I Make Like Amanda Mandolin
When I got back upstairs, Mrs. Blyth-Barrow was just hanging up the phone. The cord was long enough that she could walk all over the apartment while talking on the horn, and she had wound the whole length of it around her wrist. It took about a minute for her to free herself.
“That was a Mr. Lincoln of Child Protective Services,” she said. “He would like to set up an appointment to talk to you both—to all of us, in fact—as soon as possible.” She looked at me in a stern way. “To help, Josephine. He wants to help.”
Yeah, right. Foster care? The System? I didn’t want to live with strangers. What if they made me move away from Hamburg? Ooh, that Leonard, I thought. I could wring his neck, if I could reach my hands around it.
If that phone call wasn’t enough, right after that I spotted a pamphlet on the telephone table. It was just like the one I found that time in Grandpa’s secretary, the one with the pictures of the old people clinking their wineglasses, the vegetables and so forth. I guessed Grandpa and Mrs. B-B had been talking about the Home. I guessed she was taking steps.
“What do you have there, Jo-Jo?” Grandpa said. He was looking at the plaque with the burn marks.
“Nothing,” I said.
I went into my flowery room and plopped down on the popcorn-chenille. From there I chucked that plaque across the room in the neighborhood of the little yellow trash can. It missed, and made a racket.
“What’s going on in there?” said Mrs. B-B.
“Nothing!” I hollered. Leave me alone! is what I wanted to holler.
That plaque might as well have burned up in the fire, for all I believed it. There was nothing hopeful here. Grandpa was going to the Downeast Best Rest, and I was going into Child Protective Services.
I stared at the ceiling. What would Amanda Mandolin do? Mandy Mandolin was brave and adventurous. She sure as heck wouldn’t sit around in Becky’s granny’s underwear, waiting to be hauled off to live with strangers.
I sat up. I knew exactly what Mandy Mandolin would do. She had done it before.
The ticket agent at the bus station had no problem taking my money. Grandpa’s money, I mean.
I’d written out a check and forged Grandpa’s signature like old times, only I made the check out to me. I’d seen Mr. Miller cash a check for Grandpa before at the Pay ’n Takit, so I figured it could be done. Sure enough, a man with a toothpick in his teeth and a plastic nametag on his chest cashed the check at the Plaid Pantry.
“Thank you, Billy Bob,” I said, wicked polite. I tried not to sound like I was getting away with something.
“Aw, that ain’t my real name,” Billy Bob said, tapping the nametag. He switched the toothpick to the other corner of his mouth. “I just made it up.”
If that wasn’t a sign, I don’t know what is. “Interesting,” I said. I left that store with a spring in my step. If I had a nametag on, it would say: AMANDA.
I went straight to the bus station. I knew the drill by now, after buying tickets to Boston—was it just yesterday? The day before that? The station agent took one look at me and said, “Boston?”
I shook my head and looked up at the board with all the destinations on it. Boston, Wabash, Nashua, New York. If Joe Viola refused to believe he was my father, then fine. I would go and look for more evidence to prove it. A marriage license, a kind stranger who might have been the witness to the wedding… something.
Grandpa was going to the Home, and it was just like Winky had asked me that night we found Grandpa at the Chickadee Club. If Grandpa went to the Home, then what would happen to me? I didn’t want to have to go and live with a bunch of strangers. I wanted a family. My family.
“Atlantic City, please,” I said, and handed over the money.
“Doesn’t head that way till tomorrow, sweetie,” said the lady.
“Oh.” I looked again at the board. Nashua, New Hampshire, was the next bus departing Hamburg. Nashua, New Hampshire, was not the destination I had in mind. Nashua, New Hampshire, was not helpful.
What-to-do where-to-go how-to-prove-it. Questions chased each other around-around-around like a cop-car light in my head—and then, for the second time in a week, I heard the siren.