“Laryngitis?”
“Yeah, that. And itching. Lots and lots of itching.”
Littie says, “But I don’t sound anything like your mom.”
And then I come up with the very smart idea that she should hold her nose while she talks and say that she’s got the flu bug, too.
While Littie calls Portwaller Elementary, I talk to the man at the information desk to get some information. After I show him Grandpa Felix’s address and ask how we can get there, he hands me a map and points to the bus stop in front of the library. “Next bus should be here in about three minutes.”
I turn to Littie, who is still on the phone, holding her nose and saying, “I’m sure Penelope will be feeling much more chipper tomorrow, thank you ever so kindly.” Which is something my mom would never ever say.
I pull at Littie’s arm. “Come on, we have to go.”
Littie hangs up quick, and I pull at her arm until we’re both running out the front door toward the bus stop.
“Where are we going?” asks Littie as we climb into the bus.
I wave the piece of paper with Grandpa Mortimer Felix’s phone number and address at her. “Grandpa Felix’s house. Where else?”
I find two seats together at the back of the bus and slide into the one by the window. Littie stands in the aisle. “How do you know for sure that man on the phone was your grandpa?” she says. “He hung up on you.”
“So? Aren’t you going to sit down?”
She shakes her head at me. “So, that doesn’t seem like a very grandpa thing to do.”
Even Littie’s worst thinking can’t bother me now. “He probably just doesn’t like to talk on the phone. There are people out there in the world like that, you know.”
Littie says, “Humph,” and then nothing else.
“The bus driver is staring at you like she wants you to sit down.”
Littie finally takes off her backpack and slides into the seat beside me. She looks straight ahead and says, “I’m just saying.”
“What are you saying exactly, Littie Maple?”
“I’m saying that maybe that man on the phone isn’t your grandpa. And even if he is your grandpa, maybe now isn’t the best time for a visit.” She shifts her backpack on her lap. “He sounds kind of mean.”
“I thought you wanted an adventure,” I say. “You’re always saying how you want an adventure and how your momma never lets you do anything. And here’s your chance, Littie Maple. A real adventure is right under your nose!” While Littie thinks this over, I say the one thing that I know will change her mind: “Unless you want to turn into your momma.”
16.
We take the bus across Portwaller to 609 Antietam Street. Grandpa Felix’s apartment building looks as old as he must be. The window shutters hang all cockeyed and the gray paint is peeling off the bricks in clumps like whiskers. Long ivy vines cling to the sides and front, climbing up, up, up to the rooftop where I imagine they meet and have tea parties with the moon.
“This is it,” I say.
“How do we know which one is his?” asks Littie. “The address we have didn’t list an apartment number.”
I shrug and point to a man walking toward the front door. “Let’s ask.”
I catch the door before it latches shut and swing it back open again, almost knocking off a wreath of plastic yellow flowers. “Excuse me,” I say to the man. “Do you know where Mr. Mortimer Felix Crumb lives?”
The man sticks a key into a mailbox in the wall, peers inside, and then closes the door. He slips the key into his shirt pocket and pats it twice. “You family?” He looks right at me when he says this, wiping his nose with his wrist.
“Yes sir,” I say.
“He’s her long-lost grandpa,” Littie adds.
“Up the stairs. Apartment Three-C.”
Littie thanks him and yanks on my arm in the direction of the stairs. But I plant my feet, wondering about his big nose that doesn’t stop growing. “There isn’t anything, you know, especially strange about him, is there?”
The man’s eyes get big and then he gives me a look that says, If You Don’t Know, I’m Not Going to Tell You. I go cold all over and Littie has to give my arm another big yank to get me moving.
The door marked 3C is in front of me before I know it. This time Littie does the knocking before I’m even ready. “Wait, Littie!” I turn my back to the door because I haven’t thought of the words that I want to say. But I hear the door open before my brains get awake.
