Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers

by M. E. Kerr

  Goldie let out a little yelp, and Walter reached in and petted him. “It’s hard to be away from your family on Christmas. My dad’s in Israel, but my mother’s on her way here.”

  In your dreams, Irving said to himself.

  Outside, the wind was whistling.

  “No one is going to plow out this place on Christmas Day!” Irving said to Goldie. “We won’t get our walks.”

  The bulge in Marshall’s body was growing larger.

  “One thing I’d never eat is a rodent,” said Irving.

  “Lotho blatho,” Marshall answered.

  “Don’t talk with your sides full, please,” said Irving.

  “I thought he didn’t talk when he ate,” Goldie said.

  “He almost never does,” Irving said.

  Walter had shut Goldie’s cage and dimmed the lights.

  “I think I’ll check out the cat room,” he said. “They must miss Placido.”

  Not, Irving and Goldie agreed.

  All the creatures at Critters knew how Placido had controlled the cat room. He had a bad reputation. He would wait until the cats were settled in their sun spots mornings, and then one after the other he would nudge them out of their places, as though the sun were solely his property.

  At night Placido had roamed through the room with his tail switching, seeing which cat was sleeping the soundest. Then he would pounce.

  He always dove into the feeding tray before the others got there, licking off all the broth, gobbling up the choice pieces … and never mind what followed one of his feeding frenzies. You could hear the urps all the way to Mrs. Splinter’s office.

  “Well, Merry Christmas, Irving, Marshall, and Goldie,” said Walter. “And a Merry Christmas to all the sleeping critters.”

  He headed down the hall to the cattery.

  “Lotho blatho!” said Marshall.

  Irving complained, “What is bugging you tonight, anyway?”

  “Lotho blatho!”

  “Say what you have to say after you’ve finished your dinner, please,” said Irving.

  Walter was in with the cats when the lights went up again and a voice said, “Honey? Walter? Where are you, darling?”

  A Christmas miracle! Olivia Splinter had arrived.

  She must have left the front door open, for there was an awful draft. Irving was concerned for Marshall, because snakes caught cold very easily.

  There was no way, of course, to tell Walter’s mother that he was in the cat room.

  Suddenly Goldie managed to nudge open the door of his cage, jump out, and race from the kennel.

  “How did you get loose?” Olivia Splinter shouted after him. “Come back!”

  “Lotho blatho!” Marshall tried again, and not until then did Irving realize the snake had somehow sensed that Walter had not fastened Goldie’s cage. Marshall had been trying to warn them that Goldie could escape.

  10

  A Distasteful Secret

  JIMMIE SO OFTEN WORKED on Christmas Day that she usually received her presents Christmas Eve. “A diary!” said Jimmie. “I never had a diary!”

  “Welcome to the Real World,” said her father.

  “I hope not” Jimmie replied. “I don’t want to be a civilian.”

  “This diary goes from Christmas Day to Christmas Day, so you can begin writing in it tomorrow.”

  “What will I write about?”

  “That’s up to you. It’s your personal diary with a little lock and key. Write about what little girls write about. Write about your life, your dreams, your worries … your boyfriends.”

  “Boyfriends?”

  “Someday they’ll be coming around.”

  “Ms. Fondaloot says I am not to worry, because she is paid to do the worrying and I am paid to do the work.”

  “That’s just agent talk,” said Mr. Twilight. “In the R.W. little girls don’t have agents. Most little girls don’t have agents.”

  “Ms. Fondaloot says I’m not like most little girls because I have talent.”

  “Yes, you do, but I want you to think seriously about another kind of life. Show biz will always be there, but these years when you’re so young will go fast. Maybe you would be happier if you became more like other kids.”

  “I’m not unhappy the way you think I am,” said Jimmie. “I don’t want to be in the R.W. I miss Mom so bad I ache, but when I’m performing I feel close to her.”

  “I know, honey. But she’d want you to get a good education, meet kids your age, all the things she could never do when she was a child.”

  “Look how she turned out, though. I hope I become like Mom.”

