The Doldrums

by Nicholas Gannon

  “I’m surprised that’s even an option,” he said. “I didn’t think your mother would let you go to the museum.”

  Archer was silent.

  “She did sign the slip, didn’t she?” Adélaïde asked.

  Archer closed his eyes. He’d forgotten about the permission slip.

  “I’ll ask her tonight,” he said.

  But that night during dinner, Mrs. Helmsley was in a foul mood.

  “These flower festivals have taken a terrible turn,” she said. “Mrs. Murkley’s garden was completely sterile, not a speck of color. And the Glubs’, well, that was no surprise. But the new people, what’s their name?”

  “The Belmonts,” said Mr. Helmsley.

  “Yes, well, I’ve seen graveyard flowers with more life.”

  The permission slip stayed in Archer’s pocket. Now was not a good time to ask. He wanted to wait till his mother was in a better mood, but by Thursday, she was still annoyed. Archer was running out of time. He removed the permission slip and made his pitch.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Mrs. Helmsley said.

  “It’s only a school trip,” said Mr. Helmsley. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Well I do,” she replied. “And it’s a terrible idea.”

  Archer was desperate. “Oliver is going,” he said.

  “What the Glubs do with Oliver is none of my business,” his mother replied. “Besides, Oliver doesn’t have your tendencies.”

  “You mean Oliver isn’t locked inside his house!” he said, and stormed out of the dining room, afraid he might say something else he shouldn’t. If his mother wouldn’t sign the slip, he would find another way.

  ♦ WILD ANIMALS ♦

  “But there isn’t another way,” said Oliver the next day at the Button Factory. “We’ve already gone through this.”

  Adélaïde left Miss Whitewood’s desk and sat down on the rug.

  “I was thinking we should look for those trunks on Saturday and—” She stopped when she saw Archer’s and Oliver’s expressions. “What’s going on?”

  Archer handed her the unsigned slip.

  “They wouldn’t do it,” said Oliver.

  Adélaïde and Oliver looked at each other. No one said anything. Then a pen clicked.

  “What are their names?” she asked, pretending to read the paper.

  “You can’t do that,” said Oliver.

  Adélaïde stood up and wedged herself between them on the couch.

  “Sometimes you have to do what you want even when others think you’re crazy.”

  Oliver sighed. She had it backward. “Sometimes you have to do what you think is crazy because it’s what others want.”

  “We have to finish!” Adélaïde insisted. “Otherwise this has all been a waste of time.”

  Archer hesitated. Was it not enough that he would be sneaking out of his house and boarding a ship to Antarctica? Was he also going to add forging his parents’ signatures to his list of infringements?

  “If we get caught sneaking aboard a ship to Antarctica, do you really think the permission slip will make it any worse?” said Adélaïde.

  She was right. It wouldn’t make any difference. And they had done too much to turn back now, so he told her his parents’ names and she wrote them in neat cursive.

  “You’ll turn this in after lunch,” she said. “Mrs. Murkley won’t know the difference.” And that was that.

  “Now,” she continued without second thoughts. “I really think we should look for those trunks. The last place your grandparents were was Antarctica. There must be something in there. But I can’t do it tonight. I promised to help my father at the café. Amaury hasn’t arrived yet. We can do it tomorrow.”

  “Wait,” said Oliver. “I think you’re both overlooking something important. Do you really think it’s going to be so simple to slip away in the museum without her noticing? This is Mrs. Murkley we’re talking about. You know”—Oliver puffed out his cheeks, lowered his brow, and beat his fists against his chest—“that Mrs. Murkley.”

  Archer and Adélaïde giggled.

  “We’ll have to sneak away one by one,” said Archer.

  He would go first, followed by Adélaïde, and Oliver would bring up the rear. They would meet next to Tappenkuse and from there, make for the back exit and slip out into Rosewood Park.

  “But what if she notices the two of you are missing before I can get away?” said Oliver. “I’ll need a good excuse.”

  “Tell her we’re in the bathroom,” said Archer.

  Oliver narrowed his eyes. “I said a good excuse. And what if she comes looking for you? Or all of us?”

