Elvis and the World As It Stands

by Lisa Frenkel Riddiough

  “Hello, friends,” Jasmine says before catching on. “Wait. What’s going on here?”

  There’s no point in trying to explain any of this to a human. So, I just sit. Mo twists a whisker. Clementine grooms her orange patch.

  “Oh my goodness,” Jasmine says with exploding eyes. She crouches down on her knees and looks at Laverne. “How in the world did you get here? Mo? Clementine?” Maybe she won’t say my—“Elvis?”

  Mo and I follow Jasmine into Georgina’s room, where she sets Laverne, still in my water bowl, on the bureau. Mo has piled up the blue pebbles, but Laverne’s glass home and rock cave are where they landed.

  “I don’t know what you all think you’re doing with Laverne, but this is not funny,” Jasmine says.

  “We saved her,” I say, in a clear, loud voice, but Jasmine just shakes her head. She picks up Laverne’s bowl and scoops up the pebbles and puts them inside, along with the rock cave. Then she walks out of the room.

  “What happened?” Bambi asks, sniffing and wagging and slobbering all over everything.

  “It was an accident,” I say. “I didn’t mean to do it, but I knocked Laverne’s bowl and she fell out. She’s alive, though. And I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever happened, Jasmine will fix it,” Bambi says. “I know because one time I went outside when I wasn’t supposed to and then I couldn’t get back in the house and so I went for a walk down the street. I came back when I was hungry and tired and Jasmine wasn’t mad or anything. She just hugged me and gave me my dinner. Everything was fine—well, mostly.”

  Jasmine comes back in the room with Laverne’s bowl full of water and the pebbles and cave in place. “This water needs to come to room temperature before we put Laverne back in, otherwise she could go into shock. I’m going to leave this bowl right here while I check to see what other destruction you cats have caused. DO NOT TOUCH IT!”

  I am so relieved that Jasmine will get this all sorted out before Mommy or Georgina comes home.

  I don’t want to be rude or disrespectful to Laverne, but I have to change the subject.

  “Bambi, I have a question,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says. “Questions are terrific. Especially if you want answers.” Here we go with Bambi’s rambling again. “I ask Jasmine questions all the time, but she doesn’t exactly answer, and sometimes I think maybe she doesn’t hear me. Why is that? She doesn’t even have fur in her ears.”

  It’s because humans don’t listen, I think to myself. But I don’t want to get into that right now.

  “Bambi, can you really take me to the shelter? I need to find my sister,” I say, approaching him calmly even though I am twitching madly on the inside.

  “Oh, yes. I would love to. It’s a magical place, like I told you before. When we get there, we can go right up to the front desk and try to sit still so we can get a biscuit. You have to sit very still, and you can’t bark or anything, and don’t even think of jumping or—”

  “I KNOW IT’S A SPECIAL PLACE,” I say a bit too enthusiastically. “I just need to know when we can go. It’s urgent.”

  Bambi just says, “Oh,” and sits there.

  I wait, but he says nothing.

  “We need to go now!” I say.

  I don’t know why he won’t speak. I look at Mo and Laverne and Clementine, who is suddenly hanging around all the time. Finally, Bambi mumbles. Barely audible. A canine whisper, if there even is such a thing.

  “I didn’t really want to talk about this, but I may as well tell you,” he says.

  Mo scuttles over to get a better listen. Clementine butts in, too.

  “I’m leaving Monday to go to camp. That’s tomorrow,” he says. “See, I didn’t do very well in my class at the shelter. Now I have to go away for special training. I tried really hard, though, and Jasmine isn’t mad, and she said that these things take time and soon enough I’m going to be very well trained and I won’t knock things over or bark at everyone or run when I’m supposed to sit or sit when I’m supposed to come. It’s just that sometimes I get distracted and I forget to concentrate, and then Jasmine gets frustrated and I cause problems and—oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “Okay, okay,” I say. “So, we’ll go when you get back. How long will you be gone?”

  “Just two weeks.” He pauses. “Then maybe two more after that. Then . . . it just depends.”

