Ten Rules for Living With My Sister

  Daddy Bo nodded. He was wandering around the family room looking like he didn’t know what to do with himself.

  “Dad?” said my mother. “Do you remember what today is?”

  “Moving day?” replied Daddy Bo. He did not sound very sure.

  “That’s right. You’re moving to your new apartment in The Towers.”

  “But where’s my furniture?”

  “It’s already there,” my father reminded him. “These are just the last few things.” He waved toward the boxes in the hall. “Ready to go?”

  “I suppose.”

  Daddy Bo did not sound happy, and I couldn’t blame him. Even though Mom and Dad had been talking about what a nice place The Towers was, I kept thinking about nursing homes I’d seen on TV. I pictured old people—rows of them—sleeping in chairs with their mouths open while a big TV played loudly even though nobody was watching it. I pictured people wearing bibs and being fed applesauce like babies, and wandering up and down hallways in their slippers, and asking visitors if they knew how to get to the Statue of Liberty, or telling anyone who would listen that they used to be President Lincoln’s secretary and then politely wondering if they could borrow a subway token, which you don’t even need tokens for the subway anymore.

  This did not sound like the kind of place for Daddy Bo. But it was too late now. His new apartment was ready for him.

  Daddy Bo said good-bye to Bitey, who nearly bit him, and then my whole family loaded the boxes and suitcases into our green Subaru and drove uptown. As we passed the Port Authority bus station, Daddy Bo said, “Remember our trip to New Jersey, Pearl? That was fun.”

  “It was an adventure,” I replied, and thought about the A I had gotten on my journal, even though at first the substitute hadn’t believed my story.

  We drove around Columbus Circle, where my father started yelling things like, “Stay in your own lane!” and then turning to my mother and adding, “He thinks he’s so special, he should get two lanes.” Dad was about to honk his horn, but my mother reminded him that he could get a fine for that, so instead he shouted, “The light is green! It’s green! What are you waiting for?” even though all our windows were closed and we were the only ones who could hear him.

  I smiled at Daddy Bo and took his hand.

  We were all relieved when we finally pulled up in front of a very tall building with a brass plaque next to the front doors that said THE TOWERS.

  “Here we are!” said my mother gaily like we had arrived at the circus.

  The next half an hour was busy and a little confusing, but when it was over, someone had helped us unload Daddy Bo’s things from the car, and we had ridden the elevator to his apartment on the fifth floor, and already, I had changed my mind about The Towers. I had not seen one person shuffling around in slippers or talking about Abraham Lincoln or the Statue of Liberty.

  Plus, Daddy Bo’s apartment was really nice.

  “Look!” I exclaimed. “All your own furniture.” Daddy Bo and I walked from the living room to the den to his bedroom and then peeked in the bathroom. (I noticed that Daddy Bo didn’t have a kitchen—just a teensy little area with a refrigerator and a sink, which I decided was a good idea, since he wasn’t always reliable with the stove.)

  In the living room were the couch and armchairs and coffee table from Daddy Bo’s house in New Jersey. In the den were his bookshelves and desk and another armchair. In his bedroom were his bed and his dresser.

  “Hey, Daddy Bo, there’s already stuff in your closets!” I said. “How did this get here?”

  It turned out that my dad had spent some time during the last week getting Daddy Bo’s apartment ready.

  My mother started opening the boxes we’d brought with us. After a few minutes she looked up and said, “Lexie, why don’t you and Pearl and Daddy Bo take a walk around The Towers and see what’s what?”

  “What are you and Dad going to do?” I asked.

  “Stay here and finish unpacking,” replied Mom.

  I looked at Daddy Bo. A tour sounded like fun. “We can pretend we’re explorers,” I said to my grandfather.

  The three of us stepped out into the hall, which was carpeted, and reminded me of the halls in our apartment building. I looked up and down at all the doors with numbers and letters on them.

  “You have lots of neighbors,” I told Daddy Bo.

  “It’s just like our apartment building,” added Lexie, and since this was exactly what I had been thinking, I said, “Pinky swear of the brain!”

