The Tantalizing Tale of Grace Minnaugh

by Kaltman, Alice;

  While Kitty dozed and passed some very smelly gas, Grace stayed with Nellie. With Grace perched by the side of her bowl, Nellie ate all her food, executed ten marvelous figure-eights, and completed twenty vigorous laps. And Grace had no allergic reactions at all—no hives, no sniffles, no asthma, no nothing. This tête à tête with Nellie is something else, Grace thought, feeling that she would be happy hanging out with Nellie anytime, anywhere, any day. Of course, since Nellie lived in a bowl nine inches across, there would be limits. But even with a bit of glass between them, Grace was convinced that the good times would roll. Grace and her new fishy friend might possibly have the best summer yet.

  Chapter Two: The Den Zombie

  When Mrs. Shelby returned, Grace helped her put the groceries away. As they stowed the Irish steel-cut oats in the cupboard and arranged the oranges in the fruit bowl, Mrs. Shelby and Grace agreed that fish-watching should become a permanent part of Grace’s job. She would visit with Nellie every day after Kitty’s afternoon walk.

  After the last purchases were neatly stowed, Grace gave Kitty one last pat, waved goodbye to Nellie, thanked Mrs. Shelby, and stepped outside into the moist Midwestern afternoon. Grace meandered up the sidewalk toward her own house and pondered the wisdom of mentioning Nellie to her parents. They would probably flip out if they knew she had come so close to a fish, and the last thing she wanted was to have to quit her job at Mrs. Shelby’s, especially now that she was making so much money. And Kitty was awfully sweet, really, for such an ugly dog. Not to mention what a drag it would be to lose her newfound friend, the splendid Betta splendens Nellie.

  Grace looked up at her home and sighed. The Minnaugh house was an old and rambling structure, with white shingles in need of repainting, a roof that sagged and leaked, and an untended front yard that had become an overgrown jungle. The house had always been a dilapidated, ramshackle building, but in the past year it had begun to look as if it should be condemned. It was her mother’s fault, Grace felt gloomily. Minerva Minnaugh was down in the dumps. And it seemed that she and the house together were both becoming grey and tired, inside and out.

  Her mom used to be a happily obsessive painter and an involved parent. She worked on immense canvases and used to delight in covering the surfaces with thick, swirling blue and green swaths of paint. But the door to her studio had been locked for a year now, the curtains drawn, the paints drying in their tubes. Every day, Grace would come home from school to find her mother sitting listlessly, staring out the living room window like a zombie. When Grace asked her why she didn’t paint anymore, her mom muttered lame excuses like, “Oh, I’m just not feeling inspired these days,” or “I’m waiting for the mood to strike.” This from a woman who used to carry an extra paintbrush wedged into her knot of hair and drool over her monthly issue of Art in America.

  When Grace told her father about her concerns, he dismissed them with his usual psycho-babble comments about “artist’s block” and “creative hibernation.” Still, Grace got the distinct impression that her mother was in a dreadful state, and that her parents were in a conspiracy to hide something from her.

  As she approached her front door, the gloom that seemed to surround the house now seemed to encompass Grace as well, and the happiness of her visit with Mrs. Shelby began to fade. “Hello,” she called, with forced cheerfulness. “The dog-walker is home!”

  No one answered. From the family room, Grace heard the strains of a well-known tune and found her mother and Stuey sprawled together on the threadbare sofa watching Mary Poppins for the hundred-millionth time.

  Grace studied her mother. She was taller than Grace’s dad, Walter, by at least five inches; most of those inches belonged to long, spindly legs, legs that were now draped over the arm of the sofa like a pair of useless tassels. Minerva’s once-upon-a-time bright blue eyes had lost their spark and were now red-rimmed and puffy. She stared blankly out the window at the wilting rose garden that she used to be enthused about. Now the blooms were infested with bugs, the leaves mottled with rust disease.

  “Hey, Gwace,” Stuey mumbled through a mouthful of Cocoa Puffs. “You came for the bestest part.” Stuey, with the same reddish-brown curls and freckly skin as Grace, was undeniably cute. But while Grace’s body was morphing into an awkward and gangly kid version of her mother’s, Stuey was chubby, with a low center of gravity and the general appearance of a solid little brick.