  The door to my heart shuts with a snap-click, just like the condos at the shelter. I try to keep my chin held up, but my head drops anyway.

  “I’ll take you as soon as I get back. I promise.”

  “Elvis,” Mo says, climbing up my leg to get close to my face. “You need to rest. You can barely walk. You’re not supposed to do anything for six weeks, right? It’s all perfect timing. It is.”

  I’m so tired of Mo’s perfect timing. I don’t want to hear another word about it. My heart hurts. My head hurts. The very tip of my calico tail hurts.

  My silent moment breaks when Jasmine comes back into the room. “Come on, Laverne,” she says. “I’ll bet you’re ready to get out of the cat water. I look up and watch as Jasmine pours Laverne back into her home with a splash. She swims in circles and dives in and out of her cave. Her life is suddenly back to normal. Jasmine wags a finger at all of us. “You people be nice to Laverne,” she says. Then she tells Bambi it’s time to go and walks out.

  Bambi nudges me on his way out. “The weeks will go by in a jiffy. That’s what Jasmine says.”

  Mo chuckles. “Ha! Jasmine called us people. That’s funny.”

  I am in no mood to laugh. It will be a lifetime before Bambi comes back for me.

  I look up at Laverne, safe in her home, and I can’t deny that I am so relieved. I only wish I could feel the same about Etta. I miss Etta. And I have no idea where she is.

  Chapter 15

  Georgina finally comes back on Monday morning. Mommy, too. I hear her clippity-clops downstairs.

  “I missed you, Elvis,” Georgina says.

  She picks me up and walks me around with her, gently scratching my head as she checks on Laverne and then sits down next to Mo’s palace. Mo comes out and scrambles onto Georgina’s leg and then up onto her shoulder.

  It is strange and wonderful to be missed.

  The three of us sit together for a few minutes, and I wonder if Georgina has any notion of all that occurred in her absence. Can she tell that the Transamerica Pyramid came crashing down? And that Mo and I rebuilt it? Did Jasmine tell her about Laverne? There is so much to discuss, and apparently no words to use.

  Clementine pokes her head in the doorway, and Georgina calls to her. But she doesn’t come in.

  Mo crawls to the floor, and Georgina sets me down, too. She studies the Transamerica Pyramid. I watch as her smile slowly leaves her face and she wrinkles her brow. Oh shoot.

  “What happened here?” she says, looking from the pyramid to me to Mo.

  “Uh-oh,” I say to Mo. “She knows.”

  Mo scrambles over to her and shimmies up her leg and into her lap. I go to her, too, and give her a headbutt.

  She looks confused. But she’s not mad.

  She takes apart the top of the Transamerica Pyramid and starts re-snapping pieces together. Occasionally she looks over at me with questions in her eyes.

  Oh, how I wish I could tell her. “We should have done a better job,” I say to Mo. I should have helped more. But how?

  “We did our best, Elvis, considering the circumstances,” he says. He grabs a shiny, white brick and hands it to Georgina. She puts it in place with a SNAP. Mo hands her another, and then another, and pretty soon, all that is left to connect is the long, thin spire.

  “Where is the spire?” Georgina says. She shakes her head in confusion. I look around the room, trying to figure out how to solve this problem.

  I see Clementine in the doorway. She motions to me. “Elvis,” she calls.

  “What do you want now, Clementine?” I have had enough of her antics to last a lifetime.

&nbs
p; She nods in the direction of the bookshelf.

  “Oh, now you want in on the reading?” I say.

  “No! Just . . .” She nods again. Then she sighs. And smiles a weak smile. “Elvis, follow me.” Clementine comes in and walks over to the bookshelf. I am right behind her. She nods again, and I follow her gaze.

  I look at the bookshelf, and there, resting on the bottom shelf, is the spire. I slink over and nudge it with my nose. Push it with my paw. I look up at Clementine. She looks me in the eyes, like she might even be sorry for what she did. Then she slinks out the door. I pick up the spire in my mouth and walk over to Georgina and drop it in her lap.

  “How did you know that’s exactly what I needed?” she says. Her eyes sparkle when she says it.

