by Lous Lowry
Winifred nodded. “Of course. That’s why I didn’t have sheets on my bed last night. They threw up on my sheets before they fainted.”
“Well, they’re out of the intensive care unit. And they’ll be discharged from the hospital in a couple of days. But no one could reach your mother—”
“We can’t afford a telephone,” Winifred said with a sad look.
“And they don’t seem to have a home,” Richie’s father went on, “or any money.”
“They paid my mom in advance,” Winston said, looking up from the toolbox. “I think they paid her twenty-eight dollars.”
“Well, that seems to be all they had, except for a fairly large amount of damp, wadded-up Swiss francs in the woman’s purse.”
“So that’s why the phone call was odd? Because of Swiss money?” Winifred asked.
“No. That’s odd, of course. But the thing that struck me as really odd is their name. Apparently they didn’t use their real names when they registered with your mother. Their real name, it turns out, is Willoughby.”
Richie was still at the computer. Winston had given him the correct size, and he had found a toy car wheel on the computer. The company wouldn’t sell just one. You had to buy two dozen. He had added them to the shopping cart and was waiting to get credit card information from his father. But now his attention had been caught by the story of the hospitalized tourists.
“Willoughby’s your name, Dad! And mine!” he said.
“That’s right,” Tim Willoughby said. “I was twelve when I was adopted by Commander Melanoff, and I decided to keep my last name.” He turned to Winifred. “I explained that I was an orphan, didn’t I?”
She nodded. But she was becoming very confused.
“Here,” he said, handing a credit card to Richie. “This one’s still good. I’ve canceled all the others. Buy the cheapest wheels they have.” Richie began to type the numbers in.
“Pay extra to have them delivered overnight. It doesn’t cost much more, and this will be our final order; we might as well go down with a flourish,” his father instructed. “In the meantime we’ll get the car prepared. We’ll sand it and repaint it and oil the axles. How does that sound?”
“Great!” Winston and Richie both said.
“Then tomorrow, when the wheels arrive, we’ll put four new wheels on it and it’ll be as good as new. Better than new!”
“Just like when your dad made it for you,” Richie said, to Winston. Winston nodded, picked up the car, and held it close to his heart.
Everyone was silent for a moment. Then, suddenly, Richie’s father said, “Son, I’m sorry I haven’t been a better father.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” Richie told him. “You bought me lots of stuff.”
“No, it’s not okay. I’m going to try to be better. It’s just that—well, I told you I was an orphan.”
The children all nodded.
“So I never had a great dad to learn from. I did have a dad once, for a while, till I was twelve, but he never liked me very much. He always called me a dolt. He shortchanged me on my allowance every single week. And—” He stopped talking because he was choked up.
“What’s going to happen to the people who threw up on my sheets?” Winifred asked. She was trying to change the subject because she didn’t like it when people burst into tears.
Richie’s father cleared his throat. “I told the hospital director that they could come here. We have plenty of room, at least until we have to sell this house. And I didn’t know what else to suggest.
“Isn’t it extremely odd, though,” he mused, “that their name is Willoughby?”
33
So close! Ben Poore thought as he climbed down from the cab of the truck just outside of Seattle. The driver handed his heavy pack down to him and drove away without saying goodbye or good luck.
Yet the driver had been so close to ordering the encyclopedia! Several hundred miles, Ben had had, to present his sales pitch, so there had been no rush, as there so often was when someone was trying to slam their front door on you. No, this guy had listened, had shown interest, had even asked about the payment plan.
When had it turned bad? He tried to remember. Probably it was when they had stopped at a gas station, hit the men’s room, and bought some bad coffee. There had been a picnic table. Yes, it was at the picnic table that things turned sour. The driver, listening in the cab as Ben talked, had shown real interest. So at the rest stop Ben had dumped everything from his pack and laid the sample materials out in order on the rough boards. There was a hardened stain of bird-dropping on the edge of the table, he recalled. He had asked about the driver’s family, ascertained that there were children, had begun his talk about the importance of knowledge, how the kids’ grades in school would improve if they had access at home to—
The driver had interrupted him. “What’re those?” he asked, pointing.
Ben had looked. “Oh, just some souvenirs I’m taking to my kids. Rocks. My little girl’s really interested in geology. I mailed her a big box full but I saved these just to bring me luck as I make my way home.
“She and I will be spending a lot of time with the G volume. Or maybe the M, for minerals. How about your kids? What are their hobbies?”
“Can I see them?” The driver had reached for the glistening striated rocks and was turning them over in his hand.
“Maybe they’re athletes? Lemme tell you, there’s a whole section on the major leagues. My boy’s a Yankees fan. But it doesn’t matter. All the teams, they’re all in there. Well, maybe not the Diamondbacks or the Rays. They’re too new.”
“You got more of these?” the driver asked.
“Not with me. These are just sample volumes. After I take your order, and your deposit, then the company starts sending them, one volume a month. These are all beat up because I’ve been traveling. You wouldn’t want these. What you’ll get will be brand new, for sure.”
“I mean the rocks.”
