“Sorry,” Mrs. Prescott replied. “Nothing yet. But that’s good news. The mother is resting and the baby is staying where he — or she — belongs.”
Allie closed her cell phone and settled in to wait.
If you were to look at a postcard of Camden Falls, Massachusetts, you might see a small town nestled in the hills, or you might see Main Street, with its rows of shops and businesses, or you might see gracious old homes, some dating all the way back to colonial times. But if those photos were taken in the summer, as were many of the ones that grace the postcards sold in the T-shirt Emporium or Stuff ’n’ Nonsense or the bookstores, you would not have a picture of Camden Falls at the beginning of the holiday season.
For this is Camden Falls on the Monday before Thanksgiving: A feeling of expectation is in the air, a feeling of festivity, too. Hanging in shopwindows are wreaths of autumn flowers and bunches of dried corn. The trees lining Main Street are bare. Soon, they’ll be twined with tiny gold lights, but not until next weekend. The residents of Camden Falls don’t start decorating for Christmas until Thanksgiving is over. At the edges of the sidewalks and on the roofs of the stores are traces of the season’s first snow. It fell last night, just a flurry, really, but it sent Ruby Northrop and Lacey Morris and plenty of other Camden Falls children into a fit of excitement about future snow days and the possibility of blizzards.
Take a walk along Main Street and look at it up close. Here is the Marquis Diner, ready for its first Thanksgiving in Camden Falls. It’s owned by the Nelsons, and they’ve hung a banner in the window announcing that it will be open for business on Thanksgiving Day, serving traditional turkey dinners in addition to everything they usually serve. Here is Fig Tree, the fanciest restaurant in town, the menu in the display case outside the front door bordered with pumpkins and cornucopias. Here is Needle and Thread, the sewing store owned by Min, and by Olivia Walter’s grandmother Gigi. Christmas fabrics and trimmings have been for sale since the summer, but the store window still features back-to-school clothing and two quilted Thanksgiving table runners (made by Gigi). No matter what, Min and Gigi will not break with town tradition and decorate their window for Christmas before Thanksgiving has come and gone. Three doors down from Needle and Thread is Sincerely Yours, the store recently opened by Olivia’s parents. In its windows are gift baskets filled with artificial chrysanthemums and chocolate turkeys and candles shaped like corncobs.
Now cross the street and walk to the south end of town, past the movie theatre. Here is something exciting. A new business has opened today. The sign out front reads MATY’S MAGIC STORE, and this afternoon it’s drawing a crowd.
“Look at that!” says Ruby breathlessly. She has walked to Main Street after school with Lacey and Hilary, and they’re gawking at the outside of Maty’s.
“A magician’s hat,” says Lacey. “How did they do that?”
The front of the store has been transformed into an enormous top hat, out of which sticks a pair of pink-and-white rabbit ears.
Hilary reads a sign posted in the front window. “‘Magic galore,’” she says. “‘Tricks, illusions’ … hmm. A ‘Who-Done-It Party.’ I wonder what that is.”
“This is so cool,” says Ruby. “I’m going to do my Christmas shopping here.”
“In a magic store?” asks Hilary dubiously.
“Yes,” replies Ruby. “If I ever earn any money. It’s really a shame that Aunt Allie didn’t win the lottery. Oh, well. Come on. Let’s go inside.”
If you want a complete picture of Camden Falls, you’ll have to leave Main Street behind now. It may be the heart of town, but you’ll want to see what lies beyond. Walk west until you reach a tiny cottage plunked down amid gardens, so many gardens that there’s no actual yard. The gardens trail from the sidewalk to the house and don’t stop there, since ivy climbs the walls. This is the home of Mary Woolsey, who, thinks Flora Northrop, could be a character in a picture book. She’s a little old lady like Miss Rumphius or the one with the shoe and all the children. Except that she doesn’t have any children. She has two ancient cats, though, who in cat years are probably older than Mary. Mary, who works part-time at Needle and Thread, has lived alone for a long time and is happy in her solitude, although she’s also happy that Flora has become her friend. Mary will be celebrating Thanksgiving by herself, and she doesn’t mind that at all.