  “I hope you do, too…. It’s late. We’d better open the rest of our presents.”

  Outside, the snow was coming down hard.

  “I hope we don’t get snowed in, Dad. When there’s a storm like this, Angel on High always takes a room in the city at the Y. What if StarStretch can’t get here tomorrow?”

  “Ms. Fondaloot will call if that seems likely.”

  Jimmie put the diary with her other gifts. Angel on High, who was in the Christmas show with Jimmie, had given her Roscoe the Robotic Frog from Manley Toy Quest. He came on a plastic lily pad, made a ribbit! noise, and threw out his red plastic tongue to catch the fly that came with him in the box.

  While they opened their Christmas presents, Placido was batting a piece of tinsel on a lower branch of the tree Sam Twilight had lugged aboard the boat and trimmed a few hours ago.

  Placido remembered the taste of tinsel from other Christmases before he had landed in Critters. Tinsel wasn’t delicious, not like the mackerel he’d finally had to scarf down while Sam Twilight slept and waited for the girl to come aboard. But tinsel was fun to swallow. It was like rubber bands. It was like spaghetti strands.

  Placido knew when he ate the tinsel, his secret could come out. Placido was a projectile vomiter. It was another reason that his adoptions did not work out. He might have used some restraint and left the tinsel on the tree, but he had an idea he would get seasick soon anyway. Why not enjoy himself while he could?

  His second owner (Placido never discussed his first owner) used to hold her head whenever it happened and holler, “PLA-CI-DO! Oh, nooooooooo!” She was a high-strung opera singer who seemed to prefer Polly, her parrot. She was always asking Polly if she wanted a cracker in baby talk. She didn’t talk that much to Placido because, she said, he did all the talking.

  As a young and healthy Siamese, Placido had strolled about exercising his lungs, as Siamese like to do.

  Polly would shout, “Shut the cat up! Shut the cat up!”

  Sometimes when the diva went off to a performance, she would forget to lock Placido out of the kitchen.

  Then Placido would jump up and cling to the cage and poke his head under the black silk cover. “Madame de Flute!” the parrot would scream. “Madame de Flute!”

  Placido would get the cage swinging fast. He would leer at the parrot and hiss and yowl. The parrot would always faint, falling to a heap at the bottom of the cage.

  When Madame de Flute got home, she would scold Placido and tell him she was going to give him away.

  Placido never believed her until he found himself at Critters. The parrot had finally fought back. Polly had lost only a few garish green feathers. But Placido had lost his right blue eye and his home.

  Placido didn’t know how the girl would react to his secret. She was the one in charge of things—he could see that. Her Santa Claus father was a lonely man. All the while he was trimming their tree, he had sung Christmas carols in this melancholy tone that depressed even Placido, who rarely let things get him down. Twilight had even said “Oh Elaine, Elaine,” in his sleep, still in his Santa Claus costume, during the long wait for Jimmie. Placido had sneaked in a brief catnap atop the pillows stuffed inside Twilight’s pants.

  Now Sam Twilight wore a handsome cashmere sweater the girl had just given him for Christmas.

  “Let’s get to bed,” he told the girl. “You
have four shows tomorrow … and don’t you have another audition?”

  “Not until after Christmas.”

  “How did it go with BrainPower?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “If I ask, you always say Ms. Fondaloot does all your worrying. But I know better.”

  “I said ‘consensus of opinion,’ which is a major faux pas.”

  “I say it. Shouldn’t I say it?”

  “It’s redundant.”

  “So just forget you said it. I remember that time your mother said ‘irregardless’ when we were at some townie’s place for dinner. Someone told her that it wasn’t even a word, and you would have thought she was caught with her hand in the till or caught naked or some other damn thing, the way she carried on. ‘Oh, how could I have said that, Sam? Oh, Sam, how can you stand being with an ignoramus like me?’ I said, ‘Count your victories, Elaine. Don’t sweat the small stuff.’ And that’s all it is, Jimmie. It’s small stuff. It’s not the only job in the world either.”

  “It’s the best one I’ve ever been up for! Kids would be able to download me! I’d be a spokeskid!”

