A Llama in the Library

by Johanna Hurwitz

I knew my mother was making hamburgers at home, but there were no hamburgers on this menu. Most of the dishes had foreign-sounding names like Filet of Sole Amandine, Pasta Primavera, Chicken Provencal, Veal Marsala, Duck à l’Orange. I picked Chicken Livers Madeira, which was served with “toast points.” My grandmother used to cook chicken livers whenever we went to visit her, and I hadn’t eaten any in ages.

  “Yuck!” exclaimed Justin. Like dandelion jelly, chicken livers didn’t appeal to him.

  The waiter came over to us. He picked up the discount coupons. “The ten-dollar dinner includes only an entrée. Soup, salad, and dessert are extra. And of course drinks are extra too.”

  “No Cokes.” Justin sighed. He took a sip of his water.

  “Rats,” I said.

  “No rats on the menu tonight,” the waiter said seriously. But when I looked at his face, I could see he was smiling.

  We ordered our entrées. Alana selected the chicken, and Justin picked the duck. Then we sat waiting for our food and feeling a little bit sheepish.

  I turned my head and looked over at the other diners. “No ghost tonight,” I told Justin.

  “Not yet,” he said. “But you wait. I’m not giving up.” With that he got up from the table and left Alana and me.

  “Where do you think he went?” I asked Alana as I leaned over and picked up Justin’s napkin, which had fallen from his lap and landed on the floor.

  She shrugged. “The john?” she said.

  But when ten minutes passed and Justin hadn’t returned, I got up from the table. “I’m going to look for him,” I told Alana. “Maybe he’s sick.”

  I followed a sign that pointed to the men’s room. I called out his name, but there was no answer, and I didn’t see him anywhere.

  Hesitantly I opened the door to the one cubicle. It was empty.

  I left the rest room, and as I started back to our table, I remembered that Justin had said he wanted to investigate the secret staircase. I went into the back dining room that hid the entrance to the staircase. There were no guests eating in the room, so the light wasn’t on. The cabinet was in place, and it seemed impossible that Justin could have gone up the stairs. Unless he had remembered my description of how the stairway led up to the second floor and had gone upstairs to find it from that direction.

  Quickly I ran to the main entrance of the inn and hurried up the stairs. There were many doors on the second floor, and I couldn’t recall which door was the exit to the stairway. There was no one around I could ask. I opened the nearest unmarked door. It was a linen closet full of sheets. I closed it and moved on, looking for the next unmarked door, which turned out to be a closet full of cleaning tools. I was really beginning to feel silly. Justin was probably downstairs eating his supper with Alana. I decided to open just one more and then go back downstairs.

  I opened a door, to a room that contained a sink. That’s it, I thought. I’m going downstairs. But just at that moment I heard a muffled cry. I ran along the hallway listening. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I couldn’t see anyone or anything that could be making those sounds or the accompanying thumps that I now heard too. I moved down the hallway and found myself in front of still another door. I admit I was a little scared, but I took a deep breath and pulled the door open.

  A disheveled Justin was standing there.

  “Where were you?” he asked accusingly.

  “Where was I? I was looking for you. What happened?”

  “I found this entrance to the secret stairs, and just as I was walking down them, the ghost shut the door behind me. I was on the stairs in the middle between the two doors, and it was totally dark with the door closed. I made my way downstairs, but I couldn’t get the cabinet to open. And when I got upstairs, I couldn’t get this door to open either.”

  “I don’t think it was the ghost who shut the door,” I said to him. “I bet one of the chambermaids walked by and gave the door a good slam. They don’t want any of their guests going in here in the dark. Someone could fall and get hurt.”

  “It was a ghost,” Justin insisted.

  “You do look kind of pale, like you’d actually seen a ghost. But that’s probably because you were scared of spending the night in the dark stairway.”

  “If I’m pale, it’s because I’m hungry,” Justin protested. “Let’s go eat.”