  Grace looked at the screen. Bert and Mary were about to jump through Bert’s chalk drawing, meet the cartoon penguins, and start all that bobbling dance nonsense.

  “Whatever,” Grace mumbled. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hey, sweetie,” Minerva replied without looking up. “How was your first day of work?”

  “Great,” answered Grace. “Kitty’s pretty cool. I mean, she’s kinda gross, but lovable, you know?”

  “Uh-huh,” Minerva nodded. “That’s nice,” she said, reaching over Stuey’s lap to scoop up a handful of Cocoa Puffs from his bowl.

  “Hey, Mom. Need any help in the studio before I head back to Mrs. Shelby’s?” Grace tried.

  “No, not today, Gracie. I think I’m going to take today off.”

  Today and every other day, thought Grace irritably. It was one thing for Stuey to be obsessed with Mary Poppins, to watch it repeatedly, day after day, but it was quite another for their mother to sit there wasting her life away.

  “Oh, and FYI, I’m not just walking Kitty. I’m also feeding Mrs. Shelby’s pet fish, Nellie,” Grace declared, determined to get some kind of response out of her mother. Stuey’s mouth dropped open in a gasp, Cocoa Puffs spilling all over the floor. Minerva looked up at Grace, the color draining from her cheeks. “You’re what?”

  Grace smiled. Minerva was paying attention! “You heard me. I’m looking after Nellie. She’s a Betta splendens. She loves me. It’s like I’m the Fish Whisperer or something.”

  Minerva scrambled to her feet, her face tight with anxiety. Her silky brown hair had once been thick and straight, but now fell in a lank and greasy mess around her shoulders like Darth Vader’s cape.

  “Are you all right? Did anything happen to you?”

  Wow, thought Grace. The Den Zombie has risen. “No, nothing happened to me. So, news flash—you can stop worrying about me and algae allergy. It seems I don’t take after you at all.” Grace turned and left the room. At least she had gotten a reaction out of her mother. But was a worrywart Minerva better than a sad-sack one? Probably not.

  In her room Grace plopped down on her beanbag chair and heaved a heavy sigh. Her alarm clock read eleven-thirty. She had an hour and a half to kill before she could go back to Mrs. Shelby’s. She got up to lock her door and went over to the shelf where she kept treasured knick-knacks high out of Stuey’s reach. It was also where she hid her secret stash of candy. Grace grabbed a semi-stale Snickers from behind Ducky Doodles, the favorite stuffy she’d slept with for years, but had had to retire to shelf-hood because he’d grown so threadbare. She selected a book from the messy pile on her floor. Candy and a little light reading would just have to do until she could return to her incredibly awesome but somewhat fishy summer job.

  Chapter Three: Operation Immovable

  The next few weeks flew by. Grace spent more and more time at Mrs. Shelby’s and less and less time at home. She discovered that she did have a slight allergic reaction to Nellie’s fishbowl, after all—whenever she got too close to the glass, the skin behind her ears itched like crazy. But it didn’t bother Grace very much, and she had no intention of letting a little rash stop her from doing her job.

  By mid-July Nellie became so rambunctious during Grace’s visits that Mrs. Shelby worried the fish might accidentally leap out of her bowl and nose-dive to the floor. Digging in the bottom of her pantry, Mrs. Shelby came up with a plastic table mat that Grace could lay over the mouth of Nellie’s bowl. During the mornings, before the sun rose too high in the sky, Mrs. Shelby pu
ttered outside in the garden while Grace sat with Nellie. If Mrs. Shelby was out of earshot, Grace would talk out loud to Nellie. Grace, still a bit dubious about what was going on between her and the fish, didn’t know how Mrs. Shelby would react to their cross-species tête-à-tête. It might alarm or excite the old lady so much that it caused her to have a heart attack. At the very least the situation was quite out of the ordinary, so Grace decided to keep it under wraps for the time being. Meanwhile, she could swear Nellie understood everything she said.

  “Three circles, Nellie,” Grace might say, her lips just inches from the glass. “Then two quick loops around the mermaid’s head.” The fish did exactly as directed. If Grace told her to go left, then Nellie headed left. If Grace murmured, “Stop!” then Nellie would stay in place as best she could while the current she’d created caused her to sway like a little boat in a choppy sea.

