The Genie of Sutton Place

by George Selden

  I interrupted everything by marching out living-room center and announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen—and parakeet—Madame Sosostris has kindly consented to entertain us with a few magic tricks before dinner. Madame S.—go into your act.”

  The humans applauded, and Felix squawked enthusiastically.

  Madame Sosostris bowed and said, “For my first endeavor—”

  Her first endeavor was usually the disappearing coin, a Spanish doubloon, in this case. It was twiddled around in her fingers a minute, and then, when the back of her hand was turned, down the sleeve of her blouse. And was it ever obvious—wow! Even Felix turned to me with as much of a skeptical expression as a parakeet can have and said mockingly, “Aw haw!”

  Dooley and I had decided to let that one get by and start in on her with the second endeavor.

  We all applauded for politeness’ sake. Except Mr. Watkins. Perhaps he thought it was funny or clever, but he purred silkily, “Delightful, Madame Sosostris, delightful. But would you dare to untuck your blouse just now?”

  There was that awful embarrassed pause when someone you like is exposed as a fake.

  “Sharp eyes, Mr. Watkins,” said Madame Sosostris. “For my second endeavor—” across the room Dooley gave me a colossal wink—“I shall produce—from the empty air—a series of the most delicate silk scarves.”

  The series of scarves was produced from an enormous hollow gold bracelet she wore on her left wrist. The idea was to make it look as if they all were coming from the palm of her hand. There were five of them: red, blue, green, gold, purple—and each new one elicited an “oh” or an “ah,” from Madame Sosostris, if not from her audience. At the purple, the last, she did a big thing of flourishing the raggedy string in the air.

  But this time, as she began her flourish, the purple was not the last. A gorgeous piece of silk appeared, with all different dazzling colors mixed into it … And now there was a real “oh” from the audience.

  “That’s lovely!” Rose exclaimed.

  “Yeah, isn’t it?” said Madame Sosostris nervously.

  Nobody was watching him except me, but I could see Dooley doing little things with his fingers. Mixing colors, I suspect.

  The next scarf to appear was even more brilliant than the first had been. I’m not going to try to describe the scarves. There aren’t that many words for colors in the whole English language. And if there were, I wouldn’t know half of them.

  More beautiful even than the scarves was Madame Sosostris’s face—the changing expressions there. At first she just couldn’t believe her eyes and kept unrolling them like paper towels. But then, finally, she trusted what was happening. Her face flushed even more happily with each of the scarves she pulled out. It was just like down at the antique shop, with the Willy sisters—she was sure she was having a breakthrough.

  Now she really became a magician—grandly unreeling scarf after scarf. Until it was my turn to wink at Dooley. Because enough is enough. Even of fun. Besides, I was hungry. I could smell the Stroganoff … And we still had the egg to go through.

  Madame Sosostris’s third endeavor was a hard-boiled egg inside her turban. She would reach behind, as if patting her hair down, and magically produce the egg. I hoped it would work. There was one time, down in the Village, when she accidentally bumped her turban, coming into the séance room, and then gracefully called off the trick, excused herself, and went into the kitchen, where, when she got her turban off, her hair was all covered with bits of hard-boiled white and yolk.

  Well, she lifted her hand up with a very grandiose, lengthy gesture—and just as she was about to extract the egg, her head suddenly drooped beneath an unexpected weight. She barely got the thing out in time, before it sprained her neck. And it was an egg, all right—but a huge egg, made of marble, so big that it filled her whole hand, like those sculptured eggs that come from Florence, Italy.

  By now Madame S. was absolutely convinced that the Spirits were helping her out with her act. She reached around and patted her turban, to find what else might be there, pretending she was primping. I’d never seen Madame S. primping before, and as far as I was concerned, that was by far the best part of the show. She’s always been kind of a horsy woman and really doesn’t know how to primp; patting herself all around like that, she looked as if she were posing for old-fashioned movie stills.

  But the egg was all. Dooley called off his magic, Madame Sosostris at last gave up, and we went in to eat.

