Taking Terri Mueller Read online

  Copyright © 1981 by Norma Fox Mazer.

  All rights reserved.

  Reissue Edition

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher.

  Please direct inquiries to:

  Lizzie Skurnick Books

  an imprint of Ig Publishing

  Box 2547

  New York, NY 10163

  www.igpub.com

  ISBN: 978-1-939601-39-1 (ebook)

  For Gloria Yerkovich and all the other parents who are still waiting for their children to return

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  For as long as she could remember it had been the two of them. “Me and Daddy. Daddy and me.” That was a song she sang when she was little. “Me and Daddy. Daddy and me. Oh how nice it be. Daddy and me.” She sang herself to sleep at night. “Daddy and me, Daddy and me. Oh how nice it be.”

  Once there had been a mother, also. Terri, Daddy, and Mommy. She didn’t remember. She had been four when her mother died. She didn’t remember. That was funny. Not funny that made you laugh. The other funny. Sad funny. She didn’t remember what her mother looked like, how she smelled, or if she was tall or short. Daddy talked to her about everything, but he didn’t like to talk about her mother. It made him sad.

  She knew what sad meant. Mostly she was happy. But sometimes she was sad. She didn’t know why. It was silly to get sad. Daddy told her stories about Sally the Mouse who traveled with her father, Mustafa the Mouse, in their Mousemobile. Sally the Mouse was very smart, but sometimes she was sad, and sometimes she had a Bad Temper. But mostly she was a good little Sally the Mouse who made her father Happy and Proud.

  Terri sat on her father’s lap, her arms around his neck. Tell me a Sally the Mouse story.

  Have you been a good girl?

  Yes, yes, yes.

  Did you learn a lot in school today?

  Yes, yes, yes.

  Were you an outstanding first-grade girl?

  Yes, yes, yes.

  Well, let’s find out what Sally the Mouse has been up to.

  Yes, she was a good girl. She was Daddy’s good girl. They liked to travel and visit places. They had a car, a red Pinto. Her name was Terri Mueller. Daddy’s name was Phil Mueller. Terri and Phil. Phil and Terri. Hurry, Terri. I will, Phil. You’re a berry, Terri. You’re a pill, Phil.

  She loved the Pinto. She loved Daddy. They lived in lots of different places. “My, what a memory,” her teacher said. “She learns so fast.” Daddy was Proud.

  Every year she had a birthday in April. Every year Daddy took her out to dinner on her birthday. They got all dressed up. He let her sip his wine and gave her nice presents. One year her present was Barkley. So you never have to be alone again, Daddy said, even when you’re waiting for me to come home from work. Barkley hardly ever barked. She loved him very much.

  She was eight years old . . . she was nine years old . . . she was ten years old. She and her father had fun together. He even made it fun when they cleaned house. Once, cleaning windows in a new apartment, he wrote messages on the windows with spray cleaner. “HELLO, TERRI. DO YOU LIKE THIS PLACE?” “THE MICE ARE HOLDING A CONVENTION UNDER THE SINK.” His best message was written over the last three windows. “HELP! I CAN’T CONTROL MY URGES. STOP ME BEFORE I CLEAN MORE WINDOWS.”

  They had lived in so many places—big cities like New York and Chicago, and little towns like Hap Falls, Amber-ville, and Roarin. She could remember all the cities and towns, and all the different apartments, and all the people she had met.

  She was eleven years old... twelve years old... thirteen years old .. . Her head was full of faces and places and names, but even when she tried very hard she still couldn’t remember her mother.

  ONE

  “Terri, did you see the kitchen?” Phil Mueller’s voice echoed off the walls of the empty room.

  “I’ll be there in a sec.” Terri was checking out the bedroom that would be hers if they took this apartment. “Bed over here,” she said, pacing around. “Bureau here?” And she imagined her posters tacked up, covering every inch of bare wall, including cracks and stains. She liked the long windows that faced on a little bit of a park across the street.

  Her father came into the room. “Nice, very nice,” he said, looking around. “Don’t you think so?”

  “How much is the rent?”

  He shrugged. “Not cheap, but not a killer, either. We can go for it. Looks like a nice neighborhood, too.”

  “I could walk to school from here,” she said. They had passed the junior high on the way from the rental agency. “But there’s no garage, or side parking. Did you notice? That means parking the camper on the street.”

  “Camper’s kind of big for street parking,” Phil said.

  “It’s not that busy a street,” Terri said. “If we still had our Pinto it wouldn’t matter so much.”

  Phil groaned. “You’ll never stop talking about the Pinto, will you, Terri?”

  “It was my sweet little car.” Right up until last year they’d had the Pinto with the stick shift. Red Ryder, her father called it. Whenever they drove at night Terri would climb over the front seat and curl up in back to sleep. Barkley was always very alert and excited in the car and would sit by the back window watching everything and taking up more than his share of space. But even though she had to really scrunch up, Terri never minded and always slept in the car just as well as she did in her own bed.

  In fact, since they’d had so many apartments, but only one Pinto, she had thought of that almost as her real home. Speeding along the highways between cities and states, she and her father chewed over where they’d been living and where they’d live next, what kind of place they’d look for, and the interesting people they were sure to meet.