  But no one knew what I meant, and anyway, Daddy Bo had just gotten a look at the nurses’ station at the end of the hall, and he said, “There aren’t any nurses where you live.”

  He got in a better mood, though, after we’d taken the elevator to the first floor.

  “Hey, here’s the gift shop!” exclaimed Lexie. There’s nothing like shopping to capture her attention.

  “Oh, and look, a coffee shop,” I said.

  A woman sitting at a desk by the front door smiled at us and said, “Mr. Littlefield?”

  “Yes?” Daddy Bo answered cautiously.

  “Good morning. I’m Harriet Sutton. I work here on the weekends. Welcome to The Towers. Are you taking a tour?”

  “We’re explorers,” I said.

  “If you go down that hallway,” said Harriet, pointing, “you’ll find the library and the lecture room. On the second floor are the exercise room, the barber shop and beauty parlor, the crafts room—”

  “Crafts room!” I cried.

  “Yes, you can take classes—”

  “Daddy Bo, you can take art classes here!”

  My sister pulled me aside and whispered, “Calm down, Pearl.”

  But I couldn’t. “I want to live here!” I said.

  Finally Daddy Bo smiled. “Sorry. I’m afraid only old gents like me can live here. Well, old gents and old ladies.”

  We left Harriet and walked along the hall toward the library. Posted on a bulletin board were sign-up sheets for field trips.

  “‘The Metropolitan Museum of Art,’” read Lexie, peering at the notices. “‘Broadway Bound’—that’s a trip to see a musical. ‘The Spring Flower Show. A Tasting Tour of Manhattan’—that’s something to do with restaurants. Wow, Daddy Bo, you’re going to be busy.”

  “I never!” he said, and I wasn’t positive what he meant, but his eyes were kind of sparkling, so that was good.

  We peeked in the library, which was bigger than my school library, and then we peeked in the lecture room, and after that we took the elevator to the second floor. I examined the crafts room and looked hopefully for a sign announcing grandfather/granddaughter art classes, but I didn’t see one. I did see, though, that Daddy Bo was smiling again, and this was nice since his smile had been missing for quite some time.

  Finally Lexie looked at her watch and said, “We’d better go back upstairs. It’s one o’clock. Mom and Dad will be wondering where we are.”

  On the fifth floor we found Daddy Bo’s apartment and when we opened the door we saw that Mom and Dad had unpacked every box we’d brought. The place looked pretty much like Daddy Bo’s house in New Jersey, except with a view of Seventy-second Street out the window.

  We ate lunch in the coffee shop, and later we went back to the fifth floor. We rode in the elevator with a man wearing a baseball cap and holding a cane, who was very cheerful, and when he got off with us and saw where we were going, he said to Daddy Bo, “You must be our new neighbor. I’m Howard. I live across the hall in 5D. Why don’t you join my wife and me for dinner tonight?”

  I was only a little jealous that Howard and his wife would get to have dinner with Daddy Bo, and anyway, I decided that this was one of those things that shouldn’t get out in the open, so I didn’t mention it.

  “Well,” said my father, looking around Daddy Bo’s new place, “I think you’re pretty well set here, Dad.”

  That was my father’s way of saying it was time for us to leave.

  “We??
?ll be back tomorrow,” added my mother. “We’re all going to go out for brunch.”

  “I remember,” said Daddy Bo.

  We started to put on our coats.

  “Daddy Bo,” I said, “I have something for you.” I reached into my pocket and handed my grandfather an envelope with his name on it and a box that I had wrapped in tinfoil and tied with a piece of yarn.

  “Goodness, what’s this, Pearl?” he said.

  He opened the envelope first and found the card I’d made for him. On the outside it said To the best grandfather in the world and showed a picture of Daddy Bo standing on a globe with the squirrel tail attached to his pants. On the inside it said I WILL MISS YOU!!! and showed a picture of me crying.

  “Thank you very much,” said Daddy Bo.

  “Now open the box,” I told him.

  Daddy Bo did so and he found a key on a key chain.

  “I made the key chain,” I announced.

