Chapter Four

Any Old Thing Will Do

Chapter Four

Buckley’s Hollow was too large to be a town and too small to be a city. It was both old-fashioned and new, with a downtown filled with bright, pristine buildings pressed right up against old, rickety places that had been there for as long as anybody who lived there could remember.

Grumman and Fletchers Department Store was one of these old places. The only people that shopped there were the older folks in Buckley’s Hollow, who stubbornly refused to drive the extra few minutes to the shopping mall the next town over. On the day that Mrs. Strumpet had stopped by in search of Jenny’s birthday present she had never been inside before, not even once. Now, as Jenny and her father pulled up in front of the red-brick building, and Jenny glanced up at the battered sign, she wondered that her mother had even noticed the place.

“I haven’t been in here since I was a kid,” said Mr. Strumpet, looking up through the car window.

Jenny looked up at the red brick building. On either side of the roof, almost hidden by the two buildings on either side, was a pair of stone gargoyles with jagged teeth. She felt herself shiver slightly.

“You grew up in Buckley’s Hollow, didn’t you?” asked Jenny as her dad pulled open the door and retrieved the bag containing’s Jenny’s box from the back seat. He came around, yanking open the car door on her side. She jumped out, taking the bag from him as he went around to the back seat and pulled Trevor out of his car seat.

“Until I was your age,” he said, as he hefted Trevor up onto his side. “But my mom got tired of living here, so we moved to the big city.”

“And that’s where we lived, until last year,” said Jenny thoughtfully as the three of them made their way through the gravely parking lot and up to the front door of the store. She pushed her way inside, expecting to see something strange and interesting �" a box like hers, she reasoned, could only have come from that kind of place.

Instead, she found herself staring at rows and rows of boring old clothes on metal racks. Overhead, bright fluorescent lights flickered, casting everything with a strange yellow glow. It had the faint, musty smell that all old places do.

“Monkey!” Trevor said suddenly. Both Jenny and Mr. Strumpet turned to look at him.

“Right! Monkey!” said Mr. Strumpet. Jenny held back giggles as he started to make a face, scratching his head and going “oo-ooh!” just like the monkeys they had seen at the zoo, the summer before.

“Excuse me, sir?”  He stopped and turned around, seeing a young saleslady with long, red hair standing there with a hint of a smile on her face. Mr. Strumpet stopped, blushing slightly. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m here to make a return. Could you direct us to the toy department?”

“The toy department?” said the young woman. “Uhm…just a moment.” She walked away just as quickly as she had appeared.

“She must be new,” said Mr. Strumpet. “The salesladies I remember were never that young.”

“Or that pretty, I bet,” said Jenny. She pulled a strand of her own hair over, to look at it. It was a plain, mousey brown, and there was nothing terribly exciting about that.  “Do you think I’ll be that pretty, when I’m grown up?”

“As pretty as a princess,” said her father automatically. Jenny’s face scrunched up and she stuck out her tongue.

“I don’t want to be a princess,” she said. “Princesses never do anything but sit around waiting to be rescued, or singing, or…” she trailed off, trying to think of other things that princesses sometimes did in the books she read and the stories her father told her.

“Getting eaten by dragons?” he finally offered.

“Yeah! I want to be a knight,” she said. And the more she thought about it, the more Jenny liked that idea. She imagined herself swinging a big, shining sword and fighting off all sorts of evil monsters. She was already fighting her first dragon when the salesgirl came walking back and asked them to follow her.

She led them straight to a large counter, where an older woman with white hair was sorting piles of socks from a large basket into other piles of socks into smaller baskets. She glanced up at the group, smiling at Jenny and Trevor and then pausing when she looked at Mr. Strumpet, the sock she’d been sorting still suspended in mid-air.

“It can’t be! Little Jack Strumpet, is that you?” The woman finally threw the sock down and leaned over the counter, squinting as she pushed her glasses down her nose. “Why of course it is!”

“Uhm…yes, that’s me, but I’m sorry �" I don’t seem to remember you.”

“Well, of course you wouldn’t. I was your grandmother’s friend, Molly.”

“Miss Molly?” said Mr. Strumpet, first looking surprised and then slightly afraid. “Of course I remember you now.”

“Looks like you got a handful, with those little ones,” she said.

“My daughter, Jenny, and my son Trevor,” he said. Miss Molly smiled at Trevor, and then turned her eye on Jenny. She felt as if she were being studied as the old woman kept her eye on her for several seconds, finally nodding slightly before returning her attention to Mr. Strumpet.

All during this time, the young salesgirl was standing quietly beside the counter, her hands clasped in front of her. “Don’t you have work to do, Gretchen?” Miss Molly finally said. With a light blush she excused herself and, saying goodbye to the Strumpets, practically flew away from the front counter. Jenny was sorry to see her go. Now she turned her attention fully on Miss Molly as her father picked the box out of the bag and sat it down on the counter.

