Very Rich

by Polly Horvath

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Stanley. “I’ve known you for thirty years and this is the first time I’ve ever known you to float.”

  Sam, who had stopped serving people, and Rupert, just stared in awe.

  Where is Mrs. Rivers? thought Rupert. She should see this. He knew he was supposed to stay glued to his bar stool, but he couldn’t stand the idea that she was missing the effect of her salads. So he jumped down, pushed through the door into the kitchen, and, grabbing her by her chef jacket, pulled her into the restaurant.

  “Really, Rupert, what in the world…” she began, but her voice trailed off when she saw tables hovering beneath the ceiling.

  Whatever she had expected, whatever results were to come from all the nights she had lain awake trying to invent a salad that would astound, she had not imagined this. She said nothing but clamped a hand down on Rupert’s shoulder in sheer wonder, and the two of them stood like that, unable to speak a word.

  Out of the blue a sadness overcame Rupert, as for a moment he wished it was his mother, not Mrs. Rivers, with her hand on his shoulder. He wished she were here with him to see this great thing. She worked so hard and always looked so tired. If she could see this, he felt sure it would spark something joyful in her. And for a moment he felt guilty that it was happening to him and not to her.

  Then something dreadful happened. Chef Michaels, wondering why no one had ordered any of the steaks or fish or chicken on the menu and why all the line cooks who were supposed to prepare them stood idle, charged into the restaurant, looked up, and barked, “What’s going on here? Just WHAT’S going on?”

  “It’s the sparkle salad!” said Gloria, giggling. “It makes you floaty. Try some.”

  “What sparkle salad?” asked Chef Michaels. “There was no sparkle salad on my menu.”

  “Well, there is now. Right here,” said a woman floating high enough to put her finger on the chalkboard where Rupert had printed it.

  Chef Michaels turned his attention to the chalkboard.

  “That’s not one of my salads!” he roared. “Who put that on my menu?”

  “Whoever it was is a genius!” said a man from the ceiling. “You ought to listen to him. You ought to make him a head chef at the least.”

  “Balderdash!” bellowed Chef Michaels. “I ought to fire him! There is only one head chef and that is me! I will not HAVE this! Waiters, serve no more sparkle salads. And all of you! Get down right now. This is MY restaurant and I’ll have no FLOATING! Who made these concoctions, anyhow? I’ll have his head!”

  “I did,” said Mrs. Rivers in a small voice. “People seem to like them.”

  “We love them, dear,” said the old lady who was now experimenting with doing loop de loops with her chair in the air. “I’ve never had such a feeling from a salad. Do you think it’s the folic acid? I read that everyone should eat more folic acid. I certainly would have if I’d known this is what would happen.”

  “Mrs. Rivers, how dare you! Get out of my restaurant! And you people up there floating, that’s against the rules. Get down. Get down RIGHT THIS MINUTE before I CALL THE POLICE!”

  And just like that, all the tables, all the chairs, all the people drifted back down like balloons that had been pricked. No one was ready for this. They had just started to feel so…luscious.

  There was a little sigh from the old lady, and then she said, “Initially I wasn’t sure I liked it, but now that I’m down I want to go up again.”

  A terrible quiet came over Zefferelli’s as everyone sat silent and deflated—all you could hear was the discontented scraping of chairs.

  Gloria was the first to speak. “I guess the fun’s over.”

  “I don’t like this chef,” said another patron.

  “No, indeed,” said another. “Who is he to spoil our fun?”

  “Stanley, pay the bill and let’s go,” said Gloria, standing up and putting on her coat. “If I can’t float, I don’t even want to be here.”

  “Yes, the food was never that good anyway,” said another man.

  “Not before the sparkle salad,” said a woman.

  People were getting their bills, paying them, putting on their wraps, and heading for the door.

  Chef Michaels looked about in continued fury and then headed into the kitchen, where Mrs. Rivers and Rupert, who had taken off his chef’s coat, were quietly cleaning up the sparkle salad and the sauté stations.

  “YOU!” he roared. “You fiend! You cursed woman! Making things that aren’t on my menu is TREASON! It’s…it’s…” He paused, unable to think of a word for such a horrendous act. He looked at Mrs. Rivers as if determining what she would least like to be accused of and finally finished with, “It’s BAD BEHAVIOR!”