  “It’s beautiful, Pearl. But what’s the key to?”

  “To me,” I replied.

  23

  Back at our apartment, my old room was empty. Or almost empty. My bed was still there, of course, and my dresser and my desk. But Daddy Bo’s things were gone from the closet, and on top of the dresser was nothing and on top of the desk was nothing. Daddy Bo had kept pictures on the desk—my school picture and Lexie’s school picture and a picture of my dead grandmother (before she died) and a picture of my father when he was little and a picture of some dog I didn’t know. And he had put all sorts of things on the dresser—mail and handkerchiefs and a seashell I had painted for him and paper clips and magazines and packages of gum. But these things had been packed up and moved to The Towers and now my room looked like it had never belonged to anyone at all.

  Lexie came out of her room and stood in my doorway. “So,” she said, “I guess you can have your room back.”

  I think what she wanted to say was, “I guess I can have my room back,” but she was a little politer these days. She even let me spend one more night in her room. The next morning, though, before we even left to take Daddy Bo out to brunch, we began to lug loads of my stuff down the hall to my room, and by that night we were finished. The last thing Lexie did was take down the LEXIE AND PEARL’S ROOM sign. But she didn’t throw it away. “I’ll just keep it in my desk for a while,” she said. I knew she was only being polite, but whatever.

  One afternoon, a couple of weeks after Daddy Bo had left, I passed by Lexie’s room and since the door was open I leaned inside and said, “You know what?”

  Lexie was plugging away at her homework. “What?”

  “The days used to seem really long, but now they go by quickly.”

  “That’s because you’re busier.”

  “Really?”

  “Definitely. It’s a fact.” Lexie closed her textbook and gave me her full attention. “When you’re busier, time passes faster. I mean, it seems to pass faster. Like, when you’re sick? And you spend the day in bed? You know how long the day feels? But when you’re busy with school and homework and friends and projects, the days fly by.”

  “I guess.” Personally, I thought Lexie sounded like a magazine article, but then I considered what she’d said and decided maybe it was true. Back in the fall I had slogged through school and then in the afternoons Justine usually came over but she never knew what she wanted to do so I had to play Sorry! for both of us, etc., etc., etc. But these days things were different. In school I hung out with James Brubaker the Third. We passed notes in class and we ate together in the cafeteria and we played Spy during roof time. At first we spied on Rachel and Katie and Jill, but it turned out that they weren’t all that interesting, so then we spied on imaginary enemies like giant sewer rats and men carrying suspicious briefcases. We kept a notebook labeled SPY NOTATIONS and hoped Rachel or Katie or Jill would steal it, since we had also written fake stuff about them in it, but they were too concerned with their fingernails and hair.

  After school JBIII would come over to my apartment or I would go over to his and it was nice to play games with someone who could read the directions. At exactly 4:30 every afternoon, though, JBIII would say that it was time for him to do his homework, and then he would go home, or else I would have to leave his apartment and go home myself. (JBIII’s name had never once been written in the corner of the blackboard in Mr. Potter’s room and he said he planned to keep it that way.) Then when I was alone in my room I would work hard on our assignments about myths and crustaceans and verbs. And sometimes JBIII would call me at night and say, “Don’t forget your math worksheets,” or whatever, so then I would put them in my backpack, and all in all everyone was pretty pleased with me.

  Mr. Potter sent home progress reports and my parents were so happy with mine that they phoned Daddy Bo and said, “Guess what. Pearl got her best report ever! She improved in every single subject.” Daddy Bo asked to speak to me then, and he said, “Blimey, Pirate Pearl! You’ve done a bang-up job!” which I don’t think “bang-up” is a pirate term, but whatever.

  Anyway, what with JBIII and my homework and visiting Daddy Bo on the weekends, the time was flying by, so Lexie’s theory was probably correct.

  I thought Lexie might pick up her textbook again, but instead she said, “Hey, Pearl, who do you think is going to move into Justine’s apartment?”