  Aunt Lucy had ordered the works: the table all decorated with Grampa Lorenzo’s oldest china, candelabra, and everything. I never thought she’d let me do it, but she even allowed me to bring in Felix. I perched him on one of the branches of a candelabrum, and he spent the whole meal yodeling and cracking jokes and repeating, “Wow! What a spread! It sure beats birdseed.” (He got that last from me. Because when I put him on the silver limb, I asked him if this didn’t beat birdseed.)

  We were all in very high spirits, because of Felix and Madame Sosostris’s unexpected success. After getting over the shock of seeing her chauffeur and her cook sitting down at her dining-room table, Aunt Lucy enjoyed herself, too. All except Sam, that is. He was sitting on the opposite side of the table from me, fuming and woofing to himself about something.

  We didn’t find out what it was until the time for dessert came around: baked Alaska, the climax of the meal—but it was spoiled by a fight beginning. “Timmy—” Sam burst out—he’d had wine with dinner too—“is it true that they’re shipping you off to camp?”

  “Yes, Sam.” I hadn’t told him, wanting to break it to him gently, in private. “But only for a few weeks.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do?”

  “What’s the matter, Bassinger?” Mr. Watkins purred. “Can’t you tend your pet shop without the little chappy’s help?”

  “No!” I could see Sam’s hackles beginning to rise. “We’ve never been separated—not since that day I was found—”

  “Shall we have coffee in the living room?” Aunt Lucy’s Sutton Place instinct knew just when to interrupt.

  We all murmured our relieved agreement.

  But it didn’t do any good … This quarrel had been in the cards, or the fur, ever since the two of them had met.

  “But why camp—?”

  “Cognac, Sam?” said Aunt Lucy, still doing her best.

  “Sure.” Sam swigged down a snifter of brandy. “He won’t know any of the other kids—”

  “I don’t mind, Sam—really. I think I’d like—”

  “That’s exactly the point.” Mr. Watkins now became logical, which for some reason that I don’t understand made him behave as if I wasn’t even there. “Dr. Friedlinger said the boy was well on the way to becoming a regular little eccentric. He needs the companionship of his peer group, and Lucy and I—”

  “Yes, and you, Lucy!” Sam glared at her balefully. “I don’t understand how you could do this—if you love him.”

  “Of course I love him—”

  I didn’t quite understand how a “little eccentric”—me—could also be “regular,” but no matter. The whole point now was to stop the fight. “Honestly, Sam—I don’t mind—”

  “Well, I do!” said Sam. “And it makes me angry!”

  “Mad dog! Mad dog!” screamed Felix, to enrich the confusion.

  Aunt Lucy was pouring coffee like crazy, and Dooley and Rose were sitting side by side on the couch, with that embarrassed I-wish-I-wasn’t-here look of people who have to watch their employers quarrel in public … It was getting to the point where I would even have welcomed a few more lousy magic tricks.

  By now Mr. Watkins had his own hackles up. If cats have hackles. He kind of spat out, “As long as we’re on the subject, Lucy—and this is something the little chappy should know—” Thanks a lot! As if I hadn’t heard everything already. “I’ve been thinking about his schooling. September’s only a month away—”

  A feeling of dread got hold of me. “Public school will be fine,” I
said hopefully.

  “—and I’ve taken the liberty of getting in touch with the headmaster of the General Ulysses S. Grant Military Academy.”

  “Military Academy!” Sam stood up and tried to steady himself.

  “It’s a very fine boarding school.” Mr. Watkins stood up, too. “My alma mater. And I’m proud of it, if I may say so. By the way, Bassinger,” he added sneakily, “what’s your school?”

  “Life, Henry!” Sam snarled. “I picked up my education in the streets. And why don’t you just keep your cold nose out of Timmy’s business anyway?”

  “Dooley!” Aunt Lucy squeaked desperately. “We’re out of coffee—”

  We weren’t, but Dooley took the pot, said, “Yes, mistress,” and bumped Sam purposefully on his way to the kitchen.

  “Boarding school. And military school. The General Ulysses S. Grant Military Academy!” The bump had done no good at all. “That means he’ll be away all the time—”

  It went too fast now. I stood up myself. “Sam—!”

