The Penderwicks at Point Mouette

by Jeanne Birdsall

  She was the OAP, however, and having the OAP respond to a crisis by kicking too many trees would demoralize the troops. She had to think, and quickly. She was certain that neither her father nor Rosalind had given her guidance for what to do in the case of Aunt Claire damaging an ankle. Skye glanced over her shoulder at Jane and Batty huddled together, looking scared. Think! If only she weren’t so hungry—the gingerbread was a distant memory—maybe her brain would be working properly. No leader, not Caesar or Napoleon, not Washington himself, could have developed strategy on a stomach this empty. And then Skye realized that there was her answer. In any emergency, food is always an excellent idea.

  She turned away from the trees, courageously faced her sisters, and said, “Let’s have breakfast.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Pancakes

  JUST AS HUNGRY AS SKYE, Jane rashly volunteered to make pancakes for everyone. She’d watched her father make pancakes from a mix a hundred times and was sure she could do it herself. After all, the directions would be right there on the box. Unfortunately, those directions turned out to be not as clear as she would have liked, starting with the first step. Heat skillet on medium to low, it said. But the knob on the stove had numbers, with no indication which number meant medium or low, let alone medium to low. If only Jane had paid attention to the setting her father had used at home—but who cared enough about stoves to notice things like that? She was going to have to experiment, and since experimentation can get messy, Jane didn’t want Skye around watching the process. Too stressful. So she wondered loudly why Jeffrey wasn’t yet back from taking Hoover home. This worked perfectly—Skye rushed off, certain that Hoover had broken Jeffrey’s leg or arm or killed him altogether.

  Batty stayed behind, too hungry to run away, even for Jeffrey.

  “I’ll help,” she said. “So will Hound.”

  “Thank you.” Jane lifted Batty onto a chair to make her tall enough for helping. “And we can talk while we work. Do you have any fears or anxieties to discuss?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean, was it scary when Aunt Claire got hurt?”

  “Yes, but then Skye and Jeffrey came.”

  “And me, too.”

  “Uh-huh.” Batty blew the opening notes of “Taps” on her harmonica. “But not Rosalind.”

  Jane would have liked a more enthusiastic response to her own role in this tale, but she understood that Rosalind would have been preferable. “How many pancakes should we make?”

  Once they’d decided on the recipe for twenty-four pancakes, they put together the ingredients. Once again, the directions proved to be vague, calling for two cups of mix and one and a half cups of milk. After some deliberation, Jane decided that a mug was sort of a cup, so she used one with a seagull on the side for measuring. Batty proved to be surprisingly good at breaking eggs without smashing them to bits. Only a few pieces of shell got into the batter, and Hound licked off all the yolk that splattered onto Batty’s shirt.

  Next came stirring. The directions said to stir with a wire whisk, but since neither of them could find anything that might be called that, they settled on a fork. While they worked, Jane told Batty about meeting Dominic and Mercedes Orne, and about the Love Survey she was putting together to help with research for her book.

  “And I’m still looking for a name for Sabrina’s true love. Do you like Dylan?” But when Batty vehemently shook her head, Jane remembered. “Sorry. That’s the name of the boy who poured glue on you at day care, right?”

  “He poured glue on everybody,” said Batty darkly.

  “What about the other boys?”

  “Isaac is nice. He invited me to his birthday party. So did Jaimon and Gabe. Satchel didn’t. Also Satchel pushed me off the swings, and Zoe said it was because he likes me, but I don’t like him, and if he likes me, he should’ve invited me to his birthday party. He invited Zoe.” Batty frowned. “She got a stuffed animal for a party favor.”

  “I won’t use Satchel, then.” Jane gave the batter one last stir. “Let’s try a pancake.”

  The directions said to use less than a quarter cup of batter for each pancake. Jane found that it was harder than it looked to pour batter from a mug into a hot pan, which meant that a lot of batter ended up on the stove and the floor. But the hiss when the batter hit the heat, and the way the batter turned itself into a round cake—all that was quite gratifying.

