One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street Read online

  “That one,” said Ali, pointing to the big shoebox on the floor by the dictionary stand. “What’s in it?”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Robert. “Nothing, yet.”

  “OK.” said Ali, shrugging. And poof! The old Ali disappeared into thin air, right before Robert’s eyes.

  Maybe a hint of magic would impress her, since she was always wowed by Magic Manny’s stuff, Robert thought. He put down the magnifying glass. “By the way,” he said to Ms. Snoops, “you know that book you lent me? Do you mind if I keep it for a while longer?”

  “Which book?” asked Ms. Snoops.

  “You know, Incredible Magic Tricks for a Rainy Day. It’s really great.”

  Oops, thought Robert. Ms. Snoops was pretending she didn’t know what he was talking about! He shouldn’t have brought it up. Maybe the book was so special, Ms. Snoops wanted to keep it a secret, sort of like a pact between the two of them.

  “Oh, is that a book of mine? Sure, keep it as long as you like,” Ms. Snoops said.

  “Thanks,” said Robert, and winked.

  Ms. Snoops smiled and winked back.

  Ali hurriedly gathered up her treasures from the coffee table. “I have to go now,” she said. “Leandra and I have something to discuss, and soon Edgar will be waking up from his nap and asking for me.” Oh, how she wished that was true!

  Then Ms. Snoops said something that made Ali’s sleeping invisible, theoretical angel suddenly awaken—and sit up straight.

  “Who’s Edgar?” Ms. Snoops asked.

  The invisible, theoretical angel began whispering furiously in Ali’s ear, and Ali realized something she’d known all along, but hadn’t really known she’d known. The thought made her sit down slowly on Ms. Snoops’s orange and green striped sofa.

  Ms. Snoops’s memory, whispered the angel, was like the lacy antimacassars on the orange and green striped sofa’s arms. Ms. Snoops’s memory had little holes in it, here and there, where facts slipped through and disappeared: people’s names, titles of books, answers to questions Ms. Snoops had to keep asking, over and over. But then there were the parts of her memory with no holes at all—those would make her memoirs grow fatter and fatter . . . all those stories, all those historical and scientific facts she knew, all those wonderful words she remembered. Naranga! Infrangible! It was so confusing, and so, so sad.

  Now it was Ali’s turn to hug Ms. Snoops.

  “Edgar is my little brother,” Ali said. “But I promise I’ll be back soon, to read those memoirs you were going to write. I’ll help you remember.”

  “That would be lovely,” said Ms. Snoops. “And a nap sounds likes a good idea right about now.”

  “I guess I’ll go now, too,” said Robert. “May I please borrow your fruit-picker pole? I’d like to pick some more of the oranges, the ones you said were extra-special.” He winked at Ms. Snoops again.

  “I’ll give you some of mine! No need to pick them your-self,” said Ms. Snoops, winking back at him. She filled a paper bag for both Robert and Ali from a big bowl of oranges on her coffee table. “These are the tree’s sweetest oranges,” she said. “The perfect ones that were hanging from its topmost, southerly branches.” And then she added, “Personally picked by me. This old body can still scamper up a ladder when it wants to!”

  After they’d gone, Ms. Snoops watched the two of them from her window. Ali looked up at her and blew a kiss. Robert hifflesnuffled behind Ali, off to his meeting with Manny.

  “This has been my lucky day,” said Ms. Snoops. “Two guests!”

  obert sat down beside Manny on the front steps to Ali’s house.

  “What’s in the shoebox?” Manny asked.

  “Nothing,” said Robert. And there wouldn’t be, not today anyway, because his secret mission hadn’t worked out as he’d planned. He let out a long sigh, but it was a satisfied one. Ali wasn’t home, but it still felt good to be there. Just like old times, long ago. Well, not so long ago, maybe two or three years back. They used to sit on those same stairs and count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder, to calculate how far away the storm was (five seconds = one mile) , not even caring if they got soaked. Or they’d cheer on the L.A. Marathon. Small stuff, babyish stuff even. But satisfying.

  “So. What’s on your mind, Rob-o?” asked Manny.

