Josie Bloom and the Emergency of Life Read online

  This book is dedicated to Alice B. Hill, with love, admiration, and thanks

  The Money

  If Grandpa was the one telling this story, he’d probably start with one of his mottoes, such as Home Is Where You Hang Your Hat. My best friend, Winky, would roll it out like Joe Viola’s evil changeup, a pitch that starts out a fastball, and—surprise!—drops low and slow. Mr. Mee and Mrs. B-B both would probably quote from some book: There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.—Charles Dickens. But I’m the one telling the story, and I say it began with the bologna.

  * * *

  The first time it happened, I was sitting on the couch sorting socks. I patted around the pillows and throws for a missing mate. No luck. I got up and shook out the House of Harmony Church Ladies’ Auxiliary Bicentennial Blanket, and out flew a package of bologna. The strange part was, instead of a stack of delicious lunch meat, the package was stuffed with money.

  I beelined to the kitchen with my findings. Grandpa was peeling potatoes, the Maine state vegetable. “Why, Josie Bloom,” he said. Grandpa scratched his bald spot with the tip of the peeler. “What’d you do, rob a bank?”

  “No.” I thought about it. “Did you?”

  “No-oo-oo,” he said, very fishy, like he’d just yanked off the ski mask after pulling the heist.

  While he tried to cram the money into his wallet, I asked him a few more questions.

  “Did you get an odd job?” Like the time he turned Mrs. Bean’s old chipped bathtub into a shrine for the Virgin Mary. “Did you get money from a long-lost relative?” That sort of thing happens, but we don’t know of any relatives. “Do you think a burglar might break into the house and rob us?” Because why did he hide it? “You could put it under your mattress.” I’d heard people on TV talk about doing that.

  Grandpa was not giving me any answers. He seemed out of sorts in a way that if I had that kind of money, I would not be. If I had that kind of money, I’d buy up the entire collection of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! books. I would probably still have a lot of cash left over, and with the rest I would take a trip to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum in Orlando, Florida.

  “Can I have three dollars?” I said.

  Grandpa had managed to shove some of the cash in each of his pockets, and was peeling another potato into the sink, fast as lightning. “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool,” Grandpa said, “than to speak and remove all doubt.”

  These are words I know all too well. He used a woodworking tool to burn them forever onto a plaque. This was during craft-time at Pineland Senior and Assisted Living over in Topsham, where he used to live with Grandma Kaye until she died of old age, and before he came to live with me.

  I’ll stop right there and point out that Grandpa came to live with me when my mom died, as he’s my only living relative and there was never any dad in the picture. By that I mean, there’s a family picture on the shelf in the den, and it’s just Mom and me. Whenever I would ask about my dad, she’d tell me he was dead, more or less. “He’s dead to me,” she’d say. “End of story.” Anyway, Mom “expired” of sudden cardiac arrest, which is a problem with the heart’s electrical system, and not anybody’s fault at all. Even the Hamburg Catch-up! reported how Josephine Violet Bloom, age nine, called 911 immediately. When we talked about it, back then, Grandpa took me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye and said, “Josie, there is nothing you could have done, and there is no way to place a call any faster than immediately.” But sometimes I wonder. These days, Grandpa would be more apt to snap a salute and say, “Pancakes!”

  Anyhow, that plaque (plus other ones) was always trying to get my attention from its shelf in the den. But if you think about it, isn’t the fool the one who hides seventy-eight dollars in a package of bologna?

  * * *

  The second time it happened, I was taking out the garbage. I found a wad of rubber-banded bills between the liner and the can under the sink.

  “I almost threw it out!” I mentioned.

  Grandpa grabbed the bills from my hand and shot a suspicious look at me, the sink, and the garbage can. Then he stomped out of the kitchen.

  “Now that money stinks like fish wrapping!” I said to his cardiganed back. “And it’s moist!”

  “Lima beans!” Grandpa blurted from the den. It was sort of a new thing, a troubling thing, the blurting.

  * * *

  The third time it happened (rolled up in a toilet paper tube!), I didn’t tell Grandpa. I put the money in a Keds box under my bed in case I needed it, and soon enough I did.