  “We’re supposed to turn the pancake over when it starts to bubble,” Jane told Batty, and thought seriously of becoming a chef someday, if it should turn out that she was indeed washed up as a writer, which she could be if she never got this book started.

  “And don’t use Hamish for your book,” said Batty. “Hamish is always kissing people.”

  “You mean like you?”

  “Not me. I run faster than him.” Batty pointed at the pan. “Bubbles.”

  With great excitement, Jane slid the spatula under the pancake, lifted it, and flipped it over. It was unevenly browned, but it was a real pancake.

  “We did it!” she said, hugging Batty. “Only twenty-three more to go!”

  While Skye rushed over to Alec’s house, she steeled herself for the grisly sight of Jeffrey felled by a triumphant Hoover, his doggy jaws dripping with gore. She took the back way, racing along the seawall, down the steps, across the beach, up Alec’s steps, then onto his rear deck. This was where she stopped, forced to reassess the situation. Someone was playing the piano in Alec’s house, and since it couldn’t be Hoover, it had to be Jeffrey, which meant he probably wasn’t felled or even bleeding after all.

  She peered in through the sliding door. Yes, right in front of her, with his back to the door, was Jeffrey, sitting at a baby grand piano, oblivious to the world around him. She’d seen him in this kind of musical swoon before and knew not to startle him. Once when she hadn’t been careful, Jeffrey had banged against the keyboard cover, making it fall onto his hands. No serious harm had been done, but Skye had learned her lesson.

  Quietly she slid through the door and found herself in what should have been Alec’s living room. True, there were a few living-room kinds of things—a couch and some chairs and a table—but mostly the room had been turned into a music studio. Besides the piano, there were saxophones, drums, trumpets, and maybe those were violins tucked away in the corner. There were also shelves upon shelves stuffed with sheet music, and even what Skye thought might be recording equipment. And there was Hoover, peacefully asleep under the piano. Now Skye had two reasons not to make any sudden movements—Jeffrey’s hands and not waking up that insane dog. Nevertheless, she had to get Jeffrey to stop playing. He really shouldn’t be in the house of an almost stranger using a piano without permission. More important, she was growing ever hungrier by the moment.

  “Jeffrey.” Skye said it quietly, and waited several moments before saying it again, a little louder. “Jeffrey, what are you doing?”

  Only then did Jeffrey realize that he wasn’t alone. He stopped playing and swiveled around to face her, his face alight with happiness. “I’m working on Stravinsky’s Piano Sonata. My teacher in Boston suggested it—he said I need to take an occasional break from the nineteenth century, because I was spending all that time with Liszt, you know.”

  “I suppose so,” said Skye, though she didn’t know anything about either Liszt or Stravinsky. “But what I meant was—why are you playing Alec’s piano?”

  He looked embarrassed. “I guess I shouldn’t have, but the piano was right here—and I couldn’t help it. Hoover doesn’t seem to mind, anyway.”

  Skye didn’t consider Hoover to be the best judge of right and wrong. At least he was still asleep.

  “And Alec must be a real musician, of course. This is his life.” Jeffrey said it so simply. “What I wouldn’t give for a room like this. And no one to tell me I had to leave it.”

  Skye knew who Jeffrey meant by “no one”—his mother had never been enthusiastic about his music. “I’d never tell you to
leave it—that is, if it were yours. But we should leave this one.”

  “I know.” He turned back to the piano and played one quiet chord, and then another. “Do you think Alec will let me play it again? It’s a wonderful piano.”

  Because already he was slipping back into his swoon, Skye declared loudly that she was about to faint from hunger. Jeffrey jumped up apologetically, and they left, escaping just as Hoover woke up and lunged at Skye, determined to kiss her once again. Now that Skye had Jeffrey safely in tow, it occurred to her that leaving Jane and Batty alone with knives and a stove might not have been the best idea. So the trip back was even faster than the trip over had been. When they arrived, the kitchen was a disaster—flour, eggshells, and melted butter everywhere—and Hound had that all-too-familiar air of having eaten too much food not suited for him. But no one had been slashed, burned, or suffocated, and since Jane and Batty were just sitting down to the table with a huge stack of pancakes, Skye and Jeffrey sat down, too, and the eating began.

