Welcome to the BSC, Abby

by Ann M. Martin

  It wasn’t what I’d expected at all. It wasn’t something from the dark side.

  It was something from the past. Our past. I knew it, from the faint, familiar smell that wafted up out of the box as I bent toward it. The smell of a particular cologne …

  Isn’t it funny how a smell can make you remember a whole world? I froze there for a moment, and saw Anna and me. We were sitting at a table, a beat-up old table, no fancy hardwood table with a butcher-block top like our new kitchen table now. A birthday cake was on the table and its candles were still sending up little trails of smoke after being blown out. Paper was being torn and our mother was laughing and Anna and I were saying, “Happy birthday, Daddy! It’s a surprise!” and I said, “It smells good!” and Anna said, “Don’t tell, Abby ! Don’t tell!”

  Then Daddy held up the bottle of cologne. “My favorite,” he declared. “Now and forever.”

  The box contained our father’s things. After all the cleaning out and throwing away and starting a new life that our mom had been doing ever since he died, there it was.

  Full of things she hadn’t thrown away.

  My eyes met Anna’s. We both wondered if Mom had forgotten about the box.

  Then Anna reached down and pulled out our father’s ancient Dress Campbell plaid flannel bathrobe and the faint scent of his cologne came wafting up with it more strongly. She held the bathrobe to her nose for a moment, then mutely held it out to me.

  I laid the soft, worn flannel against my cheek. Then I lowered it to the table and squatted next to the box. “What else is in there?” I asked, surprised at how steady my voice sounded. “Let’s see.”

  We found a pair of our father’s glasses in a leather case with his initials stamped into the leather, and a big manila envelope with the words Woodstock 1969 written on it. Inside the envelope was a ticket stub and a grass-stained, mud-blotched, tie-dyed T-shirt.

  “Wow,” I whispered.

  I reached in and pulled out our dad’s wrist-watch, remembering how he was always losing it and then finding it again in weird places.

  Anna held up his harmonica.

  We found a college engineering paper with an A + written at the top, and a hand-painted necktie with a peace symbol on it. And at the very bottom, in a plain silver frame, was a picture of Mom and Dad at their wedding.

  “They look so young,” said Anna in a stunned voice.

  She looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears. “I miss him,” she said.

  “Yeah.” I stroked the robe idly. “You think Mom knows about this box?”

  Blinking back her tears, Anna began to replace things in the box carefully. “She must,” she said. “I mean, these are some of Dad’s favorite things. At least we know some of them are. I bet the other stuff was special to him, too.”

  “Yeah, stuff from B.U.,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

  “B.U.?”

  “You know. Before Us.” I smiled a shaky smile.

  Anna managed to give me a small smile back.

  We packed everything back into the box. Then I got the masking tape from the kitchen drawer and we resealed it.

  “She must have forgotten,” said Anna. “She wouldn’t just leave this box of Dad’s stuff around like that.”

  “She probably did forget,” I agreed. Then a sudden gust of anger shook me. “How could she?” I cried.

  It had hurt so much opening that box without warning.

  Anna didn’t answer. I didn’t expect her to. I didn’t have an answer myself.

  “Attic or basement?” asked Anna.

  “Attic,” I replied. “It’s cleaner.”

  My sister nodded. I didn’t add, “And Mom never goes up there.” I didn’t have to.

  We’re twins. We knew. We knew we wanted to put the box away in a safe place. We knew we weren’t going to tell Mom about finding it. It was our secret. At least for now. Until we weren’t quite so angry with her for forgetting the box and letting us find it like that.

  I wondered if the smell of our father’s cologne would linger very long in the kitchen.

  I wondered if Mom would notice.

  Or had she forgotten that, too?

  Mary Anne is a longtime fan of the Arnold twins, and they’re pretty fond of her, too. After all, Mary Anne is the one who introduced them to Elvira Stone, the goat who lives on the Stones’ farm near Mary Anne’s and the Arnolds’.

  So Mary Anne is, in a way, responsible for the Arnolds’ idea for their booth.

