by Maria Parr
“You write it, Trille. You’ve got such good handwriting,” she said when she’d been into the shop to fetch a pen and paper. One of her pigtails was hanging off to the side at a funny angle, but she looked very determined. I felt very skeptical.
“What should we write, then?”
Lena lay down on the wooden table outside the shop and started thinking so hard that I could almost hear it.
“Write ‘Wanted: a dad,’” she began.
I sighed. “Lena, don’t you think—?”
“Write it!”
I shrugged and did as she said. After that, Lena went quiet for a long time, by her standards. At last, she cleared her throat and spoke loudly and slowly: “Must be nice and like boiled cabbage, but anyone welcome as long as he is nice and likes boiled cabbage.”
I frowned. It sounded strange.
“Are you sure we should write about cabbage, Lena?”
No, Lena wasn’t sure. But he would have to be nice.
In the end, the ad looked like this:
Right at the top we wrote Lena’s phone number, and then she stuck it up, just below the dog advertisement.
“You’re nuts!” I said.
“I am not nuts. I just like to speed things along,” answered Lena.
Lena really had sped things along. Just half an hour after we got back to her house, the phone rang. Actually, I don’t think Lena had thought very carefully about what we had done until that moment.
The phone kept on ringing.
“Aren’t you going to get it?” I whispered eventually.
She stood reluctantly and picked up the receiver.
“H-hello . . . ?”
Lena’s voice was as thin as a piece of thread. I put my ear up to the phone too.
“Hi, there. It’s Vera Johansen here. Was it you who put up an ad at the general store?”
Lena looked at me wide-eyed and then coughed. “Yes . . .”
“Great! Then I’ve got something that will interest you. He’s still a bit nervous, but, you know, he hasn’t peed inside once in the past two weeks!”
Lena’s chin almost fell down to her stomach. I could see her tonsils.
“Does he pee outside?” asked Lena in alarm.
“Yes, isn’t he clever?”
Vera Johansen sounded very proud. She had to be crazy, I thought. A dad who didn’t pee inside! Lena’s face took on a strange look, but she probably thought she had to pull herself together a bit, so she cleared her throat and asked a little sternly if he liked boiled cabbage. There was silence for a moment at the other end.
“No, actually, I’ve never fed him that. Is your mom home perhaps? Surely she’d like to have a say in the matter too?”
Lena sank to her knees. Vera Johansen said she would bring him over at five-ish so we could have a look at him. It would be easier to decide then.
After she had hung up, Lena stayed there, seated, staring into space.
“Does your dad pee outside, Trille?” she asked after a bit.
“Very rarely.”
Lena lay down on her stomach and banged her head on the floor.
“Oh, fish cakes! What’s Mom going to say?”
We soon found out. The door banged wide open like a thunderclap, and in came Lena’s mother with the advertisement in her hand and flushed red cheeks. She looked like Lena.
“Lena Lid! What is this?”
Down on the floor, Lena didn’t move.
“Answer me! Are you completely nuts?”
I noticed that Lena didn’t have much to say.
“She’s trying to speed things along,” I explained.
Luckily, Lena’s mom is used to being Lena’s mom, so she isn’t shocked by things like this. I looked at her and thought that there must be a lot of people who would like to marry her. She has a silver nose stud.
“I’ll never do it again,” Lena promised from down below.
Her mom sat down on the floor too. They tend to do that in their house.
“Oh, well. I managed to take it down before anyone saw it.” She laughed.
I saw that I would have to help out again: “Vera Johansen is bringing him at five o’clock.”
That afternoon, Lena’s mom called Vera Johansen seventeen times. Nobody picked up. The clock was ticking. From quarter to five, all three of us sat around the kitchen table, waiting. The minute hand crept toward the twelve, notch by notch.
“You’re making this up,” Lena’s mom said.
Then the doorbell rang.
A smiling Vera Johansen stood on the doorstep, wearing a red blouse, her head tilted at a friendly angle. We tried to see past her. None of us could spot any dads, but you never can tell. Maybe he was having a pee around the corner.