  “You quiet schemer, you! You just want to turn him into a little cookie-cutter person. All stamped out like everyone else.” And with that, I am sorry to say, Sam punched Mr. Watkins in the eye.

  “Sam, stop!” Aunt Lucy was on her feet now, too. We all were, milling around like animals, not knowing what to do.

  “You’ve had too much to drink—” I said.

  “I can hold my liquor,” Sam announced, in a voice as unsteady as his legs. “Remember the time Lorenzo spilled the whole bottle of beer in my pan and—” His face changed abruptly. “I feel sick,” he admitted and lurched into the hall toward the john.

  “It’s a proud school,” said Mr. Watkins defensively. He was feeling around the puffy edges of what was surely going to be a black eye. “With a great name. Indeed, in the minds of many military historians, the greatest name in the world—”

  The door from the kitchen swung in—Dooley coming back with the coffee pot.

  And from nowhere—dry space—a voice squawked, “Yes, indeed, in the minds of many Mohammedans, the greatest name in the world is Allah.”

  12

  And the Birthday Party’s End

  Felix!… With that memory of his.

  So many things happened all at once.

  By luck I was the only one who’d been looking at Dooley. Or rather looking where Dooley had been. The coffee pot hung suspended a second—just floating in empty air—then crashed to the floor. Now all eyes turned to the mess of broken china and coffee spreading along the living-room rug.

  But all ears went into the hall, where a wild barking had begun. Sam stumbled in, tottering, and collapsed—collapsed on all four legs. And if you think that a dog can’t look panic-stricken, just as much as a man, then you should have seen his eyes.

  “Timothy!” Aunt Lucy couldn’t believe her own eyes. “Have you been concealing that dog?”

  I was—flummoxed, dumfounded, speechless.

  “Timothy—I want an answer! Has that dog been hidden in this apartment all this time?”

  “Well—he’s been here part of the time—but—”

  “Oh, Timothy—” She did a big betrayed routine, eyes lifting away from me, as if I were something that had just got broken—“I thought we were friends—that we both could be honest—”

  “Aunt Lucy, we can, but—!”

  Mr. Watkins looked down contemptuously at Sam, who was flattened out on the floor and whimpering pathetically. “I thought that mutt got gassed.”

  “He looks pretty gassed to me,” Rose observed.

  “Rose, where in this apartment—?”

  “Miss Lucy—” Rose had a tone of voice that no one dared doubt—“I haven’t seen a hair of him.”

  “And where is Dooley? Did he just—throw the coffee pot at me?”

  Sam had recycled, back into a hound dog; Abdullah was trapped in his carpet again; and Aunt Lucy, too, was reverting into a short snobby lady, indignant over the loss of a china coffee pot in her posh apartment in Sutton Place.

  “Let me have a look.” Rose went into the kitchen.

  “Um—I guess the party’s breaking up.” Breaking up—it had been smashed into smithereens! But Madame Sosostris went on doing the best she could to fill up a silence when nobody else would talk. “Delicious dinner, Miss Farr—”

  “So pleased you could come.” Aunt Lucy thinned out a smile at her.

  “Miss Lucy—” Rose came back—“he’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Vanished.” She was pretending to be only reporting the latest information, but her voice was hurt as well as puzzled.

  Aunt Lucy sighed and brushed her forehead with weary fingertips. “There must be some disease peculiar to my chauffeurs.” Another confusion occurred to her. “And speaking of disappearing—where’s Sam?”

  “He’s gone home!” I blurted, before anybody could guess or suspect. “I think.”

  “And well he might! Behaving that way. Poor Henry—”

  “I knew the chap was vicious the first day I laid eyes on him,” said Mr. Watkins, who by now had a genuine shiner blossoming on his face.

  “Rose, did you cook all the beef?”

  “’Fraid so, Miss Lucy. And I don’t think a slice of stroganoff would help that eye any.”

  “This is not a time for levity.”

  “Sorry, Miss Lucy…” But thank heaven someone still had a sense of humor.

