“Well, it’s not exactly the Ritz-Carlton,” Mavis’s mother said, dropping the suitcase onto the bed. She opened bureau drawers and peered into the closet and inspected the cupboards in the kitchenette. “Heck,” she said, “it’s barely even the Motel 6.”
Mavis liked the little apartment over the Tullys’ garage. Well, it wasn’t really an apartment. More like just a room. But it had everything they needed. Beds and bureaus. A stove and a refrigerator. A closet and a bathroom. There were small ruffled pillows on the beds that matched the flowered curtains and the armchair in the corner. All the dishes in the kitchen cupboard matched, even the cereal bowls and the coffee mugs.
And it was way better than her dad’s house in Tennessee, where she had to sleep on the couch when she visited, and it smelled like mothballs and too many cats.
Mavis had a good feeling about this place. She’d only been here one day, and she already had a best friend and her own bureau.
But Mavis’s mother strolled around the room, examining things and grumbling.
“Some people get mansions, and the rest of us get one little ole room.”
She turned on the tiny television on top of one of the bureaus. A soap opera came on. Two women were arguing about a man named Todd.
“At least the TV works,” her mother said. “But a toaster oven would’ve been nice.” She turned the television off and dropped onto the bed. “This might’ve been a mistake.”
Here we go again, Mavis thought.
“Doesn’t seem like a mistake to me,” she said. “We don’t have to pay one penny for this room. And the Tullys’ house is like a castle. It sure beats working at the Early Bird.”
The Early Bird Café was the last place her mother had worked in Hadley, Georgia. She used to come home every afternoon and tell Mavis that those hillbillies who ate there didn’t even know how to spell the word tip, much less leave one. Then she had gotten into an argument with some lady who complained about her fried eggs, so Mr. Harding, who owned the café, told her to leave.
“I couldn’t get out of that dump fast enough,” she had told Mavis when she got home.
Mavis could have made a list of all the good things about her mother working for the Tullys. Like the central air-conditioning and the shiny marble foyer. That huge vase of real flowers on the dining room table. The French doors that opened out to the patio, where the gardener watered the potted ferns on the rock wall along the walkway that led down to the biggest, greenest lawn Mavis had ever seen.
But instead, Mavis said, “Rose is my new best friend.”
Her mother rolled her eyes and flopped back on the bed.
Mavis went down the steps and into the garage to look around. She had never seen such a tidy garage. On shelves along one wall were large plastic trunks labeled with things like OUTDOOR CHRISTMAS LIGHTS and COVERS FOR ADIRONDACK CHAIRS. On another wall, shovels and rakes and hoes hung on pegs. In one corner was a pink bicycle with silver tassels on the handlebars, a red wagon with wooden sides, and a skateboard. Mavis loved riding skateboards. She used to have one at her father’s house in Tennessee. But then her grandmother ran over it with her car and wouldn’t buy her another one.
“When you leave nice things in the driveway, you don’t deserve to have nice things,” she had said in that mean way of hers.
Just then Rose appeared in the doorway. “Do you want to meet Mr. Duffy?” she asked.
“Sure! Can I use this skateboard?”
“Um, I guess.”
“Is it yours?”
Rose nodded. “My uncle AJ gave it to me, but I don’t really know how to use it and my mom doesn’t want me to, anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Too dangerous,” Rose said. “She won’t even let me go barefoot. That’s how you get ringworm.”
“I go barefoot all the time. Do I look like I’ve got ringworm?” She held her arms out for Rose to examine.
Rose shook her head.
Mavis grabbed the skateboard and headed toward the door of the garage. “Well,” she said, “if I were you, I’d do it anyway.”
“Do what?”
“Go barefoot.”
“You would?”
“Sure,” Mavis said. “It’s summer. You’re supposed to go barefoot in the summer.”
But Rose just looked down at her sandals.
Then off they went to the gatehouse, Mavis riding the skateboard and Rose running along behind, her sandals slapping on the asphalt road.