The Kindness Club: Designed by Lucy Page 13

  “I know. I wasn’t trying to. Or I guess I was. But just for that one day. I wish I could go back in time and make it so I never tried in the first place.”

  “There will always be setbacks, even when you try your hardest. I hope they don’t make you stop trying. But this awful feeling you’re having right now—that will change, I promise.”

  “I wish this would change faster.”

  “Maybe if you did something to help Serena, it would change faster,” Mrs. G said.

  “But what? I can’t change what happened to her mom, just like I can’t change what happened to mine.”

  My mom was in the conversation now. I was the one who brought her in, and I felt the tingles start. The picture of me on Mom’s lap flashed into my head. The one where I had one arm around Timber, and one arm lifted up, my fingers in her hair. Mom had her arms around me. She was wearing a cream-colored V-neck sweater. It looked really soft, like maybe it was cashmere or even angora. The kind of thing I’d love to have now, and wrap around myself like a blanket.

  “Oh my goodness,” I said softly. “Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.”

  “What?”

  “Did you say you quilted?”

  “I did indeed,” Mrs. G said. “When my friend Hilda adopted a little boy, I made a quilt for him. That was forty years ago, and I’ve been quilting ever since.”

  “This is the best coincidence of all the coincidences,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Living next door to an expert quilter,” I told her. I didn’t want to hide under the covers anymore. “I have an idea.”

  CHAPTER 23

  “You know how I said Serena’s aunt took all her mom’s clothes to Second Chance?” I said. Mrs. G nodded. “It was because they were making Serena’s dad upset to look at. Serena wanted to keep them herself, but they would’ve taken up too much space in her closet. That’s what her aunt Odessa said.”

  “I think I see where you’re going here.”

  “We can go to Second Chance and buy back Mrs. Kappas’s clothes! They can be the patches of a quilt for Serena! Do you think she’d like that?”

  “I think she’d love it.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. “But she might not. I thought she’d want a party.”

  “There’s a big difference between a surprise party and a surprise present,” Mrs. G said. “Maybe she won’t want this particular present at this particular time. After Thomas died, there were so many things that reminded me of him that I wasn’t ready to look at. Like the bowl of apples in the kitchen.”

  “But it’s in the middle of your table,” I said.

  “It is now,” Mrs. G said. “Thomas ate an apple every day of his life, up till the end. When he died, I couldn’t look at apples. I avoided the produce aisle at the grocery store, just so I wouldn’t have to see them. You have no idea how hard it is to avoid apples—they’re everywhere! And they made me feel a bit like you felt this morning.”

  “What happened to you was worse than Serena not wanting a party,” I admitted.

  Mrs. G shook her head. “It’s not a contest. We all find ourselves hiding in our little holes for different reasons. My point is, I no longer feel that way. In fact, nowadays I like looking at apples. I’ve never been much of an apple eater myself, but you see that I’ve put out some plastic ones, to remind me.”

  “I always get tingles when something reminds me of my mom. Or I guess I’m not reminded—I don’t remember her. I just remember that she’s gone. But I like looking at her picture. I look at it every day.”

  Mrs. G leaned over and squeezed me to her. She gave me a little kiss on the top of my head. “Shall we get those clothes, then?”

  “I just thought of a problem. A big one. I was so excited about my idea, and I totally forgot that things at Second Chance cost money. I don’t have much. I definitely don’t have enough to buy back all of Mrs. Kappas’s clothes.”

  “Lucky for you, I happen to have some money of my own,” Mrs G. said.

  I shook my head. “I only get ten dollars a week for allowance. Well, actually, nine dollars. And my dad isn’t always great at remembering to give it to me. It would take me too long to pay you back.”

  “Nonsense. You don’t have to pay me back.”

  “Of course I would!” I said. “You don’t even know Serena. I can’t let you spend your money on her mother’s clothes.”

  “I’d be doing it for you, dear, not for Serena. Well, a little bit for Serena, too, because I know what it’s like to lose someone important. But mostly for you. You and your friends have been tending to my yard free of charge these past few weeks. I owe a lot to you.”

