by Lorri Horn
Seraphina nodded. Why couldn’t she find any words?
“We buried her collar there, though.”
“Where?” asked Seraphina.
“In the yard.”
“Oh. Right. That’s sad about your cat,” she said, her eyes watering. “He slept with me at night and sat on my lap when I did my homework,” she continued, but not too quietly because she didn’t want to sound as upset as she felt inside.
“Yeah,” replied Michael. “It’s still so weird not having Cabbage—that was my cat’s name—around now.”
An awkward silence followed, and neither of them knew what to talk about next. Seraphina felt her face flush. She couldn’t figure out why because she didn’t feel embarrassed, really.
“Did you get the joke?” asked Michael. “Retreat?”
“Huh?” Seraphina felt totally confused.
“Before that first batch of cookies. It said to ‘retreat.’ Come back tomorrow. Get it? Go back and then they’ll re-treat . . .”
“No, you think that was intentional?”
“Sure! Why not?”
Just then, Dewey came upstairs, and Clara came shooting down the slide. They both had a pile of books three heads high in their hands, titled things like Dirt and Germs; Are We Too Clean?; A Germy World Survival Guide; Should Parents Expose Kids to Germs?; Mysophobia: a Pathological Fear of Contamination and Germs; et cetera.
“Oooof,” Dewey blew out air as he set the books down on his desk. “Sorry. We’ve been up all night researching. We’ve got the plan.”
“Oh, hi, Seraphina. Michael, is it OK if Seraphina’s here?”
“Sure. Why not?” he replied.
It never occurred to her it might not be OK to be there, but she tried not to let on and just stood there, not quite sure what to do with her hands to look casual, like it wasn’t an awkward moment. She folded them in front of her chest, quickly decided that wasn’t right, and clasped them behind her back instead. Then they seemed to have a mind of their own, and she found them twisting her curly ponytail.
“I think, as you’ve likely surmised,” Dewey began, “your mom was traumatized by the whole eating cat poop thing.”
“Ha!” laughed Michael. “That makes two of us. These are confidential services, right, Dewey? I mean, I don’t need the whole world knowing I ate cat doodie! Geez!”
“Of course. Always confidential!” reassured Dewey.
Seraphina was beginning to see why Dewey had asked if it was OK if she was here now and she nodded her head in agreement at the word “confidential” to show her commitment as well.
“I’ve done a lot of reading,” Dewey continued. “We need a two-step plan. First, we have your mom face her original fear. Then, we have her work through how her fear is being acted out, ‘manifested’ the professionals call it. That’s it.”
“So what do I need to do?”
“First, my friend, you’ll need this.” Dewey reached into a bag on his desk and pulled out a Tootsie Roll.
“You need to relive the original scene of the crime. Yes, that’s right. You’ll need to eat poop. Well, a Tootsie Roll.”
“Ewww! No way!” exclaimed Michael and Seraphina in unison.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” added Michael.
“Clara. Tell them I never kid.”
“He never kids,” Clara said.
“Oh boy,” said Michael.
“Ohh boy,” said Seraphina.
Dewey pulled out a few more Tootsie Rolls of differing sizes and handed them to Michael as he went on to explain. “After your Mom’s shock and complete freak out, we’re going to let her down nice and easy. You’re going to tell her it’s OK. They’re just Tootsie Rolls.
“Then, when she calms down, remind her that you survived eating the cat poo, and you’ll tell her you need her to work on this whole germ thing before she kills you.”
“Ironically,” Michael added dryly.
“Sure. Nice touch,” said Dewey. “The books say gradual exposure is best, but you’re in a hurry, so we’ll just do that part fast.
“Then we move onto phase two. After she faces her original fear, it’s a brainstorming session. She lists all the things she’s afraid you’ll get germs from—doorknobs, elevators, other kids’ hands, whatever. Then she has to rank them from one to ten in terms of how scared she is of them, and what the fear is; one being she’s just a bit scared that a doorbell will give you a cold, for example, while a ten is fearing you’ll drink from a water fountain and get Yellow Fever. That kind of thing. Make sure she lists at least twenty things so you have enough small ones to work on first.
“Tell her to say this: ‘Germs are good. They help my son’s immunity.’ Then you’ll ask her if she agrees with that statement—do you think she will?” Dewey paused for Michael’s feedback.
“Yeah. She’ll agree. She’s not an idiot. She’s just gone psycho on me.”
“Great. So from there, help her see how many things on her list she needs to calm down about. Remind her that you’re not eating poop in real life nor are you going to die from a cold. Tell her to repeat this exercise each day when she wants to tell you to avoid germs. Then report back to me in one week. Got it?”
“I think so. That was a lot of info!”
“Oh, don’t worry. Clara and I are going to go over it with you step by step as you go.”