  He actually did feel like a Rob-o, sitting there, talking one-on-one with Manny. “I’m into magic, as you may or may not know. Like yourself.”

  “Good stuff,” said Manny.

  “And, well, I was wondering if you’d give me a pointer or two. Basically, not to put too fine a point on it, I mean, for starters—” Robert pulled up one of his socks, then another, waiting for the right words to come to mind.

  “Go on,” Manny said. The great thing about Manny was that he listened. He really listened. His brown eyes never once left your face.

  “Like how do you do it?” Robert asked. “No, I don’t mean that, exactly. What I mean is, how do you wow them? I haven’t had much success . . . yet.”

  Actually, he’d mostly failed in the wowing department. Except for that one trick he’d performed, for his mom. But moms, in general, were incredibly easy to wow.

  Manny continued to stare.

  “How do you do it?” Robert repeated.

  “Yeah, Rob-o, I heard you,” said Manny, slowly. “I’m thinking hard right now. It’s an important question and I want to come up with the best answer.”

  Suddenly Manny straddled the railing of the porch, then landed gracefully on the front lawn. “As a matter of fact, your question is so important, I think it calls for some po-eh-tree! Listen carefully, now!”

  He did a pretty good moonwalk, some more fancy footwork, some power moves, and then began waving his finger and moving his head to the rhythm of his words:

  “You find a doozy of a trick and you do it for a crowd,

  Be choosy ’bout the trick if you want them to be WOWED

  You gotta find it

  Hear me? FIND it!

  “You repeat that trick ’til you see it in your sleep

  You gotta beat that trick ’fore you take it to the STREET

  That means practice

  Hear me? PRACTICE!

  “When you’re set for the show, you gotta stay in the NOW

  Just forget about Rob-o! Yes! That’s how,

  Just forget him

  Y’hear? FORGET HIM!

  Yeah!”

  Manny leaped onto the stairs again. “That’s my answer,” he said.

  “It is?” asked Robert.

  “Lighten up, man! And think about your audience.”

  “I do think about my audience. All the time, every single second!” cried Robert, suddenly feeling very un-Rob-o-ish. “My audience is a great big hundred-pound gorilla that’s ready to tear my head off!”

  Manny stared at him again, and he looked as if he were about to come up with some more answers (maybe some answers Robert understood, for mackerel’s sake!) when there was a soft, plaintive wail from inside the house. Manny ran inside, and after a short while he returned, carrying a flushed and sleepy-eyed Edgar, just up from his nap.

  “When you’re set for the show, you gotta stay in the now,” Manny crooned.

  This time Manny’s poem sounded like a lullaby. Edgar put his head on Manny’s chest. “We’re off to the lot. It’s cooler there. Come with us?”

  “I’ll pass ... for now,” Robert said.

  And so it happened that everyone was in the empty lot that afternoon (except for Robert, who had gone home to practice —the only pointer from Manny which seemed to make any sense!).

  Just around the time Mitzi decided to pounce.

  uch later, they’d all discuss how so much had happened in one small space and one small space of time that afternoon in the empty lot. Mitzi the cat didn’t pounce right away. A few other things happened first. Things having to do with words. There were:

  (1) Ali’s new word,

  (2) Edgar’s strange words, and
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  (3) all those mysterious words on those scraps of paper in the old glass jar.

  So when Mitzi burst from her silent hiding place behind the jumble of orange nasturtiums, raced up the tree, then made her long, graceful leap, no one was able to stop her in time. That’s because everyone had been distracted by the meaning (and mystery) of all those words.

  Ali’s word was infrangible, the word she’d heard from Ms. Snoops and examined further in the OED. A word she’d never expected to use so soon! Leandra had just apologized for yelling and saying mean things.

  “I accept your apology,” said Ali, linking arms with both Leandra and Bunny/Bonita. “We are infrangible.”

  “What’s that?” asked Leandra suspiciously, who wasn’t sure if infrangible was complimentary. To her it sounded too much like a fruit gone bad.

  “I mean our friendship is infrangible,” said Ali. “That means unbreakable. We’ve been friends since we hung out in our strollers together. And we’ll be friends until college when we’ll probably move away to different cities. And even then we can still chat online and get together during vacations. That’s what Ms. Snoops does with her old friend Gertrude.”

