The Moffats (2 page)

Joey, who was twelve, and Sylvie, who was fifteen, remembered plenty about the old house, of course. Why, they could even remember Papa, who died when Rufus was just a tiny baby, just before they moved to this yellow house.

Jane swung around on her head and toes and looked at the houses across the street from this upside-down position. She made the doll Hildegarde do the same. Peter Frost's house looked spruce and neat and the lawn well-tended. Right-side-up the house was shabby and needed paint.

That Peter Frost! If he didn't stop tormenting her and the others...

A drawling voice at the gate interrupted her thoughts and brought her to her feet.

"Is this where the Moffats live?"

"Yes..." said Jane.

"Then this is the house I want."

Jane recognized the newcomer. It was Mr. Baxter, the odd-jobs man in the town of Cranbury. He was a tall, thin-whiskered man who wore square spectacles over his pale blue eyes. He worked here and there cutting hedges and lawns, doing a little carpentering or a little shingling. Jane eyed him curiously as he entered the yard. She didn't think the roof was leaking again. Mending the tin roof was the only thing that Mama ever hired the odd-jobs man for. Why else should she with four able-bodied children of all ages?

Jane's curiosity turned to amazement when she saw Mr. Baxter march across the lawn, right up to the front of the yellow house. He took hammer and nails from his overall pocket and a sign from under his arm. He placed some nails in his mouth, held the sign against the house with his left hand, and started to nail it on with his right.

The sign read:

FOR SALE
INQUIRE OF DR. WITTY
101 ELM STREET

Jane was horror-struck. The yellow house for sale! She clutched Hildegarde tightly to her, whispering fiercely, "It's not. It's not." Oh, why didn't Mama come out and set things right? But supposing even Mama couldn't do any thing about this! For Sale! The horrible sign! Mean, mean Mr. Baxter with his hammering! What right did he have?

A bicycle bell rang six times and Jane felt relieved as she recognized Joey's signal. She was glad that at least she would have company. Joe whizzed through the gate with Rufus on his handlebars. He put his brake on suddenly and his tires churned up the dirt. He balanced with one foot on the ground and the other on the pedal. He looked in astonishment at the sight of Mr. Baxter nailing a sign on his house. "Hey, what's the matter?" his eyes asked Jane's.

Rufus, sensing adventure, leaped off the handlebars, went up to Mr. Baxter, and said right out, "What's the matter, Mister?"

Rufus couldn't read yet and thought all signs on houses meant measles or scarlet fever.

Sylvie's head appeared in the window upstairs.

"What's all that hammering?" she said. "I can't remember my lines with that noise ... Hey, what's the matter?" she said, catching sight of the odd-jobs man. She didn't wait for an answer but ran down the stairs and out the front door with a bang, calling Mama as she did so.

Goodness, what was the matter? Mama wondered. Was there an airplane in the sky? A fire? Or just the ice-cream-sandwich man? Anyway, she rushed from the house, snatching off her blue-checked apron and hopping up and down in her efforts not to step on Catherine-the-cat, who leaped behind her and under her feet and all around her.

The four Moffats and Mama all stood in a circle. They all looked up at the sign. The children wondered what Mama would do.

"Did Dr. Witty tell you to nail that sign on our house?" she asked the odd-jobs man.

Mr. Baxter gave a final blow to the last nail. He took the rest of the nails out of his mouth and put them and the hammer into his back overall pocket. Then he replied, "Yup. He did."

"Why hasn't he told me anything about this?" said Mama. "We have lived here so long. This is quite a shock. I must go and see him right away."

"Times are bad, ma'am," said Mr. Baxter, nodding his head slowly up and down. "I suppose he figgers he's got to sell. Needs the cash—mebbe."

"Yes, times are bad," agreed Mama.

"Well, good-bye," said the odd-jobs man.

"Good-bye," said Mama. She went indoors and put on her hat with the blue violets that matched her eyes, and her black cotton gloves. Mama was the only housewife on New Dollar Street who put on her hat and gloves even when she was only going down to Elm Street. She said that was because she had been born and brought up in New York City.