  I thought of Alana sitting alone at the table wondering what had happened to us. We hurried back down the stairs and into the dining area. Sure enough, there was Alana eating her dinner, and Justin’s and my food waiting at our empty places.

  “I decided to begin without you,” Alana said.

  “That was smart,” I replied. “Ten dollars is a lot of money to pay for cold food.” The food on my plate was arranged in a pattern with the triangles of toast pointing to the food in the center of the dish. It looked like an advertisement in one of my mother’s magazines. However, my cold chicken livers didn’t taste at all the way my grandmother prepared them.

  “Not ten dollars. Eleven fifty,” Alana corrected me. Our parents had said that even if the meal cost ten dollars, we had to leave a 15 percent tip for the waiter. Luckily all our parents had been so amused at the thought of their fifth-grade kids eating at this place that they had offered to pay for the meals. “It can’t hurt to learn about gracious living,” my dad had said as he gave me the eleven dollars and fifty cents. “Don’t forget to use your best manners so you don’t embarrass your mother and me.”

  I guessed that meant I’d have to eat everything on my plate. There was a pile of mashed squash, some rice, and a few baby string beans. They all were cold. I turned to Justin. His food was probably just as cold as mine, but nothing discourages his appetite.

  “This duck is great,” he said. “My mother never makes it.”

  I picked up one of the toast points. Cold toast in a restaurant tastes just like cold toast at home.

  “Don’t you like the squash?” Justin asked when he saw the pale orange mound still on my plate.

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll eat it,” he offered. A moment later it had disappeared.

  As we finished our meal, the waiter came over to us. “Was everything satisfactory?” he asked. It wasn’t his fault that my food was cold, so I didn’t say anything.

  “It was great,” said Alana, smiling at him.

  The waiter smiled back at all of us. “I have some good news for you,” he said. “Mr. Grinold told me that he’s going to throw in free desserts for all of you. I’ll bring the dessert tray to the table,” he added as he removed our empty plates.

  “Free dessert!” said Justin, smiling proudly as if he’d arranged the whole thing.

  “Look at that!” exclaimed Alana.

  We turned to see that the waiter was pushing a cart toward our table, and on it were eight different desserts.

  “Let me tell you what’s here,” the waiter said. There was chocolate mousse cake, cheesecake, apple pie, pecan pie, key lime pie, and some other things that I’ve forgotten.

  “Oh, boy,” said Justin.

  “Waiter,” called the elderly man at the table across the room.

  “Take your pick,” said the waiter, winking at us. “I’d better go see what that gentleman wants.”

  “First dibs on the pecan pie,” said Justin.

  “Hey, ladies first,” I responded. “Alana should get first pick.”

  “She’s not a lady. She’s just a kid like us,” said Justin.

  “That’s okay,” said Alana. “I want the key lime pie.”

  I took the chocolate mousse cake. It was an excellent reward for eating those cold veggies and cold livers.

  “Okay. Next I’m taking the cheesecake,” said Justin.

  I looked at Alana.

  “I’m too full,” she said. “I can’t eat any more.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked. When she nodded, I reached for a slice of apple pie with a sweet white sauce on it. After that I was too full to eat another bite. But Justin wasn
’t going to stop.

  “I want to get our money’s worth,” he explained as he ate each of the remaining desserts on the tray. I noticed that he secretly had to open his belt buckle and open the button on his slacks, but he kept on going until there was nothing left on the cart.

  It was an amazing feat. Alana and I watched Justin and then looked at each other in amazement. I put my hand under the table and found her hand. I gave it a squeeze, and she squeezed my hand back.

  “I’m sorry I was so long,” the waiter said, returning to us. “That gentleman accidentally knocked over his glass of wine onto his wife’s dress and I had to get . . .” The waiter didn’t finish speaking.

  Justin looked up from the last crumbs of the last dessert. “This was the greatest meal I’ve ever eaten,” he said.

  “You ate all of them?” the waiter asked, pointing to the dessert cart.

  “Not me,” said Justin. “We shared them. They were terrific.”