“Good afternoon,” said Lena’s mom.
“Good afternoon, good afternoon! Well, now, you must be excited to see what I’ve brought with me!” said Vera, almost shouting.
Lena’s mom tried to smile. Unsuccessfully.
“A-actually, we’ve changed our minds,” Lena stammered, but Vera Johansen was already on the way to her car. It’s impossible to stop ladies like her.
Lena isn’t so easy to stop either, as it happens. She jumped out onto the doorstep and sprinted past Vera.
“Listen, we don’t want him! They’re supposed to pee indoors!”
Just then, we heard a tiny, delicate bark from the car. A puppy’s head appeared in the window.
“A dog?” whispered Lena.
“Yes.” Vera Johansen frowned. “Wasn’t it a dog you wanted?”
Lena opened and closed her mouth several times.
“No, I wanted—”
“A chinchilla!” her mother shouted from the door.
The puppy that Vera Johansen had brought was sweeter than a chinchilla. Lena wanted to keep him, but, as her mom said, you have to draw the line somewhere. Afterward, Lena’s mom spent a long time fixing the motorcycle in order to calm down. Lena and I sat on the washing machine and watched. Now and then she asked us to pass her tools. Otherwise we stayed silent.
“You can’t just randomly put up ads, Lena,” her mom said eventually. “Didn’t you think about who we might have ended up with?”
I thought about all the bachelors who do their shopping at the general store.
“Besides, we haven’t got space for a dad here,” continued her mom from under the bike.
Lena disagreed. They could tidy up the cellar.
“There are enough men in this house already. We’ve got Trille,” her mom insisted.
Lena said that was the stupidest thing she had heard in a long time.
“Trille’s not a man!”
“What am I, then?” I asked.
“You’re a neighbor.”
Uh-huh, I thought, wishing she’d said I was a best friend instead.
Almost all the grown-ups in our area sing in the mixed choir. A mixed choir, according to Dad, is a choir in which everyone is mixed together, both those who can sing and those who can’t. Dad is the conductor and tries to get them to sing as nicely as possible. In summer, our mixed choir goes off and meets other mixed choirs at a choral festival. Then they all mix together in chorus and sing for a whole weekend. The choral festival is so much fun that everyone in our mixed choir looks forward to it for weeks in advance.
As for the children, we also look forward to it, because all the grown-ups except for Grandpa are away for a whole weekend, and Mom declares a state of emergency in Mathildewick Cove. This summer it would be extra crazy, as Minda and Magnus were going to be away at camp at the same time as the festival. There would be only the little ones and Grandpa left in the whole cove.
“It’s going to be a sight to behold,” Grandpa said, chortling when he found out.
“Lars, my dear, that’s what worries me,” grumbled Mom, who was wondering whether to drop the whole choral festival, out of sheer anxiety at what we might get up to while they were away. Lena, on the other hand, thought it was terrific. Grandpa was goin
g to babysit her too.
“Thank goodness you sing like a crow that’s crashed!” she told him when she and her mother came over to our house the evening before the festival in order to lay down some rules.
It was a long evening. When the grown-ups had finished lecturing Lena, Krølla, and me thoroughly and at length about being good and not making ropeways while they were away, it was Grandpa’s turn.
“The children must wear life jackets if they’re in a boat and helmets on their bikes. There’s bread in the freezer. Our cell phone number’s above the phone. . . .”
Mom kept on talking. Grandpa kept on nodding.
“. . . and, Lars, my dear, none of your grandchildren or young neighbors are to ride in your moped box,” she said finally. Grandpa didn’t nod at that, and I swear I saw his fingers crossed behind his back.
At five past eight the next morning, the sun came in through my window and tickled my nose. A smell of boiled fish and coffee was coming all the way into my room. Grandpa’s smell! I looked out at the sea, which was bright blue with small waves, then I ran downstairs. Krølla and Lena were already sitting at the kitchen counter, eating bread with fish and mayonnaise. He only eats fish, my grandpa. That’s why the cats are happiest downstairs with him. They share the same favorite dish.