  “Because I’m listening to you,” I say.

  Georgina scratches behind my ears. I don’t know how to tell her the things I want to tell her. But none of that matters right now. I’m helping Georgina. For real. I lift my chin and purr.

  Georgina spends quite a bit of time tinkering with the skyscraper. She fixes it just right and clears a spot for it on her shelf, right next to the Sears Tower. “I should have put this up on the shelf before I went to Daddy’s,” she says. She places a picture in front of it. It’s Georgina. With a human man. It must be Daddy. They are standing in front of a white building. I can’t tell if she’s smiling.

  The rest of the day we page through the Big Book of American Architecture. I see almost every letter of the alphabet, arranged in fancy ways to make words that humans read. Reading and writing. It’s all so easy for humans. So why is listening so hard for them?

  Suddenly, Georgina picks me up. “Elvis, do you want to see something? Mo, you, too. Come on.”

  Georgina leans down and Mo crawls into her cupped hands. She puts him on her shoulder, and he holds onto her collar. With me tucked under one arm, she climbs through the window and steps us all out onto a ledge enclosed with a rail. Then up, over the rail she goes, hoisting herself onto the roof. I’ve never been up this high. We’re on top of the world. And, as an added bonus, we are in the out-of-doors.

  A cool breeze sweeps through my whiskers and rustles my fur. Peeking out from under Georgina’s arm, I can see all sorts of things. Streets, cars, trees, rows and rows of houses. Off in the distance is water. So much water. I can’t imagine how many water bowls worth of water. And something that reminds me of the connecting ramps in Mo’s palace.

  “Look at that red structure, Mo,” I say.

  “Ha! That’s the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s world-famous,” he says.

  On one side of this bridge, there are grassy peaks. On the other side, there are buildings, standing shoulder to shoulder on a hilly landscape. I can see a pointy white skyscraper that looks just like—hey! “Is that—”

  “Yes. It is,” Mo says. “That’s San Francisco. And you’re looking at the real Transamerica Pyramid, right there in the middle. Do you see the spire at the top? Isn’t it marvelous, Elvis?”

  I can’t believe it. The real Transamerica Pyramid. “It looks exactly like ours, Mo,” I say.

  “Yes, sir. I told you we were talented.”

  “Mommy and Daddy used to work right near the Pyramid. In San Francisco,” Georgina says, as if she might have actually been listening to us.

  We stand there, on the top of the world, and look across the water in silence. The sun illuminates the grand bridge. Bold red glitters on blue waters. A white pillowy puff of cloud floats overhead. It’s beautiful.

  Slowly, my gaze returns to what is right in front of me. I look down at the streets and houses that seem to go on forever. “Etta is out there somewhere,” I say.

  “Yes,” Mo says.

  “But we can’t know for sure,” I say. “I’ll never know if I can’t get back to the shelter to find out.”

  “You’ll know when the time is right,” Mo says.

  Georgina looks at me suddenly. Straight into my eyes. And I wonder again if she understands what I am saying. She scratches me behind my ears and smiles, and her eyes sparkle. “It’s time to go back inside,” she says.

  Back in Georgina’s bedroom, Mo heads to his palace, mumbling on his way. “Just because we were outside doesn’t mean you should get any wild ideas about trying to leave again.”

  The window is shut, so it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m stuck. And I know it.

  I am about to tuck myself into the pile of wrinkled clothes under the bed when Georgina takes me into her arms and presses her head against mine and whispers in my ear. “I wish we could go on our family vacation. That’s what families are supposed to do together.”

  “I want to be with my family, too,” I say.

  Georgina kisses the top of my head and sets me on the floor. She reaches for her bin of LEGOs and says, “New York City.”

  Before I know it, Mo is front and center twisting a whisker.

  “New York City is where all the best skyscrapers are,” he says.

  Georgina sits down on the floor next to us.

  “I bet we’re going to build them all,” Mo says.

  I look from Mo to Georgina. Her brow is furrowed, and her lips are pressed together. Mo scrambles up her arm and onto her shoulder and clasps her collar. “The Flatiron Building!” he shouts. “The Chrysler Building! The Empire State Building!”

