The Templeton Twins Make a Scene

by Ellis Weiner

  Dean D. Dean took a step away from her, opened his eyes wide in a protest of innocence, and said to no one in particular, “Well, I like that, I must say. I return this girl’s dog to her, and this is the thanks I get. Yes, young lady, I am planning something. I’m planning to go back to my home, which—for your information—is at 2430 Golden Apple Road.”

  He turned and strode off—well, actually, he hobbled, using the cane to take the weight off his left leg—down the walk toward his car. But before getting in, he turned back to the twins and said, “That’s right. I said 2430 Golden Apple Road, which is the address of the location of my residence. Where I live. You’re welcome.”

  In the kitchen, while Cassie slurped up water from a dish on the floor and Abigail knelt beside her, stroking her back, John said, “This doesn’t make sense. If he took her, why did he bring her back? You’d expect him to keep her to force us to do something.”

  “Maybe he thinks your dad will share that invention with him if he’s nice,” Manny said.

  Abigail gave a little laugh. “Forget it. Dean D. Dean doesn’t know how to be nice.” She shook her head. “Also, why did he keep telling us 2430 Golden Apple Road?” Suddenly her eyes grew wide and she stared at John and Manny. “The rehearsal! Let’s go!”

  FOR FURTHER STUDY

  Which answer best describes the list of thoughts the Narrator provided to help you figure out what the twins thought was “weird”? Clear, well-organized, and logical.

  Kind, generous, and sensitive.

  Dashing, clever, witty, droll, deft, astute, and wise.

  All of the above, plus brilliant.

  True or False or Believable? A Lie, Obviously, Narrator (Everyone: Yes?): Dean D. Dean’s explanation of how he found Cassie is believable and persuasive.

  TFBALONEY

  Keeping in mind the three principal causes of the War of 1812, when Dean D. Dean appeared at the door with Cassie, wasn’t it amazing?

  23. “Nonpareil” is, as I’m sure you suspected, French. It is pronounced “Nahnpah-RELL” and means “excellent” or “great.” It is also the name of a chocolate candy covered with millions of little white dots of sugar, which sounds delightful but which, frankly, I can’t stand.

  If you have taken part in the production of a big musical, you will be familiar with what I am about to describe. If you haven’t (because you think you are somehow above such activities, or you “don’t have time,” or you “don’t like having fun,” or whatever your supposed excuse is), then you are missing out on one of the most exhilarating experiences a person can have. And you likely have no idea what a “dress rehearsal” is.

  One thing it is not is an occasion in which women’s garments practice how to be women’s garments. That is to say, it is not a “rehearsal” for “dresses.” Rather, a dress rehearsal—of a play or musical or an opera—is a rehearsal in which everything is done exactly as it will be in the actual public performance. The actors wear their actual costumes and makeup. The actual scenery and props are used. If there is a band or an orchestra, the musicians play their actual parts. The actual light and sound cues are executed. Everybody really means it.

  The atmosphere of a dress rehearsal consists of a combination of joyous celebration and nerve-wracking tension. Everyone is thrilled that the “big night” is almost here. But everyone is even more anxious over the fact that, from now on, it is too late for major changes.

  Can you imagine such a thing? No, you cannot. That is why I insist you take part in a musical at your school, church or synagogue, army base, summer camp, community college, or astronaut training academy.

  How, you are no doubt wondering, did this night’s hastily assembled dress rehearsal for Let’s Live Life!, with its full-scale, real-time debut of the Live Performance Horizontal-Tracking Individual Close-Up Lens (LPHTICUL) turn out?

  Thank you for asking. It was a disaster.

  Here is what happened: The twins and Nanny Manny Mann arrived at the theater to find a scene of enormous activity and excitement. It seemed that everyone was moving here and there and everyone was talking (or shouting) at the same time.

