Double Fudge

  “Make up your mind,” Mom told Fudge.

  “I can’t,” Fudge said. He was wearing one style on his right foot and another on his left. “I have to have them both.”

  “I’ll count to twenty,” Mom said, “while you decide.”

  “I’m not deciding,” Fudge told her.

  “You want me to decide for you?” Mom asked.

  “No!”

  Tootsie mimicked him. “No!” Then she grabbed the yellow lollipop out of Fudge’s hand and threw it. It hit Mitch McCall in the head, stuck to his hair, and hung there like an ornament on a Christmas tree.

  “Tootsie!” Mom cried. “That wasn’t polite.” But Tootsie laughed and clapped her sticky little hands anyway.

  Mitch McCall grimaced as he pulled the lollipop off his head. It took some hairs with it, which really seemed to upset him, probably because he was already kind of bald on top.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mom said, handing him a Wetwipe from her bag.

  “Maybe you would prefer another salesperson,” Mitch McCall said, through teeth so tightly clenched his mouth hardly opened at all.

  “No,” Mom said, “you’ve been very helpful.”

  “All right then,” Mitch McCall said, kneeling in front of Fudge. “Let’s get this over with. Make up your mind, son. There are other customers waiting.”

  “I’m not your son,” Fudge told him.

  “That’s just a figure of speech,” Mom explained, quietly.

  “A what?” Fudge asked.

  “Never mind.” I could tell Mom was losing patience, too. “Just choose your shoes, Fudge.”

  Fudge pulled a couple of Fudge Bucks out of his pocket. He handed them to Mitch McCall. “What’s this?” Mitch asked.

  “Money,” Fudge said. “Enough for two pairs of shoes.”

  “We don’t take play money.”

  “It’s not play money,” Fudge told him. “It’s from the bank.”

  “Bank?” Mitch McCall said. “What bank?”

  “The Farley Drexel Hatcher Bank.” I was surprised to hear Fudge use his whole name. Usually he throws a fit when someone tries to call him Farley Drexel instead of Fudge. “It’s a big bank,” he continued. “It has zillions and trillions of Fudge Bucks.”

  Mitch McCall turned to Mom. “Harry’s only accepts U.S. currency and valid credit cards.”

  Mom dug her wallet out of her purse. “And I have my credit card right here,” she said, handing it to Mitch McCall. “We’ll take the black lace-ups with silver trim for Fudge and come back for his winter boots when you’re less crowded.”

  “Make it on a Wednesday,” Mitch McCall said. Then he muttered under his breath, “That’s my day off.”

  “But, Mom . . .” Fudge started.

  “That’s it, Fudge,” Mom said. “We’re done shopping for shoes.”

  “No fair!” Fudge cried.

  “No feh!” Tootsie cried, as if she were Uncle Feather, repeating every word Fudge says.

  “Let’s go,” Mom said.

  “I’m not going without all my shoes!” Fudge said. He folded his arms across his chest and burrowed deeper into the chair.

  Uh-oh, I thought, slowly backing away and out of the store. This isn’t looking good. Outside, I pretended to check out the window displays. But I could see Mom trying to pull Fudge off his chair. When that didn’t work, she tried to drag him by his feet. When that didn’t work she gave up, went to the register, picked up her bags, and pushed Tootsie’s stroller toward the door. She was probably thinking Fudge would follow. But she was wrong.

  Suddenly he was whirling through the store like a tornado, destroying everything in his path. High heels flew off a display table. Baby shoes toppled from the shelves. Men’s boots thumped to the floor. Mom chased Fudge and Mitch McCall chased Mom. As the rotating sock display crashed, Tootsie jumped up and down in her stroller, shrieking, as if her nutcase of a brother was putting on the best show to hit Broadway in years.