  “But people liked them!” Mrs. Rivers protested. She still hoped that once Chef Michaels thought it through, he would see how good this had been for business and promote her to chef.

  Instead he yelled, “YOU!” again.

  He was really not much of a word person.

  Then, because he could think of nothing else to say, he grabbed a cleaver and began to wave it around threateningly. “YOU! I’LL SHOW YOU!”

  “Oh! Oh!” cried Mrs. Rivers. “Please don’t cut off my appendages! I’ve always found them so handy! Rupert, I don’t wish to alarm you—whatever I expected in the way of a reaction, it was not this—but after giving it some thought, I think we had better RUN FOR OUR LIVES!”

  She and Rupert dashed to the coat room with Chef Michaels hot on their trail. Mrs. Rivers grabbed her coat and purse, and they made for the door. Fortunately, Chef Michaels slipped on a puddle of grease and it gave Mrs. Rivers and Rupert just enough time to fly out the back kitchen door to the street.

  Down the block they ran, with Chef Michaels in greasy shoes running and slipping on the icy sidewalk behind them. Rupert was afraid to look at Mrs. Rivers. He was sure she would begin sobbing in disappointment any second, so it surprised him when he suddenly heard the gurgle of a laugh, and then she was running, slipping, and laughing, with uncontrolled mirth. Rupert had never heard anyone laugh quite like this. It was as if it had been stored inside her for years and had just now been released. Chef Michaels gave up chasing them a mere half block from the restaurant, but Mrs. Rivers and Rupert continued running until they’d circled the block and made their way to Mrs. Rivers’s car in the underground parking lot. Once inside, Mrs. Rivers started her car with shaking hands, and drove like fury up the ramp and down the city streets, finally merging onto the highway to Steelville.

  It wasn’t until they were a good ways down the highway that Rupert dared to look at Mrs. Rivers again. He was sure that no matter the laughter, the upshot of the evening events, where she had realized everything and then lost it again, would hit her any second. She would feel as he had when he had lost his prizes. But when he finally glanced at her, he was amazed to see instead that she looked elated.

  “I loved how you yelled fire like that, Rupert!” she said. “That was perfect.”

  “And how you rolled the flaming toilet paper under that table!” said Rupert, joining in the happy post mortem in relief. “That was quick thinking!”

  “Oh, Rupert! What an evening! The floating tables. The floating people! And the salads! They really sparkled just as I planned. You wouldn’t think Himalayan sea salt and pink dusting sugar would perform such tricks!”

  “No one will ever forget it,” said Rupert. “I never will. Even if Chef Michaels thinks we behaved badly.”

  “He was right,” said Mrs. Rivers. “We didn’t behave well. We broke the rules. But I don’t know, now I’m wondering, well, I don’t really know how to express it, Rupert.”

  They drove silently for a bit and then she said, “Maybe bad behavior is only what we think other people are going to think. Maybe there is no absolute. Maybe we worry that we are doing things wrong when they’re not wrong at all. I feel like the whole universe is much looser, more spacious and open-ended than we knew. Oh, Rupert, I like everyth
ing so much better now!”

  Rupert was having his own thoughts, remembering everything that had happened that evening.

  “I was selfish, going ahead and doing what I wanted,” said Mrs. Rivers, shouting with laughter again. “And the world didn’t end. Instead I’m happy! They don’t tell you it will be like this! You think it will be quite the opposite, but it isn’t!”

  And she began to laugh again.

  Happiness. It came like magic, out of the blue, like a burst of energy. Who knew where it came from? It was as if Mrs. Rivers had rung like a bell in the great echoing space of the universe. And she loved not just her own sound but the space she rang in. She loved it all.

  And looking at her, Rupert had one more moment when he was sad that it was Mrs. Rivers and not his mother who had been freed by the wildness of the night.

  For she rolled down her window so the cold air blew through the car. It blew what short hair she had behind her. The sky was crystal clear. Her face was alight. She sparkled from every inch. As if she’d eaten the stars.

  BUT THEN of course the cold returned. Heated seats were a thing of the past. Christmas was done and January hammered them. Snowstorms came one after the other and Rupert’s feet never seemed to thaw. In order to bear it, he thumbed through his memories of the restaurant. He found this kept him going for the first couple of weeks, but as temperatures dropped lower Rupert’s memories of the restaurant began to fade. The walk home from school was particularly exhausting.