  Abigail found all this tumult a little unsettling. We are not surprised at this. She was a brainy, writerly type, who enjoyed quietly figuring things out in her head. Whereas John—who, as a drummer, was used to being calm in the center of a lot of noise and hectic activity—found the hustle and bustle of this dress rehearsal interesting. Manny Mann started out thinking that the general excitement and high spirits of the event were a lot of fun, and then soon found himself even more interested by the sight of several very pretty actresses.

  When the twins wandered onstage and inquired as to where their father was, someone pointed up toward the ceiling. The Professor was up on a catwalk, giving the LPHTICUL a last-minute inspection.

  This does not mean that he examined the device while taking a cat for a walk. A “catwalk” is a narrow walkway built above the floor in theaters (and factories) that enables workers to examine machinery and equipment up near the ceiling. The Professor had climbed up a tall ladder and walked calmly out onto the catwalk high above the set and out of sight of the audience. The twins watched as he examined the device. He seemed perfectly pleased with what he saw.

  Suddenly a burst of voices came from further “upstage” (away from the audience), where the twins could see various grown-ups standing around a young man. They heard people crying “What?!” and “You can’t be serious” and “Oh, come ON . . .”

  Porter Shorter, the stage manager, detached himself from this group and called up into the catwalk area, “Professor! Need you here. We have a situation.”

  The twins watched as the Professor crossed back to the ladder and climbed down. He joined Porter Shorter, who was standing with Claire Light, the lighting director; Roger Prince, the director; and a young student. Porter nodded to the student and said, “Tell the Professor what you just told us.”

  “I was crossing the quad, like, five minutes ago,” the student said. “And this guy comes up to me and says, ‘Tell everyone in the theater that Steve Stevenson wants them to know that somebody has sabotaged24 the close-up lens and they should check it out.’ ”

  “What did he look like?” Roger Prince asked.

  The student shrugged. “Just some guy. He had a beard and was wearing sunglasses.”

  Then everyone (except the Professor and the twins) started talking at once. Finally the Professor signaled for quiet and, when the tumult had died down, said, “I was just examining the device. And it looks fine. I wonder if this could be a prank.”

  Porter Shorter snorted. “Only one way to find out.”

  Everyone agreed that they couldn’t lower the device, take it off its track, and inspect it in a workshop. That would take too long and tie up the stage, making it impossible to rehearse the show. Instead, Claire Light and the Professor agreed to go back up to the catwalk and inspect it there while the rehearsal got under way.

  That is why, when the twins sat in the audience with a few dozen people from the Theater department, thrilling to the overture and waiting excitedly for the moment in the opening song when the LPHTICUL would descend and demonstrate what it could do, they were bitterly disappointed. Because it did not descend. The show just went on without it.

  They weren’t the only ones disappointed. Everyone was. The actors and the dancers were disappointed. The crew and the orchestra were disappointed. And, perhaps because of that, many little things started to go wrong. Dancers slipped. Actors forgot their lines. Musicians hit wrong notes. A piece of scenery fell over. A lighting fixture burned out.

  There is a saying in the theater that goes, “Bad dress, good show.” It means: If you have a bad dress rehearsal, you’ll have a good opening night. I don’t know whether it’s true, but that night, at the main theater at the Thespian Academy of the Performing Arts and Sciences, everyone hoped it was true, because this was one of the worst dress rehearsals in the Academy’s history.

&nb
sp; And, of course, there was the matter of the LPHTICUL itself. What if it didn’t work? Then the future and the fate of TAPAS itself would be in doubt.

  The only good news came during the intermission. The twins ran backstage to check in with their father, and arrived in time to hear the Professor telling Porter Shorter that he and Claire Light had indeed found an act of sabotage against the LPHTICUL.

  “That Stevenson guy was right,” Claire Light said. “The sabotage was in the lighting booth. Someone had thrown the breaker and rerouted the instrument into a bogus dimmer.”

  What does this mean? I do, of course, know. I wonder if I should tell you. Very well: A “breaker” is an important switch that automatically switches itself off in an emergency. It “breaks” the circuit, which cuts all electricity to the light in question, so that the light doesn’t burn out or get damaged. When the breaker is thrown, the light doesn’t go on—and it can’t go on until the breaker is switched back on, or “reset.” It is very possible that you yourself have breakers in your house or apartment. Ask your chief financial officer, great-aunt, or staff electrician to show you.