  Bunny/Bonita nodded her head. “Sticks and stones can break your bones, eggcetera.” Although, not exactly, thought Bunny/Bonita, since the eggcetera part was how words could never hurt you. But words could and they did. It was a bit confusing.

  Bunny/Bonita was glad the club was infrangible anyway.

  Ali lifted Edgar from his stroller. “And I’ll check on your idea about smaller wigs, Leandra,” Ali said. “Maybe you won’t have to cut off more than a few inches.”

  A soft fuzz of brown hair covered Edgar’s head but you could still see his ziggidy-zagged scar. Edgar had been wearing a baseball cap that said angels, but he’d pulled it off. The little red hat was lying in the deep mulch under the tree, where, Ali supposed, a little wig would lie, too, if he’d been wearing one and pulled it off. She couldn’t imagine that kids’ wigs were glued on. What a sad thought.

  But now Manny had begun to juggle and it was hard to have sad thoughts when Manny was juggling. Two balls were golden, two were silver, one was bright fire-engine red. Manny always asked everyone to keep their eyes on the red one to help him concentrate, and before Ali knew it, her sad thoughts were juggled away. She put her little brother into his swing.

  And then, as she pushed Edgar back and forth, something amazing happened.

  Maybe it was the musty coolness under the tree’s leaves, or the juggling, or maybe it was because Ali was pushing the swing higher than usual. All of a sudden, Edgar said, “Ahhh,” very softly.

  And he said it again. “Ahhh.”

  That is to say, Ali and Leandra heard “Ahhh.”

  Bunny/Bonita heard “Bahhh,” or “Buhhh.”

  “He’s saying my name!” Bunny/Bonita whispered.

  “Your name? He’s saying my name!” Ali whispered back. “I’m his sister!”

  “Actually,” said Leandra, “he’s saying the back end of my name.”

  “He is not!” said Ali and Bunny/Bonita at the same time.

  “Eeeeh,” said Edgar.

  “See? My name!” cried the three girls, forgetting about the infrangibility of friendship.

  “Stop arguing!” cried Manny. “Edgar said something. That’s what’s important now.”

  The girls had never seen Manny angry. It was as if it had suddenly begun to rain, after one hundred days of L.A. sunshine. They were so surprised, for a few seconds none of them could think of anything to say.

  Manny grabbed the chains of the swing and looked into Edgar’s eyes. “Say it again, little guy.” He spoke in a soft, calm voice.

  “Whatever it was . . .” whispered Bunny/Bonita.

  “Please,” said Ali. “Please.” She fingered the little stone heart in the pocket of her jeans.

  But Edgar just stared straight ahead. Then he put his thumb into his mouth, as if to block any more sounds from coming out. Ali could feel her eyes smarting. She didn’t want to cry in front of her brother.

  “Let’s have some oranges,” Ali said, rummaging in the bag from Ms. Snoops. “These are from the very, very top of our tree, a gift from Ms. Snoops.” Manny pierced the tops with his penknife, then gave them straws to draw up the golden juice. He even did the same for Edgar. When the fruit was sucked dry, the girls ate the pulp. The pulp got between their teeth, looking gross, and that was funny, but when they put the skins over their teeth, that was even funnier, even though they’d done it a zillion times before. And then they lay, infrangibly, under the tree.

  “Those oranges are refreshing on a day like today,” said a deep voice.

  Startled, the girls turned and saw a man standing at the entrance to the lot. He must have been standing there for a while, watching them. (He’d actually been watching them all day.)

  Ali and Bunny/Bonita sat up and looked anxiously at Manny. But Leandra said, “They’re from our tree. The sweetest ones are way on top.”

  “Leandra!” said Bunny/Bonita. She realized it was the same man she’d seen acting much too friendly with Ruff that morning. Of course, Leandra wasn’t afraid of anything, but still, you didn’t talk to strangers just like that. The man looked strange, too, with his thick beard and vest and clunky hiking boots, on a hot day meant for sandals. He was bald, but he seemed like a man who shaved off all his hair on purpose; a man who would never think of wearing a wig, for any reason. He had a thick drawing pad under his arm.