  “We didn’t do it to get paid, and you don’t owe us anything. We did it to be kind.”

  “And now I’m doing this to be kind,” Mrs. G said. “Come on, let’s call your grandmother and see if she’ll give you permission to leave the house on this supposed sick day. I suspect it’s not much of a sick day anymore.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. I smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. G. You’re right about chicken soup. I feel so much better.”

  Grandma said it was okay for me to take a walk with Mrs. G, as long as I was feeling up to it. Which I was, of course. I was feeling better, though also sad. The whole time I was planning Serena’s bowling party, I was so excited about surprising her that I’d forgotten a bit about what made it so sad. And now the sadness was there. Serena’s mom was dead. We were going to Second Chance to buy back her clothes. Clothes she herself would never get to wear again. But at least Serena could have them, and they could cover her like a blanket when she really needed her mom. Having things from your parents isn’t the same as having them right there with you. But this was the most I could do.

  The bell above the door to Second Chance rang as we walked in. A woman named Nicki was working behind the desk. She was a designer like me—she made her own jewelry, and she knew how sometimes you need to look around for a long time when you’re waiting for inspiration to strike.

  But there was no time for that today. After we said our hellos, I filled her in on our mission. “Can you tell us which clothes were Mrs. Kappas’s, so we can buy them all back?”

  “I wish I could, sweetheart,” Nicki said. “But I don’t keep track of who donates what.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “Are you sure? It would’ve been a woman named Odessa. I don’t know what she looks like, but her niece has long dark hair and green eyes, so maybe she does, too. She would’ve come in … well, I don’t know when she came in, but it had to be at least a week and a day ago, because that’s when I heard Serena talking about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nicki said. “It’s the change of seasons right now, which means a lot of people have been bringing things. But the good news is, I haven’t had time to separate things out of the bags yet. If you want to look through them, maybe you’ll find the bag of clothes that belonged to your friend’s mom.”

  “I didn’t know Serena’s mom,” I said sadly. “So I don’t know what her clothes looked like.” I shook my head. “Thanks anyway.”

  Mrs. G put a hand on my shoulder. “Now, now,” she said. “Let’s just take a look. You never know what will spark a memory.”

  I knew I wasn’t going to suddenly remember Mrs. Kappas’s clothes, but I followed Mrs. G to the back of the store anyway. Usually I love going through the discards at Second Chance. You never know what you’re going to find. But now I halfheartedly lifted a flap on the first bag of clothes and glanced in: some jeans, a few T-shirts, an old leather jacket, a white blouse with a stain on the collar. Could these have belonged to Mrs. Kappas? Maybe. Maybe not. I didn’t think so.

  “Nothing is familiar,” I said.

  “Check the next bag,” Mrs. G said.

  I did. It was full of baby clothes. So not that one. And the next bag, a mix of stuff for men and women. I didn’t think it was that one, either, since Aunt Odessa had only given Serena’s mom’s stuff away. The bag after
that was mostly women’s stuff, but I didn’t recognize anything. Not that I expected to.

  “Mrs. G, I feel bad,” I said. “This was such a good idea, but it’s not going to work out. I’m just wasting your time.”

  But she just nudged me toward the next bag. “Come on,” she said. “Only three more to go.”

  The next bag had a lot of corduroy pants and turtlenecks. I wondered who had bought them. Was it Serena’s mom? Was she someone who wore corduroys and turtlenecks? Or was it someone else who just went through a corduroy-pants-and-turtleneck phase, and then decided that wasn’t her thing anymore, so they ended up here. I didn’t know. I shrugged at Mrs. G.

  “Second-to-last one,” she said. I lifted the flap and looked in. There were flannel pajamas, an old concert T-shirt, some pairs of pants, a couple sweaters, a scarf with elephants on it.

  A scarf with elephants on it.

  A SCARF WITH ELEPHANTS ON IT!