  We got the bill, and I realized that although all our parents had remembered about extra money for a tip, none of them had thought about the tax that would be added. As a result, much of the money that was meant for the tip had to go to pay our bill.

  When my father came to pick us up, I explained the situation to him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill.

  “Should I ask him for change?” I wanted to know.

  “No,” he said.

  On the way home Justin complained that he wasn’t feeling well.

  “Ghost fever,” I suggested.

  “Pig fever,” said Alana.

  “Can’t be,” moaned Justin. “I didn’t eat any pork.” But of course he’d eaten just about everything else.

  9

  Nature Takes Its Course

  No matter what the calendar claims, winter in Vermont starts at the end of October and doesn’t end until March or April. We get loads of snow, and every year I make a snowman for my sister. This year, because of Mom’s pregnancy, my father worried all the time that she would slip and fall on the ice when she went outside. So he kept me shoveling a good path to our car. I had to wake up half an hour earlier each morning, just to be sure I had enough time for shoveling and feeding the llamas. I hated the shoveling, but the llamas always put me back in a good mood.

  Even though they couldn’t make snowballs or go skiing or do any of the other snow activities, the llamas loved the snow. They spent a lot of time outside their shed, and they exhaled thick clouds of steam. I attached our old sled to Ethan Allen’s halter, and he pulled April along. “Don’t be jealous,” I told Ira. “Next year we’ll have a new baby, and I’ll pick up an old sled at the flea market or at a tag sale. Then you can take someone for rides too.”

  Justin celebrates Christmas, and my family celebrates Hanukkah. But we both got the same present this year—snowshoes! We had a great time tracking through the woods in them. I was surprised to discover that Alana’s family celebrates both holidays. That’s because one parent is Christian and one is Jewish. “Wow. Does that mean you get twice as many presents?” I asked her as she tried out my new snowshoes.

  “No,” she said, taking them off. “But I’m putting snowshoes on my list for next year. I want a pair.”

  Alana often came over to my house. She liked to do things with me, and she had loads of patience to play with April too. My mom was happy to let Alana cut out paper dolls or braid April’s hair or whatever else kept my little sister busy. That’s why Alana happened to spend the night of March 31 in a sleeping bag on the floor of April’s bedroom. Alana’s parents had driven up to visit her sister at college in Burlington that weekend, and they planned to stay overnight at a motel.

  When Justin’s mom called on Monday morning, April 1, to notify us that schools were closed, Alana and I cheered. There was no fresh snow outside, but there was plenty of mud. We could hardly believe the news. Despite 147 inches of snow (not all at once, of course), we hadn’t missed a single day of school. The plows and the sanders always kept the roads open. Even the morning we woke to 19 inches, school had not been closed.

  “First the milk trucks couldn’t get out to get the milk from the farms,” Justin’s mother reported. “Then the bus drivers complained that they didn’t think they could get the buses to complete their routes. Everyone says this is the worst mud season they can remember. And that’s no April Fool’s joke!”

  “Thanks for calling. I’ll pass the word on to the Hendersons,” my mom said. The parents have a phone chain and one person calls another when there’s an unexpected school closing.

  “Mud season is here,” I explained to Alana. This was her first spring in Vermont. “What happens is that the thawing makes driving on dirt roads impossible. Gars get stuck in the mud, sort of like the quicksand scenes you see in the movies. I never heard of anyone getting killed in the mud, but it sure makes life inconvenient if your car’s brakes need to be replaced because they became packed with mud.”

  It seemed like a holiday, eating breakfast in my pajamas the way I sometimes do on the weekend. I wasn’t even self-conscious to have Alana see me that way. Besides, she was wearing her flannel pajamas too while happily putting dandelion jelly on a slice of toast. It feels as if she’s part of our family.

  “This is the greatest,” she said, licking a bit of jelly off her fingers. I remembered how Justin had reacted to that very same homemade jam, and smiled. Alana was a much better guest, I thought.

