thing. Of course Nick had been outside just about the whole time. Did he and Mom arrange that? Had he told her about yesterday and how he’d had to search the house because I thought I heard something? And then, last night, had he told Mom, “Don’t worry, Caroline. I’ll be right there outside, where he can see me”?

Naw. Mom would know I’d hate that.

I waited to eat till she came home, and then we watched TV for a while and went to bed early. If Mom noticed that I took the blackthorn stick with me, she didn’t say.

Something wakened me in the night. I didn’t think it was a noise because I can sleep through anything. I even slept through one of our earthquakes once, or I would have if Dad hadn’t scooped me up. I remember everything tilting around us and the way he’d staggered and that I’d laughed.

I lay in bed wondering what could have wakened me now. It must have been a dream. I couldn’t remember dreaming, but my heart
was suddenly doing that loud, bumpy thing again.

I sat up and listened to the silence. Nothing. My room wasn’t that dark and I could see all its comfortable, familiar outlines. I knew I should get up and check around the house. But I didn’t want to. I should at least look in Mom’s room and make sure she was OK.

I reached under the bed for the stick and went barefoot from my room. Mom sleeps with her door slightly open. I pushed it wider and peered in. Her miniblinds were half raised, the window partway open. It’s fixed so the opening’s too small for anyone to take off the screen and crawl in. By the paleness of moonlight I could see her in the bed, the dark spread of her hair across the pillow.

I checked the front door. It was locked, with the chain safely in place. The back door to the garage was locked. The stick felt good, heavy and knobby in my hand, as I switched on lights and went room to room. Nobody there. Except for Mom and me, the house was empty.

I went back to bed and tried to remember what dream I’d had that had woken me up and
set me off like that. My feet were so cold that I had to get back out and grab some socks and put them on to warm up. Sometime later, still listening, I fell asleep.

   The patter of Mom’s shower woke me up in the morning, and by the time I’d yawned my way into the kitchen she had coffee made and was dressed for work.

“I meant to be up early,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I meant to fix your breakfast.”

Mom dropped a kiss on the top of my head.

“I heard you in the bathroom last night,” she said.

“Yeah. I was up,” I said uneasily. If I told her about that night prowling, she’d be sure to have me go next door today or, heaven forbid, arrange something with our famous paying tenant.

“Don’t forget we have a date tonight,” she said. “You’re meeting me after work.”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t forget.”

“What else are you doing, Marcus?”

“Robbie and I are going along Lake Avenue. It’s the Merchants’ Christmas Fair with all those free cookies and punch and stuff.”

“Good. And if you need anything, you can run next door.” For a minute I thought she
was
going to add “or up to Nick’s,” but our eyes met and she didn’t add anything.

After she left I sat thinking. It was funny that she’d heard me last night when I’d been so quiet. And that she’d thought she heard me in the bathroom when I hadn’t been in the bathroom at all. …

I called Henry’s Bike Shop just before I went out to wait for Robbie, but Mom’s darn Campies hadn’t come in yet. I was glad I wasn’t going to be hanging around the house all day alone worrying about them—and other things. Robbie’s a good person to be with if you don’t want to worry.

He and I walked along Lake Avenue in the sunshine, sampling the free this and the free that. Free popcorn in little paper pokes. Free candy canes. Free mulled cider from what the lady in the long frilly dress called the wassail bowl.

“You boys aren’t driving, are you?” the lady asked, acting as though she thought we might have been. When we told her no, she filled our glasses a second time. “I’m only
kidding,” she said. “There’s no alcohol in this.” She took a glass for herself. “It’s awfully hot for this dress.”

“You look very nice though,” Robbie said, super politely. Robbie is real smooth, and I could tell the lady was pleased.

“Why thank you, young man,” she said, filling our glasses a third time.

We moseyed on.

There was a Santa Claus in front of just about every shop, and there were carolers in ski caps and scarves and mittens, carrying lighted red candles in candlesticks.

“Hey look!” I gave Robbie a dig. “It’s the Pacific High School chorus! The ones who sang at school.”

We squirmed to the front of the small crowd and wiggled our fingers at the chorus in a friendly way. They were finishing the last jolly line of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the one that tells how Rudolph will go down in history, and were starting to straggle on to their next stop when Robbie tugged on the arm of one of the guys. He was wearing a red-and-white scarf, so long you could have used it to lasso mustangs. It was the singer
with the mustache, the one who’d been in the front line of the chorus.

“Remember us?” Robbie asked. “You sang in our cafetorium.”

“Yeah, sure.” The guy stared at us blankly. Then he grinned and pointed at me with his mittened fingers. “I remember
you.
You were sitting next to the girl with the blond hair. Kind of well built, for junior high. You know the one?”

“Anjelica Trotter,” Robbie said.

The guy curled his tongue up around his mustache, I guess to check if it was still there. “Anjelica Trotter! Well! By the way, I’m Fred Garcia.”

“Hi, Fred,” Robbie said.

I didn’t say anything.

“You don’t happen to have this Anjelica Trotter’s phone number?”

Fred was asking me and I was staring at him as if I didn’t understand English.

He bent toward us and candle wax splashed on the sidewalk. His forehead was beaded with sweat. “Confidentially,” he said, “I happened to notice that she had a very intriguing message printed on the spine of her notebook.”

“I love somebody,” Robbie said helpfully. Robbie is a very helpful person.

“Yeah. Pity she didn’t think to put her phone number on her notebook too. I’d have asked for it, but this big hunk of a teacher was standing right there. You don’t happen to know her number, offhand, yourselves?” he asked.

“Marcus?” Robbie turned to me, his eyes big and innocent. I felt like punching him out. I felt like punching them both out.