  * * *

  It gets cold here in Hamburg, Maine. That January, it got wicked cold. There was frost inside the windowpanes. Even in my bed, under my covers, with a hot water bottle, it was cold. Turns out Grandpa had not paid the oil bill, and the tank was empty.

  “I’ll take care of it,” said Grandpa. But he didn’t. And that’s when the water pipes froze—“I’m on it,” said Grandpa—and burst. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” said Grandpa, followed by no running water for two weeks.

  I don’t remember why I opened up the desk Grandpa calls a secretary, but that’s where I found the envelopes. Most of them were stamped in red by somebody with a heavy hand and a bad temper: PAST DUE, or SECOND ATTEMPT, or FINAL NOTICE. I grouped all the envelopes by type and showed them to Grandpa.

  “Schlitz!” he blurted. (The name of his favorite beer!)

  So. That’s how when I started finding the money and Grandpa was blurting about beer quite regular, I had the good idea to take the money I kept finding here and there around the house and put it in the mail-in envelopes that came with the angry notices and which Grandpa was stuffing inside the secretary desk and then blurting about. After that the house was nice and warm, and the water kept on running in the taps. And all because of me! I did it! I felt glad and proud. Grandpa was happy, and he never seemed to notice when the money he hid went missing. I kept secret what I’d done with the money and he quit blurting about Schlitz.

  Everything was fine till there came a bill too big to pay.

  What’s a Mort-gage?

  A mortgage,” said my best friend, Winky Wheaton. He said it more-gidge. “It’s what the bank gives people so they can have a house.” He fit most of a maple-bar into his mouth. It was a Tuesday morning in March, and we were at school enjoying the free-and-reduced breakfast.

  Mrs. Crosier assigned me to Winky on the first day of school back in second grade because he was the new kid. “Winky” seems like a friendly nickname for his given name of Elwyn, except that Winky is legally blind. Stargardt disease. Juvenile macular degeneration. Winky says a nickname makes a person feel accepted, and I say that’s like going “Thanks very much!” to the pigeon who poops on your head. I know because of how Becky Schenck calls me “Brillo” on account of my hair, which, I’m sorry to say, is rusty-looking and wiry like an old Brillo pad.

  “If it’s something the bank gives you,” I said to Winky, “then why do they want so much of it back?”

  “How it works is, the bank gives you a lot of money, and then you have to pay it all back, plus extra, and until you pay it all back, the bank owns the house. My dad spits and moans about it every month.”

  “Every month!” What? “You have to pay it every month?”

  “Yup.”

  Schlitz! Not only did I not have one hundred and three dollars and eighty-seven cents to pay the bill on or before March 15, 1977, I would need one hundred and three dollars and eighty-seven cents all over again in April! Waiting to maybe find mystery-money in the washing machine or the hamper was obviously not going to be workable, long-term.<
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  I said, “It doesn’t seem like a very friendly system.”

  Winky Wheaton shrugged. Then he leaned over to poke around in his backpack, and he pulled out a book cozy made of quilted fabric—mostly jungle-type flowers and here and there a monkey-head. Winky’s mother sews Brenda’s Book Cozies straight from a wheelie-cart that slides over her bed, and I had ordered one to cover up the third-quarter health textbook. Let’s Study: Your Body and You. Rhymes with euw.

  “I didn’t tell Grandpa about the mortgage,” I said as I fit the cozy over my book.

  Winky wanted to know why not. I could tell because when he’s thinking, Winky’s eyes turn the gray-green color of Pickerel Pond on a cold day in fall. His hair sticks up and coils all over the place like a bunch of question marks and exclamation points.

  “Do you know how hard it is to talk to a serial blurter?” I said to Winky’s hair. “I ask him about the money and he salutes and blurts and leaves the room! Grandpa doesn’t open those envelopes, and I do.”

  Winky popped the last bite of his maple-bar into his mouth. “That’sh like a third-baysh coach calling the play at firsht baysh,” he said, around the donut.

  “Huh?”