  I prayed no one from my class was at the store. No one who knows me or has ever known me. No one I might meet someday who would say, Oh yeah . . . you’re that kid with the weird brother who threw the fit at Harry’s. I backed away from the store windows and headed down the street, pretending I was just another guy strolling down Broadway—a guy from a perfectly normal family. I checked out the menu of the sushi restaurant two doors down from Harry’s, browsed at the used-book table, and flipped through magazines at the newsstand on the corner. Then I heard Mom calling my name. “Peter . . . I could use some help here.” She was carrying Tootsie in one arm, struggling with the shopping bags in the other, and still trying to push the stroller, which now held my screaming brother.

  “You’re too old for tantrums,” I shouted.

  “If Mom didn’t love you, you’d have a tantrum,” he cried.

  “This has nothing to do with love,” Mom said, passing Tootsie to me, then trying to get Fudge out of the stroller.

  “Yes, it does,” Fudge cried. “If you really loved me you would have bought me both pairs of shoes!”

  “You don’t need two pairs of the same shoes,” Mom told him, as if she were talking to a reasonable person.

  “They weren’t the same.”

  “They were close enough.”

  “I wanted them,” Fudge whined.

  “I know you did. But we can’t buy everything you want.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t have the money to buy . . .” I could tell Mom was having a hard time explaining this. She thought for a minute before she finished. “. . . just for the sake of buying. Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

  “I know it doesn’t grow on trees,” Fudge said. “You get it at the ATM.”

  “You can’t just go to the ATM whenever you want money,” Mom told him.

  “Yes, you can,” Fudge said. “You put in your card and money comes out. It works every time.”

  “No. You have to deposit money into your account first,” Mom said. “You work hard and try to save part of your salary every week. The cash machine is just a way to get some of your money out of your account. It doesn’t spit out money because you want it. It’s not that easy.”

  “I know, Mom,” Fudge said. “Sometimes you have to stand on line.”

  Mom sighed and looked at me. “Got any ideas, Peter?”

  “Just tell him no! Stop trying to explain everything.”

  Mom looked surprised. “I never thought of that,” she said. “I’ve always tried to explain things to my children.”

  “Maybe that worked with me,” I said. “But Fudge is another story.”

  “Story?” Tootsie said.

  “Not now,” Mom told her.

  Tootsie started to cry. “Story . . . now!”

  * * *

  When we got back to our building my best friend, Jimmy Fargo, was coming in with his father. They were loaded down with empty boxes.

  “Have you told Peter the good news yet, Jimmy?” Mr. Fargo asked.

  “What good news?” I said.

  “Oops,” Mr. Fargo said. “Guess I let the cat out of the bag.”

  “You got a cat?” Fudge asked.

  “Meow?” Tootsie said. She has this animal alphabet book and every time she hears the name of an animal she makes an animal sound.

  Mr. Fargo closed his eyes and shook his head. He always acts like he doesn’t get it when he’s around my family.

  “I got new shoes,” Fudge told him.

  “I see,” Mr. Fargo said, trying to get a look at Fudge’s feet over the boxes in his arms.

  “No you don’t,” Fudge told him, “because my new shoes are in the bag.”

  “Meow?” Tootsie asked.

  “We’re not talking about cats,” Fu
dge told her. “We’re talking about shoes.”

  Tootsie held up her foot. “Sue,” she said. She hasn’t learned to make the sh sound yet.

  “Very nice,” Mr. Fargo told her.

  “Well . . .” Mom said to Mr. Fargo, “I have to get these kids upstairs for lunch.”

  “And I have to get started on these boxes,” Mr. Fargo told Mom.

  “A new project?” Mom asked him.

  “Oh yes,” Mr. Fargo said. “Very new.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Jimmy told his dad. “I just have to talk to Peter.” Then he took my arm and led me outside.

  “So what’s up?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. That cat out of the bag stuff.”

  “Oh, that,” Jimmy said.

  “Yeah, that.” Whatever it was, I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. So I changed the subject. “You think these shoes are dorky?” I asked.

  Jimmy checked them out. “They look okay to me. Why?”