  Often, when they traveled, they ate out in diners and restaurants, but just as often they’d shop in a supermarket and buy special things to eat in the car like Lorna Doones and bunches of green grapes. Their favorite traveling food, though, was always a plain old bread, bologna, cheese, and lettuce sandwich.

  They didn’t have too many rules in their life because Phil said—and Terri agreed—that the main rule was to be thoughtful about each other. That covered a lot of territory, such as each of them letting the other know where they were at all times, and not waiting for the other person to clean up any messes Barkley made. In the car, though, they did have rules, such as no eating peanuts in the shell (too messy), and no soft drinks (Phil didn’t approve of the caffeine), and no driving while sleeping. That was Terri’s rule for Phil, because she wasn’t old enough yet to share the driving.

  Once she had asked him how he decided where they’d move to next. “Well, I don’t really decide, Terri,” he’d said. “We just get in the car and go, until it feels like it’s time to stop. When something clicks—I trust that. I trust my instinct
s and feelings. You know how it is.”

  But, in fact, she didn’t know, didn’t really understand that sense of being carried along by instinct. She began to think of her father as emotional and herself as rational and sensible.

  She was a tall girl with long hair that she sometimes wore in a single braid down her back, and sometimes parted in the middle with a wing of hair pulled back and held with a barrette on either side of her face. She was quiet and watchful and didn’t talk a lot, although she liked to talk, especially to her father, with whom she felt she could talk about anything. They were close, very close, companionable, and easy with each other, and she sometimes thought of him as her real best friend, distinct from the best friends she made in whatever school she happened to be attending.

  He had taught her to drive in the Pinto when she was eleven years old. On Sunday afternoons in a deserted parking lot, she’d practice J turns, parking, and stopping on a dime. Her father would laugh and say, “Terri, you’ll have your driver’s license before you have your learner’s permit.”

  She had always thought she’d take her driver’s test in the Pinto, but last year on her twelfth birthday, they traded in the Pinto for the camper truck. She had hated to see the Pinto go and shed real tears for it, as many, in fact, as for the various mice, hamsters, and guinea pigs who had come and gone in her life.

  But quite soon she became devoted to the camper and hoped they would never trade it in. The cab was like an ordinary pickup truck, but in back a little metal house sat on the truck bed. Inside were two beds, a sink, propane refrigerator and stove, table and benches, and a minute bathroom with a chemical toilet. Everything was small and every bit of space was used. There was a water tank underneath and a metal luggage rack on top.

  “The camper makes us completely free,” Phil said when they bought it. “Anytime we get the urge to travel, we can just go, Terri. And stop wherever we want to.”

  They rarely stayed in any place for more than six or eight months. Terri had heard her father say, “I’ve got restless feet,” so many times that she almost thought of his feet as having a life of their own, as if it were Mr. Restless Feet, and not Mr. Philip Mueller, who kept them on the move.

  Last year, for instance, Terri had gone to school in Richmond, Indiana, until June when they went south to Wilmington, North Carolina. In August they drove north again and decided to live in Niagara Falls, mostly because they both got hooked on the awesome Falls. Then in June, after school was over, they drove to where they were now, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

  Wherever they landed, Phil had little trouble finding work. He was a carpenter and an all-around Mr. Fixit. “I wouldn’t be without you, Terri,” he told her, “and I wouldn’t be without my toolbox.”

  The toolbox, a large green metal box, with double handles, about the size of a bureau drawer, was always with them, even if they went out for a short Sunday drive. It probably weighed a hundred pounds full. It used to be that Terri couldn’t budge it—she would try regularly—but now, using both hands, she could just lift it and stagger a step or two.

  The tools—the hammers, wrenches, pliers, the doall, wood chisels, levels, planes, and saws—were as familiar to her as her own face. That, and her father’s wide leather nail belt with its pockets and dangling hammer slings that he wore when he was working, slung low around his hips like a cowboy.

  Down in Wilmington, Mrs. Lawrence, who ran the Bide-A-Wile Trailer Park, where they had stayed for the summer, had hired Terri to take care of her kids, Meg and Nate. At the end of the day they’d all sit outside on the Lawrences’ trailer stoop and wait for Phil Mueller to come home.

  “My,” Mrs. Lawrence said nearly every day, “he is very good looking.”

  And remembering that now, Terri asked slyly, “Daddy? You recall Mrs. Lawrence?”

  “Who?” He was hunkered down, checking the radiator.

  “Mrs. Lawrence from the Bide-A-Wile Trailer Park.”

  “Oh, Fran. Sure.” He looked over his shoulder at Terri. “What about her?”

  “You know what she used to say about you?”

  “It must be funny from that look on your face.”

  Terri folded her arms in imitation of the trailer park manager. “‘My,’” she drawled, “‘he is very good looking.’”

  Her father laughed. “Is that what she said? Never told me that.”

  “What did she say when you went out on dates?”

  “Dates?” Phil pulled a face. “You make me sound like your teenaged father.”