  “Your tree?” said the man, with a smile.

  Ali felt nervous but she also felt like giggling. It occurred to her that it was upside-down to have a shiny bald head and a bushy beard. And then she wondered why the man had said those oranges ARE refreshing instead of those oranges MUST BE refreshing, as if he’d already been tasting them himself. She decided he must be a person who sleeps in his car and when he’s hungry, forages for food. “It’s OK,” Ali said kindly, “there are plenty of oranges to go around. You can pick some.”

  But Manny was frowning. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  The man came closer. He flipped open his drawing pad. “I was just sketching the Valencia over there,” he said, nodding toward the orange tree.

  He’d drawn the tree in pencil. Its oranges were small, white balls, like ornaments. Its leaves were a lacy, gray swirl. Bunny/Bonita wished she could draw like that! Leandra wondered why the man needed to draw the tree at all, when a digital camera could do a clearer and more colorful job. And Ali thought the tree was prettier in real life, although, until that very moment, she hadn’t realized how lovely the tree actually was. It was as if the drawing itself was whispering, Take another look.

  Manny stepped in front of the children. “I’m not sure I like it that you’re drawing us, man,” he said.

  You had to look closely but, sure enough, around the drawing’s tree trunk were the shaded outlines of four people. And a tiny, blurry person in the tree’s swing.

  “Here, it’s yours,” said the man, ripping the page from his pad. He handed the drawing to Manny.

  While all this had been going on, Ruff had been digging furiously in the same spot Ali had found the heart-shaped stone.

  The man took in a sharp breath, and said, “Your dog has found something.”

  He strode to the far end of the lot where Ruff had dug his hole. Ali, Leandra, and Bunny/Bonita followed. The man bent down to pull up an old half-buried glass jar. Ali could see that it had a rusty disk on the top, just like the disk she’d shown Ms. Snoops, which meant it was from an old preserve jar. The man put down his drawing pad and unscrewed the jar’s rusted cap, twisting it hard with his hand.

  “Well...” the man said, looking inside. He whistled a soft melody to himself, a melody the kids didn’t recognize. Then he reached in and pulled something from the jar. They saw that it was some folded-up paper, which the man carefully unfolded and separated into two pieces. The pieces tore as he did this, but he read them anyway. That took
him a long time. When he was done, tucking the jar under his arm, he folded the papers together again, creasing the edges gently with his thumb and finger. He put the paper into the jar, screwed the cap on tightly, and dropped the jar back into Ruff’s hole. Then he bent down and raked the earth around the jar with his hands.

  “There was something else in this hole,” he said, looking at the kids, “buried on top of the jar. Did any of you kids find it?”

  Ali was looking down at her sneakers. She had her hand in her pocket. The heart-shaped stone felt warm and smooth. She really wanted to keep it.

  “Maybe the dog—” the man began. Ali looked up at him, but didn’t say anything. The man gave a little shrug and walked slowly from the lot. Ali grabbed an orange and ran after him.

  “Wait,” she said, handing him the fruit. “An orange is refreshing on a day like today.”

  “Thanks,” said the man. He put the orange into the big side pocket of his vest. He was smiling, but Ali thought she saw tears in his eyes.

  “The lady across the street told me about you,” Ali said. “You used to collect stones when you were a boy, right?” She reached into her pocket and showed him the heart-shaped stone. “Then this is yours. I was pretending it was my wishing stone.”

  The man took the stone, turning it over and over in his palm. He glanced quickly at Ms. Snoops’s house, and shook his head. “Nope. Not mine,” he said. He didn’t look as if he wanted to say more. Then he gave back the stone, holding Ali’s hand for a second in both of his. “But keep wishing.”

  “Thank you. I will,” said Ali, and she ran back into the lot.

  Leandra was already opening the jar. The others crowded around her as she pulled out the scraps of paper.

  Was it someone’s last will and testament?

  Someone dead and buried, but very, very rich?

  Was it a map to buried treasure? (Buried right there in the lot!) Would the man be back to dig for it in the dead of night?