Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little

by Peggy Gifford

  “I guess you must be taking a little rest after reading Stuart Little,” her mother said.

  Moxy didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no.

  “Did you cry when Stuart Little died?”

  “He dies! Stuart Little dies?” Moxy exclaimed. “I wish you hadn’t told me the end.”

  Moxy’s mother leaned in closer. “You haven’t even started to read Stuart Little, have you?” She held Moxy’s chin and studied Moxy’s eyes.

  Now, Moxy was fond of the truth. But the truth was not as simple as people like her mother made it seem. Often the “yes” or “no” the truth seekers sought really truthfully called for a “but.” “But Mother,” Moxy did not have time to say, “we do have a new peach orchard, which will pay for my entire college education and dental school too, if that’s the Career Path I choose, and I did clean my room.”

  Things were quite bad for Moxy now. She’d never seen her mother so calm.

  “Are you aware that you are swinging in a hammock and eating peaches and petting Rosie?” her mother said.

  Moxy hadn’t realized she was petting Rosie. Rosie looked very good. The groomer had done an excellent job. She had even put a pink butterfly bow in Rosie’s hair.

  This is the photograph Mark took of Rosie with her pretty new butterfly bow.

  Moxy scanned the horizon as if Stuart Little himself might appear and rescue her. But Stuart Little was not over by the new orchard. He was not sleeping beside the spade and shovel. Stuart Little was nowhere near the hose and Stuart Little was not in the dahlia garden.

  Because the dahlia garden was gone.

  chapter 26

  The Dahlia

  Garden Is Gone

  “That’s odd,” said Moxy. She closed her eyes and opened them quickly. She looked up at her mother, who looked down at her. It seemed to Moxy that everything had stopped moving. That the clouds had stalled over the sun. That her mother had not blinked in a long time. She looked back at the garden.

  The garden was still gone.

  chapter 27

  In Which Rosie

  Growls at the

  Garden and Mudd

  Starts Barking

  Rosie growled at the garden. Whenever Rosie growled, Mudd barked. And barked. And barked.

  Then Mudd ran. And ran. And ran. But this running and barking sequence was not your average “Sam is here to visit” running and barking. This was more serious. Mudd was so loud and so freaked out that if a UPS truck had driven through the house, he wouldn’t have stopped.

  Something had moved, and from the sound of it, Mudd did not like it one bit. Moxy looked up just in time to see what Mudd saw.

  chapter 28

  The Last Three

  Dahlias in Moxy’s

  Mother’s Prize

  Dahlia Garden Get

  Swallowed Alive

  Here is a confusing photograph of Mrs. Maxwell’s dahlias being swallowed alive.

  chapter 29

  The Great

  Quicksand

  Scare

  It was obvious to Moxy that the dahlias in her mother’s garden had been sucked underground by quicksand. Quicksand happened to be number 42 on Moxy’s List of 76 Things That Frightened Her Most.

  No wonder Mudd had started barking. It was an odd and scary sight.

  chapter 30

  Mudd’s

  Madness

  Racing full speed to where the dahlias had once been, Mudd slammed and then slid into that muddy garden. Then he began to dig up the sunken, drowning flowers.

  chapter 31

  What Moxy Had

  Known All Along

  But Hadn’t Wanted

  to Think About

  That it was all her fault. Moxy didn’t know how. But she would soon. First she had to figure out who had turned the hose on, because it was water from the hose, rather than quicksand, she now realized, that must have sunk the dahlias.

  Moxy knew the hose had not been turned on by Sam. Sam was still in the garage. And obviously she hadn’t done it herself. She had been thinking hard in the hammock most of the afternoon.

  Mark! It must have been Mark!

  “Did you turn on that hose so you could get a picture of Mother’s dahlia garden drowning?” she asked Mark.

  Mark shrugged at her as if to say “What? Do you think I’m crazy?” and took another picture.

  Pansy! Pansy must have turned on the hose. But how long ago? Moxy knew Mark had been watching. “How many billions and trillions of gallons of water have been pouring into Mom’s prize dahlia garden for how long?” she demanded of Mark.

