All The Bells on Earth (41 page)

He made the wish quickly, just a blink of his mind, and turned up Oak Street toward home.

M
RS.
S
IMMS LIVED ON
Washington Street in a white clapboard house with a wraparound porch, and when Walt and the kids pulled up at the curb, she was sitting on the porch in a wooden chair, very still, watching the rain fall, her lawn all covered with leaves. She had a shawl around her shoulders and her hands in her lap, and from the way she stared at the street, it seemed clear to Walt that all the money in the world wouldn’t help her, not in the way she needed to be helped. She and Simms had been married for fifty years.

“It’s
her
,” Eddie said, looking out the window.

“She’s
old
,” Nora said. “She’s a million.”

“Not
that
old,” Eddie said. “That’s stupid.”

“Yes-huh,” Nora said. “Isn’t she a million, Unca Walter?”

Somehow Nora had taken to calling him Walter, just like Jinx. Walt had always been a little irritated when Jinx called him that, but Nora somehow made it all right. Nora was the great leveler.

“She’s
close
to a million,” Walt said. “Closer than we are, anyway.”

“See?” Nora said to Eddie.

“You don’t get it,” Eddie said.

“Do too.”

“Do not.”

Walt held up the cashier’s check that he’d swapped the rest of the checks for. Argyle’s money had of course killed the fund-raiser. There didn’t seem to be any reason to go back out after another forty or fifty bucks or whatever they might have managed to scrounge up, and then they’d have to go to all the trouble to bake more cookies.

“I’m going to let Nora carry the money,” he said, and he winked at Eddie.

“That’s okay,” Eddie said. “I’ll stay here.”

“Nope. We’ll all go,” Walt said. “You ready?”

Without waiting for an answer, he ducked out into the rain, coming around the side of the car and opening the doors for the kids. Nora climbed out and took the check, then started out toward the porch, holding the check in front of her face with both hands as if she were hiding behind it.

“Mrs. Simms, I believe,” Walt said, once they were out of the rain.

She smiled and nodded, holding out her hand. Nora shook it like a pump handle. Eddie touched it, then pulled his hand away. Walt introduced the three of them, and Mrs. Simms said she was happy to meet them. Then Nora tried explaining the check, calling it a “fund raisin,” but Mrs. Simms was baffled. She took it and stared at it. “Whatever do you mean?” she asked.

“It’s a collection from people in the neighborhood,” Walt explained. “It’s on behalf of Mr. Simms, because of the bell-ringing. People around here appreciated that. Nora and Eddie did the footwork. Every single person they talked to donated.” And that was true. There was no percentage in revealing that they’d only hit four houses before they’d quit.

Suddenly Mrs. Simms was crying. She laid the check down on a little table next to the chair, then took her spectacles off and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief that she pulled out of her sleeve.

“Why is she crying?” Nora whispered out loud.

“Shhh,” Walt said.

“It’s ‘cause of her husband,” Eddie said.

Nora put her hand on Mrs. Simms’s arm, and Mrs. Simms patted Nora’s hand. She picked up the check again and looked at it. “Who would have thought?” she said to Walt.

He shrugged. “Give people a chance,” he said, “and they’ll show their true colors.” Somehow he felt like a heel, and it dawned on him just then that he himself hadn’t contributed a dime to the check. He hadn’t thought to.

“I’d like to know who donated,” she said. “I intend to write all of them a thank-you note.”

“Well, there’s so
many
,” Walt said. “We didn’t keep any kind of record….”

“There was that one lady on the corner,” Eddie said. “And the other one, too, that lived next door to her.”

“That’s right,” Walt said. “We can get you their names and addresses anyway. That’s a start.”

“Well, I’d be obliged,” she said.

“And Mr. R-guy,” Nora said. “He gave the most.”

“Yes, indeed,” Walt said. “That’s true.”

“Will you step inside?” Mrs. Simms asked. “I could put on a pot of coffee.”

Walt nearly refused. He had things to do—boxes to pack for a last-ditch Christmas mailing, Christmas shopping, errands to run. He just didn’t have time….