“My wife was hoping we could return this,” he said. “It’s not exactly what she was looking for.”

“Hmm?” said the old woman, adjusting her glasses again. “What on earth is it?” she asked.

“That’s the problem. Lucinda was a bit distracted when she bought it, yesterday. She let the salesman pick it out.”

“And the little girl doesn’t like it?” asked Miss Molly.

“I think it’s really cool,” said Jenny. “It’s my mom who doesn’t like it. But I think I should be the one to decide, since it’s my birthday present.”

“Oh?” Now Miss Molly turned her attention on Jenny, who regretted having said anything at all. Even though she was acting nice, her eyes were cold and mean. And from the way he was standing there, stiff and looking a little bit uncomfortable himself, Jenny thought that her father probably felt the same way. “And do you think that mothers don’t know what’s best for their children?” she said.

“Well…not always,” said Jenny.  Her skin prickled and she felt a chill; one that couldn’t possibly have been brought on by the dusty, dry air inside the store.

The woman sniffed delicately, and just when she was about to open her mouth again to say something Mr. Strumpet stepped closer to the counter.

“Just see if you can take it back,” he said.

“I’m afraid we can’t,” said Miss Molly, pushing the box back toward Mr. Strumpet. “We don’t carry toys in this story. Perhaps your wife got it from another store?”

“But that’s impossible. She said she got it from Grumman and Fletchley’s. It’s even on the bag, here �" “ he said. He had started to pick up the bag and show it to Miss Molly, but the spot where Grumman and Fletchley’s Toy Emporium and Bizarre Bazaar had been written in the same, scrawling print as the sign outside was now completely blank.  Unfolding it, he pressed it down on the counter, turning it first one way and then the other, and finally pushing it inside out.

There wasn’t even a smudge on the white paper to show that the marking had been there before.

“A simple mistake, as I told you,” she said.

“A different Grumman and Fletchley’s then? She said she got it on the third floor.”

“There is no other Grumman and Fletchley’s,” said the woman, who picked up the box and dropped it in the white bag herself. “And there is no third floor.” Gone was her earlier façade of friendliness. She gave them a cold, hard smile as she handed the bag to Mr. Strumpet, who took it with a defeated look on his face. “It was certainly nice seeing you again, Jack,” she said. And with that, they were dismissed. She went back to sorting her socks and, seeming to realize that arguing any further would be pointless, Mr. Strumpet spun around on his heels. Giving Jenny a little nudge on the shoulder, he led them away from the counter and back toward the front door.

They were almost outside when Jenny heard a faint little cough. She turned around and saw that Gretchen was standing there. “I’m sorry that Miss Molly couldn’t help you,” she said.

“It’s all right,” said Mr. Strumpet. He smiled at the girl and she blushed a little. ‘She’s shy,’ thought Jenny with more than a little surprise. It had never occurred to her that pretty girls were shy, the same as plain girls like herself.

“If you could give me your address, or phone number, or…” she trailed off, blushing even more deeply. “You see, Mr. Fletcher is my uncle. I might be able to talk to him about what happened and see if he can’t work something out.”

“Could you?” Mr. Strumpet pulled his wallet out of his pocket, searching for a moment before finding one of the business cards that Mrs. Strumpet had made him print out. Gretchen took it from him, glancing down.

“A-all right,” she stammered. “Uhm…I’ll try my best to help you,” she said. Then, with a strange little bow, she practically fled in the other direction. Probably so Miss Molly wouldn’t see her talking to them, thought Jenny, as they walked back out of the store and into the bright daylight.

Jenny was worried that that evening, when her mother found out that she still had the box, she would be upset. But as dinnertime came around she realized that she didn’t need to have worried. Her mother called home to say that she would be staying late after work. So, picking up the phone, Mr. Strumpet ordered pizza for dinner and they ate around the television, watching old cartoons until Trevor fell asleep on Mr. Strumpet’s lap.

Taking the steps two by two, and doing it quietly so her dad wouldn’t hear her, she made her way up to his office. She pushed the door aside and with only the light of his computer screen to guide her she pulled open his desk drawers and rummaged around until she found the box, neatly tucked away beneath a stack of freshly printed job applications.

She pulled it out quickly, staring once again at the gold marking on the box, and then pulled it open. The pouch of sand was still sitting there at the bottom and she pulled it out, tucking it into her pocket before putting the box back where she had found it and pushing the drawer shut. Then she looked up at what was on the computer and, with some surprise, found that the same website her father had shown her the night before was on the screen.