“No.” Ben Poore reached over and took the rocks back. He dropped them into the backpack. They were distracting the driver.
And he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried as they continued their journey, rekindle the driver’s interest. For some reason the driver was fascinated by the rocks.
“You know what? You owe me for gas,” the driver said suddenly, as they approached the Canadian-US border. “How about if you just give me those rocks and we’ll call it even?”
Ben Poore almost said yes. But instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. It was nearly all the money he had left at the end of his long and unsuccessful year. “Here,” he said, and handed it to the driver. Briefly he thought he might offer the rocks as a bonus gift if the guy ordered the encyclopedia. But he decided against it. The driver was becoming annoying. Eventually the silence between them became uncomfortable, vaguely hostile. There was a delay as they went through border control and entered the United States. He tried unsuccessfully to interest the customs agent in an encyclopedia. Finally, as they approached Seattle, he asked the driver to let him out. No need, he thought, to enter a big city. He’d just stand here by the highway on the outskirts and hope for a ride east.
He found himself oddly angry at the rocks. They’d cost him a sale. He reached into the pack past the books and felt for them at the bottom where they lay in a layer of grit and sand. He thought he’d toss them away. They were bad luck.
But at that moment a car slowed and stopped for him. Hastily he rezipped the pack and climbed into the back seat, already beginning to wonder if the middle-aged couple in the front might be interested in buying a wonderful gift for their grandkids. It would boost their IQs.
34
The toy car wheels arrived the next morning, as promised. The Poore children were at the mansion, with Richie, when the UPS truck pulled into the driveway. And there they were: shiny black plastic with hubcaps painted in metallic silver: exactly right, they all decided.
“Can I do it? Ca
n I put the new wheels on?” Richie was holding the little car, now sanded and repainted bright red.
“It’s Winston’s car, Richie,” his father reminded him.
Richie held the toy firmly. “I’ll trade you, Winston,” he suggested. “How about it? You can have my remote-control Lamborghini!”
But Winston shook his head. “Sorry. But my father made this for me. He started with a block of wood and carved the shape of the car. Remember, Winifred?”
She nodded. “He cut his finger. There was a little bloodstain on the car before he painted over it.” She pointed to the underside of the car body, where the bloodstain had been.
“So I can’t trade it away. My dad wanted me to have it.” Winston reached for the car and Richie relinquished it with reluctance.
“You know what, Richie?” his father said. “We were required to buy—how many was it? Two dozen wheels?”
Richie nodded. Winston had set four wheels on the table and was beginning to screw the first one onto the right side of the car’s front axle. The open package lay nearby with the remining wheels encased in polyurethane.
“So there are how many left? Math problem!”
Richie, Winifred, and Winston all groaned together because it was so easy. They answered, in unison, “Twenty!”
“Well, then. Choose four wheels, Rich, and let’s find us a block of wood and I’ll start carving!”
Richie giggled. “Dad,” he said, “you won’t be any good at it! You don’t even have the right knife!”
His father pointed to Richie’s computer. “Take a look and see if there’s an inexpensive carving tool. That will be the absolute final thing I buy. I’m closing my last credit card down.”
“I’ll help.” The deep voice was unexpected. But there he was, again, at the playroom door. This time Commander Melanoff was dressed and his thick white hair was combed.
“Do you know how to carve, Grandfather?” Richie asked.
“How do you think the original Easter candies were created? All those bunnies and chicks out of marshmallow? I carved the first designs myself! Right upstairs in the original lab. Had a hard time with the bunny tails, I remember. Marshmallow’s not an easy thing to carve. I think it might have been easier if I’d used nougat.”
“To think, Commander,” Tim Willoughby reminded him sadly, “American children will never experience candy again.”
Commander Melanoff was not paying attention. He was reminiscing. “The licorice days; those were the best,” he murmured. “Moment of silence, please, for Other Barnaby. He loved Lickety Twist.”
Dutifully they all fell silent. Winifred wondered if candy had become illegal in the monastery, too. Did monks have to obey such laws?
“And Nanny was still with us then,” Commander Melanoff said, at the end of the silence. He dabbed his eyes. Then he looked up suddenly. “A poem is coming,” he announced, and then began to recite:
There once was a woman named Nanny . . .
“Please, not the naughty one, Grandfather,” Richie said. Commander Melanoff frowned briefly at him and continued.
Who looked forward to being a Granny . . .
He paused for a moment, deep in thought. “Well,” he said, “it’s making me too sad to go on.”
Richie, still at the computer, announced, “Here! Wood-carving sets. And some of them come with instruction books!”
“Order the very cheapest one, son,” Tim Willoughby said, then turned to his adoptive father, who was dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. “Are you all right, Commander?”
Commander Melanoff sniffed. “I guess so,” he said.
“Think about licorice,” Winifred suggested.