  Dad said that he was expecting an early-morning delivery from a carpet warehouse in New Hampshire. “Since they’re driving on state highways, I’m pretty sure they’ll make it,” he told us.

  “Drive carefully,” Mom said. She stood up and put her arms around Dad. She was so big, with the baby inside her, that she couldn’t get very close to him.

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said over his shoulder as he left. “No one ever got hurt from mud.”

  “Adam,” Mom said, turning to me, “put on some clothes. I’m going to put your pjs in the wash this morning.”

  “Okay,” I answered as I drained the last of my milk.

  Alana and April went off together to get dressed too. As I knotted the laces of my sneaks, I thought about calling Justin. Maybe he could join us on our unexpected holiday from school. Then I realized that if the buses didn’t think they could make it through the mud, there was no way Justin’s father would want to drive him over. As for biking, forget it.

  Maybe Alana and I could bake cookies this morning, I thought. That would be fun.

  “Adam? Adam, where are you?” I suddenly heard my mom calling me from the kitchen.

  “Here I am,” I responded, coming from my room. “Where did you think I—” I stopped in the middle of my sentence. My mother was standing bent over the kitchen table, and her face looked pale.

  “Mom,” I asked, “are you all right?”

  She nodded her head, but she sure didn’t look okay to me.

  “Help April find a nice cartoon program on the TV” she said. That was the best proof of all that something was wrong. My mom is always discouraging us from sitting in front of the television set. And a nice cartoon program? She says too many cartoons will rot your brains.

  “Are you sick?” I asked my mother anxiously.

  “Not sick,” she said, trying hard to smile.

  “It’s the baby, isn’t it?” said Alana, who had joined us.

  My mother nodded.

  The baby? In a state of panic I ran to find April. I sat her down in front of the TV She didn’t know anything out of the ordinary was happening. She sat happily on the couch and put her thumb in her mouth. I left her watching The Flintstones and ran back to my mother. She was sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Your mother is getting cramps,” Alana whispered to me. “She says they’re quite strong. That means the baby’s on its way.”

  “When?” I asked dumbly.

  “Now,” my mom answered.

  I knew the baby was due in the next ten days, but I wasn
’t expecting anything to happen when I was at home with my mom and my dad wasn’t.

  “What can we do to help?” Alana asked.

  I looked at her gratefully. I wasn’t alone. But even though we’d both seen that sex education film at school, what did we really know about childbirth?

  Mom bit her lip and looked as if she were trying not to say anything.

  “I can’t reach your father,” she said after a minute. “So I called the medical center, and they said they’d try to get someone over here as soon as possible.

  “Call Dad again for me,” she said, handing me the telephone receiver. “Maybe he’s reached the store by now.”

  I pushed the buttons quickly. There was no answer. “He could still be on his way to the store,” I said. “Or maybe he ran out for a cup of coffee. Or maybe . . .”

  “Maybe he’s stuck in the mud,” Alana said, remembering what I’d told her about the dangers of mud season. I knew she must be right.

  “I guess you’ll just have to wait,” I said help lessly.

  “That’s the first thing you learn about babies. They don’t wait. They come when they’re ready,” Mom said.

  She started to pull herself up from her chair, and Alana gave her an arm for support. “I’m going to need your help, kids,” she said as she led the way into Dad’s and her bedroom. Mom lay down on their bed.

  “How are you feeling now?” I asked, but my voice came out in a squeaky nervous tone.

  “All right at this moment,” Mom said. “But put the radio on. I want some loud music.”

  “What’s that for?” I wanted to know.

  “It will muffle the noise if I shout out. I don’t want to scare April.”

  Mom’s words scared me. “What’s going to happen?” I asked.

  “Nothing, I hope,” Mom replied. “But it’s just possible that the baby is going to be born right here in our house instead of in the hospital as planned.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Fine!” Alana gasped, and I watched the color drain out of her face. “That’s the most amazing thing I ever heard.”

  My mother smiled at Alana, but then her expression changed as another cramp went through her body.