Then I hear Littie gasp. His nose must be COLOSSAL. I turn around slowly toward the open door. And when I look up at him, the first words that come out of my mouth are filled with relief. “Oh, it’s not that big.”
And to my surprise he says, “Neither is yours.” Which is a funny thing to say to somebody you’ve never met before. And I think he’s talking about my nose, but I’m not 100 percent sure.
I pull the picture of Grandpa Felix from my pocket. The nose on his face doesn’t look any bigger than his nose in the picture. Which means that either noses grow really, really slow or Terrible is full of lies.
Grandpa Felix clears his throat, and that’s when I notice how different he looks from the picture. His eyes are dark and puffy and he’s got whiskers growing in the cracks on his face. He looks like he’s had a thousand really bad days, one right after the next. And who knows, maybe he has.
I hold the picture out to him because maybe he just needs a reminder of who he used to be. He looks at it and then looks at me like I’m handing him a plate of sausage that’s been sitting in the heat too long. I slide the picture back into my pocket.
“Well?” Grandpa Felix says. He and Littie are looking at me and waiting for somebody to say something. Littie says, “er” and “uh” and “umm,” but she doesn’t seem to know what to do next.
“You’re really not dead at all,” I say.
He straightens his shoulders and says, “Not yet.”
We stare at each other for a while, and then I say, “Can I use your bathroom?” It’s the first thing I can think of. “Please.”
Grandpa Felix looks at me like I just told him half of a joke but forgot the funny part. Then he glances behind him, at the inside of his apartment, and for a minute I think he’s going to say no. “I’ve really got to go,” I say, shifting from one foot to the other.
“It’s not healthy to hold it,” Littie chimes in to help.
He grunts and as soon as he takes a step away from the door, I pull Littie inside. “Whoa, this place is a pigsty,” I say. Piles of newspapers, magazines, and pictures—lots and lots of pictures—are everywhere. I pull a few from the top of a pile next to the couch. Lots of people I don’t know and places I’ve never seen before. Tall buildings, sailboats, cornfields. “My word. What is all this stuff? Are you one of those people who never throw anything away?”
“I thought you needed to use the bathroom,” Grandpa Felix grumbles, taking the pictures from me and placing them back on the pile.
“Oh, right. I do. Where?”
He points to a hallway and Littie grabs my arm and whispers, “Don’t leave me out here with him. He’s kind of scary.” She looks around. “And this place is dirty.”
“It’s not that bad,” I tell her.
“What should I do while you’re in there?” she asks. “What if he wants to talk to me? What do I talk about? Maybe I should just come into the bathroom with you. I’m just saying.”
Then I turn toward Grandpa Felix and say, “Do you have a TV?”
“Over there,” he says, pointing to a corner of a room with a worn leather chair parked in front of it. “But don’t touch anything, and don’t move anything. And don’t touch anything.”
“TV?” That perks Littie right up. After stepping over a couple of piles, she sinks into the chair and clicks on the TV, saying, “This is great! A marathon of Max Adventure!” And I know she will be fine for as long as I want to stay.
The bathroom is mostly clear of piles,
except for a stack of magazines called Life on the back of the toilet. I pull Winston’s picture from my pocket. It’s the same kind of paper. “Hey,” I say, marching out of the bathroom and holding up Winston’s page. “Do you take pictures in magazines?”
Grandpa Felix is sitting at a square wooden table, running his finger along the corners of a stack of newspapers. He looks up, hardly interested in what I’m saying. “Humph.”
I pull out the chair beside him and sit down, putting Winston on the table between us. He doesn’t look at me. He just stares at the pile of newspapers the whole time. I don’t know what he might be thinking of, but I’m thinking that Terrible’s alien mind-reading tricks would come in handy right about now. Neither one of us says anything for a long time, and the longer I keep quiet, the harder it is for me to get my mouth to work.
Finally, I tell myself just to say something. “Do you know who I am?”
He looks at me then, right at the heart of me, and his eyes tremble a little. He nods.
