Needle and Thread Read online

  “Aunt Allie?” asked Ruby. Aunt Allie was the younger sister of Flora and Ruby’s mother.

  “Mm-hmm,” said Min.

  “Where does she live?” asked Ruby. “I forget.”

  “In New York City. She’s a writer.”

  “Did she and Mom not get along?” asked Flora. “We’ve only met Aunt Allie, like, twice.”

  “They weren’t close,” said Min carefully. “They’re very different people.”

  “Is Aunt Allie the person who would take care of Ruby and me if anything ever happened to you?” asked Flora.

  “Maybe,” said Min. “But, Flora, please don’t start worrying about that again. I promise I will work things out so that you girls will always be taken care of.”

  Flora scowled, then said, “So you always go to New York for Christmas? Does that mean we have to go there, too? I don’t want to spend Christmas in New York City.”

  “Let’s not think that far ahead,” replied Min. “Let’s just get through Halloween. Halloween is fun here. You haven’t experienced Halloween in Camden Falls. You can go trick-or-treating on Main Street.”

  “On Main Street?” Ruby repeated in dismay. “You mean we don’t go trick-or-treating at people’s houses here?”

  “You can do that, too. But you can also go in town. All the stores stay open, and the store owners dress up in costumes and hand out candy. Gigi and I usually have to get fifty bags of candy to make sure we have enough for everyone who comes into town.”

  “You mean you wear a costume on Halloween?” said Ruby.

  “I most certainly do. So does Gigi. We made the costumes ourselves. I’m the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz and Gigi is Glinda, the Good Witch.”

  Flora rolled over and faced Ruby. “Maybe we should be characters from The Wizard of Oz. Nikki and Olivia, too. We could be Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion.”

  “Cool!” said Ruby.

  The fire popped loudly then, and Daisy fled from the living room in terror.

  “Speaking of events that are coming up,” said Min, her eyes following Daisy, “I know someone who has a birthday right around the corner.”

  “Olivia,” said Flora.

  “The big one-oh,” added Ruby.

  “Is that what she calls it?” asked Min, laughing.

  “Yup. She’s really excited about her birthday. She wants a big party for the big one-oh.”

  “Min, do you think her parents will be able to have a big party for her?” asked Flora. “I mean, since Mr. Walter lost his job?”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we could give Olivia a surprise party!” exclaimed Flora.

  “Yes!” cried Ruby. “A surprise party! That would be so much fun. Nikki could help us.”

  “We could invite our friends from school and from the Row Houses,” added Flora.

  “And everybody could jump out and yell ‘Surprise!’ like on TV,” said Ruby. “That would be so cool. Maybe Olivia would faint.”

  “Good gracious me,” said Min. “I’m not sure we want that. But a surprise party is a lovely idea.”

  Ruby stood up and said, “I’m going to go to my room and write down some surprise-party ideas.” She clumped up the stairs.

  Flora gazed into the fire again, and her thoughts twisted and turned all by themselves. Suddenly, she found herself thinking about Scary Mary Woolsey. “Min,” said Flora, “wait right here. There’s something I want to show you. It’s in my room. I’ll be back in just a minute.”

  When Flora returned to the living room and Min’s bright fire, she was carrying the photo she had shown Olivia, the photo of her mother posing with Mary Woolsey. Flora perched on the arm of Min’s chair and held out the picture.

  “What’s this?” asked Min as she put on her reading glasses.

  “I found it,” said Flora. “In the attic. I was just looking around up there one day.…” Her voice trailed off and she turned the photo over so Min could see the writing on the back.

  “‘Frannie and Mary — nineteen seventy,’” read Min.

  “At first I thought ‘Mary’ meant your sister,” said Flora. “Mary Elizabeth. But then I realized this is a picture of Mary Woolsey. See the necklace she’s wearing?”

  “Well, I’ll be,” said Min. “It is Mary Woolsey.”