  When the weather was too hot or damp, Mrs. Shelby would relax in her recliner reading a book, or sit at the desk by the big picture window and pay her bills. Those times, Grace would communicate with Nellie through hand gestures and thoughts, and then it seemed the fish understood everything even better.

  Grace was agog. She was mind-melding with a fish! How could this be? If she’d known such a thing was possible, she’d have gotten herself over to Mrs. Shelby’s years ago. It did seem to be purely a fish thing, since whenever she tried to mind-meld with Kitty it never ever worked. Grace tried testing her powers out on squirrels, thinking, “Halt!” or “Roll over!” But not a single squirrel paid her any mind. The birds were the same, flying away whenever she instructed them to stay. All other creatures, it seemed, had inaccessible minds of their own. Grace assumed, after limited testing, that what was happening between Nellie and her was unique, a one-of-a kind, once-in-a-lifetime thing.

  Grace loved life at Mrs. Shelby’s. It was a home away from home. A better home, in many ways. So what if Grace preferred the company of a Betta splendens, an ancient, mangy mutt, and a ditzy old lady to the company of kids her own age? Or the company of her own family? When she was at Mrs. Shelby’s, Grace felt purposeful, wanted, and needed. Without Grace, poor little Nellie might end up a lethargic lump who ate herself to death. Without Grace walking half-blind old Kitty, well, the repercussions of that were obvious and potentially quite smelly. Grace supposed that Mrs. Shelby could let Kitty into the garden to do her business, but then the lavender gnomes would be surrounded by dog poop and Kitty would just get fatter and fatter.

  Grace found, too, that she had grown awfully fond of Mrs. Shelby. She wasn’t like other old people, who gabbed on and on about how things were different in their day, and never listened to anyone who wasn’t talking about savings coupons, heart problems, or arthritic fingers. Mrs. Shelby loved nothing more than to ask Grace all sorts of interesting questions, like: “So what’s so great about this new book series that everyone is talking about? Henry Potters?”

  “It’s called Harry Potter, Mrs. S.,” Grace answered. “And it’s not that new. It’s, like, over twenty years old.”

  “Okay, so what’s so great about it?”

  And so Grace told her and ended up lending Mrs. S. the first two books in the series, which Mrs. S. devoured almost as quickly as Grace had herself when she first read them. Then Mrs. Shelby ordered the rest of the books from the library. “I’ve been Pottered,” she joked as she held up Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and waved it at Grace, “and it’s all your fault!”

  Or the time Mrs. S. asked, “Grace, which would you rather be—an amazing singer or a fantastic hoofer?”

  “What’s a hoofer, Mrs. S.?”

  “Oh, sorry, dear. A hoofer is old person-speak for a dancer.”

  “Well, I suck at singing, so that’s out. But I’m not big on dancing either. I’m a total klutz.”

  “Well, hell’s bells!” Mrs. Shelby clapped her hands together. “That’s something we’ll have to work on.” Mrs. Shelby got up from her purple plaid recliner, shuffled to her old record player, and put on some old-timey music. She wiggled her behind and tapped her fluffy-slippered toes while holding tight to the rails of her walker. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, Gracie. So get up! Join me! It’s time to cut a rug!”

  They spent the next ten minutes dancing, or rather, trying to dance. They were both pretty lame hoofers. But neither Mrs. Shelby nor Grace cared because they were having so much fun laughing at themselves and each other.

  

  Grace’s summer was going along in this happy fashion until one Thursday morning toward the end of July, disaster struck. Grace was sitting at the Minnaugh family kitchen table, happily munching on a raisin bagel and reading The Secret Garden—it had been one of Mrs. Shelby’s favorite books as a child—when her father skipped into the kitchen whistling “California Here I Come.”

  “Aha. Reading as usual, Gracie?” Walter Minnaugh exclaimed. Grace often wondered what his Ohio University psychology students thought of her dad, with his nerdy glasses and shiny bald dome. Her father was one of those life-loving optimists whom some found annoying and others admired. When she was younger, Grace had thought her dad was the smartest, wisest man on the planet. Even before her mom became depressed and gloomy, her dad had been the the best listener of the two. And the best cook. His chocolate chip pancakes, in particular, were to die for, especially when smothered in butter and maple syrup and sprinkled with sea salt.