“Good,” I say. My mouth is just getting warmed up, so I keep on going. “Did you know this dog?” I point to Winston.
He mumbles, so low that I can barely hear: something, something, photographer.
“So you took this picture?”
He nods.
“I’m going to get a dog like Winston one day,” I say.
Grandpa Felix closes his eyes and tilts his head to the ceiling. I close my eyes and do the same. Only, I peek at him through eye slits. And just when I get to thinking that he’s gone asleep, his eyes pop open and he says, “Elmer.”
“Elmer?” It takes me a while to figure out that he’s talking about that dog in the picture. I look at those eyebrows again. “Nope, he’s definitely a Winston.”
“Let me see that,” he grumbles. I slide the page to him, and he gives it a close look until he and Winston are almost nose to nose. Then he smiles enough for me to worry that his stone face will crack, like he hadn’t thought about that dog in a long time. “I believe you’re right, Penelope. He does look like a Winston.”
I stop breathing for a second or two because this is the first time Grandpa Felix says my name and it makes me feel so good, like wiggling my toes in the ocean. I watch him close. I think he must like saying my name, too, because his face gets red, especially around his whiskers. “I like his eyebrows,” I say.
“Who wouldn’t?” His mouth seems warmed up now, too. “I bet you’ve never seen a dog with eyebrows like that before.”
“No sir.” I shake my head. “Grandpa Mortimer. Grandpa Felix.”
“Grandpa Felix,” he says.
“Grandpa Felix,” I say, smiling. “I didn’t know that dogs even had eyebrows.”
He jumps a little and shifts forward when I say his name, making me wonder if maybe his toes have gone wiggling like mine. But after a moment, he eases back into his chair and says, “Well, not many do. Not many do.”
17.
We make it back to the library just as moms and dads get there to pick up the homeschoolers. As soon as we get inside, I go to the first shelf of books I see and pull one out: The History of Great Medieval Battles. I open it in the middle, hold it up to my face, and stare at big words I’ve never seen before and don’t know how to say. “My goodness, this is very interesting.”
“What are you doing?” Littie says.
“Pretending like I’ve been here all day and not somewhere else doing something I’m not allowed to be doing,” I whisper. “Do you see your momma anywhere?” I peer over the top of the book and hope we aren’t in for a battle of our own if Momma Maple is already here.
“I don’t see her,” whispers Littie. “I don’t think she’s here yet.”
I hand Littie the book and wish her good luck. “Then I better be getting home.”
Somehow I get home before Mom or Terrible do, thank lucky stars. All this sneaking and snooping and not getting caught makes me feel like I am an official detective now. And I just know that Miss Stunkel would be proud.
I’m back at Grandpa Felix’s the next day, after I get Littie to call my school and say that not only am I no better, but I’m a whole lot worse.
I knock hard on Grandpa Felix’s door. His footsteps are heavy and slow. And when he opens the door I say, “I’m back,” and then I pick up my toolbox and go inside before he has a chance to send me away.
He stands at the door in a green coat and looks at me while I step over piles on the way to the table. I grab a couple of pictures, newspapers, and magazines from the top of each one. Grandpa Felix follows and sits beside me but doesn’t say anything. He rubs his fingers over his whiskers.
“Were you going someplace?” I ask, pointing to his coat.
“It can wait, I guess,” he says, taking off his coat and throwing it over the back of a chair.
I thumb through a Life. “That’s a funny name for a magazine.”
“You think so? Maybe that’s why they stopped printing it.”
“Do you still take pictures?” I say.
He pulls a card from his coat pocket that’s got a drawing of a camera on it and big letters that say: A THOUSAND WORDS. “Have you ever heard of the saying, ‘A picture’s worth a thousand words’?”
“No.”
“Well, there you are,” he tells me.
“‘A Thousand Words,’” I say, reading the card. “So you do still take pictures?”
