by Shawn Stout
That’s when I know that this whole time, being the Boss, I haven’t felt so nice. And that maybe the mural shouldn’t be so much about me trying to be a famous artist. That maybe the mural shouldn’t be about anything at all, but instead should be for something. I tell this to Patsy Cline and she says, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
I say never mind and then say, “I’m glad you came back, Patsy Cline.”
She gives me a smile that says, I Never Really Left.
And when somebody gives you a present like that, it’s only right to give them one back. So I climb onto a chair and take my No. 2 Hard drawing pencil out of my pocket. Up high, above the moon, I draw a cow, one with hearts instead of spots.
Patsy Cline’s smile is so big her cheeks have nearly disappeared.
I tell her I’m sorry about not voting for her to be the Boss and for thinking her drawing was a flea even after she told me it wasn’t, twice, and she says that’s okay.
“If you were the Boss,” I say, “everybody would probably still be here.”
“Probably so,” she says.
“But if you were the Boss,” I say, “the mural would also look like a bunch of fleas.”
Patsy Cline giggles. Which makes me laugh, and for a second I forget about Nila Wister’s escape and about the Bad Luck that might never go away. Because when you make your used-to-be best friend giggle like that, all you want to do is make her giggle again.
I try to think of something else funny to say, but I can’t think for very long because Mr. Rodriguez and another man come into the room. Mr. Rodriguez says that this man is from The Portwaller Tribune and then he tells him our names.
“Is this the mural?” the man says, moving closer to the wall to have a look.
Mr. Rodriguez says that it is, and the reporter says he thought it would be more complete than this. “I’ve got a photographer on the way, and these drawings aren’t going to show up in a photograph too well,” he says, shaking his head.
“We’re going to start painting today,” I say. “Maybe your photographer can come back later to take some pictures? Maybe on Saturday, when we’re all done?”
“That’s not going to work,” he says. “This was the only window she has available. A lot of our staff have been out sick with a stomach bug.”
Then I say, “My grandpa is a photographer, and he’s taken pictures for your newspaper before. He’s coming on Saturday, if he can stand the smell.”
Mr. Rodriguez gives us a look that says, You Two Should Get Back to Drawing. So, I pull on Patsy Cline’s arm and lead her back to the wall. I pick up my No. 2 Hard drawing pencil and pretend to work on the Man on the Moon’s nose. But what I’m really doing is listening and sneaking looks.
Mr. Rodriguez tells the reporter about how he wanted the mural to be as much for the kids as the old people, only he doesn’t say old people, he says residents.
“Are these two girls the only ones working on this?” asks the reporter. “I thought there’d be a bigger group.”
Mr. Rodriguez scratches his chin beard and then says in a low voice, but not too low that I can’t hear, “Well, we’ve had some artistic, er . . . pains, you know, getting everyone on the same page.”
“What sorts of pains?” asks the reporter, taking out a notepad and pen from his pocket.
Mr. Rodriguez gives me a sideways look real fast, and I wince and look away.
“He means me,” I whisper to Patsy Cline. “I am an Artistic Pain.”
“I know,” she says.
I put down my No. 2 Hard drawing pencil and stop listening to what Mr. Rodriguez is saying. I look at the mural, at all the work that needs to be done, and my ears start to sweat. “What if the others don’t come back?”
Patsy Cline shakes her head. “I don’t think just you and me can do this by Saturday.”
“I don’t think so either.” And I know it’s my fault.
“We just need some luck, that’s all,” says Patsy Cline, and she says it real simple, as if you can just reach up and pull some from a bookshelf, or from a tree.
Or from a Fortune Lady.
15.
When Nila Wister sees me and my empty hands, she says, “Big mistake.”
I tell her I’m sorry but we’re down to one Popsicle in the freezer at home and it’s been a rough week.
“Humph,” she says, and nothing else, like she knows all about rough weeks. And I guess if you are as ancient as Nila Wister, you’ve probably had a lot of those.
I stare at her for a while, a long while, and then I say, “If I help you, you’ll give me one of your charms?”
She nods. “That’s the arrangement.”
“And the charm will work,” I say, “you know, to get rid of the Bad Luck?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“But you said they can be a little particular,” I tell her.
Nila frowns. “That’s right, I guess I did.” She shifts in her chair like my questions are making her tired. “But not if you believe.”
“Believe what?”
“That it will work.”
“Oh.” I watch the charms dangle from her chair as she leans forward, closer to me.
“So you’ll help me then?” she says as one corner of her mouth curls.
“Why don’t you like it here?”
Nila Wister’s face falls because it’s another question. “This place?” she says. “Oh, it’s all right, if you like the sort of place where nobody seems to even be bothered you’re here, except when they come into your room anytime they please, and tell you that you’ve had too many sweets. Does that sound like a place you’d want to live?”
“That sounds a lot like where I do live,” I say. Because it does.
“My sister brought me a chocolate every day,” she says, smiling. “She was the youngest of all of us, but I was always her Favorite.”
“I’d like to be somebody’s Favorite,” I say softly.