He brightened. “Ah, those were wonderful days,” he said. “The days of licorice! But I had not yet adopted Tim and his siblings. It was so lonely here in the mansion. My son, Other Barnaby, was a very quiet, introverted boy to begin with, and he had gone off to Europe with my wife. And my wife—to be honest, I had never really liked her very much. She was one of those meticulous people—she measured my hair and when it was one four-hundredth of an inch too long she insisted I go to the barber because it made her very nervous. And she labeled everything, even my underwear. Anyway, she had run off with a postman, and—”
“A postman?” Richie asked. “Like Mr. Shaughnessy, our mailman who wears US Postal Service shorts, even in winter? He likes labels too. He likes when people print address labels because they’re easier to read, he says.”
“No, no,” his grandfather explained. “Not Mr. Shaughnessy. He was probably just a boy during the time I’m talking about. This was all more than thirty years ago. And anyway, my wife ran off with a Swiss postman. Actually, a postmaster. His name was something like Hans, or maybe Fritz.”
Winston and Winifred spoke in unison. “The Swiss Postal System!” they said. “Might Be Distressing!”
“Precisely,” said Commander Melanoff. “It was very distressing, because—”
But he was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell.
35
Mrs. Poore rang the doorbell at the mansion in the late afternoon. She had combed her hair and ironed her dress, hoping that perhaps they would invite her to eat with them again, and that once again strawberry shortcake might be on the menu.
But she had another reason to ring their bell.
“I need to see my dear children!” she said, when Richie’s mother answered the door. “Look!” She held up a postcard. “I’ve heard from their father!”
Winston and Winifred, summoned from the playroom, leaned close to their mother and read the message on the postcard that she held out to show them.
Dear Family,
I have not been inebriated in months. I am still depressed, though, because of no $$$. Have not sold a single set of encyclopedias. I am coming home to develop a new sales technique. Bringing souvenirs for all of you: rocks for the win-wins, and a flower for my dearest wife. You can expect me on Saturday if all goes well.
xoxoxo Ben Poore
“When’s Saturday?” asked Winifred.
“Day after tomorrow,” her brother said.
“And what’s inebriated?”
“Inebriated means having drunk too much alcohol, dear,” Mrs. Poore told her daughter. “You remember that now and then your dear father had a tendency to do that.”
“But now he doesn’t?”
“Yes, it appears that now he doesn’t.”
“And he’s bringing us souvenirs!” Winifred exclaimed.
Winston frowned. “Rocks?”
“I love rocks,” Winifred reminded him. “Did you know that one single rock can have a whole lot of different minerals in it?”
“And a flower for me!” her mother said. “How romantic! I must remember, though, if it has leaves, not to make a salad from them. It seems to have been the salad that caused the problem for my guests.”
“Those strange guests! Does anyone know what happened to them? Did they survive?” asked Winston.
Richie’s father had been listening from the foot of the stairs, where he stood with Richie, holding his hand. “They’re recovering,” he told the Poores, “and I suppose I’d better tell my wife that they’re coming here—she’ll be a little upset because we’ve had to let the maids go. It will probably be Saturday.”
“My goodness!” Mrs. Poore said. “The same day my husband returns! Wouldn’t it be a lovely idea to have a Welcome Home party for everyone all together? Of course, my little house would be a bit crowded for such an event . . .”
She waited.
“There would be—let me think—the four of us Poores, and Richie and his parents—that’s seven—and the guests, whatever their names were . . .”
“Willoughby, apparently,” Richie’s father said.
“Same name as my dad! And me!” Richie said.
“Just a coincidence,” his father said.
“Yes, the two of them. That makes nine,” Mrs. Poore went on.
“And Gr
andfather,” Richie added. “But he’s not a Willoughby.”
“That would make ten! A little large for my pathetic kitchen table . . .”
She waited.
Finally she said, “Well, I guess I could have a buffet dinner. Wouldn’t that be nice? I don’t have ten forks, but people could eat with their hands. I could make a huge salad! I know my previous salad did cause some problems, but—”
Richie’s father sighed and interrupted her. “I think it would be wise,” he said in a resigned voice, “to do it here.”
“Lovely!” said Mrs. Poore. “And perhaps after dinner my husband could do a presentation of his encyclopedias.”
36
When the Willoughbys had been moved out of the intensive care unit, when they were no longer in danger of death, they were given a shared private room at the hospital. Although the administration had not been able to figure out how the hospital would be paid for their care, since the mysterious couple seemed to have no insurance and no savings and no income, they realized that there was a value to this unusual pair of patients.
Somehow there had been a leak. Calls from the media were coming in. A lab assistant, overhearing the talk about what the pathology report had revealed—that the couple had been defrosted after many years—had notified the newspapers.
Now the hospital was receiving requests for interviews. A publisher was offering a book contract. Every TV station was eager to do a special, and late-night comedians had begun performing routines about cryogenics (What happened when the frozen body was thawed and revived? He had to pay ex-ice tax). A reporter with a camera and digital recorder in his pockets had disguised himself as a janitor and tried to get into the Willoughbys’ room with a dustpan and broom. But he had been intercepted. All the calls had as yet been declined. So far the news was not out to the public.
And Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby, though they were feeling better after the unfortunate salad,1 were beginning to have a lot of difficulty adjusting to the thirty-year gap in their personal history.