  “Mary Anne, Mary Anne, Mary Anne!” The Arnolds, who do not often scream, were nevertheless speaking very loudly and enthusiastically as they hurled themselves toward Mary Anne when she arrived to baby-sit.

  That was a surprise. Another surprise was that the twins were dressed alike.

  The Arnold twins, who are eight and in second grade at Stoneybrook Elementary School, look exactly alike. They have brown, bowl-cut hair, and brown eyes, and they both wear silver rings on their right pinkies and beaded I.D. bracelets on their left wrists. The only noticeable differences are that Carolyn has shorter hair and a tiny mole under her left eye, and Marilyn has a tiny mole under her right eye, like mirror images. But they do not dress alike. They used to, but not anymore.

  Until that day.

  They were wearing blue denim work shirts, overalls, and black high-top sneakers. Carolyn had tied a red kerchief around her neck. Marilyn was waving hers like a flag.

  “Hi, you two,” said Mary Anne. “What’s up?”

  Behind her, Mrs. Arnold laughed. “You’ll see! And it’s okay for them to use the Polaroid camera.” She reviewed the standard “the-numbers-for-emergencies-and-where-to-reach-me-are-on-the-fridge” drill. Then she gave each of the girls a hug and hurried out the door in a jingle of jewelry.

  “So, what is it?” Mary Anne asked. “You look like farmers!”

  Marilyn looked very surprised. “How did you guess?”

  Carolyn said, “We’re supposed to look like farmers, Marilyn.”

  “You’re going to become farmers?” asked Mary Anne, pretending to be very surprised herself.

  “No!” Marilyn and Carolyn answered at the same time and burst into gales of giggles.

  When they’d stopped laughing, Carolyn explained, “It’s for our booth at the fair. We thought of it and our parents said it was okay if Mrs. Stone said it was okay, so —”

  “— can we go and visit Mrs. Stone and Elvira? Please, please, please, you’ve got to or I’ll go out of my mind,” Marilyn finished the sentence.

  “Hmmm,” said Mary Anne. “Well, I think that can be arranged.”

  “Hooray!” Marilyn cheered.

  “I’ll get my notebook,” said Carolyn. Carolyn wants to be a scientist and she often takes a notebook with her so she can “make observations.”

  “Will you tie my handkerchief around my neck for me?” asked Marilyn.

  Carolyn returned just as Mary Anne finished tying the kerchief to Marilyn’s satisfaction. Carolyn held up a Polaroid camera. “It develops pictures right away!” said Carolyn.

  “I want to carry it,” Marilyn demanded.

  “Okay. Then I can make notes in my notebook,” said Carolyn.

  The three of them started down Burnt Hill Road. But Carolyn didn’t make any notes along the way. Both she and Marilyn were too busy describing their great idea for their booth.

  When Mary Anne heard it, she had to admit that it was Kristy-class. She just wondered if Mrs. Stone would think so, too.

  They reached the Stones’ farm, passing a late season vegetable garden complete with a scarecrow dressed in overalls very similar to the twins’. As usual, chickens were pecking around outside the barn. Beyond was a pigpen and a field where cows were grazing.

  Mrs. Stone had on overalls, too. She also wore heavy gloves and was carrying what looked like a big pair of pliers.

  “Hi,” called Mary Anne as they walked into the farmyard. “I hope we didn’t come at a bad time.”

  “A very goo
d time,” said Mrs. Stone, smiling and pushing back the brim of her cap. “I just finished fixing the wire on the gate to the pasture. Time to take a break.”

  She looked at the twins and smiled. “I bet you’ve come to see Elvira.”

  “How did you know?” asked Marilyn. “Could you tell by the way we’re dressed?”

  “N-noo. But you two and Elvira really hit it off the last time you came to visit.”

  “We don’t just want to visit,” said Carolyn. “We have something very, very important to ask you.”

  Mrs. Stone led the way to Elvira’s pen. “Go ahead,” she said. “What is it?”

  “We want to borrow Elvira,” said Carolyn.

  “It’s for a very, very good cause,” added Marilyn. “Please?”

  “You should explain why,” suggested Mary Anne.

  “Oh. For the carnival,” said Marilyn. “The one to raise money to pay for the Arts Fund so we can have music and art at school.”

