The Penderwicks on Gardam Street (14 page)

Batty was disappointed. Her hiding skills were not as great as she’d hoped.

“Cheer up,” said her father, cleaning one last blob of tomato sauce off her chin. “You’d have fooled me if I weren’t so wise and all-knowing. But tell me, why are you here? Running away from home again? More rabbit trouble?”

He was referring to the time she’d run away from Arundel that past summer because she thought she’d murdered one of Cagney’s pet rabbits. “No, no rabbits. I’m only here to spy on you—that is, on Marianne. Rosalind and Jane don’t know anything about her, and I’m going to find out and tell them and then—” She stopped, suddenly remembering about honor.

“Then what?”

He sounded truly curious, not at all annoyed, and he
was
Daddy, after all. “Well, since they don’t understand how you’re acting, they wonder if you’re going crazy.”

“How about you? Do you think I’m going crazy?”

“No.”

“How about now?” He made a face with his eyes rolling and his nose scrunched up and his mouth wide open in a loony grin, and Batty shrieked with laughter, and then he was tickling her, and she tried to tickle him, and everyone was laughing, and Hound was barking, and the pizza box and napkins were flying everywhere, until they all ran out of breath and flopped happily back into their seats.

Then her father said, “You want something to tell your sisters about Marianne? How about this: She’s sensible and clever, but eager in everything. Her sorrows and joys can have no moderation.”

“I don’t know that last word.”

“Rosalind will. Maybe I’d better have you memorize it.”

And so he did, until she could say it all the way through without hesitating.

“—can have no moderation!” she finished on a note of triumph.

“Perfect! And by the way, if your Aunt Claire asks, tell her, too. And you know what, Batty? You and I haven’t had an adventure together, just the two of us, for a long time. Let’s do that now. Where do you want to go?”

“Oh, Daddy, you know!”

He did know, and that’s where they went.

“So where did you go?” asked Rosalind. She and Jane had pounced on Batty as soon as she got home, and dragged her away for questioning.

“First we went to the store for carrots, and then we visited Eleanor and Franklin,” said Batty. Eleanor and Franklin were horses that lived on a nearby farm, and Batty had been visiting them with her father for as long as she could remember. “They were glad to see me and Hound, and Eleanor ate most of the carrots, but I picked clover for Franklin, and I told them all about Jeffrey.”

“But what about Marianne?” asked Jane.

“She wasn’t there.”

“We realize that, honey,” said Rosalind. “Jane meant, what happened to Daddy’s date with Marianne?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you hear him call her to cancel? Did he say anything about that?”

“No.” Batty’s happiness was oozing away. She’d forgotten about the date. What kind of a secret agent was she, anyway? But then she remembered that she hadn’t failed altogether. She had the description of Marianne that Daddy had given her. She told the others.

“She’s sensible and clever, but eager in everything?” Jane repeated. “Her sorrows, her joys, can have no moderation?”

“It doesn’t sound like Daddy,” said Rosalind. “Are you sure that’s what he said?”

“He made me memorize it.”

“Memorize it? Why?” Rosalind turned to Jane. “Does that make any sense to you?”

“No.”

“We’re in big trouble,” said Rosalind.

“Yes, we are,” agreed Jane. “Daddy’s definitely going nuts.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In Between the Stars

S
KYE RETURNED FROM BOSTON
that evening laden with gifts that Jeffrey had sent home for the family. There was a new eyeglasses case for her father.

“So you won’t lose your glasses all the time,” explained Skye. “I told Jeffrey you’d just lose the case, but he said we could only try.”

“Very wise,” said Mr. Penderwick, admiring the new case.

For Rosalind, Jeffrey had sent a pair of rose clippers. “For your Fimbriata bush. Oh, and Churchie said to tell you that Cagney’s going to start teacher-training classes in January. She thought you’d be pleased.”

“I am.” Rosalind glowed, remembering long talks on summer nights about Cagney’s teaching, and how nice it had been to talk to a mature man instead of—well, instead of an immature boy.

Skye reached into the gift bag again and pulled out a gigantic bone for Hound, who shoved it under the couch for safekeeping. Next out was a great roll of neckties, which Skye handed to Batty.

“Jeffrey’s mother is sending him a tie from every country she and Dexter go to on their honeymoon.” Skye paused while everyone shuddered at the idea of Dexter and Mrs. Tifton—no, Dupree!—on a honeymoon, especially a honeymoon that covered lots of countries. “Since Jeffrey doesn’t wear ties, he figured you might like to have them.”

Batty did like having the ties—she was already smoothing them out and looking at the funny pictures on each. She chose one with tiny Eiffel Towers to drape across Hound’s back.

Only Jane was left, but it was obvious to her that the gift bag was now empty, which meant that Jeffrey had sent everyone a present but her. She felt like crying. But did Rainbow cry when the priest pointed the knife at her chest? No. Well, she wouldn’t cry, either.

Skye folded up the bag and pulled an envelope out of her back pocket.

“This is for you,” she said, giving it to Jane.

Inside the envelope was a piece of sheet music. The notes were all in pencil, and at the top was a title in Jeffrey’s handwriting.

