One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street (18 page)

And Bunny, brave, formidable Bunny, forevermore Bunny,
her eyes smart and squinty in the morning sun, fearlessly kicked the orange cone out of her way as she streaked toward the orange tree, her purple hat falling to the ground behind her.

 

“Hey!” yelled Sid.

 

Then

Ali, admitting to herself that Bunny had just had an amazing idea, cried,

“You'll have to
debranch
the tree with all of us on it!”

And she followed Bunny.

 

As did Robert, for the oranges, and the possibility of real magic, and other reasons he wasn't quite sure about yet.

 

As did Leandra, for every single one of the babies—in a nest, inside a mother, in a swing or a stroller, or inside a FedEx box.

 

“Hey! Hey!” Sid continued yelling, and started after them.

 

But Bunny, so skilled at climbing this particular tree,
swiftly pulled herself up to a thick branch, straddled it with her legs, and continued pulling and straddling until she reached a high, thick limb on the south side. And Ali, and then Robert, settled on limbs below her. Then baby Bean was passed ever-so-carefully in its little lined dessert bowl from Leandra, up to Robert, up to Ali, up to Bunny, who placed it with its sibling into the nest as tiny as a walnut, on top of the Birdhouse of the Golden Arches.

Then they waited. Waited and hoped. Would the mother come? they wondered.

She did! She had been waiting, too. Twittering, the mother hummingbird darted to her babies and fed them with her long, pointed beak.

And Bunny, Ali, Robert, and Leandra watched, hardly breathing.

 

Then the unbelievable happened. Actually, several unbelievables:

 

Larry Tilley, his arms crossed at his chest, his blue eyes wide open, stood facing the children in the tree. He walked over to Sid and said something only he and Sid could hear. But everyone heard what Sid said, which was, “Are you kidding?”

Apparently Mr. Tilley wasn't, because Sid picked up his orange cone, hopped into his truck, started up the engine, and drove his lethal weaponry away.

 

There's a little break in the amazing chain of events here, because that's when time stopped. Well, that's what it felt like to the kids in the orange tree.

If joyful astonishment had a smell, it would smell like the perfumed air high up in that tree, among the most perfect oranges. The oranges hung like ornaments from old summers, great globes of hidden sweetness, touching the sky. So many things in the world seemed to be disappearing, so many sad, difficult things in life were impossible to stop, but, together they'd taken a stand (actually a
climb
) and stopped this one terrible thing from happening.

That's why they couldn't have been more astonished if they'd stopped time itself, which, of course, they hadn't, because at that moment, right on schedule, nobody noticed an airplane glinting across the ice-blue sky. Moments later, it would land, safely, without any help at all from Bunny.

And then
the amazing chain of events was set in motion again.

Robert loved being so high up in the tree. Looking down at the fence where the bougainvillea vine grew, he could see the five hidden alis he'd composed using seeds and twigs and petals, not counting the one Ali had already discovered.
What if she could see them, too?
he thought.
So what? Let her!
Hifflesnuffling wasn't a crime. And as long as he was way up there among the perfect oranges, Robert couldn't resist picking one of the oranges for a future magic show, when he'd have a more attentive audience. Then he picked one more, as a spare.

 

Just at that moment

Harry Houdini finished gnawing the stem of another perfect orange, at the very top of the tree, the biggest one of all, still hanging after who-knows-how-many years.

Purposefully targeted or not, that orange bounced off Robert's head and landed in his lap.

“OW!” cried Robert.

He looked up and recognized Harry. Robert knew it was Harry because if you spend an hour or so in close quarters with a rodent, you notice individual differences, compared to other rodents of your experience. Also, he realized why that particular rodent looked familiar. Harry had the accusing,
critical gaze of Mr. Pokrass, the principal of Robert's school. Robert stared back defiantly, feeling happy and brave and not at all like an emotional lagger.