  “That sounds like a lot,” I say.

  “We can do it,” Mo says.

  Georgina cups Mo in her hands and lowers him to the floor. She dumps out two bins of plastic bricks, and Mo dives right in. She presses two gray bricks together, SNAP.

  “New York City,” Georgina says again. And I get the feeling that there is something very important about the skyscrapers there. I don’t know what it is, but I see Georgina’s determination and Mo’s enthusiasm, and it occurs to me that there is so much in this world that I don’t know.

  Chapter 16

  The next few weeks go by very slowly. I am resigned to healing and waiting and hoping and trusting. Nothing in my life has ever been so hard. One day I will find Etta, and she will find me, and we will be together. But it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

  My leg improves with each passing day, and soon my food and water are moved back downstairs and I am getting around just fine. However, I take the stairs one tread at a time with carefully placed paws, just in case.

  I’m used to the schedule now as Georgina regularly goes to Daddy’s. It’s easy to keep track, thanks to the calendar in the hallway. I don’t like it when she’s gone, but when she returns, my ears perk up and I feel—I don’t know—alive.

  I love the sound of the front door opening and shutting and Georgina’s footfalls as she runs up the stairs and into our room. I am always ready for her to scoop me up and tell me in her soft, cozy voice about how much she missed me and how happy she is to see me. She does the same with Mo, patting his tiny hamster head. It seems like she would lift Laverne right out of her bowl if she could, and kiss her feathery fur. She even snuggles Clementine, who has been hanging around more and more.

  And what comes next is always wonderful. Georgina sits on the floor with Mo and me and builds skyscrapers in the middle of the room.

  Mommy usually comes in and tries to convince Georgina that she should have a playdate. A human friend. But Georgina doesn’t need humans. Why would she, when she has us? Also, humans don’t listen, so what’s the point?

  We build the Flatiron Building and the Chrysler Building one after the other.

  Georgina tells us what it would be like if she and Mommy and Daddy went to New York City. “We’d see all these skyscrapers in person. And we’d take our pictures in front of them and we’d look up to the tip-tops and feel like ants. And we’d walk everywhere together, like we did in Chicago. With me in the middle.” When she talks about it, her voice is low and slow, and it almost makes me sad.

  When we build the Empire State Building, I am fascinated. Georgina reads about it from her Big Book of American Architecture. The buildin
g is a symbol of America’s ability to dream. After all, it was built during the darkest days of the Great Depression. We don’t talk too much about what the Great Depression was. But everyone knows it was depressing. And as for dreaming, I am a big fan. I love that the people who dreamed up the idea for the Empire State Building wanted to make it the tallest building of its time. While Georgina and Mo build, they chat about colors and design.

  Georgina talks about how the top is in a style called art deco, like the Chrysler Building. I tell Mo that the Empire State Building is a combination of the Sears Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid.

  “How so?” Mo asks.

  “See how it’s a square,” I say. “Like the Sears Tower. But its skinny at the top and has a spire, just like the Transamerica Pyramid.”

  “You’re becoming an aficionado,” Mo says.

  “A fishy what?”

  “An expert. That’s what happens when you pay really close attention to something. When you study something that interests you and try to learn all you can about that something, eventually you know things that others have never considered.”

  I spend time thinking about this. To be an expert sounds good. I am interested in skyscrapers, sure. But I am more interested in letters. The way that humans use letters to communicate. I want to understand letters, too. I wish I had that alphabet book of Carly’s. Then I could communicate with Georgina and tell her that I need to find Etta. If I could tell her clearly with letters, she would understand me.

  When I tell Mo about this, he hops up onto the bookshelf and starts poking around. And miracle of miracles, he taps his hamster fingers on a skinny book jammed on the second shelf.

  “Here’s an alphabet book, right here,” he says. “There is no reason you can’t study your letters now. It’s a worthy task.”

  I yank that book out with my teeth and Mo flips the pages for me. Sure enough, all those letters are right there, in their perfect order.

  I don’t get it, though. How do they work? I see the letters, but I don’t understand the patterns.