Beside the computer there was a jumbled pile of bright yellow notes, each scrawled over with Mr. Strumpet’s handwriting. She glanced down at the one on top, making note of the foreign letters first and then glancing at two words he had written on the bottom of the note.

Pandora’s Box.

Hearing footsteps from Trevor’s room next door, she put the paper down and fled his office, landing on the couch again before she heard a door open and shut upstairs, followed by her dad’s heavy footsteps as he came back to the living room.

She turned around, watching as he disappeared into the kitchen. There was the sound of cabinets being opened and closed, plates and bowls being moved around, and the refrigerator snapping shut before he came back, holding in each hand a dish of ice cream.

“Don’t tell mom,” he warned as he handed one to her. She dipped a finger in the gooey mess of chocolate on top, licking it thoughtfully as he took a seat nearby and pressed play on the remote.

“Dad?” asked Jenny. “How did you know that lady from the store? Not the pretty one. The mean, old one.”

Mr. Strumpet laughed as he picked up his spoon, taking a large bite of his sundae. “Miss Molly? Well, like she said, she was a friend of my grandmother’s.”

“Grandma Rose?” She had passed away when Jenny was young, and she could barely remember her. Mr. Strumpet shook his head.

“No; that was my father’s mother. This was my Grandma Agnes; my father’s mother. She lived next door to me and Grandma and Grandpa before we moved away. Miss Molly was her neighbor; they used to spend all in Miss Molly’s kitchen, doing…well, we never knew what they were doing. The last time I saw her was the day we packed our things and left.”

Mr. Strumpet leaned forward conspiratorially, holding up his spoon and giving it a little wave. “My dad always used to say that she was a witch.”

“A witch?” said Jenny, her eyes widening.

Laughing, her dad sat back. “Just because she always had a way of making things happen. Like the time my best friend Danny and I played football in the front yard and accidentally crushed her begonias.”

Jenny ate her ice cream in silence, trying to imagine her dad at her age as he started his story.  It was hard, and the best she could do was picture him as shorter and scrawnier.

“It was getting dark, and Danny had to get home before dinner, so we were finishing up our game when all of a sudden, there went the ball and there went Danny flying after it. I ran after him and we both crashed into Miss Molly’s garden. I heard a scream and I looked up. Miss Molly was hanging out the window, face as red as a…”

“A tomato?” Jenny offered as he paused, now imagining the old lady swollen with anger. She decided immediately that it was probably the last thing she would have wanted to see.

Mr. Strumpet nodded. “So I did the only thing I could think of. I ran. The next morning I woke up and there was Miss Molly, standing in my living room with my mom and a plastic bag filled with dead flowers. Of course, my mom had already said I would spend the next weekend replanting them. We tried to get in touch with Danny’s folks, but he said he was sick. “

“Yeah right,” said Jenny, rolling her eyes.

“For real,” said Mr. Strumpet back. “So of course I thought I’d be doing the whole thing by myself. Then, Saturday morning, I’m up to my elbows in dirt and there comes Danny on his bike. He gets off, walks over to the garden, and starts planting. And he didn’t say one word to me the entire time. We didn’t finish until late that night, and when we were done Danny got on his bike and went home. And he never said one thing to me about it. We moved about a month later.”

They finished their ice cream just in time; Mr. Strumpet had just taken their empty bowls to the kitchen and rinsed off their plates when Jenny heard the sound of keys at the front door and Mrs. Strumpet walked in, dropping her purse and her briefcase by the front door. “I had such a terrible day at work,” she said with a sigh.

She launched into a tirade about her co-worker, and how terrible he was at planning meetings.  It continued for fifteen minutes before she finally sighed and sat down at the kitchen table. “Pizza for dinner?” she asked, noticing the empty boxes. “And movies? Doesn’t school start next week? She needs to be going to bed early.”

“It’s not even ten o’clock yet,” said Mr. Strumpet, who without being asked began to clean up the living room.

“Yes. Which means you need to start getting ready,” said Mrs. Strumpet, turning her attention on Jenny. “Now go!”

Turning around, so her mother couldn’t see her roll her eyes, Jenny marched up the stairs and into her bedroom. She quickly changed into her pajamas, dropping the back of sand into the top shelf of her drawer. By the time she was finished getting ready and had laid down in bed her mother appeared at the doorway, also dressed for bed.

“Your dad told me that you went to Grumman’s and Fletchley’s today,” she said.

Jenny thought of the sand, still hidden away in her top drawer, and suddenly imagined her mother marching straight to it and yanking it from its hiding place. Instead she sighed, coming toward Jenny and kissing her on the forehead.

“Don’t worry. You take the fifty dollars and buy yourself something nice,” she said, before clicking off the light and turning away. A moment later Mr. Strumpet appeared at the door. With a wink, and putting his finger to his lips, he shut the door after him.