  “We mustn’t be ourselves,” said Adélaïde.

  “Who are we supposed to be?” said Oliver. “Alice, Charlie, and Molly?”

  “Masks,” she clarified. “We should make masks to cover our faces.”

  “That won’t fool her.”

  “It will from a distance.”

  “Animal masks,” said Archer. “The museum is filled with animals.”

  Adélaïde said she would be a lion. Archer chose a badger. Oliver, still thinking this somewhat pointless, didn’t have a preference, so Adélaïde said he would be a gazelle.

  “They’re very fast and that’s what you’ll need to be.”

  On Saturday afternoon, Oliver and Adélaïde climbed down the ladder to Archer’s room, and they spent a short while making masks. When they finished, they took them up to the rooftop, stood side-by-side, and slipped them on. Out of nowhere, and at the top of her lungs, Adélaïde let out a “ROAR!” It was perfectly primal and made the other two laugh. Archer wasn’t sure what sound a badger made, but his “Howl!” didn’t sound terribly out of place. Oliver was equally uncertain about the gazelle, so he simply cried, “Gazelle, gazelle!” over and over in short, staccato tones like a chirping bird.

  Adélaïde pushed up her mask. “The trunks?” she asked.

  Archer nodded. “But you’ll have to do as I say down there. If my mother catches us, it will ruin everything.”

  ♦ BEHIND CELLAR DOORS ♦

  Neither Adélaïde nor Oliver had been inside the lower rooms of Helmsley House before, and they kept stopping to stare at all of the artifacts and animals. Archer had to continually nudge them along. When they finally reached the top of the main stair, Archer told them to wait and he slowly crept down. The main stair ended between a doorway to the dining room and a doorway to a sitting room. He carefully stuck his head around the corner. Mrs. Helmsley was in the sitting room reading a book. They couldn’t go all the way down, not without being seen.

  “We’ll have to go over the side,” he whispered.

  Archer went first, hoisting himself over the banister and onto a chair next to the cellar door. Oliver followed and then Adélaïde, but Adélaïde lost her balance and toppled headfirst toward the badger. Archer and Oliver grabbed her, but not before she let out a soft yelp.

  “Archer?” Mrs. Helmsley called.

  Archer froze. Oliver glanced over his shoulder. They were holding the top half of Adélaïde. Her legs were on the chair and her face was up against the badger’s.

  “She’s pretty,” whispered the badger.

  “Shhh,” shushed Archer.

  “Who are you shushing?” whispered Oliver.

  “Is that you, Archer?!” called Mrs. Helmsley.

  A book shut. Footsteps approached the stairs. Archer and Oliver reeled. They quickly lowered Adélaïde and dove for the cellar door, shutting it just as Mrs. Helmsley entered the hall.

  Archer motioned for them to continue down the cellar stairs, but it was pitch-black and the others couldn’t see him. He felt along the wall for the shelf, and when he found it, he grabbed a flashlight and handed two more to Oliver and Adélaïde. At the bottom of the stairs, they shined their lights all around the cellar. It was a large, damp, stony vault filled with crates and creatures and strange machines. Massive piles surrounded stone supports that stretched up from the ground
and arched at the ceiling. It was like a dustier version of the upstairs.

  “It’s creepy,” whispered Oliver. “And it smells like old wet newspapers down here.”

  “Old wet newspapers?” questioned Adélaïde.

  Oliver shrugged. “A pipe burst in our house once and flooded my father’s office.”

  “It just smells old,” she said.

  “It is old,” whispered Archer. “All of this belonged to my grandparents.”

  Oliver went to hit the light switch. Archer stopped him.

  “She’ll see the lights under the door,” he said.

  “The flashlights are fine,” whispered Adélaïde. “But if she does come down, there are plenty of places to hide.”

  “That’s why I’m not sure if we’ll find the trunks,” said Archer.

  They decided to split up, and wove through the scattered stacks and piles. They searched with no success for half an hour. Archer’s flashlight flickered over a large black metal bowl. It was dented all around, with three stubby legs at the bottom. After inspecting it, he had an idea and whispered to Oliver, who spun around and blinded him with the light.