  We shuffled a little more in our talk, and then Madame Sosostris and Mr. Watkins went home.

  “Just clean up as best you can for tonight,” Aunt Lucy said to Rose. She retired to her bedroom, with all kinds of exasperated sounds. “I’ve had as much as I can take for one day.”

  So had I!

  I collected Sam from the living-room rug and carried him into our bedroom. At first I thought I’d get the spell and pull everything back together again. But then I decided there already was so much chaos around, if everybody reappeared, it would only make things worse. One night in the carpet wouldn’t be too bad for Dooley, and one night in his box wouldn’t be too bad for Sam. In fact, he deserved it. I poured him out on his cushion, which I’d kept there for old times’ sake, and said, “Now just go to sleep,” and thought that was the end of my birthday party … It wasn’t.

  The next end was, while I was dozing off, I heard Sam stir and pad into the hall, still weaving a little, toward Aunt Lucy’s room. I followed him. Her door was ajar, and he nosed it open and stood there, just looking.

  She’d changed into pajamas and was sitting at her dressing table, wearing a housecoat with butterflies on it. She saw Sam watching. At first she was angry: her little features frowned, remembering all the broken bottles, I guess. But then, in spite of themselves, they relaxed. She patted her knee and said, “Come in, Sam.”

  Sam approached her very carefully.

  “Good old Sam,” she said. “I’m almost glad to see you again.”

  Sam lifted one paw to her knee. Which she shook. And then ordered him gently, “Go on, now. Go back to Timmy’s room.”

  He came into the hall—and found me watching. His head drooped down, ashamed … So did mine. I don’t like to eavesdrop. Even on dogs.

  * * *

  The next morning Sam was sure he was dying. He lay in his box making fatal sounds—low howls, whinings, and sighs of doggy despair—which I have to admit I thought were quite funny.

  “Sam, it isn’t hydrophobia.” I tried to console him. “It’s only a hangover.”

  With a little coaxing, he lapped up two aspirins from the palm of my hand. But you know how dogs are about pills. Even after some water they got stuck in his throat. He didn’t like the taste of them either and made me an angry face and gave a very disgruntled woof.

  Then I thought an ice pack might help, so I got some ice cubes out of the freezer and tied them up in my face cloth. But the string came untied, and the ice fell all over his head.

  Poor Sam … I was being mean, and laughing and having
fun at his expense … The best thing was just to let him sleep it off.

  At breakfast Rose was preoccupied. She hadn’t even asked me what I wanted the ice cubes for. I suspected her mood was because of Dooley—little wise guy that I was that day, but I was going to get what was coming to me—and I asked her, all fake innocence, if she’d heard from him yet this morning.

  “No.” She stirred her coffee and made the cup rattle. “And we probably won’t.”

  “Why not, Rose?”

  “I think he’s just one of those rolling stones, that’s all. You heard him tell about all those places he’s been—swimming in the River Jordan. Probably in some place like Bangladesh right now!” She sipped her coffee, spilled some on her chin, and said, “Damn!”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Dooley came back, Rose.” Little Mr. Fixit here—all I had to do was recite the spell.

  “Well, I would!”

  “You sort of liked him, didn’t you, Rose?”

  “Oh, sure.” She could do some faking, too. “He was okay, I guess.”

  “You liked him quite a lot—”

  “Just finish your breakfast, nosey. And leave the psychologizing to Freud. You got troubles of your own! With that dog.”

  * * *

  But the funny thing was, I didn’t. At least not the troubles Rose was thinking of.

  Aunt Lucy came into the kitchen, and before anybody could even offer “good morning,” she formally announced, “Timothy, I’ve decided that you can keep Sam.”

  “I can keep him—?” Complications swarmed like bees in my head.

  “Yes, dear. If you love him enough to have hidden him all this time—although I can’t imagine where. Probably right under our noses, Rose— Well, it’s cruel to want someone so much and then have him suddenly—”

  “I’ll have to ask Sam—” I was thinking out loud.

  “Ask Sam?”

  “I mean—tell him. He’ll be happy. To be out in the open. At least, I think he will—”