  “Delicious,” said Skye after her first pancake.

  “Fantastic,” said Jeffrey after his second. “Good job, Jane.”

  “Thank you.” Jane was quite proud of herself. “And Batty helped a lot.”

  “I cracked the eggs,” said Batty, except that no one could understand her because her mouth was full.

  Skye knew it was her job to reprimand Batty about table manners, but since her own mouth was full at that moment, she didn’t bother. Instead, she took several more pancakes from the stack and slathered them with butter and syrup. That was when the phone rang. Swallowing hastily, Skye grabbed the phone—it would be Aunt Claire!—but when she checked the display, another name was there.

  “It’s Rosalind,” she hissed to the others. “I don’t want to talk to her right now.”

  “I will, I will,” crowed Batty.

  “You can’t say anything about Aunt Claire’s ankle. Not until we know more.”

  “I won’t.” Batty frantically reached for the still-ringing phone.

  “Swear! Rosy might think we should go home for Aunt Claire’s sake!”

  “I swear, I do, Skye. I do swear, I promise!”

  Skye needn’t have worried. Once Batty got hold of the phone, a great flow of words came, but not one about Aunt Claire’s accident. Batty went on and on about Jeffrey and Hoover, and a letter in the ocean—what the heck was that about?—and the harmonica and the steps to the beach, and then for a while she was just nodding her head and saying uh-huh, and after that she hung up the phone.

  “Why did you hang up?” asked Jane, who would have liked to tell Rosalind about the sleeping porch and about how inspirational it would be if only she could start writing again.

  “Rosalind said the signal was bad and we might be disconnected, and then we were, so I hung up.”

  “What else did she say?” asked Skye, to whom the bad signal was good news.

  “She said she misses me.”

  Through all this, Jeffrey had continued to eat, but now he laid down his fork. “Skye, do you think we should leave Maine for Aunt Claire’s sake? There would be people to take care of her in Cameron.”

  “I don’t know.” Skye wondered, once again, how her father could have been so foolish as to let her be the OAP for two whole weeks.

  “I don’t want to leave.” This was, surprisingly, Batty.

  “Neither do I,” said Jane. “Not at all, not even a little bit.”

  Jeffrey didn’t say anything, but no one needed him to. Leaving Maine for him meant going back to Arundel, Dexter, and loneliness. Thinking about this helped Skye in her struggle to decide. She couldn’t have been ungenerous to Aunt Claire for her own sake, but she could for Jeffrey’s.

  “If Aunt Claire’s ankle is really bad and she needs special doctors, we’ll have to go home,” she said.

  “You’re right,” said Jeffrey bravely.

  “And if we stay, you know we’re going to have to take care of Aunt Claire for at least a few days, and probably longer.”

  “That won’t be hard. Not like dressing a wound.” Though Jane thought that dressing a wound could be rather exciting. “Just giving her aspirin and ice packs.”

  “And doing all the cooking and cleaning and shopping,” Skye said sternly, making certain the others realized what they were taking on.

  “We can get everything we need at Moose Market,” said Jane. “And this will give me a chance to get better at cooking. Rosalind showed me how to make a tuna noodle casserole once.”

  “I can cook, too,” said Jeffrey. “Some.”

  This was news. “Like what?”

  “Omelets and stuffed green peppers. Churchie’s been teaching me.”

  The sisters had never met a stuffed green pepper, but if Churchie made them, they must be delicious. So they added omelets and stuffed green peppers to Jane’s casserole, plus there were always sandwiches that even Skye could make, and spaghetti with sauce from a jar—with all those to choose from, they decided that meals would be no problem.

