The Moon Over High Street Read online

  “In back of the house?” Gran repeated. “Does that mean you would expect him to live up here with you?”

  “Why, certainly! At first, anyway—until he gets married. He’ll be sure to want his own house when that time comes.” Mr. Boulderwall began to walk back and forth, a baffled—and angry—frown deepening on his face. “Don’t you hear what I’m saying?” he burst out at last. “I’m talking about the best of everything for that boy! For the rest of his life, he’ll have all the money anyone could want! Why, to be rich—it’s the American dream! Everybody loves money! It’s what everybody wants! Surely you must be aware of that! To be able to live in a place like High Street—why, it’s ideal! It’s perfection! Everyone that sees it wants it—or a place just like it. Why can’t you understand? It doesn’t come true for a lot of people, of course, a dream like that—but I can make it come true for your grandson with a simple snap of my fingers! He can manage my factory exactly the way I would myself—and in exchange, I can give him a perfect life! How you can turn your back on an offer like that is simply more than I can grasp!”

  “You have it the right way round at last,” said Gran. She struggled to her feet, clutching her canes, and her telephone voice took over: “It does seem to be more than you can grasp. So I’ll put it as simply as I can. My grandson is not for sale. Not now, not ever. He doesn’t want to sit in an office every day for the rest of his life and run a business, never mind how good that business is or how much money you’d give him to do it. There are a lot of different dreams in America, Mr. Boulderwall, not just one. And Joe’s dream is to learn things. Discover things. High Street could never be for him what it seems to be for you. His head is too full of questions, and they’re not the kind of questions High Street can answer. He’ll have to study hard for answers. He wants to study hard. There’s a lot to be learned. Because, Mr. Boulderwall, he wants to reach up to the moon—yes—and he’ll do it, too. But not to make money because of it, not to hold it in his hands. All he wants is to understand it—and protect it. No, my grandson is not for sale. And neither, by the way, is the moon. Goodbye.”

  Leaving Mr. Boulderwall in stunned silence behind her, Gran stumped out, leaning heavily on her canes, and nearly collided with a woman hovering near the parlor door. “My dear Mrs. Casimir,” the woman murmured, tipping her head back and gazing at Gran through lidded eyes, “how do you do! I am Ruthetta Boulderwall. Mrs. Anson Boulderwall. My husband didn’t want me with him while you and he were having your little wrangle, but I listened out here, and I agree with you one hundred percent. That grandson of yours doesn’t belong on High Street. I never thought it was a good idea, Anson’s wanting to adopt him. He’s just not our kind of people.”

  “I’m delighted to know you think so,” said Gran. “Good day.”

  “SO, SWEETIE! DID YOU tell the old buzzard what’s what?” asked Mrs. Mello when Gran was settled back into the car.

  “Yes, I think he got my point,” said Gran, “and since I’m Joe’s legal guardian, that should be the end of that!”

  “Thank goodness,” said Mrs. Mello. “Oh, by the way, did you meet his wife?”

  “Actually, I did. Just now. She was eavesdropping on our conversation.”

  “Well, guess what!” said Mrs. Mello. “I got out of the car and wandered around for a few minutes to stretch my legs, and I found this under a bush where the mailman must have dropped it.” And she held out a shiny folder, bright with pictures of shoes and pocketbooks. “It’s only an advertisement, nothing important, but take a look at who it’s addressed to, there on the back,” she said to Gran.

  Gran turned the folder over and read it aloud: “Mrs. Ruthetta Grumpacker Boulderwall. Okay. That must be her full name, but so what?”

  “I’ll tell you so what,” said Mrs. Mello. “I mean, how many girls have you known with a name like Ruthetta Grumpacker?”

  “I guess she’s the only one,” said Gran. “Not that I can say I exactly know her. Why?”

  “Well, I know her,” said Mrs. Mello. “Or at least I used to! We were in school together up in Clarksfield, a long ways back. We were in the fifth grade, I think it was, when her grandfather got put in jail for stealing a cow!”

  “Oh, come on, Helen!” said Gran. “Why would you remember a thing like that?”

  “Easy,” said Mrs. Mello with a wide, delighted grin. “It was my grandfather’s cow he stole!”