  “Honey, a kid your age shouldn’t have this stress. You should be laughing and playing.”

  “I play chess with Babe in the Manger.”

  “I’m talking about kids’ games. Hide-and-seek. Pin the tail on the donkey.”

  “I’m too old for those games, Daddy. I’m eleven!” said Jimmie. “I think it stresses you more than me.”

  “I know that’s what you think, but you’re wrong. I wouldn’t care if you left show biz tomorrow.”

  “I may have to,” Jimmie said, “if StarStretch can’t get through the snow. Then I wouldn’t have to work another Christmas Day. Angel on High is right! She says it’s the pits to work on Christmas. It sucks! She says she’d like to tell them to go screw themselves!”

  Her father heaved a sigh. “Don’t you start sounding like Angel on High. Your mother winced at language like that. I thought of her all day while I was over at the Star-Tintrees’. She would have loved that house with the big tree, and the little girl, Sun Lily. She’s about your age, I think. And listen to this: We’ve been invited to their New Year’s Eve party.”

  “To perform, right?”

  “Right. That’s what we do. But they’re a lovely family, and they’ve asked boys and girls from the Ross School. Wouldn’t you like to have some nice, normal friends from the Real World?”

  “Probably not,” said Jimmie. “I wouldn’t know what to say to them.”

  “That was your mother’s problem too. She’d start talking people’s ears off about Jimmie Spheeris. Nobody’d ever heard of him or his music.”

  “Their loss,” Jimmie said.

  “I know that. But you don’t want to grow up at a loss for words on social occasions.”

  “Daddy, look at the time! We need to get to bed right now!”

  “At least we don’t have to walk a cat,” he said.

  “Where is that cat?” she said.

  Placido had fled to the master’s cabin, a piece of tinsel hanging from his mouth. He had never trusted little girls. One he’d lived with for a few days had called him Pooty Wooty, forced him into doll clothes, and tried to wheel him around in a baby carriage. The scratch he gave her across her arm had him back inside the fake-leopard carrying case and on his way to Critters one more time.

  So he wasn’t perfect.

  Placido favored the high shelf in the master’s cabin, where he could oversee the aft deck from the porthole. He didn’t have his sea legs yet, and he didn’t like the way the boat rocked, because he had no claws to grip anything if a big wave rolled in.

  There wouldn’t be any waves for a while, not with the snow coming down and the bay water turning to ice.

  From the shelf, in the daytime, he could see the gulls that perched on the railing, waiting for handouts. He liked to fall asleep in a sun spot while he daydreamed about snatching one of them.

  His first night aboard, even though he could see only a few watery lights on the bay, he liked perching on the shelf, looking up at the stars, and the moon with its moody face, sometimes clouded, sometimes this huge circle of light so bright Placido watched it through his paws.

  The girl and her father called out good night to each other, finally, and in the darkness there was no sound but the water gurgling under the boat and the wind blowing the snow.

  Silent night, Placido thought as he curled up and closed his eyes. He dreamed of Roscoe the Robotic Frog sitting on his stupid plastic pad, saying ribbit! while his red plastic tongue darted out to catch the fly.

  Placido slept with a tiny smile of anticipation tipping his furry mouth.

  11

  Wait for the Beep!

  HOW LONG WAS IT before Placido was blasted out of his sleep by the sound of the telephone ringing? Then the answering machine went on full pitch:

  I’M THE SANTA CLAUS CLOWN—

  I’M THE BEST CLOWN IN TOWN.

  TO YOUR PARTY I’ll COME

  FOR A REASONABLE SUM!

  Placido had leaped down from the shelf, trembling from the shock of Sam Twilight’s voice booming in the dark, quiet night.

  LEAVE YOUR NUMBER AND NAME—

  ENTERTAINING’S OUR GAME.

  JIMMIE IS HERE TOO:

  IF YOU WANT HER, SAY WHO.

  Placido had heard that recording all day long. Now they were both home, and there was no reason for him to have to hear it yet again!

  WAIT FOR THE BEEP

  BEFORE YOU LET OUT A PEEP!