  In this situation, just before a dress rehearsal, there would be no normal reason for anyone to throw the breaker, so everyone knew this was not only unusual, but possibly sinister.

  What does it mean that someone “rerouted the instrument into a bogus dimmer”? I’ll tell you, but first: Isn’t that a wonderful sentence?

  It means, basically, that someone had unplugged the LPHTICUL from its proper control and plugged it into some other one, so that, even if the breaker had been reset, the device still wouldn’t work.

  These two facts could only mean one thing: Someone had tried to interfere with the Professor’s invention.

  “What are we going to do?” Porter Shorter asked.

  “Well, we fixed the problems in the booth,” Claire Light said. “But we haven’t had time to really check everything out. I think we shouldn’t use it tonight. After the rehearsal, we’ll go over it top to bottom.”

  “That will mean that the first time we actually use it will be during the opening tomorrow night,” Roger Prince said.

  She shrugged. “I know. But we have no choice.”

  “We don’t want to risk anyone getting hurt,” the Professor agreed. “But it’s odd. This was a very minor bit of mischief. It was easy for us to discover and easy to fix. It’s not exactly what I would call ‘sabotage.’ ”

  Everyone acknowledged the strangeness of this, but there was no time to discuss it. They all dispersed to get ready for the second act, which went just as badly as the first.

  FOR FURTHER STUDY

  Using hand gestures, explain why you think the Narrator would be excellent in a lead role in a big musical.

  If a dimmer dims a light and a breaker breaks a circuit, what does a cruller do?

  Have you ever sabotaged a theatrical performance? If so, create a beautiful ballet explaining the name of the production you sabotaged, the date, the location, and the reason for the sabotage.

  24. Do you know what “sabotaged” means? And even if you do (which I doubt), do you know how to pronounce it? It goes without saying that I know both of these things. It is pronounced “SA-bo-tahzh,” with the final syllable enunciated in the same way as the last syllable in “garage.” Both of these words are French, and the “ahzh” sound is a very common sound in French words. You may also have heard that sound in the (French) word “decoupage,” which is a craft technique for covering a surface in pictures. “Sabotage” means to tamper with or damage (which is pronounced “DAM-idge,” not “dah-MAZH”) something so that it won’t work. A nice sentence full of French words, then, would be, “Hey, I have a good idea! Let’s go out to the garage and sabotage the decoupage.” I urge you to say this to someone the next time you go to France.

  It was Saturday. There was no school. The Templeton twins spent a pleasant morning neither playing the drums nor working on cryptic crossword puzzles, but running around, yelling and kicking and shouting. Can you guess what they were doing? Oh, please, you can so.

  The Templeton twins spent the morning playing soccer. You will, or will not, be surprised to learn that Abigail’s favorite position on a soccer team was as a forward, while John preferred to play defense. These positions have an interesting connection to the twins’ hobbies, and it is unfortunate that we have no time to discuss that at the present moment.

  Let us simply note that, for Abigail, the strategy and clever figuring-things-out required to get the soccer ball through the defense, past the goalie, and into the goal appealed to the part of her mind that unlocked puzzles. For John, the basic mechanical demands of blocking the other team’s advance, getting the ball, and transferring it to other players on his team was as satisfying as playing a section of good, accurate timekeeping and then pulling off an interesting little transitional move on the drums.

  I see that I have done what I said I would not do—I have discussed how the twins’ preferred soccer positions were in some way related to their hobbies. You have very cleverly manipulated me into doing that, by not saying anything and just letting me blab on and on. Well, fine. I’m sure you’re very pleased with yourself, but I can assure you it won’t happen again.