Grandpa spread so much butter on my bread that it looked like cheese.
“Get that grub down you, Trille, my lad. We’re going for a ride. You can’t see the world from the kitchen table!”
Grandpa’s moped looks more or less like a backward tricycle with a big box at the front. Grandpa usually carries things in the box, but when it’s the choral festival, grandchildren and neighbors get to have a ride in it.
The first job that day was to pick up two cans of paint that Grandpa had ordered from town. They would be coming across the fjord on the ferry.
We decided we would pretend that the paint cans were full of gold coins. The Royal Mathildan Agents had to hide the cans in Mathildewick Cove because the deadly Balthazar Gang was after them.
“The pirate king Balthazar will do anything to get his hands on those coins,” I said, narrowing my eyes.
“He eats live rabbits whole!” Lena whispered slyly.
“And fish,” added Krølla, with eyes as round as saucers.
Not even Mom would have spotted that there were three children, all with their own water pistols, in Grandpa’s moped box when we started our journey to the ferry landing. We were huddled at the bottom with a woolen blanket over our heads.
Grandpa’s moped rattles almost endlessly. It feels like your tongue is vibrating inside your mouth. I was so thrilled with all the excitement that my legs hurt. Finally the moped stopped, and Agent Lena threw off the woolen blanket, which fluttered toward the ferry slip.
“Freeze!” she shouted, pointing her pistol dramatically at the ferry.
There aren’t usually all that many people on the ferry. I know that because Dad works there, and we go with him for a couple of trips now and then. We expected to see four or five cars and Able Seaman Birger. But not today. Today there was a family reunion at one of the farms, and more than twenty old ladies were staring terror-stricken at Lena and me.
“Uh-oh,” murmured Grandpa. “Hurry, quick as a flash, and let’s get that paint!”
In a panic, I slalomed among all the flowery skirts, finally reaching Able Seaman Birger and the paint.
“Th-thanks,” I stuttered in a very unconvincing agent’s voice, and snatched the cans from him. I could hear Mini-Agent Krølla a short distance away, shouting “Bam bam bam” at the poor ferry passengers.
“It’s the whole Balthazar Gang,” whispered Lena excitedly when I had finally completed my assignment.
“It’s Hillside Marie and Ola’s wife, Lovise. I went to confirmation class with them,” Grandpa muttered, lifting his hand to his helmet in a cheerful salute. Our mini-agent kept on shouting “Bam” until Lena pulled her clattering back down into the box. Grandpa started the moped with a lurch, and its rattling was worse than ever as we began our escape to our fortress back in Mathildewick Cove. It was like being in an electric mixer.
After a while, Lena thought it was safe to remove the woolen blanket. I squinted against the sun. Grandpa was leaning flat over the handlebars, giving the moped full throttle. Occasionally he turned to look behind. I peered past him and saw that we were taking part in a car chase. The roads where we live are narrow, and Grandpa was driving down the middle. It was impossible for cars to pass. And even though he was driving as fast as the moped would go, that’s not especially fast. Behind us was a whole line of traffic from the ferry, all going to the family reunion. They hooted and honked. It was like a long parade with us at the front. I could see Grandpa grinning inside his helmet. He was showing off for his old classmates.
“Hold on tight!” he shouted suddenly. “We’re taking a shortcut!”
Grandpa made a sharp left turn onto the old tractor track that cuts across the fields to our house. It was so bumpy I thought I might dislocate something.
“Yee-haw!” shouted Lena as we roared into the farmyard. We skidded to a halt, spraying gravel everywhere.
Safely back home, we turned the house into a fortress. Grandpa was our commander in chief and went around with a rolling pin under his belt. We put the cans of paint in the middle of the living-room floor, then built defenses in front of all the doors to the house so the Balthazar thieves would never get in. We used almost every single piece of furniture we have. Krølla, who was standing guard, kept shouting that the thieves were coming. Then she would almost scream with laughter when we pretended to shoot out the window, especially when Grandpa used the rolling pin as a bazooka.