Then he realized what he was thinking. This was another case of there not being any room at the inn, wasn’t it? He couldn’t be a good Samaritan;
he was too busy
. Someone else could do it. Charity was something you measured in dollars and cents, but you didn’t go to any trouble.

“Would you like a cookie?” she asked Eddie.

Eddie nodded, and Nora held onto her hand as they went into the house. Mr. Simms had apparently owned a doily factory, because there were doilies everywhere, as if the furniture were wearing special clothes. And there were easily a hundred dolls in the living room and dining room, big ones and little ones both, with porcelain heads and glass eyes. There was a big dollhouse on a table against a wall—a three-story Victorian with tiny shingles and intricate wooden fretwork and corbels and gables. The rooms had little hand-woven rugs on the floor and Chippendale furniture, and there were tiny milk cartons and canned goods in the kitchen. Nora stood staring at the house, rocking back and forth on her heels.

“Here’s a cookie from the freezer,” Mrs. Simms said, coming out of the kitchen and pulling the top off a Tupperware container.

Eddie took one.

“You’d better have four, to start with,” she said, and Eddie took three more, then sat down on a chair and held the four cookies in his hand.

“Oh!” Nora uttered, pointing at a doll with blonde curls.

“Do you like that one?” Mrs. Simms asked.

“Oh!” Nora said again. “She’s … Oh!”

“Would you like to have her?”

Nora swiveled around and looked at Walt, her eyes wide open in astonishment. “Could I?” she asked. Eddie sat in the chair staring straight ahead.

“It would make me very happy,” Mrs. Simms said to Walt.

He shrugged. “What do you say, Nora?”

“Oh, yes!” Nora said.

Mrs. Simms picked up the doll and handed it to Nora, who held it in her arms like a baby. “I have something for you, too,” Mrs. Simms said to Eddie. She led them into a den, where there was a line of books supported by two heavy brass bookends on a table. The bookends were square-rigged clipper ships tossing on ocean waves. “Do you like these?” Mrs. Simms asked.

Eddie shrugged. He was still holding onto his cookies.

“Well, I want you to have them,” she said, “along with this book.” She handed him an old copy of
Treasure Island
with a glued-on cover illustration of a pirate with a knife in his teeth. “Will you take them? They belonged to Mr. Simms.”

Eddie shrugged again and looked at the floor.

“What do you think, Eddie?” Walt asked, smiling at Mrs. Simms. He looked at Eddie and mouthed the word “Thanks.”

“Sure,” Eddie mumbled. “I guess.”

“Can I have a cookie?” Nora asked. “What kind are they?”

“Ginger cookies.”

Nora took one out of the Tupperware, nibbled at it, and made her rabbit face at Mrs. Simms. Walt headed for the front door, and Mrs. Simms followed them out onto the porch, thanking Walt again for the check.

“Perhaps you’d like to come over some time and help me with my dollhouse?” she asked Nora, who nodded hard. “And Eddie, if you wouldn’t mind looking through Mr. Simms’s coins, perhaps you could help me catalogue them. I need to make a list of them.”

“I could,” Eddie said.

“Well, that’s just fine. God bless you,” she said to Walt, who nodded and stepped out into the rain.

The kids ran to the truck and clambered in, carrying their stuff, and Nora belted the doll into the center seat belt. “She’s nice,” Nora said.

“Yes, indeed,” Walt said. He felt like a complete fraud. Somehow he had set out to do the right thing with the fundraiser, and Argyle had turned him into a sort of messenger boy. By remaining anonymous, Argyle had made sure that the glory would fall to Walt, who didn’t deserve it, and Walt had enough conscience to feel guilty about it. And who was he kidding? He had thought up the fund-raiser to spite Argyle and the preschool’s Christmas wrap fund-raiser, hadn’t he? And the wild success of it had pissed him off because it wasn’t
his
success. And now Mrs. Simms turns out to be some kind of saint, and he ends up driving away down Washington Street feeling like a hollow man. What a mess. Maybe Bentley had an illustrated tract to clear all this up: “Guilt as an Obstacle to Sin.”

