And without another word, he ran swiftly back to the house.
Rupert watched after him in surprise for a moment and then trudged on home.
When he got to the front door his mother was just coming in from her job cleaning the offices at the steelworks. His father was lying on the couch, where he had lain all day watching TV.
“Have you got supper started?” Rupert’s mother barked at his father.
“Nah, I didn’t have time,” said Rupert’s father, and laughed.
“Where have you been?” Rupert’s mother asked Rupert.
“Oh, just out,” said Rupert, because he couldn’t think of a quick-enough lie.
Rupert’s mother gave Rupert a strange look. Then for a second her eyes went far away as if remembering something, and her face softened before rehardening again, and she said nothing but kicked her way through the clutter to the kitchen to begin the evening meal.
ALL WEEK following the trip to Coney Island, Rupert sat in class daydreaming about the time machine. Perhaps by now Uncle Henry had recommenced fiddling with it so they could control where they went. It seemed logical to Rupert that anyone who could make a time machine out of a plain cardboard box could figure out how to tweak it to take it where he wanted.
Rupert kept thinking of places for them to go. Places with food, places with heat. He spent more time daydreaming about those two things than he did about exotic locations and adventures. He had no desire to go any where cold or spartan; he’d love to see penguins, for example, but Antarctica was right out. Perhaps they could go to a tropical island, ripe with pineapples and coconuts and breadfruit. He had read about breadfruit—was it really bread that grew as fruit?—and had always wanted to try it. Or perhaps they could go to a great banquet in medieval times where they would cram their mouths with roasted meat in front of a roaring fire. Or maybe back to the 1950s to a Pillsbury Bake-Off where they could be the judges and go from table to table tasting all the cakes. His teacher had told the class how her grandmother had done this and Rupert had thought, yeah, those were the good old days.
Rupert walked super slowly past the Riverses’ house every day on his way home from school. He tried to spot the periscope. Each day he was sure that a hand would come poking out of the hedge, grab him, and pull him through. But as day after day passed and there was no sign of Uncle Henry and his periscope, Rupert became disgruntled. Hadn’t Uncle Henry had fun with him? Surely Uncle Henry didn’t want to go on adventures alone when he could have Rupert along? Perhaps Uncle Henry felt that he had made up for whatever guilt he’d carried regarding Christmas and the prizes and had moved on. This was a depressing thought. Somehow Rupert felt a strange rapport with Uncle Henry after sharing the time machine’s maiden voyage. He was deflated to think that Uncle Henry might not have felt the same.
When two weeks passed and Uncle Henry made no attempt to contact him, Rupert, out of desperation, flagged down Turgid in the hall before school started.
“I don’t know if you remember me?” asked Rupert shyly.
“Oh yes,” said Turgid. “You’re Rudy, aren’t you? From Christmas?”
Rupert couldn’t believe that Turgid didn’t even remember his name. They’d spent Christmas together! He, Rupert, must be the least memorable person on the face of the earth!
“Yes, I, I just wanted to ask how your Uncle Henry is? Not sick or anything, is he?”
“Sick? No, he’s just as usual, thank you,” said Turgid, looking puzzled.
“I mean, he’s still around, isn’t he?” asked Rupert, blushing. It had occurred to him as a last scenario that Uncle Henry had time traveled somewhere, gotten himself stuck there, and his family hadn’t yet noticed.
“Yes, of course,” said Turgid.
“Turns up every night for dinner?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” asked Turgid.
“Right. Just…checking,” said Rupert. Now he really was in despair.
“Very good. Very…considerate of you,” said Turgid, and walked away shaking his head.
Rupert could hear one of Turgid’s friends asking, “What are you doing talking to one of those weirdo Browns?”
“Oh, Rudy? He’s all right. Had him over for Christmas. Not exactly our idea, but he kept fainting so, you know, we were obligated to keep him around until he recovered, and really he wasn’t so bad, a little rough around the edges…” and their voices trailed off as they went down the hall.