“‘Prelude to Sabrina Starr,’” read Jane without understanding what she was looking at.

“Jeffrey wrote you a piano piece.” Skye didn’t know she was pouring balm on a badly wounded heart. “If you’d visited instead of me, he would have played it for you. But since you didn’t, he sent you the sheet music. I told him you can’t read notes, but he sent it, anyway.”

“I will learn to read notes!” Jane reverently clasped it to her. He hadn’t forgotten her! “I will treasure it always!”

“Where’s your present, Skye?” asked Batty.

Skye murmured vaguely, for she didn’t want to share her present, yet didn’t want to lie about it, either. No one noticed her evasion. They were all otherwise occupied, Mr. Penderwick with hunting for his glasses to put into the new case, Rosalind with actively not thinking about Tommy, Jane with trying to fathom the sweet mysteries of musical notes, and Batty with deciding which of her new ties was her favorite—the one with little tulips, the one with little pagodas, or the one with little cheeses.

Seeing her chance, Skye slipped out of the room and up the stairs. Her weekend in Boston had been wonderful, but she had missed her room, at least until she opened the door and went in. What the heck?—whole piles of Jane’s flotsam and jetsam had drifted into Skye’s side of the room. Someday she really would put a white line down the middle of the room, she swore it. For now, though, she shoved aside the worst of it, then resolutely turned her back on the mess.

“Now for my present,” she said.

It was in her suitcase, wrapped carefully in a nest of tissue paper—a mug emblazoned with the name of Jeffrey’s school, WELBORN-HUGHES. Skye gave it a quick polish with her sleeve, then opened her sock drawer, for she was going to hide the mug where no one else would see it, or worse, get any ideas about drinking from it. She wasn’t even going to drink from it herself, not ever. She was going to keep it just to help her remember this weekend. Every minute of it—the ride on the subway, when they almost lost Churchie because Jeffrey kept daring Skye to switch cars. Her first-ever taste of potato pancakes, at that tiny delicatessen where Jeffrey ate five bagels with lox and cream cheese. The visit to the Museum of Science, where Jeffrey and Churchie patiently sat with her twice through the show at the planetarium. The pickup game of soccer in the hallway of Jeffrey’s dormitory. And hiding with Jeffrey under his bed while his dorm master searched high and low for the rowdies who’d been playing pickup soccer in the hallway. What a perfect weekend it had been, the most perfect imaginable.

She slid the mug under the socks in her bureau, and just in time, too, for as she closed the drawer, Batty arrived with Funty, who was now wearing the Eiffel Tower necktie. Hound followed closely behind, with at least four more neckties trailing off his back.

“I’m enjoying my present very much,” said Batty. “Did you tell Jeffrey how I am?”

“Yes.” Skye started unpacking the rest of her suitcase.

“Did you tell him about my red wagon and how much Hound and I adore it?”

“Yes.” Though not so much about them adoring the wagon as about how annoyingly underfoot it always was.

“Did you tell him about me and Ben spying on Bug Man?”

“Strangely enough, I didn’t mention that.”

“Did you tell him I’m going to be a dinosaur for Halloween?”

“It’s much too early to talk about Halloween. It’s a long time from now.”

“It’s not.”

“Yes, it is. Now good night and thanks for stopping by.” Skye firmly escorted Batty, Funty, and Hound out of her room and closed the door behind them.

Halloween! Rats on Batty for bringing it up. Skye’s wonderful weekend in Boston was now truly over, for she’d just been yanked back into the harshness of real life. Why? Not because of Halloween itself. No, because of what was happening the night after Halloween.

“The Sixth Grade Performance Night,” she groaned. She hadn’t thought of it once in Boston, but now it was back, its horror undiminished.

Suddenly needing fresh air, Skye grabbed her binoculars, climbed out the window and onto her roof, and gazed woefully out over a dark Gardam Street. What was she going to do about
Sisters and Sacrifice
? She looked up at the moon, but no help was to come from that quarter. Despite what she’d said to Batty, Halloween and the awfulness that came after it weren’t that far away at all. The Sixth Grade Performance Night was only two and a half weeks away—actually, nineteen days…actually, eighteen days and twenty-three hours—but she could have eighteen years and twenty-three days, and she would never be ready to get up on a stage as Rainbow. She’d already forgotten the lines she’d managed to memorize before she went to Boston, and even if she could re-memorize them, what about
point dramatically upstage
and
embrace Grass Flower
(Melissa!) and
gaze upon Coyote with love
(Pearson!) and
look noble while priests prepare for the sacrifice
?

“Stupid Aztecs. Stupid sacrifices. Stupid play,” she said out loud. “Stupid Jane.”

Skye knew it was low and cowardly to blame Jane. It was her own fault, since she’d asked Jane to write the play in the first place. And if Jane wrote such a good play that it was chosen for Sixth Grade Performance Night? That wasn’t Jane’s fault, either. Just as it wasn’t Mr. Geballe’s fault that he’d chosen Skye to be Rainbow. Though Mr. Geballe probably was blaming himself for that, now that he was getting headaches at every rehearsal.