If you feel like taking a long walk on this fine but chilly day, you could hike out the county road, past the turnoffs for Minnewaska State Park and Davidson’s Orchards, until you came to a house all by itself in the country. At this hour of the afternoon, the house is empty. It’s the home of Nikki Sherman, whose best friends are Olivia, Flora, and Ruby. Until Flora and Ruby moved to town, Nikki had no close friends at all. And now she has three. Nikki’s life has not been easy, but in the last year it has changed so much that she sometimes thinks about her younger self as an entirely different person. Her alcoholic father is gone — Nikki isn’t sure where, and she doesn’t care as long as he never bothers her family again. Her mother now holds down a job that a year ago she could only have dreamed about. Nikki’s older brother, who once drifted along, unsure what he wanted to do with his life, is a freshman in college (to everyone’s surprise), and Nikki can’t wait until he comes home for the Thanksgiving break. This afternoon, Nikki is on her way back from Camden Falls Central High School. The bus will shortly deposit her at the end of the gravel lane leading to her house, where she’ll be greeted with boisterous barking by Paw-Paw, and later with hugs by her mother and her little sister, Mae, who’s at her after-school program. Nikki misses having her family around during these hours, but she relishes the peace she finds at home, something that was foreign to her for most of her life.
Several miles from Nikki’s house, also on the outskirts of Camden Falls, is Three Oaks, the continuing-care retirement community, and this is where Mrs. Sherman found her dream job. The job, which might not, Nikki knows, be a dream job for some people, consists of managing the dining room at Three Oaks. This is demanding and requires Mrs. Sherman to work long hours and often to be at Three Oaks on weekends and holidays. But the pay is good and Mrs. Sherman is grateful to have been selected to fill the position.
Three Oaks is where the Willets live now, and as Mr. Willet leaves his apartment this afternoon and walks through the complex to the wing where his wife, Mary Lou, resides, he notes with plea sure that his new home has put on its holiday face, just as Main Street has. Mr. Willet walks past the Three Oaks barbershop, the Three Oaks gift shop, the Three Oaks coffee shop, and the Three Oaks craft room (all located in the main building) and sees autumn flower arrangements and gourds and even a few carved pumpkins left over from Halloween. He passes into the hospital wing and smiles at the cardboard Pilgrims and cheery HAPPY THANKSGIVING! banner that decorate the nurses’ station. As he enters Mary Lou’s room, he reminds himself that his wife may or may not remember who he is — this will depend on whether she’s having a good day or a bad day — and decides that if she doesn’t remember him, he can try to cheer himself with thoughts about Thanksgiving, and the guests he’s invited to join him and Mary Lou in the dining room on Thursday.
Leave Three Oaks behind now and return to Camden Falls. If you walk along Aiken Avenue, you’ll pass the Row Houses (there’s Mr. Pennington snapping a leash to Jacques’s collar), and after a few blocks you’ll reach the road that leads to Aunt Allie’s house. On this afternoon, the door of her home is shut tight and no lights shine inside. The house, like Allie, is waiting.
Aunt Allie might not have won the lottery, but Ruby Northrop thought that she could feel her own luck changing. For one thing, there was the new baby. A baby on the way who would be her cousin and who would live right in her town. Ruby had never had a cousin nearby and was slightly jealous of Olivia, who had many cousins living near Camden Falls. Then there was the fact that Ruby had gotten a 98 on a spelling test for which she had forgotten to study. Ruby was not noted for her good grades, so this unexpec
ted 98 — surely an A — went right along with all the good things that had been happening lately.
Given her run of luck, she wasn’t very surprised to come home from school on Monday, having paid her visit to Maty’s Magic Store, to find two exciting messages for her on the answering machine.
“Ruby!” Flora had called from the kitchen. “Come here!”
Ruby was still shrugging out of her backpack. She hustled into the kitchen, shedding clothing and school supplies as she went, a trail of sneakers, papers, a sweater, her social studies book, and finally the backpack itself, now empty.
“What? What?” she cried.
“You got two replies to your ad!” said Flora. “Listen!” She pressed the REPLAY button on the machine.
“Hi, Ruby.”
“That’s Dr. Malone!” exclaimed Ruby.
“Shh! Listen,” said Flora.