  “I didn’t know you knew her that long ago. Do you remember when this picture was taken? I mean, why was she posing with Mom? Mary didn’t work for you then, did she?”

  “No. There was no Needle and Thread back then.”

  “That’s what I thought. So what did Mary Woolsey do? Didn’t she … didn’t she just live by herself in that little house and never come out? It seems weird that she would pose with Mom.”

  Min frowned, staring at the picture, and Flora was relieved that her grandmother hadn’t asked her why she’d been hunting around in the attic. “Frannie was four,” murmured Min. “That must have been … land sakes, I wonder if this was taken on the day … yes, I believe it was.”

  “What? Taken on what day?”

  “The day Mary showed up at our house to say thank you for what my father had done to help her. She didn’t know how to reach my parents, but she knew I was still living in our old house, so she came here. In fact, my parents had moved to Florida, and my father had died several years earlier.”

  “She wanted to thank your father? Lyman Davis?” Flora thought back to the letters she had also found in the box of papers. Lyman Davis, she had read, had made something of a bad name for himself after the stock market crash in 1929, which was several years before Min was born. He had been a wealthy stockbroker in Camden Falls, and from what Flora could piece together, had made investments that had lost money for his clients. In fact, many of them lost their entire fortunes, plunging them into poverty during the Depression. Min’s father had left his job, a move his former friends (and some of his relatives) viewed as cowardly, and the family then lived mainly on a large inheritance that had come to Min’s mother. “What did your father do for Sca — for Mary?” asked Flora.

  “You know, I don’t remember. This was decades ago, honey,” said Min. “My father was always doing nice things for people, though, and lots of times he never said anything about it. He just went ahead and lent people money or quietly did favors.”

  “Lent people money?” repeated Flora. “I thought he lost all his money in nineteen twenty-nine.”

  “Now, where did you hear about that?”

  “In some letters I found in the attic,” Flora admitted.

  “Oh,” said Min. “There’s an awful lot of old stuff up there, that’s for sure. Well, let me see. Yes, Dad did have a bad time for a while. Of course, that was before I was born. But our family got back on its feet. Dad never worked again but Mother had money, and Dad still had some of his own. I think my parents felt guilty that their lives didn’t change much after the crash, even though the lives of so many of Dad’s clients changed dramatically. For the worse. But as the years went by, things settled down. Anyway, maybe that’s why Dad did so much for other people — because he felt bad about what had happened after the crash. So when Mary showed up at our door wanting to thank my father, I wasn’t surprised, even though I didn’t know he had helped her out.”

  “But what about the picture?” asked Flora.

  “The picture,” said Min. “Well, I think it was just that Mary was so shy and awkward, and I wanted her to feel more comfortable. So I invited her in and offered her tea or something, and your mother kept running through the living room, where we were talking, and Mary kept saying how appreciative she was, so finally I asked if Mary wouldn’t like me to take her picture with your mother. I told her I’d send it to my mother along with a letter about Mary’s visit.”

  “But you didn’t send the picture,” Flora pointed out.

  “I guess not. Or maybe this one is a copy. Maybe I took two to make certain we had one good one. I really don’t remember, honey. I’m so
rry.”

  “Huh,” said Flora, settling down in front of the fire. She had the feeling that someone had just read her the first page of a fascinating book and then slammed the cover shut.

  Next door to Flora, on that same chilly, blustery evening, Olivia Walter sat in front of her computer and began composing a list. It was headed: Wild Mammals I Have Seen in Camden Falls. Olivia wound a curl of hair around her finger, then typed: red squirrel, gray squirrel, eastern chipmunk, bat, opossum, porcupine, deer mouse, white-footed mouse, cottontail rabbit, red fox, white-tailed deer, eastern mole. Before the list was finished, she abandoned it and started a second one: Birds I Have Seen in Camden Falls — black-capped chickadee, pileated woodpecker, house wren, blue jay, slate-colored junco, northern cardinal (male and female), eastern bluebird, sparrow (not sure what kind), duck, goose, chicken. Leaving that list unfinished, too, she began a third: Insects I Have Seen in Camden Falls — butterflies (varied), ladybug, mosquito, flea, bee (honey and queen), wasp, hornet, gnat, flies (varied), daddy longlegs. She was about to start a fourth list, for spiders, when she realized she didn’t know the names of many spiders.