But whether Nila hears me or not I don’t know because then she says, “Did you know when she was a baby, I pretended that she was mine. I dressed her up in a ruffled bonnet and carried her around like she was a china doll.” Nila is looking out the window when she says all this, like she’s reciting a dream to herself. “I once had a sweet little doll, dears. The prettiest doll in the world. Her cheeks were so red and white, dears, and her hair was so charmingly curled. But I lost my poor little doll, dears . . .” Nila’s tiny voice trails off, and when her eyes wander over to me, she gives me a look like she forgot I was here.
“What will it be?” she says.
“Where will you go?”
“Home.”
“But if you want to go home, why can’t you just tell the people here that you want to leave?” I say.
She shakes her head and gives me a look that says, You Don’t Know Anything. And then I know it wasn’t up to her to come here in the first place.
“What about the rest of your family?” I say. “Are they Graveyard Dead, too?”
“You ask a lot of questions for someone so small and unlucky,” she says. “I’ve got a brother left, but I don’t know where he is. We aren’t that friendly.”
“Oh.”
“So, will you help me or not?” she says.
“Don’t you have any kids or anything?”
“What, girl?”
“Any kids,” I say.
“None.”
“Is it because you don’t like kids?”
She raises her eyebrows at me. “I like them all right. Some of them, anyway.”
“Do you like me then?” I ask. Because I wonder if maybe I could be her Favorite. Seeing how it seems like we’re both alone.
“You?” she says.
I nod and whisper, “Me.”
“You could stand to bring me more sweets,�
� she says. “Something other than melted Popsicles.” She looks me over and shrugs. “But I guess you’re okay.”
“Then could I be your Favorite?” I say. “And you could be mine.”
She scrunches up her lips like she’s thinking hard about it. And then all at once, she shrugs her bony shoulders and says, “Deal.”
“Okay,” I say, “then I’ll help you.”
Nila Wister smacks her tiny hands on the blanket covering her lap. “Good girl. I’m liking you more already.” She tells me to come closer and then whispers, “I’ve been doing some thinking, and the best time is right in the middle of the big party, when everyone will be in that room eyeing up your painting. You’ll have to sneak away. Do you think you can do that?”
“This Saturday?” I say. “That’s awful soon.”
“I’m ninety-three,” she yells. “Wait much longer and the next chance I have to go home is in a pine box. Do you think you can get away or not? It really shouldn’t be so hard.”
“I think so,” I say, and then I tell her she doesn’t have to be so shouty about it. “My mom’s coming, I think. And maybe Terrible. But they didn’t notice last night when I was dead at the dinner table, so they probably won’t notice if I disappear.”
Nila Wister raises her eyebrows at me. “Terrible?”
“My brother, the alien.”
“No wonder you are in need of a charm,” she says.
I give her a look that says, You Have No Idea.
She smiles, and I don’t know if she’s real good at telling what different faces mean, like I am, or if it’s because she’s a Fortune Lady and knows everything anyway, but she says, “Being young is hard. And being old isn’t any easier.” Then she fingers her charms and says, “And now for the good stuff. What shall it be?”
My heart thumps in my chest as I look them over. “Where did your dad get them?”
“He never told me,” she says, “and I never asked.”
“Why?”
“You don’t ask a magician his secrets.”
“Your dad was a magician?” I say.
“Something like that.”
I tell her that my dad worked in computers. And I would have asked him lots of things if I had the chance.
She brushes her hand across the charms that hang from her wheelchair, making them swing. “Take your pick.”
My eyes find the butterfly charm, with its wings open, ready to fly. “And you think it will chase away the Bad Luck?”
She tilts her head to the side. “Do you doubt the Fortune Lady?”
Then I reach for the butterfly, but before I can touch it, Nila says, “Just a moment. Let me untie it first.”
Her tiny fingers pull at the knotted yarn until it comes loose. Then she rubs her thumb over the glass wings like she is saying good-bye or telling it to be good to me. Or maybe thanking it for bringing her the Good Luck for so many years. But when I ask her if that’s what she’s doing, she shakes her head and says, “No, I had an itchy thumb is all.”
I’m not sure I believe her, but it doesn’t matter because then Nila Wister puts the butterfly in my hand. “This one was my sister’s,” she says.
Perched in my palm, the butterfly is lighter than I thought it would be, smaller even, and I wonder how something as little as this could do anything so big as keep me from being alone.
I tell Nila I have to go, and she grabs my hands with both of hers and holds on until I look her right in the eyeballs. Her dark eyes say, You Will Help Me, Won’t You? and she waits until I say that I will before she lets me go.
When she does, I slip the butterfly into my pants pocket and hurry back to Patsy Cline and the mural. I don’t know how the butterfly knows what to do, because I haven’t even wished on it or anything, but there, in the activity room, right beside Patsy Cline, is Vera Bogg. And she’s helping.
“Look who came back,” Patsy Cline says to me.
Vera holds up her paintbrush that’s been dipped in purple.
“Where did you get the paint?” I ask.
Patsy Cline says, “Mr. Rodriguez.”