  Their rising confidence was stemmed by another phone call. Since this time it was Aunt Claire, Skye took the call and got the news. Aunt Claire’s ankle was severely sprained and she would need to be on crutches. This was a blow. But when Skye hung up and looked around at the anxious faces, she decided that if she wanted to be a successful OAP, she needed to rally her troops, not upset them. So she explained that although Aunt Claire had a bad sprain, a broken bone would have been far worse, and that if they were really organized and responsible, maybe Aunt Claire wouldn’t need to go home. Inspired, they began being responsible immediately. Jane rearranged the living room so that Aunt Claire would have her choice of comfortable places to rest, then collected wildflowers from the field across the street to put in jars. Jeffrey and Skye tackled the kitchen so energetically that it ended up cleaner than it had been before Jane started cooking. When Batty begged to help, Skye gave her a broom and told her to sweep the living room, and though not very much actual sweeping was done before the whole thing turned into a game of tug-on-the-broomstick with Hound, Jeffrey took over later to do it right while Skye gave the bathroom a quick go-over.

  When the house was spotless, everyone had worked so hard that Skye ordered them into their bathing suits for some enthusiastic diving and splashing in the ocean. They were cleaning up from that, and Skye was about to attack Batty’s wet curls with a brush, when Alec and Aunt Claire returned. The four children lined up to show off their good work, but as Alec half carried Aunt Claire into Birches, they could see that she wasn’t in an observant mood.

  “The medicine the doctors gave her for pain has made her a little goofy,” said Alec after he’d gotten her settled on the sofa, with her feet propped up and the crutches beside her.

  “ ‘Edelweiss, edelweiss,’ ” sang Aunt Claire in several different keys, “ ‘every morning you greet me.’ ”

  “Like I said, goofy. She’s been singing a lot.”

  “She never sings,” protested Skye. She wasn’t ready for this. The crutches and the poor ankle—encased in yards of bandages, tape, and a white plastic boot—were bad enough, but if Aunt Claire had lost her mind, she was going to be difficult to care for.

  “ ‘Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow, bloom and grow forever.’ ”

  “That’s from The Sound of Music,” said Jane, then started to hum along, in yet another key.

  Batty covered her ears and Jeffrey winced.

  Skye was less delicate. “Jane, be quiet,” she said, and Jane was.

  Aunt Claire now moved on to “Do-Re-Mi,” which sounded awful enough to make Hound abandon his exploration of the crutches.

  “She should fall asleep soon,” said Alec. “And then the singing will stop.”

  Skye hoped so. “Thank you for taking care of her. We’ll be grateful forever.”

  “Well, it was Hoover’s fault and Hoover is my responsibility, whether he agrees or not.” Alec rubbed his beard worriedly. “So now what should I
do for you kids? You can’t take care of your aunt all by yourselves. We need to call someone—your father?”

  “Call Daddy? You can’t do that!” Jane was appalled. “You’d wreck his honeymoon in England!”

  “And you can’t tell Rosalind either.” This was Skye, with Jeffrey nodding in agreement.

  “Who’s Rosalind?”

  “Our older sister in New Jersey. If she finds out about Aunt Claire’s ankle, she’ll try to get up here, and her vacation will be over.”

  “Her long-due vacation from us,” added Jane. “That’s what Daddy called it. We can be a lot of trouble, especially Batty.”

  “I’m not,” protested Batty. “Anyway, Jeffrey can make stuffed green peppers.”

  For some reason, that got through to Aunt Claire. She stopped singing and said, “I like stuffed green peppers.”

  “Plus Skye is good at cleaning,” said Jeffrey.

  Jane added, “And I’m also going to nurse you, Aunt Claire. Soothe your spirits and bathe your forehead.”

  They all looked at Aunt Claire to see how interested she was in forehead bathing, but the singing had tired her out, and she was asleep. Alec covered her with a blanket, then led everyone to the other side of the room, where they could talk without waking her up again.

  “Okay, I might be crazy, but we’ll try this for now,” he said. “Here are my conditions. For the rest of today, your aunt can’t be left alone, so one of you older three always has to be here. She has to keep her ankle elevated, and it should be iced every few hours. When she’s a little less goofy, she has to get used to the crutches—you can help her with that. In the meantime, I’m going to be over here a lot, and if anything goes wrong, we’re going to call in reinforcements.”

  Skye opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off.

  “That’s nonnegotiable. If all goes well today, we’ll talk about it again tomorrow with your aunt, who should be coherent by then. Until then, any help you need or want—anything at all—you must come to me, promise?”