  Placido covered his ears with his front paws.

  Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep, the machine screamed, and Placido rolled his eyes in agony.

  “Hello? Hello? This is Mrs. Randall from Montauk. We’re so very sorry to call this late, but we can’t find the phone number you gave us for Critters. We’re desperate to find Rex! We want to leave a message in case he’s there. If we could have him for Christmas, our little boy would be so happy! There’s no listing in the book for Critters. Thank heavens you gave us your business card, Sam Twilight. Hello?”

  Now Jimmie was awake and calling, “Daddy? Is that Ms. Fondaloot? Am I supposed to go into New York right now?”

  “Hush, honey. It’s not Ms. Fondaloot.”

  Mr. Twilight turned on a light, sat up in his bunk bed, and took the phone. “This is Sam Twilight …

  It’s all right … Critters is listed as Hamptons Critters Shelter, but never mind. I’ll give you the number again.”

  After he hung up, Sam Twilight began to tell Jimmie about the boy named Bob and the lost yellow Labrador retriever he’d heard of at the mall that day.

  Goldie, Placido thought. Goldie!

  Placido remembered when Goldie had first arrived at Critters on a cold afternoon, not too long ago. Placido had been taken out of the cat room to be groomed. He was in the Critters examination room, waiting for the girl with the brush and comb, when Goldie was brought in. Goldie needed a bath badly.

  “My name is Placido. Welcome to Critters.”

  “I won’t be here long,” Goldie had said.

  “Where have I heard that before?”

  “I plan to escape,” Goldie had said. “You’ll see.”

  Placido had wished the dog luck and then purred hard, picturing a daring dog escape that would liven up the holidays.

  Right before the groomer appeared, Goldie had told Placido, “My real name is Rex. Bob, my owner, named me. Do you know what Rex means?”

  “King,” Placido had answered. Placido was no dunce of a cat. He had lived with a diva, after all, and Madame Fleurette de Flute had sung many roles in many languages.

  12

  Heartbroken Family

  CHRISTMAS EVE AT THE Uttergores’.

  “How many lost-dog posters did you manage to get down?” Percival Uttergore asked his ailing sister when she came home crying from the cold.

  “I found thirty,” she said, “and I have twenty-nine in my car
. I brought in this one for you to look at.”

  She put it on the table. The ink was running from the wet snow.

  REWARD! LOST DOG!

  Answers to Rex

  Yellow Labrador retriever, 5 years old

  Family heartbroken

  Call 631.555.2868

  REWARD! $$$$$$$$$$$

  “Sometimes I wonder about people,” said Percival Uttergore. “Imagine paying money to get a dog back!”

  “Some people get great happiness from a pet,” said Ursula.

  “‘Family heartbroken!’” Uttergore scoffed. Then, in an imitation of a distraught female, he whined, “Oh me oh my, me doggie is lost and me am heartbroken!”

  Ursula wondered if she should proceed to the basement, where her brother had fixed a small room for her near the furnace. There were no dogs being held for rewards, only the clothesline with the leashes attached where they could walk when they were in residence.

  Ursula knew her brother did not approve of Christmas celebrations, because they were just a waste of hard-earned money, but she held the hope that she might dry herself by the fire, this being a special night for some.

  “The kind of people who get great happiness from a pet are the kind of people who have very little life,” said Uttergore.

  “Yes, Percival. I suppose you’re right.”

  “Then why did you say some people get great happiness from a pet?”

  “I’m too cold to think straight. I cannot feel my feet.”

  “They’re there,” he said. For a moment she had imagined he was consoling her, saying, “There, there,” but she quickly realized he was talking about her feet being there.

  “Tomorrow,” said her brother, who had put his Barcalounger in the reclining position before the fire, “we’ll drive around and see if we can find this Rex. Set your clock for seven A.M., Ursula, and this time I think I’ll have my eggs over easy. Rye-bread toast. Bacon crisp. Coffee as usual. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  “Be glad you don’t live with someone who goes boo hoo hoo over an animal.”

  13

  Racetrack Riffraff