  “Sorry,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  Archer pointed his light at the black metal bowl. Oliver nodded, but wasn’t sure why Archer was pointing to it.

  “It’s nice,” Oliver said.

  “We can use it to make a fire,” said Archer.

  “Metal doesn’t burn.”

  “That’s the point.”

  Archer said it would be a good idea if they skipped a comfortable night of sleeping in beds and slept on the rooftop for practice. Oliver liked the idea more than Archer, but only because he was thinking about marshmallows.

  “And we’ll make a fire in this,” said Archer.

  Oliver looked over his shoulder at Adélaïde. She was digging against the far wall.

  “There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you about her,” he whispered. “Do you still ever think she’s lying? She doesn’t seem to know very much. And you saw how easily she duped that guard. What if she’s duping us?”

  Archer shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that,” he said.

  Adélaïde flashed her light at them. “Back here!” she whispered.

  Adélaïde had discovered there was more to the wall than it appeared. Two doors with stained-glass inserts were covering a hole five feet high and four feet across.

  “They might be in here,” she whispered.

  Archer handed Oliver his flashlight and helped Adélaïde slide one door over and then the second. The alcove went farther back than they could see, but sure enough, sitting just inside were all four scarlet trunks. And not only the trunks. The journals and packages tied with red string were sitting on top.

  “You found them,” whispered Archer.

  “They’re quite beautiful,” she replied.

  Oliver held all three flashlights, shining them over their heads as Archer and Adélaïde quietly dragged the trunks out of the damp alcove.

  “Your mother really didn’t want you to find those,” said Oliver.

  “I don’t think she made the hole,” said Adélaïde.

  “Just good use of it,” said Archer.

  They knelt before separate trunks and lifted the latches. Archer’s trunk was filled with his grandfather’s belongings—an old sweater, a dirty pair of boots, and a tin of milk candies that should have been eaten long ago.

  Adélaïde removed a gold medallion, depicting a woman with three heads, and a stack of photos from her trunk. “They’ve been everywhere,” she said, flipping through the photos. She paused at one of young Ralph Helmsley, sitting in a comfortable chair with a crooked smile and grease-stained cheeks. “You look like him,” she said, and handed it to Archer.

  Archer studied the photo. He did look like his grandfather. He slipped it into his pocket.

  Oliver lifted a wooden case from his trunk. Inside were corked bottles containing colorful powders and liquids. He removed one filled with a dark blue dust and pink specks.

  “What do you suppose this does?” he asked, showing it to Adélaïde.

  “Taste it and find out,” she replied.

  “Théo ate a basement mixture he didn’t understand,” said Oliver. “I’m not doing the same.”

  They were all disappointed after opening the fourth and final trunk. They were expecting to find equipment or something they could use, but aside from personal belongings, all of the trunks had been mostly filled with items that would be as useful as a glass eye. Archer did, however, find a leather satchel full of odd metal tools.

  “These will be useful,” he said.

  “But we’re trying to rescue your grandparents,” said Oliver. “Not carve the iceberg into a swan.”

  Archer’s grin quickly vanished. Footsteps sounded overhead. It was nearing dinnertime and they must be somewhere below the kitchen.

  “We should go,” he said.

  Oliver and Adélaïde piled everything back inside the trunks while Archer searched the boxes. He found the jade elephant house and dropped it into his pocket along with the photograph of his grandfather.

  “They would’ve hated this,” said Archer, as they pushed the trunks back into the alcove and slid the doors into place. “Those trunks don’t belong in a hole in the wall.”

  Oliver and Adélaïde agreed, but for now, that’s where they would stay. They dusted themselves off and stepped quietly back to the foot of the stairs.

  “Do you have sleeping bags?” Archer asked.

  Oliver did. Adélaïde didn’t.

  “I’ll find an extra one for you,” he said.

  “Why do we need sleeping bags?”

  “We’re camping on the roof,” said Oliver.