  I was quiet for a moment, remembering my old best friend. Then I thought about the news John had given Lexie and me after school that day—that somebody had bought the Lebarros’ apartment. But John didn’t know anything about the new owners.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I hope they have a kid exactly my age, though. Oh! Maybe they’ll be foreign and I’ll have to teach them English.”

  Lexie turned her face away from me for a moment, but then she said, “So who’s coming to your birthday party?”

  There was a lot of news about my party. For starters, when I had told my parents that Justine would be in Paris on my birthday, Dad had said, “Why don’t you have your party early this year, Pearl? If you have it before school lets out, no one will be on vacation yet.”

  So I planned my party for a Saturday in May. At first my guest list only included Justine and JBIII. But JBIII convinced me to invite five kids from our grade too. And then guess what. It turned out that Justine wouldn’t be home then either, but the invitations—which I had made myself—had already been sent out, so I couldn’t change the date.

  “Leslie’s coming,” I said to Lexie, “and Elena and Kenny and Greg and Elyse. I don’t think you know them. But they’re nice.”

  I left my sister alone then, since I had learned a thing or two about overstaying my welcome, and I went to my room to think about my birthday list. I knew my family would give me their presents on my actual birthday in the summer, but I didn’t think it could hurt to get a head start on the list. (The list wasn’t going to come as a surprise to anyone anyway, since all I wanted was the cell phone, the computer, and the key to our apartment.)

  One day Lexie dropped me off at our building after school and when the elevator doors opened on the seventh floor I heard voices and loud noises. The door to Justine’s apartment was open and I could see boxes and furniture in the front hall. I tiptoed to the doorway and peeked inside. In my head I was saying, “Please let my new neighbor be a nine-year-old girl. And please let her have her own cell phone and computer and key to the apartment.” If she had any of those things, I would be sure to mention the fact to my parents.

  “Hello? Can I help you?”

  I jumped.

  A young woman had stepped out of the living room. She was carrying a baby.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t spying or anything.” Even though I was. “My name is Pearl. I live in Seven-F.”

  The woman smiled. “I’m Nancy Harmer. And this”—she waved the baby’s fist at me—“is Matthew.”

  “Do you have any other kids?” I asked hopefully.

  “Nope. It’s just Matty and my hu
sband and me.”

  Oh. Undoubtedly, Lexie would get to be Matty’s babysitter and earn lots of money. But I remembered my manners and tried to look like I was thrilled to have a baby down the hall.

  I waved good-bye to Mrs. Harmer.

  That afternoon I made some notes about my birthday party. I had decided that my guests could spend the afternoon making crafts. We were going to have different stations set up in the family room: one for painting T-shirts, one for making beaded bracelets, one for decorating treasure boxes, and one for sand art. I had also decided what we were going to eat at the party: bagels with different toppings, and for dessert fruit kabobs.

  My mother had said, “Pearl, don’t you want to have your party at the bowling alley?”

  My father had said, “Or at the gymnastics center?”

  And my sister had said, “The guests will want pizza and cake and ice cream, not bagels and fruit kabobs.”

  But it was my party and I knew what I wanted.

  24

  The very first person to arrive at my birthday party was Daddy Bo. My father had taken the subway to The Towers in the morning and picked up Daddy Bo, who now stood in our living room looking around at the craft stations.

  “Gracious, Pearl. This is a wonder!” His chin flap swayed slightly.

  “Thank you,” I said modestly. “See, at this table everybody gets to paint a T-shirt. And over here they can make bracelets. If the boys don’t want bracelets for themselves, they can make them for their mothers or something. Over here is the table for sand art sculptures. And at the big table is all the stuff you need to decorate a treasure box. You can use paint or glitter or sequins or even feathers. Or everything all at once for a very fancy box.”

  I took Daddy Bo’s hand, led him into the kitchen, and showed him the party food. “First we’re going to create our own bagels,” I said. “Look at all the toppings. Peanut butter and cream cheese and jam and tuna fish and—I don’t know why anyone would want it—lox.” Which if you don’t know what lox is, it’s thin slices of this slimy pink fish that’s as limp as a wet washcloth and smells like the inside of your shoes. But some people like it.