  “Here, look at this.” Walter pulled a photograph out of his shirt pocket to show Grace—the snapshot showed a house made of glass and metal and surrounded by palm trees. In the background, the deep blue of the sea shimmered in the sun. “What do you think? Pretty deluxo, huh?” Walter asked.

  Grace took a closer look. The house had shingles missing on the roof, a window covered in plywood, and a front door that hung half off its hinges. If that wasn’t bad enough, the palm trees in the front yard were the scraggliest-looking excuse for trees that Grace had ever seen. Grace looked up from the photo at her father, who grinned with delight. “Dad, it looks like an outhouse for aliens,” she replied. “Why am I looking at it anyway?”

  Walter shifted slightly from foot to foot, hesitating a moment before sitting in the chair opposite Grace. He took a deep breath and, looking her straight in the eyes, said, “Gracie, I’ve got some very exciting news.” Grace felt her stomach twist and turn in sour knots, suddenly certain that something dreadful was coming. “I’ve been offered a teaching position at La Toya University. It’s a fabulous opportunity, a psychology professor’s dream job. In two weeks, we’re all moving to sunny Southern California, and we’re all going to live in that awesome beach house!”

  Grace’s jaw dropped open. She had expected him to tell her of an upcoming family vacation that she was going to have to go on whether she liked it or not. Moving was dreadful on a whole different level. Surely he wasn’t serious? “This is one of your psycho-tests, right? Some experiment for your students?” Walter was always trying out different psychological tests on her, though usually he warned her ahead of time.

  “No, Gracie. No test. This is the real thing. We’re moving to the beautiful beach town of La Toya. And this gem of a house is only ten minutes from the university,” he said with a grin.

  The raisin bagel felt like cement in Grace’s belly and she felt nauseated. “No way,” she gasped, her heart pounding like a tom-tom drum. “I don’t want to move.”

  “I know it’s very sudden. But this is the dream job of a lifetime for me, Grace.”

  “Well, it’s the nightmare of a lifetime for me!”

  “Oh, come on, Gracie. La Toya will be loads of fun. Our new house is totally modern and right on the beach. You just walk out the door and—boom!—you’ve got sand beneath your feet.”

  Grace looked at the photo and scowled. “That’s a disaster, not a house. Besides, I hate sand. Sand is totally annoying. It gets stuck between your toes and gives yo
u blisters. Who wants sand right outside their front door? I’d rather have nice, soft green grass that stays put and leaves your toe cracks alone.”

  “Hey, you two, what’s going on in here?” Minerva appeared, wiping her paint-streaked hands on the button-down shirt she used for a smock.

  “Mom? Have you been painting?” Grace couldn’t believe her eyes. Minerva looked so different. She was smiling! Her eyes actually sparkled, and she was holding a paintbrush!

  “You bet. All night, actually. I’m pooped now, but it sure feels good to be in the studio again.” Minerva grinned happily, but her smile faded as she looked at her daughter, her brow creasing in concern. “You look terrible, Gracie. Are you feeling okay? Did something happen with Mrs. Shelby’s Betty?”

  “Betta, Mom. Not Betty. Nellie is a Betta.” Grace looked up at her mother’s face. “And, no, I’m not feeling great. Dad just told me the news. Is it true? Are we really moving?”

  “I thought we agreed to tell her together, Walt,” Minerva said, scowling at her husband, who shrugged sheepishly. Minerva, dropping to her, covered Grace’s clenched fists with her own warm, paint-flecked hands. “Grace, I know it’s scary to think of leaving Floral Park and moving to a new town. But, believe me, La Toya is a wonderful place. You’ll love it there.”

  Grace pulled her hands away. “Excuse me? And how would you know that?”

  Minerva shrugged. “I just have a feeling. You know.…” Her expression got dreamy. “California…sunshine…ocean breezes….”

  “Since when are we such a beach-loving family? We never go to the beach. We live in the Midwest, remember? We barely even go to the Floral Park public pool.”

  “Grace—” Minerva began.

  But Grace was on a roll. “And what about the summer we went to Kakawalah Lake for a week? Remember how traumatized I was when sadistic Steven Reedy from the cabin next door held my head underwater? I nearly drowned! I’ll never do that again, ever. Besides, Mrs. Shelby needs me.” And I need her, Grace thought. I need them all. “I can’t move. Nellie will become a floating blob if I leave, and Kitty will have accidents all over the house.”