“Margaret showed me your flyer, and there are a couple of chores here we’d love to hand over to you,” continued Dr. Malone. “There’s some stuff in the basement that needs to be cleaned out…. Well, I’ll give you the details when you call back. You can reach me at the office before six or at home tonight. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”
“And now,” said Flora, waving her hand over the answering machine like a magician, “call number two.”
“Hello, Ruby? Ruby? This is Robby. Is this your answering machine? Ruby? Okay. Mom told me to call you. We have a job for you.”
“Yes! Yes!” squealed Ruby.
“It’s unpleasant,” Robby added.
“That’s my specialty,” Ruby told Flora with what she hoped was a professional edge to her voice. “Unpleasant jobs.”
“So call back,” Robby finished up.
“Wow, Ruby, that’s great,” said Flora. “Two jobs and you only handed out the flyers yesterday. I guess you’re in business.”
Ruby wasted no time returning Dr. Malone’s and Robby’s calls. When she had hung up, she plunked herself at the kitchen table with Flora and reported, “Dr. Malone wants me to clean out part of his basement, like he said, and also I’m supposed to alphabetize Margaret’s CD’s.” She paused thoughtfully. “Huh. I don’t think I’d want my CD’s in alphabetical order. I kind of like them messy. But Margaret isn’t a messy sort of person.”
“No, she isn’t,” Flora agreed.
“Then I talked to Robby’s mother,” Ruby went on, “and she said they have this huge pile of old clothes they want to donate to the clothing bank, but they’re all in a heap, and they need to be sorted by season and then folded neatly and put into bags. She said they’ve been putting this off for years. Years — can you imagine?” Ruby bit into a chocolate chip cookie. “I bet I can do it in one hour. Tops.”
“But don’t rush your work,” said Flora maddeningly. “You have to do a good job.”
“I know, I know.”
“Or people won’t call you back with more jobs.”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
Ruby thought that if she ran directly to the Edwardses’ after school the next day, took care of the clothes, and then hurried to the Malones’ (arriving just as Margaret returned from high school), she could handle both jobs in one afternoon. She also thought that she should have a uniform, so that night she found an old white T-shirt and, with a fat black permanent marker, wrote DOER OF UNPLEASANT JOBS across the back and, in smaller letters on the front, RUBY.
She wore the T-shirt under her sweater at school the next day, so that when she arrived at Robby’s house, all she had to do was remove her sweater and she was ready to work.
“The clothes are in here,” said Mrs. Edwards, guiding Ruby upstairs to a spare room. “We certainly are happy to let you take care of this for us.”
Ruby stopped at the threshold of the room and stared. She thought that, outside of a department store, she had never seen so many clothes all in one place.
Mrs. Edwards looked apologetic. “As I said, we’ve been putting this chore off for a while.”
Ruby held up a small striped shirt. “Whose is this?” she asked.
“Well, it was Robby’s. When he was in first grade. That’s about how long the clothes have been piling up.”
Ruby swallowed hard but didn’t say anything.
“So what you need to do,” said Mrs. Edwards, “is decide whether the clothes are for summer or winter, fold them, and pack them into bags.” She indicated a stack of paper grocery bags by the door. “Leave the summer clothes up here, and I’ll help you carry the bags of winter clothes downstairs. I’m going to drive them to the clothing bank tomorrow. The director said they’re only interested in the cold-weather clothes at the moment.”
“Okay,” replied Ruby, who was already wondering whether she would be able to arrive at the Malones’ on time.
Mrs. Edwards left and Ruby dove into the job. She sorted first, making decisions fast. When she had two piles (enormous, teetering piles) of clothes — one for summer and one for winter — she began to fold them. Folding was not one of Ruby’s strong points (as she had once heard Min mention to Flora), but she concentrated and did her best. It occurred to her that she could simply stuff most of the clothes into the bags and fold only the ones on the top — that would make the job go much more quickly — but Flora’s words about being called back for future jobs rang in her ears, so she worked doggedly, folding each article carefully. And when she had finished, she was surprised to look at her watch and see that in fact just over an hour had passed. Not bad at all. She would arrive at Margaret’s only fifteen minutes late.
