Ms. Bean

Everything is perfect on Whimple Street. The lawns are perfectly manicured and so green and plush they look like velvet. The postman is never late. The neighbors never quarrel. The homes are spacious, the kind you would find in Better Homes and Gardens, but the biggest home belonged to Ms. Bean.

Ms Bean was famous for her better-than-the-farmer's market vegetables, her sherry angel food cake, and for her Sunday evening storybook time she held for the Whimple Street children. Usually she read Lewis Carroll, C. S. Lewis, or Roald Dahl. None of that violent commercial trash, mind you. You could find her picture under Home of the Year every year in the town newspaper, featuring her famous greenhouse, which was almost as big as her house, and alone was featured in three national magazines.

But there was something else Ms. Bean was more famous for. Something that you wouldn't find in any newspaper. Something that would make people from all over the globe hop into planes, drive in cars, or even brave trains for. She was a baby broker. The world's best baby broker. She had a knack for finding babies for childless couples that you would swear were their own.

Every couple in every house on Whimple Street owed her thanks. Some say it was due to the fact that she never married or her own childlessness that fueled her desire to give that gift to worthy couples of the world. Some except Mrs. Stiles, who accused Ms. Bean of being a fraud, told neighbors she wasn't to be trusted, said things behind her back, but thankfully Mrs. Stiles no longer resided on Whimple Street.

Ms. Bean was working on the right side of her greenhouse, pruning some tomatoes and herbs before her three o'clock appointment arrived. Her first customers of the year were Danny and Cheryl Walgreen from Duluth Minnesota. Danny was a human resource manager, Cheryl was a homemaker, just the kind of couple Ms. Bean liked helping. When her doorbell rang at three o'clock sharp, Ms. Bean answered looking like she just came from brunch instead of knee deep in funky compost.

"Ms. Bean?" Mr. Walgreen said. He did what everyone who met her for the first time did, and looked straight ahead. Ms. Bean never tired of their expression when they realized their host's head stopped a little closer to the ground. In fact, Ms. Bean stood exactly three feet and eleven inches. "Ms. Bean?" he repeated, and he and his wife exchanged a look they would probably give if a ten year old tried to perform surgery on them.

Mr. Walgreen was Ken and his wife Barbie. Both stood picture perfect and shoulder to shoulder in a black golf shirt, khaki trousers, a lemon chiffon sundress, and matching strappy sandals. The misses elbowed her husband gently before he presented a bouquet of slightly wilted store bought roses with a small plastic tube with water on their ends.

"I adore roses," she said, deciding they would make an excellent addition to the compost in her garden.

They entered, Mr. Walgreen allowing his wife to enter first into the receiving room.

"How beautiful," she said.

Ms. Bean preferred interviewing in the kitchen. She had already set out a tray with some Earl Grey and squares of her sherry angel food cake in the breakfast nook, with a large wall-sized window facing her greenhouse. She offered the couple two chairs and Mr. Walgreen offered the first to his wife.

"How long have you been married?" she began.

"Twelve years," the misses said. "We've been trying for eleven." At this point her peach glossy lips lost some of their luster, but her husbands hand over hers put the sparkle back immediately.

"She's just too beautiful for child bearing," he added.

Ms. Bean smiled along with Mrs. Walgreen. "Are you educated?" she said to her.

"Yes," she said proudly. "Yale, Class of 97'" Mrs. Walgreen took a sip of her tea thinking the subject over until she could see Ms. Bean's eyes were unsatisfied. "Masters in English Literature. I substitute teach only because I plan to stay at home fully when . . . if we're lucky."

"Call me old fashioned but it's something I feel all mothers should go back too," Ms. Bean said, draining the contents of her teacup.

She offered them a tour, taking them first to her library. It was a narrow tall room piled with books on every wall. The dust tickled the Walgreens nose and both began sneezing violently. Ms. Bean smiled and offered two cloth handkerchiefs she just happened to have in her pocket. On one side she had a collection of clean but cheaply bound commercial paperback and hard covers you could find on any beach or airport vendor stand. The other was lined with leather bound and cloth renditions of every classic literature artist from Shakespeare to J. D. Salinger. Her travels to every city in every state and almost every country allowed her to amass a wealthy collection. Her insides jiggled like Jell-O when the couple gravitated and paused before this section.

Next they ventured outside into the garden before her greenhouse.

"I thought gardens like these could only be found in England," Mrs. Walgreen said. "Is that were you're from?"

