Figgs & Phantoms (3 page)

Tap-tappity-tap-tap. Mona was home.

★
“A crazy lot, those Figgs,” the people of Pineapple said. “Not our kind at all. How Newt Newton, the best high school quarterback this town's ever had, could have married the likes of that tap-dancing Sister Figg is more than a person can imagine. Serves him right, his one and only child turning into such a misfit.”

T
APPING. Resounding, ear-shattering tap-tap-tap-tapping. Mona had grown used to her mother's incessant tap-dancing, but this sounded like a buffalo stampede. Even the front stoop where she was sitting shook as the thundering herd stamped and sang “Take Me Out to the Ball-game.

Shutting her ears, closing her eyes, Mona tried to concentrate on the new additions she had discovered on Bargain's top shelf.

 

★
“That Mona Newton is a Figg, all right,” the people of Pineapple said. “Looks like a Figg, acts like a Figg. Balances like her uncle Truman the Human Pretzel. Memorizes like Romulus, the Walking Book of Knowledge. Figures like Remus, the Talking Adding Machine. Short, too, like Florence, though she's still growing-both ways. Wouldn't be so bad if she took after her cute mother, but she's going to end up looking like Kadota, and she doesn't even like dogs.”

 

Deep in thought, Mona was almost trampled by the Pineapple Slicers. Rehearsal over, the high school baseball team bounded through the front door, laughing, punching, clowning. Mona darted around to the side of the house and waited until she heard Fido Figg, boisterous star pitcher, leave. If there was one person Mona truly hated in that hateful town, it was her cousin Fido Figg.

“There you are, Mona,” Sissie Newton said, tap-dancing toward her daughter with welcoming arms. “Fido was disappointed he didn't see you.”

Mona ducked, successfully eluding her mother's kiss, and plopped down into the old couch.

Sissie shrugged off the now-familiar rejection and began tap-dancing the furniture back into place. “Mona, dear, please give me a hand.”

Sighing, Mona rose, pushed the sofa to the center of the room, then slumped back into its sagging springs. Noodles, her cat, missed being squashed by a hair. He sprang off the couch and meowed a complaint from under the piano.

“Is anything wrong?” Sissie asked.

“I'm thinking,” Mona replied.

“That's nice, dear,” her mother said, and tapped off to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

 

★
“Those Newtons,” the people of Pineapple said, “don't even have carpets like decent folk do. Sister says she can't tap-dance on carpets. If Newt wanted to marry a dancer he should have picked a ballerina. At least a ballerina wouldn't make so much noise.”

 

“Anybody home?” Newt boomed, bouncing through the front door. “What a day. What a glorious spring day.”

“Newt, darling, is that you?” Sissie called from the kitchen. Mona groaned at the silly question; who else would be so disgustingly happy?

Hands behind his back, Newt waited for his wife to make her grand entrance.

“Looky, Looky, Looky, Here Comes Cookie,” sang Sissie, tapping into the living room with a double shuffle. She topped off her performance with a buck and wing and a deep curtsy.

Newt bowed, extended his left hand with a flourish, and presented his wife with a daffodil. “And where's my beautiful Mona?”

Newt tracked the grunt of disgust to the sofa. He bowed again and presented his daughter with a lilac. “And some spring for my little blossom.”

Mona took the flower with a limp hand, put it on the coffee table and stroked the cat, who was now lying on her stomach.

“Don't you feel well, princess?” Newt asked.

“She's thinking,” Sissie explained, and tapped to the kitchen, the daffodil between her teeth.

Mona thought throughout most of dinner, shrugging off questions about school and the book business. Newt finally drew her into the conversation with news of his latest trade: the blue Buick for a raspberry-red Edsel.

“What!” Mona exclaimed.

“Well, I, for one, think it was a wonderful deal,” Sissie said. “Raspberry is such a gay color, and we can always use an Edsel in the Founders' Day parade.”

“Besides,” Newt explained sheepishly to his disapproving daughter, “money isn't everything.”

He had used this excuse so often that Mona had a come-back ready. “Money happens to be one of our few compensations in this vale of tears.”

“Why, that's very clever, princess,” Newt said, impressed with his daughter's quick wit.

“Say that again, Mona, please,” Sissie pleaded. “I like the sound of those big words.”

“Never mind.”

Sissie, unaware of having ruined Mona's insult with her praise, chatted happily about her plans for the Founders' Day parade while her sulking daughter comforted herself with a heaping of mashed potatoes.

 

★
“Founders' Day!” the people of Pineapple said. “As if Sister Figg Newton didn't have enough holidays to dance and prance around in, she has to invent Founders' Day. And she wasn't even born here. Wouldn't be so bad if she knew who the real founders were, but the town records were lost in the fire of '08. All anybody knows for sure is that Pineapple wasn't named after pineapples. Pineapples don't grow within three thousand miles of here.”

 

Fingers extended, Sissie counted off possible origins for the town's name that she had compiled with the help of Rebecca Quigley, the public librarian:

Newt offered a fifth possibility: the old trading post was won in a pinochle game.

“That's wonderful, sweetheart,” Sissie exclaimed. “And we can dress Florence as a one-eyed jack.”

Mona protested so violently that her mother changed the costume to the King of Hearts.

“By the way,” Newt asked, “where is Flo tonight?”

“He's with Phoebe,” Mona replied furiously. She slathered margarine on a slice of bread with such force that it crumbled in her hand.

Newt was utterly confused by his daughter's anger. “What's wrong, princess?” he asked meekly.

“What's wrong?” Mona replied. “What's wrong is that I don't think there is or ever has been a Phoebe. That's what's wrong.”

“Don't be silly, Mona,” Sissie said. “Of course there's a Phoebe. She's intelligent and kind and loves books. And she's four-feet four-inches tall.”

“How do you know?” Mona challenged. “Have you ever seen her?”

“Well, no,” Sissie admitted, “but your Uncle Florence described her to me. He's good at describing, you know.”

Mona wasn't convinced. “If there is a Phoebe, how come none of us have met her?”

“Gee, princess, Flo is entitled to some privacy,” Newt said. “Besides, he's too smart to let Phoebe meet a Figg.”

Newt and Sissie laughed, but Mona didn't think it was funny.

D
OTS FOR EYES, a blob for a nose, a line for a mouth. Mona combed the limp mouse-brown hair that refused to grow longer and studied herself in the bathroom mirror. What should have been small was big; what should have been big was small. She looked even worse than her Uncle Kadota, she thought. Kadota didn't have pimples.

Something worse than her own reflection awaited Mona in the kitchen. Fido was sitting at the breakfast table with her parents, blowing his perpetually runny nose.

“Morning, princess,” Newt said cheerfully. “You made the front page of
The Pineapple Weekly Journal.”

Mona read the newspaper her father held before her as she poured dry cereal into her bowl. The Corn Flakes overflowed and sprinkled in her lap.