“Ruby,” said Mrs. Edwards as they lugged the last bag of winter clothes to the front door, “I will certainly call you in the future. You did a great job. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.” And she pressed several bills into Ruby’s hand.
Ruby, glowing, sprinted to the Malones’ house. “What do you want me to do first?” she asked, the moment Margaret opened the door.
“Hi, Ruby,” said Margaret. “Nice to see you. Thank you for coming.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry to be in a rush, but I’m trying to stay on schedule,” Ruby replied, shedding her coat and sweater.
Margaret smiled at the sight of Ruby’s shirt. “Very nice lettering,” she said.
“Thanks. It’s my uniform.” Ruby clapped her hands together smartly. “Okay. Basement or CD’s?” she asked.
“Up to you. Why don’t I take you down to the basement and show you the stuff Dad wants cleaned up. Then you can decide where to begin.”
Ruby followed Margaret into the Malones’ kitchen, and Margaret opened the door to the basement. Ruby’s nose was greeted with the familiar basementy smell that all the cellars in the Row Houses seemed to share. A smell of dampness and cement and something that Min described as “fustiness.” Ruby wasn’t sure what “fustiness” meant, but it sounded like a good description of a basement smell.
Margaret switched on the light, and she and Ruby made their way down the worn wooden steps.
“It’s over here,” said Margaret, indicating an area of the basement beyond the Malones’ washer and dryer.
Ruby stopped and stared. “That?” she cried.
Margaret cleared her throat. “I know it’s a lot. I mean, it looks like a lot. But it isn’t, really, and all you need to do is toss out the stuff that’s completely useless and organize the rest of it.”
“But,” said Ruby, gawking at what appeared to be a miniature mountain of junk, “how do I know what’s useless to you?” She remembered that her mother used to say: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
“Oh, you’ll know,” said Margaret. She grabbed at something, and Ruby now saw that the mountain was actually overflowing storage shelves. “This, for example,” Margaret continued, pulling a scarred pole from the top of the heap on a middle shelf.
“What is it?” asked Ruby.
Margaret shrugged. “Exactly. A mop without the mop part? A broom without the broom part? I don’t know. And if
you don’t know, either, then there isn’t any point in keeping it.”
Ruby nodded. “I understand.”
“So do you want to start here or in my room?”
“I might as well start here,” replied Ruby weakly, the dark recesses of the cellar already reminding her of the many reasons she avoided descending into Min’s basement.
“Okay. Just leave the stuff to be thrown out over there by the washer and then tidy up the shelves. If you have any questions, call me. I’ll be right upstairs in the kitchen.”
Margaret climbed the steps, and Ruby stood before the shelves. Tentatively, she reached for a lumpy item. Her fingers had barely closed over it when she heard a noise from a distant corner, a sort of scratchy, slithery noise. Please don’t be a ghost, she thought fervently. Or a snake. She reminded herself that ghosts weren’t real (probably) and that snakes weren’t around in late November (probably), and hefted the item, which turned out to be a boot. She set it aside. If she found its mate, she would return the pair to the shelves. If she didn’t, the lone boot would be destined for the dump.
Ruby worked steadily, ignoring creepy basement sounds, and found that the job went fairly quickly. “Margaret!” she called forty-five minutes later. “I think I’m done.” She surveyed her work with satisfaction. The shelves, emptied of nearly half their contents, now neatly held the remaining tools, baskets, outdoor clothing, and other articles Ruby had deemed worth keeping. And in a pile by the washing machine were heaped a bucket with a hole in its side, two cans of dried-up paint, the single boot, the broom handle, and many broken items, some of which Ruby couldn’t identify.
“Wow!” exclaimed Margaret, before she was even halfway down the stairs. “Ruby, this is fantastic. Dad’s going to be thrilled. I’ve never seen the basement look so good.”
“Thank you,” said Ruby modestly.
“Do you still have time for my CD’s?”
Ruby looked at her watch. It was closer to dinner than she had thought it would be, her jobs so far having gone fairly quickly but still having been bigger than Ruby had imagined, and she didn’t want to upset Min. She also didn’t want to turn down perfectly good work, so she phoned Flora and told her she’d be home in an hour (she hoped).