“You said we get a doughnut,” Nora said.

“A doughnut? Not after all those cookies?” Walt turned up Chapman toward the All-Niter. Nora and Eddie deserved a doughnut.

“I didn’t eat my cookies,” Eddie said. “I’m saving them.”

“I’m saving, too,” Nora said, making the rabbit face. But her cookies were already gone.

The parking lot at the All-Niter was deserted. It was too late in the day for serious doughnut eating. Walt swung the Suburban into a slot and glanced into the building, through the big window in front, on the lookout for Maggie Biggs. Had she vanished? Taken the slow boat to Waikiki?

Someone was coming out to the front of the shop from behind the counter, pushing through the little Dutch door. But it wasn’t Maggie Biggs; it was Uncle Henry. Henry looked up just then, apparently spotted the Suburban through the window, and stood stock-still, as if trying to decide whether to come ahead or to turn and flee. Abruptly he hurried forward, out among the tables, where he slid into one of the booths. There was an empty doughnut basket and a half-drunk cup of coffee on the table in front of him. He picked up a section of newspaper and affected an engrossed look.

Walt got out and walked to the door, pushing it open and letting Nora and Eddie squeeze in under his outstretched arm. Eddie stood looking at the doughnuts and Nora ran to Uncle Henry, who feigned surprise at seeing them there. Walt decided to let it slide.

There was a lipstick stain on the coffee cup, so the stuff on the table wasn’t Henry’s; either that or he’d had company. Probably he was here for some purpose besides doughnuts. “No sign of the lingerie yet?” Walt asked hopefully.

“No,” Henry said, putting the paper down. “And there won’t be, either. The party’s off.”

“That’s a dirty shame,” Walt said. “Vest didn’t drop the ball on us, did he?”

Henry nodded his head slowly. “Something like that. I got through to his secretary this morning. She tells me that Sidney Vest fell over dead last night at a restaurant out in Villa Park. Choked on a piece of fish. They’re shipping his body back home to Raleigh for burial.”

“D
EAD?”
W
ALT ASKED, SITTING
down hard in the booth. The word croaked out of him. His head swam, and he shut his eyes tight. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered.

“Apparently it’s true,” Henry said. “Piece of halibut got him. He sucked it down his windpipe. They worked the Heimlich on him but it didn’t do any good. I guess that when it’s your turn to go …” He shrugged philosophically.

“My God!” Walt shouted suddenly, just then remembering his other wish. “Maggie Biggs! Where is she?”

Henry looked around uneasily, his face furrowed up. “I’m not sure,” he said. “What’s wrong, Walter? What’s the matter?” Nora and Eddie stared at him. He stood up again, looking from the counter to the door, ready to bolt for the car and drive the half mile to Olive Street.

There was a voice from among the doughnuts then, and Walt stood up and turned around. Mrs. Biggs herself looked out from the door to the back room, eyeing him suspiciously. “It’s you, is it?” she said. “What’s all this fuss?”

“Are you all right?” Walt shouted at her. He strode across to the counter. She took a step backward, looking uncertainly at him now, and he gestured at her and shook his head. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, grinning weakly. “Everything’s all right with you, then?”

“Well, I suppose it is.”

“You’re feeling all right?”

“What’s your game?” she asked, squinting at him. “Where’s the Reverend?” She looked around suspiciously.

“He’s …” Walt realized that he sounded like a lunatic. “The car, I mean to say.” Clearly Mrs. Biggs was safe. The bluebird hadn’t killed her, at least for the moment. “The car’s all right? Not overheating?”

“Not so’s you’d notice it, no. You look like hell, sonny, pardon my French. Why don’t you go sit down? Chew on a sinker.”

“That’s right,” Walt said. “Sure I will.” He slumped into the booth again.

“Who are these, then, your children?” Mrs. Biggs waved at Eddie and Nora. Nora smiled big at her and held up her new doll. “What’ll you have?” Mrs. Biggs asked, and then started piling doughnuts into one of the baskets as Nora and Eddie pointed at the racks. “On the house,” she said to Walt. “Couple of glazeys for you? Cup of mud?”