  He was plodding past the Riverses’ house one day when he heard, “YOU, BOY!”

  Rupert stopped to look, but all he could see was the thick, snow-covered, impenetrable, perfectly manicured hedge.

  “I said, YOU BOY!”

  Surely the voice didn’t mean him?

  He started to trudge again when the voice said, “What’s the matter with you? Are you deaf? Stop plodding and poke an arm through the hedge.”

  Rupert was startled, but he did as he was told and a hand grabbed him and pulled him the rest of the way through.

  “HA!” said Uncle Henry. “Caught you!”

  “How did you know it was me going by?” asked Rupert.

  “I’ve been spying on you,” said Uncle Henry. “I invented a hedge periscope and I said to myself, I bet Rupert would appreciate this. I showed it first to Turgid and Rollin and Sippy, but they had no interest. I didn’t even bother with their cousins, ole whatstheirnames.”

  “Melanie, William, and the other Turgid?” said Rupert.

  “Right. That’s when I thought of you. I thought, if there’s one thing Rupert would appreciate, it’s a good hedge periscope. Too bad he doesn’t live here. Then I used it to lie in wait for you. Come on, have a look.”

  Rupert approached the long-necked instrument that sat on a tripod. Looking through the lens he could see up and over the top of the hedge to everything that happened on the sidewalk below.

  “Isn’t this a great invention?” asked Uncle Henry. “And I thought of it myself.”

  “Yes, it’s wonderful. Thank you for showing it to me,” said Rupert politely. He really needed to keep moving if he wasn’t going to turn into a human popsicle. “Well, I’d better go on home.”

  “You’re shivering!” said Uncle Henry, suddenly noticing. “Why aren’t you wearing more clothes? A coat! A coat is conventional wear in January, Rupert.”

  “I haven’t got one,” said Rupert before he thought. Then he blushed bright red.

  “That’s unusual,” said Uncle Henry.

  “I’d better go,” said Rupert again.

  “You can’t go,” said Uncle Henry. “Not yet. You haven’t seen my really special invention. It was to catch you that I specifically invented the hedge periscope. It was to catch you and take you up to the attic to see my really, really special invention. The one of which I’m most proud. And why, you ask? Why did I choose you to show it to when I haven’t shown it to anyone else yet? Why you? Go ahead and ask.”

  “Okay, why me?” asked Rupert as Uncle Henry marched him through the front door and up the seven flights of stairs to the attic.

  “Because, my boy, I felt bad, very bad about Christmas. Can you guess why?”

  “The prizes?” asked Rupert.

  “No. That’s just the rules. You can’t go around feeling bad about what happens after you’ve set up the rules. No, it was because I realized you’d left before we had the Christmas pudding. We totally forgot to keep you around for that. And I think you would have liked it. All plummy, lit up with brandy. On fire! I said to myself, a dessert that’s on FIRE is exactly the kind of thing Rupert would love. Oh, I’ve got your number, boy. But selfish oafs that we are, we forgot to keep you around for it, and now it’s gone and we won’t have another one for a year at least. I must make it up to Rupert, I said to myself. I will show him THIS!”

  They had reached the middle of the attic and Uncle Henry waved a hand theatrically down and forward as if presenting something. Rupert, for the life of him, could not see what Uncle Henry was pointing to. All that was before him was a large cardboard box.

  “Is the invention in the box?” Rupert asked. He was stamping his feet as the circulation returned to his toes. They hurt terribly when this happened and he found he got over it faster if he stamped around.

  “Stop that clunking about. No, the invention isn’t in the box. The invention is the box.”

  “Oh. Well, it’s a very nice box.” Rupert floundered around for the appropriate response. “Good inventing. Do you plan to ship something in it?”

  “Are you CRAZY? I haven’t invented a box. The box has already been invented, otherwise how would you know what it was? You’re losing it, Rupert. What small wit and intelligence you possess is drying up like a puddle in the sun.”

  “You said at Christmas I was a genius,” protested Rupert before he could stop himself, because he had savored that remark ever since Uncle Henry had made it and it had warmed him on the nights when he was too cold to sleep.