Ms. Bean almost laughed, knowing the misses noticed her accent, which was clearly American. "No, I was actually born in New Mexico. But hot climates aren't for me."

Last but not least was the greenhouse. To describe it accurately would be to describe a football stadium dome cut in half. Mrs. Walgreen looked as if she would faint. Mr. Walgreen stood like one would stand before an Egyptian pyramid for the first time.

"You have enough food here to feed an African country!" he said.

It was true. If she were to let someone catalog it they would find every vegetable in existence and some new hybrid ones of her own. But it didn't stop at vegetables. She had growing in a strip directly down the center, fruit and nut trees of every kind. Not only was it impressive, but impossible. Her products grew against the law of physics and were each absolutely perfect in shape, color, and superior in taste. If the world's vegetables were high school students, Ms. Bean's vegetables were toddlers belonging to Mensa.

"Please, taste anything you wish," she insisted.

Mrs. Walgreen went straight for an eight foot tomato plant, its fruit dangling like giant rubies the size of cantaloupes. When she bit into it, her face twisted into orgasmic convulsions. "It's unreal," she said, her mouth full. "It's so sweet and . . . it's like an entire meal!"

Mr. Walgreen plucked a hybrid mango-peach-plum, savored it and declared Ms. Bean gardener of the world. "What's your secret?"

"Good compost."

As they finished their treats, she led them past a large field of rich moist dirt the color of mahogany where she explained her plans for yet another garden with more fruits and ended facing the back wall where - taking up its entirety - was a large portrait of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man.

All in all, Ms. Bean assured them she was more than confident that on her next expenditure, she would find an infant for them. It was if they had won the lottery.

"I'm afraid to ask but, can you give us an idea of your fee?" Mr. Walgreen asked, pulling out his Italian calf-skin bi-fold. Ms. Bean quickly placed her dwarfish palm over it and shook her head.

"Let's just say I'm like one of those ambulance chasing attorneys. I don't get paid until you win the case. Then we'll discuss my very modest fee."

Mrs. Walgreen was satisfied, but Mr. Walgreen tried unsuccessfully to get a round figure, an estimate, something indicating how much it would hurt his pocketbook.

But there would be no fee, Ms. Bean thought as she waved them off. She looked down at the two handkerchiefs they returned before leaving, along with a few strands of perfect blond hair she collected from both and headed for the greenhouse.

She thought what perfect citizens they made, what wonderful contributions to this planet. Soon, the fruit they ate would cause both to find Duluth suddenly unattractive. They would be overwhelmed with a renewed urge to move to Whimple Street, where there just so happened to be a home available. In thirty days, Ms. Bean would inform them that an infant had been found. Both would remark at its blond hair, how similar its button nose was to Mrs. Walgreen, how odd the same shade of blue eyes as her husband.

Thirty days. That's all it took for Ms. Bean to grow them. Human bodies were the most simple of carbon-based life forms she had ever encountered. Still, she admired the time frame. Her ultimate garden would have cured this planet sixty years ago.

Ms. Bean walked over to the strip of moist rich dirt. She dug a small hole and placed the two handkerchiefs and the strands of hair inside. Then she walked to the back towards the large wall of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man, and walked right through it. It crackled slightly, the only evidence that it was a hologram. It was funny. She had shown her greenhouse to dozens, hundreds of people, and only one had thought to walk over to the "painting". Ms. Bean smiled remembering the look on Mrs. Stiles's face. She was happy to add her body to the compost. The fierce defiance in her DNA was an excellent mineral.

Behind the painting was her ultimate garden. Large green shiny plants -about ten feet tall- slim like doors and resembling heads of cabbage, lined the grounds as far as the eye could see. She started the first of them sixty years ago when she crashed landed. Soon they would bloom. Soon her children would emerge. What wonderful additions they would make to the children she already blessed this planet with.

She dug her hand into a large field of dirt similar to the strip in the front, and retrieved one of her eggs. Thick, shiny and white like a boiled chicken egg but the size of a bag of sugar. She had laid a record number this year, one thousand. And she planned to use every single one. She walked back to the front - but not before grabbing an index card that she had stapled to a Popsicle stick- and placed the egg into the hole. When she covered it, she took a black marker, wrote the word "Walgreen" onto, and marked her first seed.

Ms. Bean exited the greenhouse, exited the garden, exited her home and stood admiring Whimple Street. The most perfect street on earth. But not for long.