  “For all the schools in Stoneybrook,” corrected Carolyn.

  “I’ve heard about the carnival,” said Mrs. Stone. “But how can Elvira help?”

  “We want her for our booth.” Marilyn held up the camera. “We want to take people’s pictures with her.”

  “And we’re going to bake special goat cookies to sell,” Carolyn continued. “Goat-shaped cookies. For people. We were going to make cookies out of oats for Elvira, but the veterinarian, Dr. Smith, said that that would be bad for a goat.”

  Marilyn nodded solemnly. “She said that it could make Elvira very, very sick to eat even too much of the food she was used to. It could even kill her!”

  “That’s true,” said Mrs. Stone, smiling. “It’s why I’m very careful never to let any of Elvira’s visitors feed her more than just a small amount of her regular food. And I feed her a little less at her regular feeding times when I do. I don’t want a sick goat — or a fat one, either!”

  The girls nodded solemnly, their eyes fixed on Mrs. Stone.

  “You’ve done your homework,” said Mrs. Stone, both amused and impressed. The four of them had reached Elvira’s pen. Elvira, one of the cutest animals on earth, and one who knew it, trotted over immediately to have her head scratched.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Stone, “that is some idea!”

  Marilyn and Carolyn looked at her anxiously.

  Slowly Mrs. Stone smiled. “I don’t see why not. As long as it’s okay to have a goat at the carnival …”

  “Our mother called and asked,” said Carolyn triumphantly. “The carnival’s going to be at the old fairgrounds at the edge of town. So Elvira will be just fine!”

  “Well, I think Elvira would love it. I’ve got a portable pen around here somewhere. I can bring it and Elvira and some hay and so forth to the carnival and then I can stay and help out, too.”

  “That’s great!” Marilyn exclaimed.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” said Carolyn. She held up the camera. “We brought the camera so we could practice.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Stone, “let’s fire away.”

  It didn’t take much practice. Elvira was a natural. Mrs. Stone took out her kerchief, which was blue, and tied it around Elvira’s neck. Mary Anne took pictures of Marilyn and Carolyn with Elvira, and then of the two of them together, and then of Mrs. Stone and the twins with Elvira.

  Elvira was a pro, chewing on a wisp of hay through the whole thing.

  The pictures were pretty cute, too. “Excellent advertisements,” said Mrs. Stone, holding one of them up. “You can put them on your sign outside the booth.”

  “Our sign!” Marilyn looked stricken. “We haven’t even made that yet! And we’ve got to make cookies, too. We’d better get going.”

  “You still have plenty of time,” Mary Anne assured her. “You don’t have to do everything today.”

  But the twins insisted it was time to go. “I’ll tell Mrs. Arnold,” Mary Anne called as they practically dragged her away. “Thank you!”

  She and Marilyn and Carolyn made it home in record time. Soon after, they were in the kitchen, going to work on the first batch of Goat Cookies. They twins had a cookie cutter that was in the shape of the head of a dog with pricked-up ears. On each cookie, the twins painstakingly redesigned the ears, dividing them into one round part and one pointed part, to look like goat horns.

  “Beautiful,” said Marilyn when the first batch of cookies came out of the oven.

  Mary Anne had to admit that they did sort of look like goats’ heads.

  Mary Anne put them aside to cool. “When they’re cool, after your mother gets home,” she told the twins, “put them in a cookie tin to keep, okay?”

  The twins agreed. Then they set to work making the sign for the booth. They had just agreed on a slogan for the booth, “$1.00 to have your picture taken with the Cutest Goat On Earth,” when Mrs. Arnold returned.

  As Mary Anne left, she heard Marilyn saying, “Would you like a special cookie, Mom? Those are goat cookies.”

  And Carolyn saying, “And they cost thirty-five cents each!”

  Kristy said, “I am truly awed by the Arnolds’ idea.”

  Mary Anne nodded. “So am I. But our idea is a good one, too.”

  It was an unofficial meeting of the BSC. Everyone, including Shannon and Logan, was gathered around the enormous picnic table in the enormous backyard at Kristy’s house. We were working on the booth project. Our booth project was derived partially from my idea to make cakes shaped like musical instruments and partially from the Kormans’ fortunes in a bottle.