Rupert, standing there watching them depart, blushed even deeper. Now it would be all over the school, the thing he had tried to avoid—everyone would say that he was a charity case. That he’d been invited to dinner not because anyone wanted to eat with him but because they felt sorry for him. But that really wasn’t how it had happened at all, was it? They were the ones whose gate had caught him up and shocked him. Then Turgid had insisted he stay. He hadn’t asked to stay. And what did Turgid mean by “rough around the edges”? What had Rupert done that was rough? And now he supposed he had to face facts: Uncle Henry was taking him on no more time-travel trips. The one had been the one and only. There would not be a series of madcap adventures together.
When he went on his adventure with Mrs. Rivers and then Uncle Henry he had thought, Ah, now the exciting part of my life has begun! He thought things were just getting going. He could not believe it was over so soon and from now on life would just grind on.
And yet it did for a time. January blizzards set in followed by February’s ice storms until Rupert began to feel like an icicle himself, never thawing, always slightly blue.
Then, to cap it all off, his least favorite day of the year arrived: Valentine’s Day. Every poor child in school dreaded Valentine’s Day.
At Rupert’s school the children decorated valentine mailboxes which they made out of shoe boxes. The children were supposed to bring a shoebox from home, but of course for the poor children this was often a difficulty and so the teachers always brought in a few for these children. This was the first humiliation.
Each child had to give every other child in his class a valentine. Most of the children’s parents took them valentine shopping and they bought boxes of little cards with cartoon or movie or TV figures on them. Then the children spent part of the day in class printing names and sometimes messages on cards and delivering them.
The poor children usually arrived on Valentine’s Day without any cards. This was addressed thoughtfully by the teachers, who put out construction paper and felt pens and crayons and glue and glitter and lace and stickers and let these children make their valentines during silent reading time. But although this was kindly intended, all it did was draw attention to the children who could not afford valentines, for they were the only ones laboring away, covered in glue and stickers.
Few children were unkind to those who couldn’t buy their valentines, but there were always some who sniggered and teased when the teacher wasn’t looking. And even if there hadn’t been, to spend time making valentines—especially when you weren’t, as Rupert wasn’t, very good with your hands—was utter torture. Rupert always made a mess of his desk, with glue and glitter everywhere. He had once tried to cut out plain hearts, but the teacher had come by and said, Now, now, we can do better than this, surely? And heaped glitter and art supplies on Rupert’s desk while the girls sitting around him looked politely away. All Rupert wanted to do on Valentine’s Day was crawl under his desk and die, but, of course, no one let him do that either.
The great saving grace of Valentine’s Day was that Rupert could count on getting something to eat because the day always ended in a class party. Any child could bring treats for the class as long as they brought enough for everyone. There was an excited atmosphere before school started as mothers dropped off bright pink cupcakes or heart-shaped cookies. And for once it didn’t matter if people didn’t like the Browns. Rules were rules and the booty was divided evenly. The food wasn’t served until all the valentines had been delivered, but, thought Rupert, at least there was that to look f
orward to after the humiliation of making his valentines and having to go around with glue in his hair.
This year in Rupert’s class there were three children having to make their valentines. Rupert had gotten himself enough art supplies in order to look industrious from the table where they’d been set out, but not so many that he had to spend more time and make more of a mess than necessary. He was busily putting glue and glitter down on a heart and sniffing the wonderful smells of cupcakes and icing and sugar coming from the front of the room when the door of the classroom suddenly opened with a blast of air and everyone looked up. They expected to see the principal, who often peeked into classrooms on special days, but instead they saw a tall, imposing woman with a large hooked nose and a mass of unruly red curls and a bright red lipsticked mouth. She was wearing a mink stole and very high heels.
It was Aunt Hazelnut!
She must have come to the wrong classroom, thought Rupert. Turgid’s grade six classroom was next door.
Rupert’s teacher obviously thought the same, for she said, “Mrs. Rivers, are you looking for Turgid, perhaps?”
Everyone in town knew all the Riverses. They were celebrities in Steelville. Their clothes and their history and their cars and their manner bespoke a position well above everyone else. Even above the people in the other six mansions.