  He swallowed. “It’s not your place.”

  “Well, if I don’t take care of it, who will?” I said.

  Notice that we’d been talking for all of about three and a half minutes, and Winky had already wormed baseball into the conversation. Winky loves baseball—he loves the sound of the bat and the ball, the umpire’s cry, stee-rike!—which is why I only had to wait about two seconds…

  “Viola’s in a”—Winky lowered his voice and spelled it out—“S-L-U-M-P.”

  Winky’s Hero

  Joe Viola is Winky’s all-time favorite baseball player. When the Boston Believers went to the top of the bracket and all the way to the quarterfinals in the ’74 World Series? Joe Viola’s pitching was all and I mean all Winky could talk about. 1974 was very boring in terms of conversation with Winky. If I had a dime for every time I heard that Number 23 has a heart of gold and the soul of a saint and can throw a changeup like the devil himself, well, then I could have all the heating oil and hot water my cold little toes desired.

  I said, “A slum—”

  “Tsssssssst!” Winky hissed, flapping his hands in my face, “don’t say it out loud!”

  “All right already!”

  “It’s bad luck.”

  “I got it!”

  “The Believers will never make it to the playoffs if he doesn’t snap out of it. Last year during spring training he was throwing smoke and slurve clinch brutal-schedule heat Florida batting mathematically-alive…”

  I wasn’t really listening at that point. I promise I didn’t mean to yawn, but baseball is wicked dull. The players stand around, they scratch themselves, they spit. It’s gross.

  Let me explain that the whole town of Hamburg, Maine, is crazy for baseball. Hamburg is the home of the Hot Dogs, the farm team for the great Boston Believers. The Hot Dogs play down at Hot Dogs Field all summer long, and “goin’-the-game” is what everybody in town does for entertainment. Hot Dog! Why, even my own mother had a Number 23 Joe Viola baseball card, which sat on a shelf in the den in a red plastic heart-shaped frame, right beside a picture of the Pope.

  Anyway, Winky was a super-fan, even now that he could barely see. “Baseball is all about connecting,” he says. “The eye and the ball and the bat and the heart.”

  “Maybe Viola’s not as wonderful as you say he is,” I said. When he gets riled up, Winky’s hair really punctuates.

  “You take that back.” Winky stuffed a fist under each armpit, probably to keep from reaching across the table and strangling me. “There is no player as great as Joe Viola.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” I knew the next part by heart, so I said it: “Gives away his money, hole in his heart, charity machine…”

  Winky kept speechifying right over me. “Joe Viola was born with a hole in his heart. He overcame his birth defect and became a great player. And he makes a ton of money for charity, too. All he has to do is show up.” With that, Winky pointed energetically at the ceiling, as if Joe Viola might be floating around up there like the Ghost of Christmas Past. (That is a reference to author Charles Dickens, who Mr. Mee keeps telling me to read.) “Car wash, fancy dinner, cocktail party, talent show, the money rolls in.” He put his hands together like a person praying. “I won’t say I’m not concerned about him losing his touch. But it’s temporary. I have faith.”

  Winky has had lots of practice testing his faith. For the past six or seven months, his father had found the balding corduroy couch in the Wheatons’ front room a nice change from the job he lost at Sebago-Look Shoe Mill, and his mother suffered from diverticulitis. Her doctor said her condition was not serious, but she believed it to be and in that case what’s the difference?

  And then there’s the legal blindness, of course. Basically, if Winky looked straight at me from the other side of the table, he could see my hair around the edges, but he couldn’t see my face in the middle. He didn’t need a white cane or, too bad, a seeing-eye dog. A dog at school? That would be wicked.

  He used to see fine. He used to play baseball and watch baseball on TV and go to the games at Hot Dogs Field, live, breathe, eat, and drink baseball. Everything changed when he started to lose his eyesight at eight years old. Some days are better than others, but generally his vision gets worse and worse as time goes by. Maybe he’ll get that seeing-eye dog after all!

  “I had my dream again,” he was saying.