  Archer crept up the steps and poked his head out from the cellar door. Mrs. Helmsley was in the kitchen. He motioned and Oliver and Adélaïde hurried up the stairs.

  ♦ FIRE ON THE ROOFTOP ♦

  Adélaïde and Oliver returned to their homes after agreeing to meet Archer on the Glubs’ roof at eight o’clock.

  “Slow down,” said Mrs. Glub. “You’ll go blind if you keep eating like that.”

  “He’s hungry,” said Mr. Glub. “I used to eat like that at his age.”

  “Used to?” said Mrs. Glub with a smile.

  “I’m hungry,” laughed Mr. Glub. “He’ll eat like this at my age.”

  “We’re all sleeping at Oliver’s tonight,” Adélaïde told her father. “Just in case you need me.”

  “Sounds like a good time,” Mr. Belmont replied. “By the way, did you ever happen across that polar bear?”

  “I did,” said Adélaïde. “It’s actually quite nice.”

  Archer ate quietly. His father, as usual, was working late in the study and his mother was fussing over a stain on a linen napkin that wouldn’t come out no matter how she tried.

  “It’s Mrs. Murkley’s lipstick,” she said. “And it still won’t come out.”

  When he finished, he set to work, timing his movements with his mother’s. First he lugged the metal bowl from the cellar to the roof, which was more difficult than he thought it would be. He finally got it up the ladder, though, and returned to the roof shortly with two sleeping bags and pillows. His final trip was into the sitting room to collect wood from the fireplace. Once his arms were full, he hurried up the stairs and straight into Mr. Helmsley, who had just stepped from his study.

  “What’s all that for?” he asked with an odd twinkle in his eye. “Hope you’re not planning to set the roof on fire.”

  Archer dropped the wood and nearly fell backward down the stairs. “I’m—why did you say that?”

  Mr. Helmsley grinned. “No reason,” he replied. “Just be careful.”

  Archer stood quietly, watching his father saunter down the stairs. He slowly gathered the logs and climbed to the roof. Oliver and Adélaïde were waiting for him. Oliver looked annoyed. Adélaïde was laughing.

  “What’s going on?” Ar
cher asked.

  Oliver groaned and took a seat on his sleeping bag.

  “My father told her the Rosewood Zoo story,” he said. “When I was four and that monkey pulled my head through the bars.”

  “Did that really happen?” said Archer, trying not to laugh.

  “Yes, they had to cut the bars to get me out,” said Oliver. “That place is horrible. It’s a wonder they’re still in business with the way they run things.”

  “‘Now you mustn’t get too close to the bars, Ollie,’” Adélaïde giggled, imitating Mrs. Glub.

  Oliver went pink.

  “Please don’t call me that,” he said. “I hate it when they call me that.”

  Archer smiled and dropped his pile of wood on top of Oliver’s.

  The sun was gone and the stars were out, and they had to use flashlights to see what they were doing. Both Archer and Oliver had made fires in their fireplaces before, but making a fire on the rooftop in the wind proved a bit more challenging. They argued over the specifics, and after a number of failed attempts, Archer managed to get a small fire sparkling in the metal bowl. Adélaide hovered over them with a bucket of water while Oliver tore pieces of The Doldrums Press to help it along.

  “Listen to this,” he said.

  THE DOLDRUMS PRESS

  GIRL VANISHES DOWN WISHING WELL

  “That’s awful,” said Adélaïde.

  Oliver agreed. He tore the story out and tossed it into the flames.

  The fire was now doing quite well, but Archer wouldn’t stop fiddling and poking at it.

  “You have to let it breathe,” said Oliver. “Take that stick off the top and put it over there.”

  “I think it’s burning fine,” said Adélaïde.

  Archer finally agreed and left well enough alone. He moved the pile of wood next to his sleeping bag and tossed new logs on the fire whenever it slowed. All things considered, the fire burned nicely in that metal bowl and they pulled their sleeping bags in tight around it, watching as the flames flickered and the wood popped.

  “How long did you say the voyage would be?” Oliver asked.

  “About three weeks,” said Archer.

  “And how long are we going to be there?” Adélaïde asked.