  Mark shrugged. Then he said, “For as long as it takes for a bunch of dahlias to drown.”

  chapter 32

  In Which

  Moxy’s Mother

  Sees a Dahlia

  Fall from the Sky

  Moxy’s mother was looking up. Her mouth was open and her eyes were open, but she looked, well, not asleep, but as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  And then Moxy saw it too.

  chapter 33

  In Which

  Moxy Sees the

  Dahlias Fly

  Mudd was digging up dahlias like mad. Dahlias were flying out behind him. They were so spectacular, those pink and yellow flowers exploding across that sky, that they looked like fireworks in daylight.

  “I wonder if Mudd buried a bone in the dahlia garden,” Moxy said out loud.

  “Ya think?” said Mark. Mark could be so sarcastic—a character trait Moxy did not enjoy. Then he snapped another picture.

  Mrs. Maxwell did not appear to be breathing. Mark did not seem to be moving, but his camera kept shooting.

  “Come! Mudd, come!” Moxy shouted. But Mudd wasn’t listening. After all, he had never listened, so why should he listen now? Instead, he kept tossing dahlias into the air.

  A dahlia splashed on Moxy’s head.

  “Come, Mudd, come!” Moxy tried to call again, but her lungs were plugged with the fragrance of freshly launched flowers. It was like inhaling the color green, Moxy thought.

  By now dozens of dahlias were airborne. Seven dahlias pelted Moxy’s arm; an eighth and a ninth lashed her leg. Three landed in her mother’s hair. Two dahlias were stuck in Mark’s camera strap, and the red head of a third was tangled in his lens cap.

  Dirt was flying too. It was a good thick pudding sort of mud. It wobbled in great gobs across the lawn like chocolate Frisbees and when it fell, it stuck like superglue to anything it found. Including Pansy.

  Mudd sent another volley of dahlias out of the garden. Up, up, up they went like water in a fountain. Mudd was almost done. He fired a final round of flowers, and the last of Moxy’s mother’s prize dahlias slammed into the hammock.

  Here is a photograph Mark took of Mudd after he was finished making Moxy’s mother’s prize dahlias fly.

  And here is a photograph Mark took of part of Pansy partly covered in mud.

  chapter 34

  In Which the

  Screen Door Slams and

  Dum … da dum-dum …

  Moxy heard the screen door slam and suddenly Ajax was standing there.

  chapter 35

  Mrs. Maxwell’s

  Unfortunate

  Appearance

  Mrs. Maxwell was on her hands and knees picking up green dahlia stems with no dahlias on them. Moxy was the slightest bit worried about her. But when she saw Ajax treading carefully between the mud and the puddles to reach her mother, it was a relief. Thank goodness Mother had someone to help keep her calm. Eventually Moxy would have to go off to one of seventy-three Possible Colleges and she often worried about what her mother would do without her. It was nice to see old Ajax picking up the slack.

  Mudd stuck his tail out of the mud hole and backed almost all the way out, then stopped and went back in again. Moxy lay back in the hammock and put her hands behind her head and crossed her legs. She was exhausted.

  chapter 36

  The Breath
r />   of Ajax Is Felt

  upon Moxy

  “Get up,” Ajax said.

  Moxy jumped. Ajax could be very abrupt. She struggled to stop the hammock—wasn’t this just the sort of occasion that called for an automatic hammock-stopping machine?—and stumbled to her feet.

  “Now help your mother lie down,” he said.

  “Mark! Pansy!” snapped Moxy. “Get over here this minute and help Mother get in this hammock.”

  This is where a photograph of Mrs. Maxwell holding a little bouquet of flowerless stems should be shown. But Mark was actually helping Ajax and Pansy put Mrs. Maxwell into the hammock, so he could not take a picture. If there had been a photograph, you would have seen Moxy in the corner supervising everything.

  chapter 37

  In Which Moxy

  Needs a Glass

  of Water

  “Moxy Anne Maxwell!”