She screwed up her face in an imitation of Mr. Geballe with a headache. “Can’t you put some emotion into your voice, Skye? Remember, you’re about to sacrifice your life for your sister. Try to imagine how that would feel!”

How could she possibly imagine how that would feel? No one she knew had ever been sacrificed. And especially to sacrifice herself for Melissa Patenaude! And that wasn’t even the most humiliating part of the play, for in the final scene she had to tell Pearson that he was the only boy she’d ever loved or ever would love, let the maize be her witness. True, she also got to tell him that since she had to devote her life to her people, he should go ahead and marry her beloved sister, Grass Flower, but even that wasn’t enough to wipe out the shame.

“Beloved sister. Bah!” Skye glowered through her binoculars at the stars and reconsidered the falling-off-the-roof idea.

However, before she could once again weigh the pluses and minuses of a broken leg, there was a thump beside her, and Asimov appeared out of the darkness, purring and butting his head against her knee.

“Silly cat, why don’t you understand that I can’t stand you?” she said, rubbing his ears. “Forget about me taking you home again. There aren’t any football drills to avoid tonight.”

But there was something else to avoid, for moments later Jane was leaning out the window. “Ready to dive back into rehearsals for
Sisters and Sacrifice
?”

“That would be just great, but I have to take Iantha’s cat home.”

“Maybe when you come back.”

“Maybe.” Skye hoisted Asimov onto her shoulder and inched her way over to the tree. She’d climbed down this tree a hundred times, but never with a hefty cat along for the ride. Well, maybe he’d scratch her on the way down, startling her so that she’d fall and break her leg without having to do it on purpose. That would solve lots of problems. Asimov wasn’t in a scratching mood, though, and Skye made it to the ground with both legs intact.

“It’s not too late for you to bite me and cause an infected wound. No one would expect me to be Rainbow with an infected wound,” she told Asimov hopefully.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t in a biting mood, either, and soon Skye was next door, gloomily unharmed, ringing the doorbell. Iantha opened the door, laden down with Ben in his pajamas.

“Here’s Asimov,” said Skye. “He was on my roof again.”

“Oh, Asimov,” said Iantha. “Ben, tell him he’s a bad cat.”

Ben had other ideas. “Pretty!” he said, pointing at Skye.

“I wish he wouldn’t say that,” said Skye, putting Asimov down and shooing him into the house.

“But you
are
pretty,” said Iantha.

“Please don’t,” said Skye, then knew she’d been rude. “I’m sorry. I just don’t think I am, and I don’t care, anyway. I’d rather be amazingly intelligent.”

“Martin—your father says that you are.”

“He’s biased, and I can prove it. What does he say about Batty?”

“That she has untapped creative genius.”

“You see? Blindly biased.” Skye sighed. How nice it must be for Iantha to already know she was amazingly intelligent. No one could ever force an astrophysics professor to be in an Aztec play.

Iantha must have heard the sigh, for she opened her door wider, inviting Skye to come inside. Which Skye did, for even having to look at Ben in his pajamas was better than going home to play practice.

“Did you have fun in Boston?” asked Iantha. “Jane told me you went to visit your friend Jeffrey.”

“I did, thank you.” Then, without meaning to, Skye burst out. “I didn’t want to come home!”

“Oh, dear.”

“Not because I don’t like my family or anything, but because I have to star in a play in almost nineteen days, and I’m dreading it.”

“The Aztec play,” said Iantha. “Jane told me about that, too. She said it’s quite well written.”

“She
would
say that.” Skye looked around for something to kick in frustration, but it’s hard to find the right thing to kick in other people’s houses. She should go home and kick some of Jane’s stuff. “I’m sorry to be so grumpy. I’d better leave.”

“Please don’t. I have something I want to show you, if you don’t mind waiting while I put Ben into his crib.”

But Ben was thrusting out his chubby hands at Skye. “Duck,” he said.

“Or, better, you can put him into his crib while I set up my something.” Iantha plopped Ben into Skye’s arms. “His room’s at the top of the steps. Come into the backyard when you’re done.”

Horrified, Skye watched Iantha disappear into another room. She didn’t know anything about holding babies. The only one she’d held in all her life was Batty when she was a newborn, and even that had been as seldom as possible, for Batty had always wailed when Skye picked her up. What would she do if Ben started to wail?

Gingerly, she shifted his weight until he rested against her shoulder. He snuggled in and made a gurgling noise that she hoped didn’t mean he was throwing up, but when she checked, it seemed to have been a happiness gurgle. So everything was all right thus far, but she still had to get him upstairs without damaging him. Up the steps she crept, holding Ben like a bomb that could go off any second. At the top, she stopped and sagged with relief—they were almost to his room and the end of her responsibility.

His little room was bright blue, with constellations painted on the ceiling in gold and shelves piled high with ducks, big and small and in every color a duck could possibly be. Skye cared only for the crib in the corner, though, and got Ben to it as quickly as she could. Carefully—carefully!—she laid him down beside yet one more duck, a tiny white one who’d been waiting patiently for his master’s return.