  We were cutting pictures of musical instruments and famous art pieces out of magazines. Claudia had also supplied old art books and I’d talked Anna out of some of her old musical scores and music magazines. We found pictures of famous works of art such as the Mona Lisa and all kinds of musical instruments and drawings of famous artists and sculptors and composers such as Beethoven. We cut out musical notes and bits of scores from the sheet music Anna had given me. We were careful to cut everything into squares. We glued the pictures onto square pieces of cardboard. Then we laminated the cutouts and glued pins from a crafts store onto the cardboard: instant pins.

  We would ask people to donate one dollar each for the pins. To make it more interesting, some of the buyers would also win prizes. We put an “x” on the back of each pin that was worth a prize.

  The prizes? Hours of free baby-sitting, of course.

  It was a great afternoon and we were having fun. Claudia was the pinhead (that’s a joke, get it?), the boss of all the pinmakers. Meanwhile, Sam and Charlie were constructing a square booth using scraps of lumber.

  Karen, Andrew, David Michael, and Emily Michelle were helping, too. Karen and David Michael took a keen interest in the building process. Karen felt that she was something of an expert, since she and her two best friends had “built” the castle (also known as a playhouse) out of old wooden crates and flowerpots and leftover wallpaper that now stood by the gardening shed at the edge of the yard.

  “What color are you going to paint it?” Karen asked. “There are buckets of paint in the gardening shed. You should paint it a beautiful color.”

  “Karen’s right,” Shannon said solemnly. “Color is a very important sales tool.”

  “As well as an artistic statement,” agreed Claudia.

  The rest of us looked startled. Except of course for Karen.

  “I will review the colors in the shed and let you know what your selection is,” she said.

  Although Karen is only seven, she has, I have already discovered, a way with words and a big, colorful imagination. For instance, the ditch around the castle is not a ditch, it is a moat. What castle would be complete without a moat?

  Halfway across the yard to the gardening shed, Karen stopped. Then she said to David Michael, “Could you bring some crayons and paper? We will take them to the paint showroom. Then we can make color samples so people can choose.”

  A few minutes later, David Michael and K
aren, designers and interior decorators, had disappeared into the gardening shed/paint showroom. Meanwhile, Emily, who had been given a magazine of her very own, was systematically demolishing it. She was helped in this by Shannon the puppy. Emily Michelle would color on a page for a while, grow tired of that, rip out a page, and hold it up. She’d let it go and the wind would swirl it away.

  That was the cue for Shannon (the puppy) to chase it down, barking. When she caught the paper, she pounced on it. Then she brought it back to Emily Michelle. Sometimes Emily would take the paper and let it go again. Sometimes one of us, since Emily was sitting on the ground on a blanket next to the table, would reach down and snag the paper and put it in the bag we were using to collect litter.

  I found a photograph of an accordion. Logan cut out a photograph of a rock star in the middle of a baseball stadium, singing the national anthem before a game. Then Mary Anne found a picture of a woman with long braids wearing horns, singing on a stage. Then I discovered a photograph of Jessye Norman, a famous opera singer. She was with James Galway, who was holding his flute.

  Shannon (the person) cut out photographs of murals from the walls of buildings in New York City. Stacey even recognized one of the murals, from the side of a restaurant in the East Village. There were photographs of sidewalk art shows in San Francisco and authors at book signings and a woman with a blowtorch making a sculpture in a park in Seattle and dancers performing on the streets of Atlanta. We found pictures of musicians playing in a funeral procession of a fellow musician in New Orleans.

  “It’s amazing,” said Kristy. “I mean, art is everywhere.”

  “And at least as important as things like math and science and social studies,” said Claudia, making a face as she named just a few of the many subjects she does not like in school.

  We laughed, but it was true.

  “Aha!” Jessi exclaimed. She held up the word “article” that she had just cut out of a magazine. Neatly, she snipped the piece of paper in half between the “t” and the “i.” She threw away the end of the word.

  “A button that says ‘Art’!” said Mal. “Excellent.”