  Moxy was almost at the screen door.

  “Come back here right now!”

  Moxy paused to consider.

  “I said now!”

  “But Mother, there’s so much mud,” Moxy called. “I don’t think I can make it back without risking a fall.”

  Suddenly Sam was standing there. The second hose was wrapped around his shoulders. He looked like a fireman.

  “I’ll help you,” he said, and before Moxy could tell him how much, how very, very much she did not want his help, Sam was leading her across that treacherous terrain between the back door and her mother.

  Moxy was trying to think. Think harder, she said to herself as she marched. But the harder she thought about thinking harder, the harder it was to think. In fact, she was thinking so hard about thinking harder that she didn’t see Mudd until it was too late.

  Mudd was running straight for her. There was a dahlia caught in his collar. Mudd was so proud of his dahlia that when he reached Moxy, he gave a good shake, jumped up, and pulled her down beside him, and just as she predicted not five paragraphs ago, Moxy fell into the whole muddy mess. She could scarcely catch her breath.

  This is the photograph Mark took of Mudd just before he gave Moxy the last prizewinning dahlia.

  It was the last straw.

  Enough is enough, Moxy Maxwell said to herself.

  chapter 38

  In Which

  Mrs. Maxwell

  Asks How Her

  Prizewinning Dahlias

  Happened to Drown

  “How did my dahlias happen to drown?” asked Mrs. Maxwell. She sounded very casual. She was swinging in the hammock.

  “It all started with the Peach Orchard Plan,” said Moxy.

  “Peach Orchard Plan?” said Mrs. Maxwell. Moxy’s mother often did that—repeated what you’d already said but with a little spin on it.

  “The plan I had to grow peaches in the backyard.”

  “Why would you want to grow peaches in the backyard?”

  “Well,” said Moxy, “if I make enough money selling peaches—of course, they would have to grow first—to send myself to college and dental school, if that’s the Career Path I choose …”

  Moxy stopped for a moment to look at her mother looking at her. Her mother’s face had a curious expression on it, as if what Moxy was about to say next might be the most interesting thing in the world.

  “Well,” Moxy began again, “if I did all that, I sort of thought you would think I was so smart I wouldn’t need to read a book about a mouse. Or anything else, for that matter. Unless of course I wanted to.”

  The hammock stopped swinging. “You still haven’t answered my question—how did my dahlias drown?” said Mrs. Maxwell.

  The word “character” was a fifth-grade word, but Moxy had long been drawn to it. As far as she could tell, having character meant telling the truth when it was not absolutely necessary. And even though this struck Moxy as a somewhat unnatural thing to do, she knew it was considered by most adults to be a very good thing indeed, and just now Moxy needed to do a very good thing. Indeed.

  “Pansy must have left the hose running in the dahlia garden instead of over there by the peach orchard. But it was my fault,” Moxy said. She was so startled to hear herself say this that she lurched a little to the left to get out of the way of herself.

  chapter 39

  In Which the

  Age-Old Question

  “What Do You Have

  to Say for Yourself,

  Young Lady?” Is Asked

  “What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?”

  “It will never happen again,” said Moxy.

  Mrs. Maxwell felt quite sure this was true. “And …”

  “And?” asked Moxy. “And I don’t blame you at all, Mother.”

  “What did you say?” said Mrs. Maxwell.

  “I mean that in the nicest possible way,” said Moxy.

  Mrs. Maxwell leaned up on her elbows.

  Honestly, Moxy couldn’t understand why her mother would want her to state the perfectly obvious.

  “Haven’t I been saying for years and years that someone must, must teach Mudd to come? And now …” Moxy shrugged. “Well, just look around.”

  Reader, can I describe the expression on Mrs. Maxwell’s face? It traveled from Stunned to Puzzled and back. It moved on from there to places Moxy had never visited before, places like Self-doubt and Despair. It crossed into territories like Hopeless and Surrender, and on the way it passed very near Laughter.

  chapter 40

  In Which

  Moxy Forgives

  Her Mother

  “Don’t cry, Mother!” Mrs. Maxwell had her head down. She was pinching the bridge of her nose the way she did when her glasses had been on too long. Now was not the moment to suggest the aquamarine contacts. Moxy just knew this.