“Don’t worry,” says Vera Bogg, “there’s no pink.”
“I’m not worried,” I say, even though I kind of am.
Vera stands back and takes a long look at the mural. “This is different.”
“Penelope drew a cow,” says Patsy Cline, pointing up at the moon.
“I’ve still never heard of a cow with hearts on the outside,” Vera Bogg says. “And I’ve never heard of a Mother Goose with mittens on either.”
“Not all art has to be real-looking,” I tell her, shaking my head.
“If that’s so,” Vera Bogg says, “then why can’t Mother Goose drive a monster truck? Huh?”
And when she says those words, just then, I can almost hear Mister Leonardo say in a quiet voice, “My goodness, little darling, that pink girl over there sure does make a good point.”
Good gravy. The strangest day in the world: when Leonardo da Vinci thinks that Vera Bogg has a point about art. And when I think so, too. But I decide it’s better not to think about that for too long, and instead I get my No. 2 Hard drawing pencil going on the wall under Mother Goose.
“What are you doing?” Vera Bogg says to me.
“Is that a truck?” asks Patsy Cline.
“Not just a truck,” I say. “A monster one.”
When I finish, Vera Bogg looks at it close up and shakes her head. “A bird driving a truck. I like things that look real.”
“Then, Vera Bogg,” I say, smiling, “you’re really not going to like this at all.” And in a couple of minutes, there’s an alien in a spaceship on a faraway planet.
Vera says, “Humph,” and then gets back to painting the dish that runs away with the spoon. After a while she says, “So where’s everybody else?”
“Mr. Rodriguez is calling them, too,” I say. “But you’re the first one to get here.”
Vera Bogg stops painting. “But Mr. Rodriguez didn’t call me.”
Patsy Cline and me look at each other. “Then how come you’re here?” I say.
She shrugs. “I don’t know, I just got to thinking about it and figured I’d give it another try.”
My eyes get big when I think that maybe, just maybe, the butterfly had something to do with this. I pat my pocket and can almost feel its wings whisper, whisper something to me.
16.
I keep on painting long after Patsy Cline and Vera Bogg go home. I lose track of time and don’t stop until I hear Grandpa Felix’s voice behind me. “Oh my,” he says. “That’s quite a scene.”
“Grandpa Felix,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
“Picking you up a half hour ago.”
I tell him I’m sorry but I wanted to get as much done as I could because it has to be finished by next Saturday. And then when I notice that he is standing upright and not passed out on the floor because of the awful nursing home smell that’s worse than hospitals, I say, “Hey, you’re all the way inside!”
“I’m on borrowed time,” he says, wiping his forehead. “Are you ready to go?”
I tell him I just have to clean up, and while I start doing that, he gets a closer look at the mural. “So, Mother Goose isn’t too old and close to death to drive?”
“I guess not.”
“Interesting.” Grandpa Felix clears his throat. “And is this an alien? On the moon?”
I rinse the paintbrushes in the sink. “No, that’s Jupiter. The other one is the moon.”
“But that’s an alien,” he says. “Have I got that part right?”
“You do.”
“My Mother Goose rhymes are a little rusty. Remind me which one is about an alien on Jupiter?”
“It’s art, Grandpa.” I throw the newspaper in the trash can and stick the paintbrushe
s in a plastic bag. “And not all art has to be real-looking, you know.”
“You don’t say.”
I do. I do say.
“Ah, art,” he says. “Don’t mistake what I’m saying, little darling, I like it quite a bit.” Then he says, “‘Hey diddley diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow something something the moon. The little dog laughed, something something something, and the dish ran away with the spoon.’ I never did really understand what was going on in that rhyme.”
“The dog thinks the cow jumping over the moon is funny,” I explain, “but the dish doesn’t think so because she isn’t a very happy person and so she grabs the spoon and they run away to go home.”
Grandpa says, “Like I said, I never did really understand this one. But there’s something very familiar about the face on that moon,” he says. “I think I’ve seen that big nose before.”
“Could be,” I say. “Could be.”
Grandpa touches his finger to my nose and I know we’re back to being okay, thank lucky stars. Or, lucky butterfly. He puts his hand on my shoulder and walks me down the hall. He nods and says hello to the old people in the wheelchairs along the wall. “I’ve been thinking,” he says to me. “How about on my next shoot I let you take a picture?”
I tell him yes, yes, yes. And then I say speaking of pictures, can he can bring his camera here on Saturday now that he can stand the smell enough to be inside?
He says, “I suppose. Why?”
“Because the photographer for The Portwaller Tribune can’t make it and I thought maybe you could take some pictures and send them in to the newspaper.”
“That’s not the way it generally works,” he says. “And what makes you think the newspaper would want to use my pictures?”
I pat the butterfly in my pocket and say, “You have to believe, Grandpa.”
He shakes his head. “Penelope Crumb.”
“Grandpa Crumb,” I say back.
Then he just smiles and says we need to go because this place is starting to make him feel woozy.
“You get used to the smell after a while,” I say.
“Little darling,” he says, “this is not a smell I particularly want to get used to.”