  “Because . . .” I shook my head and stopped. I wasn’t about to say because Fudge said they were. “So what’s the good news?” I asked again. He’d have to tell me sooner or later.

  “You know my father’s got a show coming up, right?” he said.

  “Yeah . . .” Frank Fargo’s an artist. And all of a sudden his paintings are starting to sell.

  “So he needs a bigger place to paint,” Jimmy said.

  “Yeah . . . so?”

  “So he got this loft down in SoHo and . . .” Jimmy stopped and took a long look at my shoes. “You know . . . maybe they are dorky. Where’d you get them?”

  “Harry’s.”

  “Let’s see the bottoms.”

  I raised one foot to show Jimmy the bottom of my new shoe.

  “I guess they’re okay,” he said. “Anyway, they won’t take them back now, ’cause you already wore them in the street.”

  “Could we get back to the news?”

  “Oh, right . . . the news.” But he kept looking at my shoes. “How much were they?” he asked. “I need new shoes before school starts.”

  “I’ll sell you these at a slight discount.”

  “I don’t think we wear the same size anymore. Besides, if you think they’re dorky, why would I want them?”

  “They’re not dorky.”

  “Then how come you asked if I thought they were?”

  “I’m done talking about these shoes, Jimmy, okay?”

  “Okay. Fine. Probably nobody will even notice them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gotcha!” he said, sticking a finger in my gut and laughing. I hate when he does that.

  I started back to our building. “I’m going up for lunch.”

  “Good idea,” Jimmy said. “I’m starving. What are you having?”

  “I don’t know. Peanut butter, probably. So are you going to tell me or not?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Whatever it is you don’t want to tell me!”

  “Oh, that . . .”

  I waited while Jimmy looked up at the sky, then down at the ground, then back at the sky. Finally he took a deep breath and said, “I might as well get it over with because sooner or later you’re going to find out anyway. Probably sooner since it’s happening on Saturday.”

  “What’s happening on Saturday?”

  “You know that artist’s loft I told you about . . . where my dad’s going to paint?”

  “What about it?”

  “We’re going to live there.”

  “What do you mean live there?”

  “We’re moving to SoHo on Saturday.”

  “What do you mean moving?”

  “Come on, Peter. You know what moving means.”

  I kept shaking my head. It couldn’t be true. It was just one of his jokes. Any second he’d poke me again and say Gotcha!

  “But I’m still coming up here to go to school,” he said. “So we’ll still see each other every day.”

  “What are you talking about? SoHo’s like sixty or seventy blocks away.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to walk. I’m going to take the subway.”

  “You’re going to take the subway to school every day?” I asked. “By yourself?”

  “What’s the big deal? Plenty of kids in seventh grade take the subway by themselves.”

  I swallowed hard. I didn’t know what the big deal was except I felt like I’d been punched in the gut for real and this time I felt like punching back. “Why’d your father have to go and get a place way downtown?”

  “That’s where the lofts are. You have to be an artist to get one. Besides, our apartment is too small. It’s always been too small.”

  “You didn’t used to think it was too small. One time you even invited me to move in.”

  “We were younger then,” Jimmy said. “I didn’t know as much as I know now.”

  “Just because your father’s getting rich . . .” I began.

  Jimmy didn’t wait for me to finish. “That’s a really rude thing to say. He’s not rich and you know it.”

  “What’s rude about having plenty of money?”

  “He doesn’t have plenty of money. He’ll probably never have plenty of money.”

  “Why are you acting like it’s bad to have money?” I said.

  “I don’t know what it’s like to have money, okay? All I know is my father got this loft downtown and we’re moving in. It’s not like we’re leaving the city the way you did.”

  “That was just for one school year,” I argued. It’s true we spent last year in New Jersey. In Princeton, to be exact. Because my parents wanted to check out living outside the city. It was okay. But when school ended we decided to come back. Jimmy was so glad we celebrated for a week. “Besides,” I told him, “I didn’t have any choice about that.”