“I
don’t
happen to know it,” I said. “And if I
did
happen to know it I wouldn’t happen to give it to just anybody on the street who asked for it.”

“Quite right. Here, hold this.” Fred shoved the dripping candle into my hand and bit off one of his mittens. He used it to wipe his forehead, then fished in his pocket and came up with an old envelope. “It’s warm,” he said, and began searching his pocket again.

“You need a pencil?” Robbie offered him one shaped like a candy cane that we’d just been given free at Tilton Hardware. Robbie is so helpful he makes me want to throw up.

One of the carolers called, “Come on, Fred.”

“I’ll be right with you,” Fred said.

He wrote quickly and shoved the envelope at me. “My phone number,” he said. “Why don’t you ask Anjelica to give me a call?” He grabbed the candle and was gone, the end of his scarf trailing behind him. I stepped on it so fast, it came off and he had to turn back to scoop it up. He dropped his candle.

By this time half the chorus was yelling at him.

“Jerk!” I said, when he finally got everything together. I shoved the envelope with his phone number into one of the wire trash baskets that hung from the light pole. “That guy’s old enough to be Anjelica’s father.”

“
I
think Anjelica might like a mature guy like Fred,” Robbie said. “For her red-and-green ‘Color Me Christmas’ lipstick. And her new top.”

He was walking backward in front of me, talking and grinning. “How come you’re not giving her Fred’s phone number? That wasn’t very nice of you, throwing it away, Marcus. You know why you did it, don’t you?”

“You look really stupid walking backward,” I told him coldly. I was ready to start a giantsized
row, but just then a lady with a tray offered us little crackers with cheese on them. The food calmed us down, and by the time we’d eaten our way to the corner of Lake and Cordova, we were OK again.

The clock on the Bank of America building said four fifteen.

“I’m going to be late for Mom,” I told Robbie. “I still have to go home and pick up the two Wish Tree packages to bring to the mall. Let’s move.”

We walked fast along Cordova, finishing the crackers and cheese we’d stashed in our pockets.

“I like that Wish Tree thing you and your mom do,” Robbie said. “It’s neat. We should start that in my family.”

“I like it too.”

Robbie munched a handful of broken crackers. “Why didn’t we bum a couple of extra drinks? These things are dry.”

“We have lemonade at home,” I told him. “But you’ll have to be quick.”

As soon as we got to our house, I noticed that Nick’s car wasn’t there. Across the street Patchin drowsed in the afternoon sun, and
Miss Sarah was in her driveway next door, washing her car. It’s a big old black Buick, shaped like a humpback whale, and she’s all the time hosing it off and waxing it, although it doesn’t go many places. On Sundays its open trunk is filled with the flowers that she and Miss Coriander take to their church. Then it’s like some strange funeral car going slowly and solemnly down the street.

“Good afternoon, Miss Sarah,” Robbie said. “You’re looking very well.”

Miss Sarah sniffed. “Good afternoon, Robert. Marcus! You’d better hurry or you’ll be late for your mother.” She twisted the hose nozzle to “spray” so it would be less noisy. “The Rabbit Hutch in the mall has a special today. I saw it in the
Star News.
Turkey salad. I’d have thought they’d have turkey salad after Christmas, but it’s not good to eat it then. They take the leftover turkey off people’s plates and mince it up. But before Christmas should be safe.”

“Oh. Well. I’ll tell Mom and we can check it out. Thanks, Miss Sarah.” Yuk, I thought.

I can never understand how Miss Sarah knows everything that’s going on. She’s like
one of those Greek oracles. I wondered if she knew about Nick’s photograph of Mom. I wondered if she knew when it was taken. There was no way to ask. I took my key from my pocket, dusted the crumbs off it, and unlocked our door.

The living room was empty and tidy, the tree lights off. The jigsaw puzzle was a blob of color on the coffee table beside the two wrapped Wish Tree gifts. Everything just the way I’d left it. What other way would it be?

“You want lemonade too?” Robbie asked me, heading for the kitchen.

I followed. “Naw. I’m OK.”

In the kitchen the wall clock lurched as it came to the half hour. It always lurches on the half and the whole. The faucet dripped gently into the morning cereal dish I’d left in the sink. The loaf of bread I’d taken from the freezer sat, defrosting. I eased off my backpack and slid it on the table.

“What’s that smell?” Robbie had his head up, sniffing around. “Do you smell something?”

“What kind of something?” I sniffed and smelled it too.

“Peanut butter,” Robbie said triumphantly. He slopped the lemonade pitcher onto the table beside my backpack and got himself a glass. “I have a nose for peanut butter. You had peanut butter for breakfast, right? You had a lot, if the smell’s still in the air.”

I opened the cupboard and looked at the jar that sat where it always sat.

“I haven’t touched this in days,” I said.

“Well, somebody has,” Robbie said.

“What do you mean,
somebody
?” I couldn’t figure why the least little word made me nervous now. Ever since the key. My brain kept telling me that there was nothing to be nervous about, but the rest of me wasn’t getting the message. I tiptoed across to where the loaf was defrosting.

“Why are you walking like that?” Robbie asked.

“Sh!” One end of the loaf didn’t look quite right. Had the wax-paper wrapping been opened very carefully? Had bread been taken from the end and then had someone closed it again, folding the wrapping exactly the same way? There was a gap with just air where three or four slices of bread should have been. I
tried to remember if it had been tightly closed this morning. Sometimes Mom and I do take a few pieces for toast or something before we freeze a loaf. That could be it. Or maybe Nick had come in and borrowed some. Then he’d fixed himself a couple of peanut butter sandwiches. Want to bet he’d helped himself yesterday to that meat loaf too? No wonder things were shrinking. Go right ahead, make yourself at home, Nick, I thought bitterly.