 

And that's when

Robert got his own amazing idea, although it didn't seem so amazing at the time. He had three perfect oranges in his lap. There was one dog and one person looking at him, needing to be wowed; he could just tell. It was as good a now as any to stay in, and try to juggle. He threw one orange up, caught it and—

“Hey, look at me! I'm juggling!” Robert shouted. He added the gift of a perfect shark face to his performance, just to spice things up a bit.

 

And one second later

that's when

Robert was beamed by another orange. (He'd always say it was Harry.)

 

And that's when (because there can never be too much joyful astonishment on any one morning)

Edgar laughed.

And
just before he fell from the tree, landing with a thud and breaking his arm in two places, Robert looked up to see Ali smiling, just for him. He could hear Ruff barking, and Edgar laughing and laughing and laughing, and something that sounded like a chorus of tiny angels, all the way down.

ore tea?” Ms. Snoops asked Larry Tilley. “Another chicken salad sandwich? How about some more ambrosia?”

Larry patted his stomach. “Couldn't eat another thing.”

“Much healthier than hamburgers and fries!”

“Much healthier.”

“Oh, it was so good to go back in time with you! I remember your house so well. The trim was painted chartreuse and the door was yellow. I remember Marisa's boysenberry pie. I remember Cream. And the boys! Does Pug still like to draw?”

“He does,” answered Larry.

“And how is young Larry?” Ms. Snoops asked.

Larry paused. He put his hand on Ms. Snoops's cheek, as soft as crushed velvet. “He's fine, Ethel,” he said.

“Good. I am so glad you visited, Ralph. When you go home, make sure you kiss Marisa and the boys for me,” said Ms. Snoops.

It has been such a nice morning,
she thought, even though the details were fading quickly; only the feeling was left. But it was a peaceful feeling, the kind you get when a story is ending.

et's say you were a stranger, visiting Orange Street, after all of this happened.

Maybe you'd wonder why three girls and a boy (two of the girls with very short hair, the other with dreadlocks) met regularly under that orange tree in the empty lot. You'd notice that kids from nearby blocks would join them every now and then.

What were they all arguing about? Everything: their next letter to the president, for example; whose turn it was to weed and fertilize; how much admission to charge for the Great Rob-o's Incredible Magic Show; and to which worthy cause he should donate the money. And they weren't arguing,
as Rob-o said in an e-mail to his old friend Nick. They were having a loud
discourse
(
dis
´
kors, v. to talk)
. Occasionally one of the kids would sprawl under the tree, or perch on a big branch, to read, or write, or draw, or just to think about this or that...

(Nick e-mailed back, saying he missed his former street and former continent. And he missed Robert, of course.)

And you'd probably be curious to know why the owner of the empty lot wasn't developing it just yet, and what it was that the elderly woman was reading to the group. And what all that digging was about.

And then there'd be that business with names.

You wouldn't understand why Leandra called her baby sister “Bean.”

Or why, for that matter, Bunny was Bunny. And why she waved at an airplane from the orange tree, every now and then, if she had the time.

And maybe you'd wonder why Robert, long after his broken arm had healed, kept a frayed “Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery” in his pocket, which he pulled out to look at, every now and then. Or why Ali had drawn a tiny heart over the “I” of her name, when she'd signed that card. (She
often drew that heart, but sometimes she didn't. The point was, that time she did.)

And you'd probably be surprised to see Ali and her friends high-fiving one another, when she showed them the following note from her brother Edgar's preschool teacher:

 

Edgar is sometimes a tad too boisterous and doesn't stop talking to his table neighbors. But all in all, coming along nicely
.

 

You wouldn't understand any of this, unless, of course, someone explained it to you, or wrote about it in their memoirs or in a story.

The kids of Orange Street always remembered that morning when everything connected in the glowing moments of the Magic Now, like juice and pips and pith inside the skin of an orange. When all that really mattered was an old tree, a baby bird in its nest, and a little boy's laugh.