  “They were dates,” Terri said. “You went to the movies with her, didn’t you? Did you buy her popcorn? What else did you do?”

  “Subject closed.”

  She would have teased him a little more, but just then a woman walked into the empty apartment. “Oh!” She stared in surprise. “Excuse me, I didn’t know anyone else was here.” Her hair was tucked into a red bandanna. She was holding a little boy by the hand. “Are you looking at this apartment, too?”

  “We’ll be through in a few minutes,” Phil said.

  “Don’t rush on my account. It’s just—they didn’t tell me in the rental office.” She opened the bathroom door. “Is this real tile? How neat! Most places have everything fake these days.”

  The little boy was wearing blue and white striped overalls that said Oshkosh B’Gosh. He had big brown eyes and light frothy hair. “Hi,” Terri said. He got behind his mother, then peeked out with a serious expression.

  “Say hi to the girl, Leif,” his mother said. “Say hi, honey.”

  He shook his head.

  “That’s okay,” Terri said.

  “This really is a neat place,” the woman said. “What fantastic windows.”

  Terri liked that she didn’t badger the child to say hi. She really hated it when adults did that to kids. She’d noticed that a lot of adults thought kids had no private life, that they could say or do anything to children just because they were bigger.

  “It’s a fine apartment,” her father said to the woman.

  “If you only knew some of the dumps I’ve been looking at. Am I sorry you’re here first!” She had big excited eyes and a big grin. “I’m going to take a look at the kitchen—just in case you guys decide not to take this place.” She held up crossed fingers.

  Terri and her father finished inspecting the apartment. “So, what do you think?” Phil asked. “It won’t be easy to heat with those big windows.”

  “Yes, but the living room—” There was a real working brick fireplace, and Terri already had visions of them playing checkers and eating popcorn in front of a crackling blaze. “I think we should take it,” she said.

  “Okay,” her father said. “Let’s.”

  Just then the child and his mother came into the room. “Don’t you love that fireplace?” She said, “Luuuuuuve,” and her eyes got even bigger. “I bet you’re taking this apartment.”

  “Well . . . we’re discussing it,” Phil said.

  Discussing it? Terri thought they’d just made their decision.

  “We’re probably not going to take it,” he went on.

  Well, there goes the fireplace, Terri thought. Seeing her father give her a wink, she said, “We think it would be hard to heat because of the windows.”

  “Oh, poo!” The woman waved her hands. “You can always wear another sweater. But can you always get a place right by a park, with a fireplace, and elegant windows?” She clapped her hand to her forehead. “What am I doing? Selling the place to you. Shut up, Nancy! Are you really turning it down? You aren’t desperate—?”

  “We’re camping out right now,” Phil said.

  “That’s wonderful! We’re staying in a motel, and it costs a fortune. If I ever get my life in order I’m taking Leif camping. I really think it’s a must-have experience for every child. Don’t you?” She appealed to Terri.

  Terri, not happy to be classified as a child along with the little boy, only smiled faintly.

  Her father put his hand on her
shoulder. “Terr—what do you say we let this lady have the apartment?”

  “Look,” the woman said, “you’re not just being nice—?”

  Yes, he is, Terri thought.

  Her father leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest. “Terri and I are old hands at this apartment hunting game. We’ll probably have another place by tonight.”

  “Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?” She looked from one to the other, then grabbed their hands. “It must be a good omen meeting such terrific people on my first week here. I came here to go to college and—Oh, excuse me! My name is Nancy Briet.”

  “Phil Mueller. And this is my daughter, Terri.”

  Nancy Briet shook Phil’s hand, then Terri’s. “And this is Leif, as you already know.” She put her hand on her son’s head. “Phil. . . Terri. . . Can I call you that?” Her smile was brilliant. “As soon as I’m settled, I’m inviting you to dinner.”

  “We’ll hold you to that,” Phil Mueller said. Everywhere they went, there were women who liked her father, and women her father liked. Terri mostly understood. If only, she sometimes thought, as she thought now, leaving the apartment, If only my mother . . . She pushed the useless thought away and considered Nancy Briet. Friendly, warm, but not gushy. Blonde, but not glamour blonde: underneath the red scarf, her hair had been loose and tangled. She liked her son and had mostly included Terri in the conversation. Points for Nancy Briet.

  Would they see her again? Terri glanced at her father as he unlocked the trunk. He was whistling between his teeth. In the cab she put her arms around Barkley, who had waited patiently for them, and remembered her small self listening gravely to her father’s stories about Sally the Mouse who sometimes had a Bad Temper whenever her father, Mustafa the Mouse, wanted to do anything without her. Silly Sally didn’t understand that Mustafa also needed friends his own age. Didn’t she know that in the end they two would always go off together in their Mousemobile? And that would be that!

  TWO

  It was always fun settling into a new place. Out of the U-Haul (or in this case, storage) came their dear familiar things: Terri’s bed and bureau, their wooden-legged kitchen table with the cocoa-brown enameled top bordered with prancing horses, their TV and radios, her father’s special chair, and the old beat-up red couch they kept meaning to replace.