  “Huh,” she said aloud. “I’d better read up on spiders.”

  “Are you talking to yourself again, Olivia?” called Henry from his room.

  “No!” Olivia called back. She left her computer and lay down on her bed. She wondered if trying to capture Camden Falls wildlife for the photography exhibit was too big a project.

  “Of course, I don’t have to photograph every kind of animal,” she said. “And I’ve left out reptiles and fish —”

  “I can hear you! You are talking to yourself!” said Henry.

  Olivia rolled off her bed and very quietly closed the door to her room. She knew her brother was just teasing her, but she didn’t feel like being teased. She also didn’t feel like having a fight with Henry.

  Olivia stood in the very center of her room. She did this sometimes. Standing in the center, she could feel the presence of her neighbors. She shared one wall of her room with Ruby’s next door. Across the hallway, one wall of Jack’s room shared a wall with a room in Mr. Pennington’s house. And in front of Olivia was her window, which faced onto Aiken Avenue. Olivia rested her elbows on the sill and stared outside. In the dim glow from the porch light, she could make out her yard with the little flower garden that Olivia herself had planted. To the right was Min’s tidy yard with its magnolia tree, the one Olivia’s mother remembered climbing with Flora and Ruby’s mother when they were young. “We would hide up there and drop water balloons down on Allie,” she had said once.

  Olivia smiled at the thought that she and Flora and Ruby were growing up in the Row Houses just as her mother and Frannie and Allie had grown up here. But, she reminded herself, my family might not be living here if it weren’t for Mr. Pennington. Olivia’s mother had said many times that Mr. Pennington had bravely paved the way for people of color in the Row Houses. The first time she had mentioned that, Olivia hadn’t understood what she meant. “What do you mean, paved the way for people of color?” she had asked.

  “These houses are old, very old,” her mother had told her.

  “I know. They were built before you were born.”

  “Good heavens, they were built before Min was born. Long before she was born. They were built in the eighteen hundreds. And for decades, closer to a century, actually, the only people who lived here were white. Mr. Pennington and his wife were the first people of color to buy one of the Row Houses, and apparently this made quite a stir in Camden Falls. But the Penningtons were respected. Mr. Pennington was a teacher at Camden Falls Elementary back then, and eventually he became principal of the high school. So when my parents bought one of the Row Houses a few years later, it wasn’t such a big deal. And by the time the Morrises and then the Fongs moved in, no one thought twice about it.”

  Olivia, still gazing out her window, thought about Mr. Pennington and how brave he had been. She couldn’t imagine being treated the way she suspected he and his wife had been treated. Kids at school sometimes teased Olivia, but not because of her skin color. They called her “Professor” since she was smart, and “baby” since she was a good year younger than most of the other kids in her class. Olivia didn’t mind these names. She liked being smart, and she couldn’t help having skipped a grade. If kids wanted to tease her about those things, well, that was their choice. Personally, Olivia thought it was a waste of valuable time.

  Olivia returned to her desk and looked at her calendar. She counted the days to her birthday, which she had marked with a sticker in the shape of a cupcake over which she had written TEN, and under which she had written THE BIG 1-0!!!! All summer, Olivia had dreamed of a lavish birthday party the likes of which had never been seen in the Walter household. Olivia felt she could reasonably petition for one, though. She had said to her parents, “I know no one in our family has ever had a party like this, but ten is a big deal. It’s the first age with two numbers in it. Maybe this could be the beginning of a tradition. A Walter family tenthbirthday tradition. I’ll have the first big party, then Henry, then Jack.” This, she hoped, made her sound slightly less greedy, as if she were thinking not so much of herself as of her brothers, and of the Walter family in general.

