Someone had meticulously arranged a row of beer bottles along the walk. That someone had filled each bottle with water and set inside each a daisy or buttercup from the Green Kingdom.
Except, that is, for the two bottles at the very foot of the front steps. Each of them held a furled yellow rosebud. One kiss of the sun and those velvet petals would open, sharing the secret wrapped inside.
Who but the Wild Child could dream up a beer-bottle garden? Mo sat on the top front step and gazed out over it. The sun that refused to stop shining tapped the bottles with its dazzling wand, turning them emerald and diamond and smoky topaz.
Mrs. Steinbott’s weaselly eyes saw everything. She had to know Dottie had plundered her roses. Had she already called the police? Or was she saving up her wrath for when Mr. Wren came home? Or would she nab Dottie herself and scare the living you-know-what out of her?
Or did she find the garden as beautiful as Mo did?
The daisies and buttercups nodded in the breeze, like skinny-necked old ladies listening to dance music.
What if necessary evil had an opposite? This is what it would be. This unnecessary good.
For the first time in days, Mo smiled.
Home Plate
DOTTIE SAT BESIDE DA at the Walcott kitchen table, inching word by word through a picture book.
“The woods were dark,” she intoned. “A cold wind made her shrink.”
“Shiver,” said Da.
“At last she saw a house. Oh, God, she told herself.”
“Oh,
“I can take shhh…shepherds here.”
Dottie smooched her fingers, then smacked herself in the forehead.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Mr. Wren, freshly showered and wearing his favorite Wahoo T-shirt, poked his head through the kitchen doorframe.
“Daddy! You’re home?”
Mr. Wren grinned. “I had to leave early-important business,” he said. “Da, would it be all right if the Little Bit hangs with you for a while? I need to borrow my partner, Mo.”
“It’s far more than all right.” Da lifted her chin the Walcott way. “This is my star pupil.”
“Where we going, Daddy?” Mo asked as they climbed into the car.
“I’ve got something to show just you.”
They cruised up Paradise and onto the highway. Lake Erie was flat and blue, like a distant mirage. Mr. Wren sang along with the radio, his voice extra loud because the car’s air-conditioning had conked out and both their windows were rolled all the way down. His voice trilled up high as a girl’s, then dropped down into his shoes.
Mo remembered sitting in the backseat as her parents sang duets. One of their favorites was “I Got You Babe.” Every time they sang that line, they’d both point over the seat, at her.
Today empty warehouses and factories flew by, a blur as she squinted into the wind. Where were they going? Oh, Mo hated surprises. But her father’s happiness was contagious. It was like the wind itself, catching you up, carrying you along with it.
When a song she liked came on, Mo began to sing, too. Her father tried to harmonize, their voices twining together like the strands of a sturdy rope. Mo began to wish they’d never get wherever they were headed, that they’d just ride around and around like this, happy together, the car a little houseboat floating on the summer afternoon, till at last the sun dropped into the lake and they’d sail back toward Fox Street.
But Mr. Wren took an exit, passing a hospital and a bunch of apartment buildings and easing into a neighborhood of old-fashioned houses that had seen better days. The ground floors had been turned into shops. They passed a bookstore, a bakery, a cafe, a place selling homemade ice cream. Some had colorful awnings and little tables set out on the sidewalk. Flowers bloomed in boxes and tubs. The upstairs windows were hung with curtains or shades. A white cat solemnly stared down as they went by.
Mr. Wren pulled up in front of a dark green house with curlicue trim over the windows and along the edge of the roof. The bottom floor was built out and fitted with a big plate-glass window. CORKY’S TAVERN said the faded sign over the door. FOR LEASE OR SALE read the sign in the window.
Cupping their hands around their eyes, they pressed their noses to the window. A small bar with stools ran across the back wall. There was space for tables, and the corners were snug with wooden booths. Dingy linoleum covered the floor.
“It needs some TLC, that’s for sure,” said Mr. Wren. “But wait’ll you see the upstairs. Three nice little bedrooms, one with built-in shelves ready-made for Dot’s bottles.”
Mo stepped back from the window. “You already saw the upstairs?”
Mr. Wren took her hand. “Come on, come see the backyard.”
A crooked white fence covered with blooming vines looped around its edges. The yard was empty, not a single tree, the sun pouring down.
“I was thinking that’d be the perfect spot for a little vegetable garden. We could grow our own tomatoes and herbs for the sandwiches and soups.”
Mr. Wren gently lobbed his invisible baseball into the invisible garden.
“It’s a good neighborhood, Momo. I met a guy who runs his own hardware store, and a gal who’s looking to open a teahouse. It’s just like Fox Street, except things are looking up instead of down. There’s hope in the air.” He scooped the air. “See it?”
He drew her to the back kitchen window and pointed out the nice new grill, the fryers where the best onion rings in town would sizzle. The cooler would hold all kinds of beer, but chocolate milk and all-natural fruit juice, too, because this was going to be a family place, where everybody in the neighborhood felt at home.
“Corky, the old owner, fell on hard times. But that just means a better price.”
The excitement in her father’s voice worked a spell, and in spite of herself, Mo saw the two of them, side by side, sweeping and scrubbing and painting. She saw herself doing her homework in one of the corner booths, and heard her father’s laughter from behind the bar as he sliced a home-grown tomato for a delicious BLT. Mo glanced up at the curlicued windows. She could see the small face with a lollipop jutting out, waving down at her.
“You know the best part?” he asked her.
“What?”
“I’d never have to leave the two of you again.” His voice went crooked. “We’d be together all the time. I…I could quit asking too much of you, Locomo.”
“You don’t!”
“Yeah, I do.” Suddenly he sounded angry. “It hasn’t been fair, no way. I want us to be more of a family again. We could be…we could almost be like we used to be.”
A red bird flashed across the yard, looking for a tree to perch in. Mo felt its shadow flutter in her chest. What kind of yard had no place for a bird to nest, no place for a girl to settle her spine and think? Frightened, Mo dug her hand into her pocket. Where was it? Had it fallen out somewhere? Frantic, she shoved her fingers into her other pocket and there, there it was.
“Got an itch?” asked her father.
Words beat inside her, like a bird trapped inside a house, and she longed to tell him. But what if he didn’t understand? Her father was different from her. He’d tell her, “You’ve never seen a fox, Momo. You can’t abandon something you’re not sure exists.”
“I am sure,” she said aloud.
Mr. Wren gave her a funny look. His curls made a dark halo around his head, and his eyes shone so bright, Mo realized with a little shock that they were full of tears.
“There are a lot of things we haven’t talked about, aren’t there? That’s my fault, too. I’ve been a coward.”