  “That was Christmas,” said Uncle Henry crisply. “One is rather given to hyperbole at Christmas. Possibly sherry is involved.” Then Uncle Henry noticed Rupert’s crestfallen face and said, “Well, perhaps you are just having a momentary lapse in genius. Maybe your brain cells have been freeze-dried due to your unfortunate aversion to outerwear.”

  “Well, what is it then?” asked Rupert finally, because however much he wished to prove his genius status again, he couldn’t for the life of him imagine what this thing did.

  “Well, I’d say that was obvious,” said Uncle Henry. “It’s a time machine.”

  “Oh,” said Rupert. “How nice.” But what he was thinking was that Uncle Henry was completely cracked. And how long did he have to stay politely looking at this box before he could get out of here?

  “Ha. You don’t believe me, do you? It’s written all over your face. And why, may I ask, don’t you believe me?”

  “Because,” said Rupert, deciding to come clean, “there’s no such thing.”

  But then he remembered Zefferelli’s floating tables. Had that really happened?

  “I see. I see. Then I guess we’ll just have to take a little time trip and show you,” said Uncle Henry, prancing about and rubbing his hands together. “That’s what we do with skeptics around here! Well, actually, we haven’t done that before because I’ve never used the time machine before. This will be its maiden voyage.”

  “If you’ve never used it before, how do you know it works?” asked Rupert.

  “How do I KNOW? How do I KNOW? Because I invented it. That’s how. What a ridiculous question. Why would I invent something that didn’t work? Now, where shall we go? Well, it doesn’t matter where we want to go or to what time we want to visit because I couldn’t figure out how to invent the gauge or whatever you’d need to point yourself to a certain time. But you have to admit that it’s enough to have invented a time machine. You can hardly fault me for not inventing one with a gauge. You couldn’t have done better. N
ow, come on, hop in, there’s room for both of us. Hurry up. I haven’t got all day. Or maybe I do! Ha! Maybe I have all the time in the world.”

  Rupert inwardly rolled his eyes. He would get into this carton with Uncle Henry and watch him be disappointed that nothing happened and then he would go home. He didn’t want to be late for dinner. His father had a regular route for collecting kitchen scraps and he went to the Carlsbergs’ on Thursdays. Everyone liked the Carlsbergs’ refuse. It tended toward pizza crusts.

  “Hurry up, hurry up,” said Uncle Henry, who had already jumped into the carton. “I can feel it beginning. I can feel it warming up. You don’t want to be left behind. Now where shall we go? Perhaps if we just say it out loud, the time machine will take us there. Yes, I have a feeling, an intuition, Rupert, that this is how it works. All great inventors intuit things. We are very special people. We fly by the seat of our pants. Now the tough question is, where would we like to go?”

  “Cavemen times?” asked Rupert. When he was little he and his brothers used to watch re-runs of The Flintstones. He had always secretly wanted one of those foot-activated cars.

  “No, we certainly don’t want to go there,” said Uncle Henry. “Dinosaurs.” He touched the side of his nose to indicate keenness of mental perception. They thought again. “I know, Giverny. Let’s go watch Monet paint water lilies.”

  Rupert thought if they were going through time they might do something a little more interesting than visit a bunch of flowers, but he didn’t really believe they’d be going anywhere anyway.

  “Agreed?” shouted Uncle Henry, waving one hand like a great magician about to perform his prize trick.

  “Sure,” said Rupert patiently.

  Uncle Henry raised his arms over his head and with great pomp and a deep voice said, “Time Machine, take us to Giverny, France, to watch Monet paint water lilies!”

  There was a whirring sound.

  “QUICK!” yelled Uncle Henry. “It’s about to leave! Jump in!”

  Rupert didn’t have Uncle Henry’s long legs, so he needed help scrambling over the side of the box, and when Uncle Henry leaned over to pull Rupert in, he only got him halfway when the carton tipped over onto its side. Rupert was head down in the box, his face under one of Uncle Henry’s feet and one of his wet tennis shoes poking Uncle Henry in the back. It was all very uncomfortable. Meanwhile, the box continued making whirring and whizzing sounds. When they stopped, Uncle Henry and Rupert were in such a tangle that for a moment Rupert didn’t know whose feet were whose.