“No,” said Aunt Hazelnut. “I want…” And she looked wildly around the room for a second before her eyes settled on Rupert. “HIM!”
“Him?” echoed the teacher, looking to where Aunt Hazelnut was pointing but obviously not quite believing her eyes.
“Yes. HIM!” repeated Aunt Hazelnut.
“Rupert?” said the teacher, looking worried. Then she whispered to Aunt Hazelnut, but loud enough for Rupert to hear, “He hasn’t stolen your cat, has he?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Aunt Hazelnut. “What would I be doing with a cat? No, I want him right now. Please get him ready.”
“Oh,” said the teacher at a loss. “Has Mrs. Brown sent you to fetch him for some reason?”
“Mrs. Brown? I know no Mrs. Brown,” said Aunt Hazelnut in the same imperious tone.
“Rupert’s mother,” said the teacher. “Or perhaps Mr. Brown?”
“Nobody sends me to fetch anything, young lady,” said Aunt Hazelnut.
Rupert was amazed to hear his teacher referred to as young. He had never thought of his teacher as young, but he supposed she was, compared to Aunt Hazelnut.
“Yes, well, do you have a signed permission letter?” asked the teacher, pulling a file out of a drawer and going through it. “You know you have to be on a list of approved people to pick up a child. The parent has to provide these names at the beginning of the year. I just ask because Mrs. Brown didn’t provide any names. Not that I recall. Let me just see now, I can’t, you know, release a child unless a person is on the list…”
The teacher continued to flip through the file nervously, not wanting to keep a Rivers waiting. While she was doing so Aunt Hazelnut marched over to Rupert’s desk, picked up a crayon and a piece of red construction paper, and scrawled something. Then she brought it up to the teacher’s desk.
“Here, will this do?”
The teacher took the piece of paper and read it out loud: “I hereby give my permission for Hazelnut Rivers to collect my son Rupert. Signed The Browns. Both Mrs. and Mr.”
The teacher frowned. “I see,” she said. She paused timorously. “Did you, uh, just now write this yourself?”
“How DARE you!” said Aunt Hazelnut. “What are you IMPLYING?”
“Well, uh, the thing is,” said the teacher nervously, not knowing where to go with this next.
“Shall I just see the principal about this then?” asked Aunt Hazelnut.
“Oh, please do,” said the teacher in relief, more than happy to pass the buck.
“I’ll take Rupert with me, shall I?” said Aunt Hazelnut. “For expediency.”
“Oh,” said the teacher. “Take him out of the classroom?”
“You don’t seriously believe I intend to kidnap him, do you?” asked Aunt Hazelnut. “A RIVERS?”
“No, of course not, of course not,” said the teacher. “All right, well, Rupert, perhaps it’s best if you collect your things.”
Meanwhile, Rupert couldn’t imagine what Aunt Hazelnut wanted with him. Perhaps Uncle Henry had sent her to fetch him for another time-travel adventure. It couldn’t be that something terrible had happened to his family and they had for some reason sent Aunt Hazelnut for him, could it?
“Oh, Rupert, you didn’t have a chance to finish your valentines,” said the teacher, glancing at his desk and looking troubled.
“Don’t be ridiculous, woman, we’ve more important things to worry about,” said Aunt Hazelnut as she bustled Rupert into the cloakroom to grab the two extra shirts and holey sweatshirt that he hung on his hook when he got to class.
“And you’ll miss the treats,” said the teacher as Aunt Hazelnut continued to sweep him along, out of the cloakroom, through the classroom door, and into the hallway. Rupert turned back frantically to see if perhaps the teacher would come after them to hand him a cupcake or a cookie or even a Rice Krispies square, but she had already closed the door behind them.
“Well!” said Aunt Hazelnut. “You’re well out of THAT!”
“What do you mean?” asked Rupert as they raced down the corridor and out the school’s front door. “We’ve passed the principal’s office!”