“On occasion.” He points at the stack in front of me and asks, “What do you have there?”
The picture on top is of a boy in blue-striped overalls sitting on a porch step and grinning like he just won first place. His front teeth are missing. I hold the picture out to him. “Who’s this?”
He takes the picture from me, looks it over, and then hands it back. “Yours truly.”
“You were little,” I tell him.
“That’s what they tell me,” he says. “Guess I’d be about ten in that picture.”
“Same as me. Well almost. I’ll be ten next year.”
“Is that so?” he says.
I tell him that it is so and he nods. “Can I have this picture?”
Grandpa Felix scratches his whiskers for a long time. So long that I think maybe he forgot what I asked. But then he says, “I guess so,” and I tuck the picture into my toolbox before he changes his mind.
“How’s that brother of yours?” he asks.
I make a face. “Terrible.”
Grandpa Felix gives me a look that says, He Can’t Be All Bad. So I tell him that Terrible is so all bad. And that he was snatched by aliens and he smells and that I’ve got a list that I’m going to send to NASA. But instead of offering his help to send Prince Stupider back to Planet Jupiter, Grandpa Felix says, “You should give your brother a break. It’s not easy being the man of the house when you’re only fourteen years old.”
But when I tell him that he’s an alien, not a man, and that we don’t even live in a house, he just says, “You know what I mean.” Only I don’t really.
The next picture in the pile is a face I know. “We have the same picture of my dad on our bookshelf at home.”
Grandpa Felix drops his eyes on the picture but doesn’t take it. Then he looks away. “That your toolbox?”
“Yep. It belonged to my dad.”
“It belonged to me,” he says. “I gave it to your father when he moved out.”
We’re both quiet for a little while longer. I watch his yellowed fingernails tap on the tabletop. He’s got some kind of rhythm going, but if it’s to a tune, I can’t make it out. “You know what else I have of yours?” I say. “My nose.” I stick it up in the air and turn my head so he can get a good look.
“I’ll say you do,” he says. “Too bad.”
“What do you mean? I like the Crumb nose. It makes for a good drawing subject.”
“You can’t miss it, that’s for sure,” he says. “You can see one coming from miles.”
“You can?”
“No,” he says. “I�
�m exaggerating.”
“Oh.”
He clears his throat. “The Crumb nose has stood out in this family for a long time. My father, that would be your great-grandfather, also was blessed with this beast.”
“Is that so?” I say.
A glint of a smile appears on his face. “That’s so. There was a time when I very much did not like my nose. But after a while…”
“After a while what?”
Grandpa Felix settles back in his chair and folds his arms. “There are certain advantages to having a large protuberance.”
“A what?” I say.
“A big nose.”
“Like what?”
He rocks back in his chair so that it stands on only two legs. Something that Mom never lets us do. “Many people find that big noses work better,” he says. “If you want to be a winemaker, a florist perhaps, even a chef, or perfumer, your nose may come in handy.”
I lean back on my chair, holding on to the table to balance. “Perfumer?”
“A person who makes perfume,” he explains.
“Oh,” I say. “I’m going to be a famous artist. Like Mister Leonardo da Vinci, only not dead.” I let go of the table one finger at a time until I’m balancing on two chair legs and a pinkie.
“Da Vinci?” he says. “You couldn’t do better.”
“Did you know Mister Leonardo?” I ask.
“Did I know him?” he says. “Just how old do you think I am?”
I laugh and let my pinkie go. The chair rocks back, and just when I think I’ve got it balanced, the chair rocks back even farther. “Whoa,” I say, flailing my arms and trying to paddle through the air to get closer to the table.
Grandpa Felix puts his big hand on my knee and presses down until my shoes are flat on the floor.
“Thanks. That was a close one. Can I have some of these?” I ask, pointing to the magazines and pictures.
He looks at me like he’s not sure he wants to let them go. But then he says okay, and I stuff them into my toolbox before he can change his mind.
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