  “Mrs. G! This is the bag!”

  “You sure?”

  “Serena talked about this scarf in her grief group! I heard her! And she mentioned something else … a silk blouse. A pink one.” I bent back down and rummaged through the rest of the bag. “It’s not in here, though.”

  “Perhaps her aunt hung on to it.”

  “No, Serena specifically said she gave it away.”

  “Well, there’s one bag left.”

  “Right! It’ll be in there—I just know it. After all, Serena’s aunt must’ve brought in more than one bag of clothes—she was bringing in a whole wardrobe!”

  I dug into the remaining bag of clothes, and lo and behold, there it was: Mrs. Kappas’s pink silk blouse. I clutched it in my hands, the material soft between my fingers. I wondered when Serena’s mom had worn it last, and whether it had been washed afterward. If we looked at it under a special microscope, would we be able to see her fingerprints? How long do fingerprints last, after a person herself is gone?

  “You okay?” Mrs. G asked.

  “I was just thinking,” I said. “You know how when a day is done, it’s done forever?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think that’s why I like shopping here.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “People who wore these clothes were done with them. Maybe they died, or maybe they grew out of them, or maybe they just didn’t like them anymore. But here we are buying them, so they’re not really done. It’s like giving an old day a second chance—like the store says. Does that make sense?”

  “It’s just about the best explanation I’ve ever heard,” Mrs. G told me. “Come on, let’s pay.”

  “It’s really a lot. I hope it’s not too expensive.”

  “I’ll worry about the cost,” Mrs. G said. “You worry about bringing these bags to the front of the store.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Nicki did the most amazing thing. She gave us the clothes for free. Mrs. G had her wallet out and was all ready to pay, but Nicki told her to put it away. I thought back to something our principal, Mr. Dibble, had told Chloe, Theo, and me, when we told him about the Kindness Club. He said kindness was a bit like the butterfly effect. You do an act of kindness, and you never get to know the extent of its effect. Its ripples go on and on. But right there, I could trace some things back to our original kindness: we’d helped Mrs. G with her yard, and now she’d tried to do something for Serena. And all that happened to Nicki was she heard about it, and she wanted to do something, too.

  “I hope the quilt brings your friend some comfort,” Nicki told me.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  One thing Mrs. G did pay for was the cab ride home. I don’t think it had anything to do with the driver being kind or unkind, but he didn’t know the whole story. We got dropped off on the street right in front of our houses, and I lugged Mrs. Kappas’s clothes up the walkway to my front door. Mrs. G offered to help, but I was afraid she’d hurt her back. So I did it by myself, first one bag, then the other.

  “Why don’t you call your grandmother and let her know we’re home,” Mrs. G told me. “I want to grab a few things I have at my place. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  I left the bags in the front hall, right by the bottom of the stairs, and went into the kitchen to get the phone. I was just about to pick it up to dial Grandma at the bowling alley when it started ringing. Another coincidence. I didn’t even check the caller ID before I picked up the phone. “Hey, Grandma,” I said. “That’s so crazy—I was just about to call you!”

  “Lucy?” a man’s voice said.

  It wasn’t Dad’s voice, and it wasn’t Oliver’s. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Felix. Felix Martinez. I used to work with your father at the bowling alley. You remember me, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember. My dad’s not home right now.”

  “I figured that,” Felix said. “I didn’t want to bother him at work. I thought if I called the house I’d get voice mail.”

  He probably didn’t want to speak to Dad live because he was embarrassed about leaving him in the lurch. Maybe the message he planned to leave was to say sorry.

  “No school today?” Felix asked me.

  “There’s still school,” I said. “I just wasn’t feeling well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you feel better soon.”

  “Thank you.” I was trying to be polite, but it was hard. I was mad at Dad, but I was even madder at Felix. If he hadn’t quit without notice, Dad wouldn’t have been so stressed these last couple weeks, and our big blowup at the bowling alley never would’ve happened.