"I won't be gone long," she said. "Sylvie, stir the applesauce once in a while. It's nearly cooked. Behave yourselves."

Rufus shinned up the hitching post to watch her all the way down New Dollar Street to Elm Street, where Dr. Witty lived. Then a freight train came along and he turned his attention to Wood Street. He counted the cars, hoping this time he would know what came after twenty.

Sylvie ran inside to stir the applesauce and Joey turned his bicycle upside down. He spun the wheels around and around to make sure the tires were perfect. Jane sat down on the green grass in front of the lilac bush to do a few rows of knitting. But she couldn't keep her mind on her work. Her eyes kept straying to that sign. For Sale! She stared at the sign and she stared at the yellow house. She stared so hard she had to blink. The sign made the house strange and unfamiliar. It was like looking a long time at Mama's face and thinking,
This is Mama;
looking and looking and thinking,
Who is Mama?
And the longer she'd look at Mama's face, the stranger and more unfamiliar it would seem to her until she'd just have to rush to her, bury her face in her apron, and feel,
This
is
Mama.

Now the yellow house with its For Sale sign on it was like that. Janey looked and looked at the house and it just wasn't the Moffats' own yellow house anymore. She rolled up her knitting, stuck Hildegarde under her arm, and ran into the house. Perhaps here, indoors, away from that sign, the yellow house would be the yellow house again. She stood for a moment in the sitting room, where the little potbellied stove that kept them warm in the wintertime was now standing cold and empty. There were the familiar pictures on the wall: one picture of a country girl leading home the cows; another of the big velvet-clad lady whose soft gaze followed Janey's eyes no matter what part of the room Janey went into.

Next Jane marched into the spicy-smelling kitchen. She answered Catherine-the-cat's suspicious glare with an impertinent grimace. Upstairs she could hear Sylvie saying her lines and saying her lines again. Did the sign really matter?

She ran into the Grape Room and hung her knitting bag around Madame's black satin shoulders. Madame was not a real person. Madame was a bust. She served as a model for Mama when the ladies Mama sewed for could not come to try on. Madame was built in perfect proportions. She was wonderful! She could impersonate anyone. One day she could impersonate Mrs. Shoemaker, who was so big around, and the next, Miss Nippon, who, as Mama said, was so like a stovepipe. With the help of Madame, Mama was easily able to maintain her position as the finest dressmaker in the town of Cranbury.

Jane looked around the room. There was the yellow plush couch near the window, the same couch on which she had had German measles every Good Friday and Easter for three years in succession. There was the wallpaper with its pattern of bunches and bunches of dark purple grapes that she counted every time she was sick.

"Maybe no one will have the money to buy the house," Jane whispered softly to Hildegarde. "You must remember these are hard times."

She sat the doll on the yellow plush couch. She herself knelt for a moment in the old morris chair by the window which looked out on the Brick Lot. Even now, in broad daylight, tears of suspense popped into her eyes as she thought of the scary stories she and the other Moffats made up about the Brick Lot. And suddenly all the warmth and familiarity of the yellow house came back to her with a rush.

"Pooh! What's a sign?" she said. She jumped up. Why, the yellow house was still the yellow house even with a sign on it. The sign didn't change it. It meant no more than when she, Janey, dressed up in Mama's dresses and high-heeled shoes. She was still Janey, she was still Janey. And the yellow house was still the yellow house, she thought in a burst of relief. "For Sale" wasn't "Sold." She ran through the front spare bedroom, back into the sitting room, and out the front door. There was Mama coming back up the street. Janey and Rufus ran to meet her.

"What did he say, Mama?" they asked.

"Well," Mama replied, "he said he just has to sell this house. He has to because times are bad and he needs some money. My, I wish we could buy it," sighed Mama. "But we just can't, so that's that. Anyway, very few people are buying houses right now. So we will just forget about that old sign until Dr. Witty actually does sell the house to someone."

So Janey and Rufus and all the other Moffats set about forgetting the sign on the yellow house. At first it was hard though, because every time they came in and every time they went out, there it was:

FOR SALE
INQUIRE OF DR. WITTY
101 ELM STREET