“Oh, we won’t be bothering with HIM,” said Aunt Hazelnut. “That was just for show. I never had any intention of talking to him. No, listen, Rupert, I wanted to take you on a little field trip. One I do every year. It’s my favorite thing to do and I wanted to share it with you. Because, you know—and don’t tell the others this ever, especially Uncle Henry—but I felt rather bad about that thing with the prizes at Christmas and I’ve been trying to think of a way to make it up to you. And what better day to do it, I said to myself, than Valentine’s Day. The most dreaded day of the year.”
“Didn’t you like Valentine’s Day when you were in school?” asked Rupert in shock, for he thought all adults suffered the happy illusion that it was a joyous day for everyone and had simply loved it when they were children.
They climbed into Aunt Hazelnut’s car and began zooming along the snowy streets to downtown Steelville.
“LIKE it?” squawked Aunt Hazelnut. “I LOATHED it. All poor children loathe Valentine’s Day. I was not a Rivers by birth, you know. I was a Macintosh. And all us Macintoshes were poor. We came up from Kentucky hoping to score big in the steelworks, but, of course, everyone just gave up. My people came from the hills and it often seemed to me that for us Macintoshes, giving up was what we did best. I went to the very same school you go to, Rupert. Joe Rivers was in my class. We were childhood sweethearts and our love never faltered. He married me right out of high school and we moved into the Rivers mansion with the rest of them, because that’s what the Riverses do, live together like ants in an ant hill. That was fine. I wanted whatever Joe wanted. Then he died. He got a very bad case of the flu in our sixth year of marriage and that was that. And it was as if I were made of stone ever after. All my happiness died with Joe. The Riverses didn’t kick me out, I will say that for them, but I had nothing there to remind me of Joe. The only things I had left of him, the only things that were truly mine, were the jewels he gave me each year on every conceivable occasion—Christmas, New Year’s, birthdays (both mine and his), Valentine’s Day (that made up for a lot I can tell you, I almost came to like Valentine’s Day), our anniversary, Arbor Day…”
“Arbor Day?” said Rupert incredulously.
“Little brooches full of emeralds in the shape of trees. There wasn’t an occasion or holiday he didn’t shower me with jewels. Thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of jewels. Every year I think I will sell them and make my great escape from that house…”
“Don’t you like it there?” asked Rupert in amazement.
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br /> “Would you?” asked Aunt Hazelnut, sneering.
“I think I would,” said Rupert, thinking of Christmas dinner and all the fireplaces and soft beds. “If it were my home.”
“But that’s the thing,” said Aunt Hazelnut, “it isn’t my home, not really. Because you can marry all the Riverses you like, but if you’re a Macintosh you will always be a Macintosh. The part of you that began life dirt poor will always be dirt poor. Your circumstances may change, but you don’t change. I can never really fit in there, but I can’t go back to my life with my family either. I’m not a Macintosh anymore, nor have I ever really become a Rivers. I thought I would become a Rivers if given the chance and there I was given the chance, but the fantasy of the person I would become—sleek and chic and with the perfect life and perfect hair and perfect clothes and perfect thoughts and feelings? Well, I never became that fantasy me. I was just me in another house. If anything, I was the same imperfect person but more bored. Every year I think I’ll go to the Pacific Northwest and become a fisherman. I do like fish. If I sell my jewels then I can bankroll my mad escape that way. So every year at this time, when winter is at its worst, I go to the bank, to the safety deposit box where I keep my jewels, and I visit them. I plan to take them out and take them to Cincinnati and sell them. I’ve got the jeweler all picked out and everything. But then…it happens.”
“What?” asked Rupert, who was so enthralled with this account that he barely noticed them parking and walking into the bank.
“I look at them and instead of just jewels I see Joe’s face staring at me and the look he gave me when he presented them to me. And I can’t sell them. It is the only time I see Joe’s face so clearly in my memory anymore—when I look at the jewels. I think that when they go they will take his face with them. So I put them back and return to the mansion and think, Maybe next year. But”—Aunt Hazelnut became suddenly brisk again as they strode across the bank’s marble floors and to a door that said BANK MANAGER—“perhaps today things will be different. Perhaps I will find the courage to move forward. Perhaps you will bring me luck.”
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