  There was a general silence among the audience.

  “What a mess I am!” Moxy said. “Don’t you think I’d better pop into the shower, Mother? It’s almost time for my daisy routine.”

  Slowly, slowly, with no help from anybody, Mrs. Maxwell crawled out of the hammock and stood up. Mrs. Maxwell was quite tall. And even though Moxy had recently had a growth spurt, she still had a few more inches (as she figured it) to go before she and her mother would see eye to eye.

  “I’m going to let you do your daisy routine tonight,” said Mrs. Maxwell. “But do you know why?” It was the sort of question that wasn’t asking for an answer, so Moxy was silent. “Because if you don’t, you will let the other seven petals down. It wouldn’t be fair to them.”

  Moxy could not believe her luck.

  “But I am not going to allow you to go to the party after the show. And do you know why?”

  Moxy had a feeling she did.

  “Because you are going to march home as soon as it is over and go straight to your room. And do you know what you’re going to do in your room?”

  “Read Stuart Little?” said Moxy. Her voice was a little weak, though you couldn’t call it defeated.

  Here is a photograph Mark took of Mrs. Maxwell from Moxy’s point of view.

  Mrs. Maxwell did not even nod.

  “But I might be hungry,” said Moxy. “After all that swimming. Do you know how many calories an hour you burn off when …” Moxy’s voice sort of trailed off.

  “You can have a glass of milk when you get back.”

  “And some of the great daisy cake? Please?”

  Mrs. Maxwell shook her head. “And some saltines.”

  “Graham crackers?” suggested Moxy.

  “Graham crackers, and that is it,” said Mrs. Maxwell.

  Moxy knew enough about her mother to know that this was the best deal she was going to get. So she went upstairs and put on her baby blue petal-covered swimsuit with the matching royal blue swim cap.

  chapter 41

  The Great

  Daisy Routine

  I do not have to tell you how spectacularly successful the Great Daisy Routine turned out to be. There were, of course, a few problems. But nothing the avera
ge water-ballet fan would notice, unless they happened to be in the business.

  It was complicated: all eight petals had to stand on the diving board with their arms linked together until Coach Marjorie turned the Pink Panther song on over the loudspeaker. Then they dived in. Next, without coming up for a single breath, they had to swim underwater until their heads met in the middle. Then came the tricky part: they had to count to ten and at exactly the same time come to the surface with their legs sticking straight out to form the petal parts of the flower.

  Naturally the applause went on and on. It was such a shame that Moxy had to go home.

  chapter 42

  In Which

  Moxy Maxwell

  Finally Meets

  Stuart Little

  The first thing Moxy did after Ajax drove her home was to have two glasses of milk and seven graham crackers. Then she went up to her room and crossed “Win a Gold Medal for Synchronized Swimming in the 2016 Olympics” from her list of 211 Possible Career Paths. Though she had liked the sparklers and the bright blue petal outfits, she had to admit she hadn’t been fond of the swimming part.

  In fact, as she thought about it, Moxy realized she did not want to spend the next ten years being wet.

  Here is a remarkably sharp photograph Mark took of Moxy’s baby blue petal-covered swimsuit with her royal blue cap after Moxy had hung them up to dry.

  Moxy needed a clear mind and a dry head as she considered which of the now 210 Possible Career Paths she would choose. She thought about adding “Own a Large Peach Orchard Plantation” to her list, but she decided to wait and see how her first peach orchard went.

  Then she turned her attention to the cover of Stuart Little. He was such a cute mouse. She asked herself why she hadn’t noticed that before—after all, they had been together most of the summer. Then she examined the picture of his little sports car. She wondered how he had managed to talk his parents into getting it. Then, as with all the really great stories, Moxy was no longer in her room, she was in the passenger seat beside Stuart Little.