  “Yeah? The one with you and the ball and the glove and the amazing catch?” (Winky even sleeps baseball.) Wink hadn’t caught a ball since the second grade, but I didn’t have to tell him that. “That would be a miracle,” I said anyway.

  “Yeah,” Winky said. “If only.”

  He’d been having this same dream forever. In the dream, he was always a Major League Baseball player. He hits one outta the park and the fans go nuts. But nothing about Winky’s dream could ever come true.

  Believe me, I can relate to that. Every night when I was little, Mom used to tell me a story about Amanda “Mandy” Mandolin, a made-up girl who traveled widely and had many adventures and mishaps. Mandy was above-average brave and smart. The stories all had happy endings. I dream all the time about Amanda Mandolin, and those dreams, also, can never come true.

  “Finish up, children, no loitering!” said Mrs. Blyth-Barrow. “This is elementary school, not a bistro on the French Riviera!” She has a phlegmy rumble to her voice that makes me need to clear my throat. Everyone knew that old Mrs. B-B, widowed young, lived in an apartment over Kenerson’s Five and Ten in the company of several cats. Nobody knew how many.

  Winky sat there loitering like a French person. “My dad says all of life is if-onlys,” he said, about our dreams, I guess. “Ifs, mights, too-bads, and buts.”

  “You said butts,” said Bubba Davis, who just then tractored between the tables in his big green sweatshirt like a big John Deere and gave Winky’s head a shove while he was at it. Meanwhile, Becky Schenck spilled her water on my head.

  “Hey!” I said, very reasonable.

  “Becky!” rumbled Mrs. B-B.

  “He bumped my tray!” She pointed at Bubba. Mrs. B-B turned her attention to Bubba, and Becky said, just to me and my wet head, “ ’Bout time you took a shower, Brillo.” She shot a look at Winky and made a kiss-face she knew he couldn’t see. “Has it ever occurred to you that Winky, here, would never sit with you in a million trillion zillion years if he could see you, Brillo?”

  Becky slunk away like the weasel she is, and Winky, while ignoring Becky very thoroughly, passed me a paper napkin.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Winky said. “You look good to me. Your hair is very recognizable.”

  Grandpa, Explained

  Winky and I hustled to homeroom, where Mrs. Blyth-Barrow stood like a palace guard at the door. Her handbag was on the floor beside her desk, big as
a house. I wondered how much money was in it. It was definitely large enough to stash a hundred and three dollars and eighty-seven cents.

  That made me think of Grandpa. Let me tell you, as grandpas go, mine is wicked awesome. He looks like Yertle the Turtle. He used to have a highly successful business fixing up old houses. His business card said A+ HOME WORK: We Get the Job Done Right. One of his houses was even written up across six pages’ worth of Yankee Delight magazine, November 1963. Then there was some problem or other with building permits, and after that the printing on his business card just said Home Work: We Get the Job Done. Then it said: We Do Odd Jobs.

  As an example, there was the time Mrs. Blyth-Barrow hired Grandpa to hang a door to the hallway between the kitchen and the living room of her apartment. When she got home, the hallway was missing. In its place was something everybody secretly wants but nobody has except for spies, eccentric uncles, and wizard-types, and also which there is one of in the coolest castle ever, which is in Romania, and which I read about in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Royal Edition. Totally wicked.

  Grandpa’s door was not so much a door as it was a bookcase. I stared. Mrs. Blyth-Barrow stared. Grandpa beamed, very confident, like a lighthouse. He gave the bookcase a light tug, and when he did, another one of Grandpa’s plaques came into view in my mind: Way Will Open.

  “That is so wicked!” and “Absolutely not!” and “Haven’t you always wanted a hidden-passage-swingaway-bookcase?” we all three said at once.

  Mrs. Blyth-Barrow crossed her arms and generally looked like a person who had definitely not read about any castles in Romania whatsoever.

  Grandpa lowered his eyes and made a prince-type move with his hand and wrist. “Consider it a gift, Mrs. Blith-Biffle. Mrs. Blithel-Bliff. Mrs.—”

  “Oh for Pete’s sake,” said Mrs. Blyth-Barrow, “call me Balithia.”