  After lunch, the Professor was catching up on his mail and the twins were arguing over whose turn it was to wash the dishes, when the phone rang. The Professor was needed at the theater to deal with certain technical matters. Rather than take the twins with him to “hang around” the theater for six hours, he decided to let them stay in the house, alone and unsupervised, until around five o’clock, when he would return and bring them to the theater for the grand official opening of Let’s Live Life!—and, of course, for the first-ever public display of the Live Performance Horizontal-Tracking Individual Close-Up Lens.

  And so it was—isn’t that a splendid phrase?—that, sometime in the middle of the afternoon, the Templeton twins were alone at home when the doorbell rang. When the twins (and Cassie, barking in a particularly ridiculous manner) answered the door, they beheld a United Express Delivery person holding a large package.

  The package looked heavy but turned out to be very light. “Templetons? Need a signature.” He held out a clipboard and Abigail signed her name as John and Cassie watched from the open door. The delivery person left.

  Suddenly, at the end of the walk, there was Dean D. Dean. He was still wearing the black, bootlike cast on his left foot. In his left hand, along with his cane, he held the collar and leash he had used when returning Cassie the day before. He waved a gigantic dog biscuit and called out, “Cassie! Here, girl!” And before John could stop her, Cassie dashed out the door, past Abigail, and right on up to Dean D. Dean! Can you imagine?

  He gave her the biscuit and, as she gnawed on it, clipped the collar around her neck and started pulling her toward a black SUV that was parked right in front of the Templetons’ house. Dean D. Dean looked up and called, “There’s a beach ball in that box. Get your nanny to drive you to the park and throw it around. Meanwhile, we’ll be at my house at 2430 Golden Apple Road.”

  He opened the passenger door and Cassie jumped in. He hobbled quickly around to the driver’s side door, got in, revved up the car, and drove off. There was someone in the backseat, but the twins couldn’t see who it was.

  “We have to call the police,” Abigail said.

  “Wait.” John looked not only vexed, but extremely vexed. “How did he know there’s a beach ball in the package?” Suddenly he looked at his sister. “He sent it! He sent it so he could be waiting there when the guy delivered it, so he could lure Cassie out!”

  Abigail impatiently pushed the box aside. “John, come on! I’m serious! We have to call the police.”

  The phone rang. Abigail went to the little table in the hallway and answered. Immediately a familiar voice said, “And no police.”

  She motioned John over and switched the phone to its speaker. She said, “Listen, Dean—”

&nbs
p; “I said, do not call the police. Or we kill the dog.”

  Another voice could be heard in the background, saying, “What? No. Forget it.”

  “Dan—”

  “I’m not killing anyone’s dog!”

  Dean D. Dean said to Abigail, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up.

  As Abigail hung up, John said, “I don’t think the police will do anything, anyway.”

  “Why not?” his sister protested. “They stole our dog!”

  The phone rang again. John answered. “And no police,” the voice said. “Or we will sell the dog.”

  The background voice said, “Dean, how? Once the police get here we won’t have time to sell the dog!”

  The voice sighed and said to John, “Or we will LET THE DOG RUN AWAY. Okay? Everybody got that?” And he hung up.

  “We have to go get Cassie,” Abigail said. “Right now.”

  “How?” John said. He snapped his fingers. “He told us how.” John hurried into the kitchen, where a phone number had been attached to the refrigerator door with a magnet. He brought the number and Abigail dialed.

  The person answering the phone barely had time to say hello before Abigail said, “Manny? It’s us. Dean D. Dean just stole Cassie. We need you to drive us to go get her.”

  Manny immediately said, “I’ll be right over.”

  While the Templeton twins anxiously waited for Manny Mann to arrive, several things happened. Abigail began to fear the worst and started to get weepy. John had to calm her down. Then John thought about what had just happened and started to get weepy. Abigail had to calm him down. Then they had an urgent discussion about how they would go about rescuing Cassie . . .

  And it is here that the latest lesson John learned from his hobby paid off.

  You will recall that incorporating the use of his new cymbal into his practice routine had the effect of making his other cymbals seem a little less important. He worried about them less. And because of this he was actually able to do more.