  “We’ll see,” her parents had said.

  That was before Mr. Walter was laid off from his job. Olivia had not asked about a big party since then, although she still longed for one. She also had not dared to ask for the birthday present for which she longed: a pet. The Walters had no pets, and Olivia was desperate for one. Flora and Ruby had King Comma and Daisy Dear. Mr. Pennington had Jacques. The Willets had Sweetie, the Malones had two cats, the Fongs had two dogs, and the Morrises had two hamsters and a guinea pig. But pets weren’t cheap. Even if you got one for free, you had to buy food and toys and other supplies, and then there were the vet bills. Olivia’s parents had said they would be all right for a while without jobs, but Olivia knew this was not a wise time to ask for something that would add to their expenses.

  Olivia sighed. She had thought that the big one-oh would mark the start of a fabulous time in her life. But a lot of things were going to have to change, and change quickly, in order for that to happen. She felt unsettled. Her father didn’t have a job. He talked of starting his own business now, which was exciting, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. Olivia’s mother didn’t have a job, either, and soon one or the other of her parents would need to work. Then there was Mr. Pennington. For quite a while now, Olivia had been keeping a secret for him. Only Olivia knew that old Mr. Pennington was having a bit of trouble taking care of himself. Olivia had been giving him a hand — checking on him, pitching in with his housework, making sure he remembered to care for Jacques, lock his doors, turn off the oven, and a hundred other things. But she couldn’t always be there for him, so she knew this arrangement wasn’t right. And Mr. Pennington feared that if anyone else found out what was going on, he would be made to move to a nursing home, which he couldn’t face. “Not after forty-five years here. This is my home. I can’t leave it,” he had said to Olivia. And Olivia didn’t want him to leave it. She couldn’t imagine the Row Houses without Mr. Pennington next door.

  Olivia had just slumped onto her bed when she heard the phone ring. Moments later, a knock sounded on her door, and Olivia’s father said, “For you,” and opened the door just wide enough to hand the phone through it to Olivia.

  “Thanks,” said Olivia. Then, “Hello?”

  “Hi, it’s me!” said Flora.

  Flora, Olivia thought, sounded excited. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Hey, Olivia?”

  “Yeah?”

  “About your birthday?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I guess you’re going to have a party, aren’t you?”

  “I guess so. I don’t really know. But if I do have one, don’t worry, you’ll be invited. You and Ruby and Nikki.”

  “
And who else? I mean, who else would you want to have at your party if you have one?”

  “My brothers,” replied Olivia. “And Mr. Pennington. And everyone in the Row Houses. And —” Olivia caught herself. This was the guest list for the giant one-oh birthday party she had hoped for. “But I can’t really do that, I know. That’s too many people.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Flora.

  “What?”

  “I mean, well, you should, um, ask whoever you want to your party.”

  “But Mom and Dad can’t afford a big party now.”

  “Okay. Well, if you were planning your dream party —”

  “My dream party?”

  “Come on, Olivia. Just play along. Don’t you like to pretend? Pretend you could have any kind of party you wanted. Any kind. What would it be?”

  Olivia lay back against her pillows and stared at the ceiling. “Okay. I’d invite the people I just told you about, plus the girls in our class and my cousins. All the decorations would be pink and silver. The cake would be pink, too, with silver decorations, and on top would be those big number candles — a one and a zero.” Olivia stopped speaking. “Are you working on your computer? You sound like you’re typing.”

  “No! No, I’m not. Now what would the decorations be?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe … giant butterflies. Are you sure you aren’t writing this down or something?”

  Flora ignored the question. “And what do you want most of all for your birthday? What would be the perfect gift?”

  “A pet,” said Olivia instantly. “Any pet at all.”

  “Bye! Wish me luck!” called Ruby.

  “Good luck,” said Flora and Min as Ruby ran across the lawns to the Morrises’ house. And Min added, “Break a leg!”