“Choral festival is the best,” I said to Lena, but Lena said it would be even more fun if someone really did try to break in.
Then Grandpa suggested inviting Auntie Granny over for a cup of coffee.
“She’s here! The old pirate queen,” whispered Lena.
We lay as still as statues on a table in Minda’s room and peered out the window. Auntie Granny’s head was right below us. She rang the doorbell. Lena and I carefully inched our pistols out the window.
“You’re never getting in!”
Lena sounded very fierce, and Auntie Granny looked up in surprise.
“Oh my, Trille darling. Aren’t you going to open the door?”
I explained to her briefly that she was a powerful pirate queen. Auntie Granny put her bag down in bewilderment. In a secret compartment inside it, there were hard candies.
“What about Grandpa, then?” she asked after a moment.
The tip of a rolling pin came into sight through the small bathroom window next to the front door.
“Get lost, Lady Balthazarina!” Grandpa shouted, so loudly that the shower stall shook.
Auntie Granny stood in shock for a moment. Then she said something about smoking us out, and vanished.
A long time passed. We couldn’t see Auntie Granny anywhere. Lena thought she had gone home, but Grandpa was sure she was up to something and we should keep our guard up. Besides, there were no more buses to Auntie Granny’s house.
Then suddenly I smelled something that sent a chill down my spine. I ran upstairs to the ropeway window with Lena in hot pursuit.
“Smoking haddocks! She’s only gone and made waffles!” Lena blurted out.
So she had. Down in Lena’s yard, Auntie Granny had equipped herself with a camping table and an electric waffle iron. A long cable trailed away through Lena’s kitchen window.
“She’s flipping broken into my house!”
Lena was absolutely astonished. There was already a stack of waffles on the table. Now and then, Auntie Granny flapped a tea towel, wafting the smell toward us in great clouds. It gave me goose bumps all over. We stayed as quiet as church mice as we watched the pile of waffles get bigger and bigger. Even Grandpa sat down, disheartened, and looked out the window. None of us was keeping an eye on Krølla. All of a sudd
en we caught sight of her out in the yard! Auntie Granny gave her a hug and sat her on a lawn chair. Then she spread butter on a freshly cooked, delicately soft waffle and sprinkled loads of sugar on top. I almost started crying.
“We surrender,” Lena said determinedly.
“Suffering sticklebacks, no, we don’t!” exclaimed Grandpa, even though Auntie Granny has told him that he’s not allowed to say “suffering sticklebacks” when we’re listening. “Go to the cellar and fetch your fishing rod, Trille.”
Then Grandpa called Lena’s house. Auntie Granny heard the phone ringing and peered up at us.
“Should I get it?” she asked Lena, who nodded vigorously.
Auntie Granny lifted out the next waffle and disappeared inside.
“Ah, hello. I am calling from the National Federation of Hip Patients,” Grandpa said in a frightfully high-pitched voice. “We were wondering if you would be generous enough to consider purchasing some fund-raising scratch cards.”
While he was speaking, he pointed desperately at the window. Auntie Granny clearly didn’t want any scratch cards, so we didn’t have much time.
“Psst! Krølla!” I whispered, letting out the fishing line.
Krølla didn’t understand right away that she had to attach waffles to the hook. She is so little, after all. It took us quite a while to explain, but we managed to hoist up two waffles before Grandpa had to hang up and Auntie Granny came back outside. Lena wolfed one of them down as soon as we got it over the windowsill.
“We’ve got to share!” I said, almost shouting.
“It’s impossible to share two waffles between three people, Trille!” Lena explained with her mouth full.
Grandpa and I had to make do with one. In the yard, Krølla was on her fifth.
After ten minutes, Grandpa fixed a pillowcase to the end of a broom and raised the white flag out the bedroom window. We surrendered.