  “You think I have a choice?” Jimmy asked. “But to tell you the truth, I don’t mind leaving.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I’m not talking about leaving you,” Jimmy said. “I’m talking about leaving an ant-sized apartment with no furniture. I’m tired of sleeping on a mat on the floor inches away from my father’s face. I’m tired of smelling his salami and onion burps all night. I need my own space.”

  I looked away.

  “Are you trying to make me feel bad?” Jimmy asked. “Because you’re doing a pretty good job of it.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

  “Look . . .” he said, “you’ll come down. We’ll hang out. It’ll be cool. Nothing’s going to change.”

  * * *

  “What’s wrong, Pete?” Fudge asked when I went upstairs for lunch.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You look like you just lost your best friend.”

  “Where’d you learn that expression . . . from Grandma?” Grandma has an expression to fit every situation.

  Fudge nodded. “So, did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Lose your best friend?”

  “I just found out Jimmy’s moving down to SoHo.”

  Mom put a peanut butter sandwich in front of me. “Frank Fargo told me. It’s really good news for them, Peter.” She put an arm around my shoulder. “I know it’s going to be hard to say good-bye to Jimmy but . . .”

  “I’m not saying good-bye to Jimmy! Didn’t Mr. Fargo tell you? He’s still going to school with me. He’s going to take the subway up here every day.”

  “Is SoHo like Princeton?” Fudge asked.

  “Princeton’s in New Jersey, Turkey Brain.”

  “SoHo is part of the city,” Mom told Fudge. “You’ve been there.”

/>   “So . . . ho ho ho,” Tootsie said, sounding like some miniature Santa.

  Mom was impressed. “That’s right. SoHo.”

  “I hate SoHo!” I shouted. Then I ran for my room and slammed the door and when I did, Tootsie started bawling.

  “Thanks a lot, Pete,” Fudge called. “Everybody was happy ’til you got home!”

  Who’s Mixed Up?

  The minute Jimmy and his father moved out of our building, Henry started painting their apartment and fixing up the old kitchen. Lucky for the new people he did, because Frank Fargo never cleaned out his refrigerator. He kept everything until it turned green with mold and so smelly you nearly fell over when the door opened.

  The new people have a kid Fudge’s age. We met in the lobby the afternoon before school started. “I’m Melissa Beth Miller and I’m in mixed-up group,” she announced. She had kid tattoos plastered up and down her arms.

  “I’m in mixed-up group, too,” Fudge told her.

  “It’s not mixed-up group,” Mom said. “It’s mixed group.”

  What does that mean? I wondered. And how come this is the first I’m hearing about it?

  “That’s a relief,” Melissa’s mother said. “We’re new here and when we got Melissa’s school assignment I was very concerned.”

  By then, Tootsie had fallen asleep in her stroller. She was barefooted and Turtle started licking her toes. I don’t know what it is about toes but all of a sudden he’s an addict. It’s like he can’t help himself. Baby toes, old people’s toes, clean toes, disgusting toes. As soon as he sees a set of toes he’s at it—sniffing, nibbling, licking. I’m hoping he’ll forget about toes once it’s winter and nobody’s walking around in sandals.

  The second I let go of his leash to fish our mail out of the box, Turtle took off. By the time I looked up, he was across the lobby, sniffing Olivia Osterman’s big toe. It was the only one sticking out of her open-toed shoe. Mrs. Osterman spends a lot of time in the lobby, sitting on the leather sofa, watching people come and go. She’s lived in our building longer than anyone—more than sixty years. She’s close to ninety now. When she was younger she was a Broadway star. Grandma saw her perform. She still dresses up every day, wearing big hats and lots of jewelry. Everyone in the building knows her and stops to talk. She hands out little boxes of raisins to the kids, as if every day were Halloween. She carries dog biscuits, too, so all the dogs in the building are her friends.