  But then, I wouldn’t have stayed home from school, and Mrs. G certainly wouldn’t have offered to buy back Mrs. Kappas’s clothes.

  So maybe I wasn’t that mad after all. Sometimes it’s hard to decide how to feel.

  “Are you well enough to jot down a message for your dad?” Felix asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me when you’re ready.”

  Grandma kept a pad in the drawer beside the utensils. I pulled it out, along with one of the pens that said Tanaka Lanes on the side. “I’m ready,” I told Felix.

  “You tell your dad that I appreciate the call he made to the fitness center. I just found out that the job is mine.”

  I’d started writing, but I paused, and the pen made a dark point on the page. “Wait a second,” I said. “You just got a new job? Like today?”

  “Thanks to your dad, I did,” Felix said. “Can you tell him that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And tell him my fingers are crossed that things start looking up at Tanaka Lanes.”

  “Do you mean … do you mean things were looking down?”

  “Uh,” Felix said. “Hey, Lucy, let’s just rewind the tape and pretend I didn’t say that.”

  “You can’t rewind and go back,” I told Felix. “You can’t change the past. You can only change the future.”

  “You’re a smart kid,” he said. “Too smart for my own good. I think I should let you go.”

  “No, wait,” I said. “Felix?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You didn’t quit working at the bowling alley, did you?”

  Felix gave a nervous laugh. “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “Tanaka Lanes is a special place. You should be proud of your dad.”

  I felt something in the back of my throat. Like I’d taken a bite of a Tanaka dog, swallowed funny, and now it was stuck there. “I am proud,” I said.

  “If he’s ever hiring again, I want him to give me a call. You tell him that.”

  The doorbell rang. Mrs. G was back.

  “You got that, Lucy?” Felix asked.

  “Yeah. I got it.”

  “Feel better, kiddo.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  CHAPTER 25

  I barely had time to think about what Felix had said, because Mrs. G and I had so much work to do. She said the quilt would have three layers: First, a top layer of patches stitched tog
ether. Second, a middle layer called batting, which was basically a filler to give the quilt some weight. And third, a back layer to hold it all together.

  Luckily, Mrs. G had brought batting and fabric for the back. As for the top layer, we had Mrs. Kappas’s clothes. I dumped the bags out in the living room. There was so much stuff, the entire living room floor was covered, as if a closet had exploded. All the things Serena’s mom used to wear. There was the scarf, and the pink blouse. Plus so much more. “I don’t see any socks or underwear,” I told Mrs. G. “She must’ve had some. It seems weird that those would be the only things that Odessa decided to keep.”

  “My guess is she threw them away,” Mrs. G said. “Secondhand places don’t usually sell that sort of thing. I guess even those of us looking for a bargain don’t want to own used socks and underwear.”

  “The pioneers would have taken them,” I told her.

  “The pioneers?” Mrs. G asked. “You mean the people who settled in the west a couple hundred years ago?”

  “We’re studying them in school,” I said. “They used whatever they could to keep warm and survive, and sometimes it wasn’t enough.”

  “We’re lucky to be alive now,” Mrs. G said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “But look—” I swept my arm out, gesturing to all the clothes on the floor. “Serena’s mom had plenty to wear and keep her warm, and she still died.”

  “That’s surely true,” Mrs. G said. “It’s hard to make sense of things sometimes, isn’t it?”

  “It really is.”

  We got started. Mrs. G had a special acrylic ruler, which she opened up on the coffee table, to measure out five-and-a-half-inch squares. We each had a pair of fabric scissors to cut the squares. It took a long time because they had to be perfect. When we finished, Mrs. G wanted to lay them out on the floor in the right order, so we could see what the quilt would look like. But with her bad back, it was hard for her to bend over, so she directed me: “Let’s alternate a light square, then a dark square, light, then dark … Hmm, no, I’m not sure I like that one there. Move the yellow up to the top—no, not that one. That one. There you go … Okay, I like that, but the middle has way too much pink right now. Let’s move a few of those squares around.”