  And they laughed all the way back to Glen Lane.

  IN AUNT MYRA’S living room again, Gran happily reported on her visit with Mr. Boulderwall, and they were settling down to tea and cookies when Mrs. Mello said suddenly, “Berta! I nearly forgot what I came here to tell you! It’s my son! He told me last night, they want me to come down from Willowick and move in with them—him and Jeanie, his wife! He doesn’t like me living alone up on the lake, and he says their house feels empty anyway, now that their two kids are grown and gone. We’ve talked about something like that before, you and I—remember? But we never really expected it to happen! I hardly know what to think!”

  Myra put her teacup down with a clink and leapt to her feet. “Wait!” she cried. “Don’t answer that till I get a turn! Gran, that’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to say to you! I want you and Joe here with me so badly, I can hardly bear it! And if Mrs. Mello is going to be that close by, maybe it wouldn’t be so selfish of me after all! She’d be practically next door! Oh, Gran, there’s plenty of room here, and to have your company—and take care of each other—with Joe here for both of us to love a good while longer—it would be a dream come true!”

  “Hmm!” said Gran. “Our branch of the Casimir family together at last! Of course, it’s possible that the Boulderwalls would make things hot for me if I was here all the time.”

  “But maybe not,” said Mrs. Mello with a grin. “Remember, Berta, you’ve got a weapon of your own now. I make you a gift of it.”

  “What weapon?” asked Aunt Myra.

  “Oh,” said Gran, “just a cow that got stolen. Helen will tell you all about it one of these days. So … sell the Willowick house and—for goodness’ sake! Of course! Keep most of the money for Joe to go to college! And use the rest of it to pay our share of the monthlies with our very dear Aunt Myra! Casimirs all, right here in Midville! Joe, what do you say?”

  And Joe, choosing from a small but growing collection of memories of the girl across the street, thought about her smile from the afternoon before, and how she had given him back to himself, and he said, “I think it would be really, really good!”

  And so it was.

  EPILOGUE

  THIS HAS been Joe Casimir’s story, yes, but stories don’t just stop. Things went on happening in Midville while Joe was upstate with Gran, getting ready to move back down at the end of the summer, and maybe some of those things didn’t matter much—not to Joe, anyway—but there were three that were important enough, each in its own way, to appear on the front page of the Midville Informer. Beatrice Sope knew they would matter to Joe, so she clipped them out of the paper and held them for him.

  The first one came out in early July:

  Then, in the first week of August, this surprising announcement appeared:

  And finally, there was the following brief announcement in the Labor Day edition of the Informer:

  So things go right on happening—some good, some bad, of course, but in this case, the good things lead the list. At least, they’re good for most of the featured people. Probably the dognapper is saying what happened to him was bad—even if it was his own fault he ended up in jail with a great big bandage on his ankle. And probably Mr. Boulderwall is sorry that his factory bit the dust, even if he is still one of the richest men in the state. But there are no two ways about Vinnie. He has come right out and said, himself, that he’s “real happy.”

  There’s an endless future waiting. It doesn’t belong to just a few of us; it belongs to everyone. And much of it can be happy if you’re patient and wait your turn. It does go on forever
, after all. It changes all the time, yes, but it doesn’t go away; it’s always there, even when you’re not looking. Just like the love of money. Just like the moon.

  BOOKS BY

  NATALIE BABBITT

  Dick Foote and the Shark

  Phoebe’s Revolt

  The Search for Delicious

  Kneeknock Rise

  The Something

  Goody Hall

  The Devil’s Storybook

  Tuck Everlasting

  The Eyes of the Amaryllis

  Herbert Rowbarge

  The Devil’s Other Storybook

  Nellie: A Cat on Her Own

  Bub, or The Very Best Thing

  Elsie Times Eight

  Jack Plank Tells Tales

  The Moon Over High Street

  NATALIE BABBITT is the author and illustrator of sixteen books, among them Tuck Everlasting, The Search for Delicious, Jack Plank Tells Tales, and Kneeknock Rise, a Newbery Honor Book. Five of her books have been named ALA Notable Children’s Books.