“How’s he supposed to do the whole eating the Tootsie Roll thing?” asked Seraphina. She was completely intrigued by just how sophisticated Dewey had become since his early days with her mom.
“Any way he’d like, as long as she walks in and thinks it’s real and has enough time to freak out about it. I’d stop it short of her calling Poison Control or 911 or something to save yourself some grief. Perhaps the bathroom is your best venue if you don’t want to be seen as a complete freak of nature.”
“Yeah. I think I’d like to just be seen as the kid who eats his ‘Tootsie Dookie’ in the bathroom, not at the kitchen table, thank you very much.
“OK. I’ll do it tonight. I’d like to get this over with as soon as possible.”
“Great. Hey! Tootsie Roll fun fact: the guy who invented the Tootsie Roll named it after his daughter, whose nickname was Tootsie. Guess what her real name was?”
“What?” asked Michael and Seraphina on cue.
“Clara!”
That brought big laughs all around.
Then Michael picked up his Tootsie Roll and sighed, “Well, Clara. It’s good to know at least you’ll be there with me in spirit.”
Michael Eats Tootsie Rolls
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Everyone Out of the Pool
Texts between Michael and Seraphina:
Michael: Well if it weren’t so funny it would be terrible
M: Or maybe the other way around?
Seraphina: So it went well?
M: OMG, yes
S: Highlights, pls!
M: Me sitting on tub edge, door open so she can walk in
M: I wait almost twenty min. but . . . She enters
M: I bite down
M: She screams.
M: I take another bite, give big grin, and wipe my chin with TP!
S: No way!
S: Did she scream?
M: Out of her mind, hysterical
M: I felt kind of bad
S: So, now what?
M: She’s lying down with an ice pack on her head
M: I think I killed her.
S: Go tell her
M: I did
S: Go tell her again and the plan
M: Scared!
S: It will be OK, be brave! Go!
S: Text Dewey yet?
M: No, I will
M: Cya
Texts between Michael and Dewey:
M: OK, did it
M: Wildly successful, if killing her is part of your plan
D: Great job. Don’t worry if she’s upset. It’s part of the plan.
D: We left a plate of cookies on the porch. Go get them and bring them up to her with cup of tea. Tell the next steps.
D: One week. Hang in there.
M: Yeah, OK!
“You know,” Michael said, “when I was a kid, I thought Poison Control was this tall, windowed structure with surveillance displays and radar systems. Turns out it’s just an office with a bunch of phones, men, women, and a database ready with medical advice for, um, something like three million calls a year. That’s not as cool as what I was picturing when I was a little kid.”
“But three million calls a year? That’s a lot of poison. Someone is eating a lot of Tootsie Rolls!” laughed Dewey.
A week had passed, and the three of them were debriefing in Dewey’s office.
“Yeah, most of ’em are for snake bites and carbon monoxide and stuff like that. But there were like, almost 6,000 cases involving poop. No big surprise that most of the calls were about little kids—I don’t want to think about it otherwise! And guess what? Twenty-seven of the calls this year were listed as intentional.”
“What’s that mean?” asked Seraphina.
“That means,” Dewey chimed in, “that twenty-seven of those callers intentionally ate feces. And it wasn’t a Tootsie Roll, either!”
“Ewwwww!” they all cried out in unison.
“Well, I guess you’d have to count my cat litter party as ‘intentional’ though right? You know how little kids are when they stock the pool with brown trout. You gotta get ’em out fast!”
“Ewwwww!” cried Seraphina again. “That’s just gross.”
“Twenty-seven out of 6,000 is actually a pretty good stat,” claimed Dewey. “It would suggest the other 5,000 plus are getting out of the pool without tasting the floaties.”
“Yeah, ha! Guess you wouldn’t have been one of them!”
“That’s not funny,” said Michael with a half-smile, half-scowl.
“Can we please get to the matter at hand, Michael? How’d it go with your Mom?” asked Seraphina, who hadn’t been brought up to speed yet.
“She screamed for about forty-five minutes, and we’re going to need new kitchen dishes, but once she understood I needed to make a point, she stopped throwing the socks out of my drawer at me and we hugged. Then we cleaned up the kitchen, and she listened. Kind of. Sort of. Clara’s cookies and the tea helped.
“We’ve been doing the whole exercise thing with ranking fears and her mantra: ‘Germs are good. They help my son’s immunity.’ And I’d say it’s working. Except . . .”
“Except what?” asked Dewey.
“Except that I don’t think she’s ever going to let me eat another piece of chocolate again. Got a cure for that?”
Shocking News
If there’s one thing that Dewey’s dad loved, it was a good game of Monopoly. That’s probably because he always made sure he bought Park Place first. Pretty much no one else in the family ever had as much fun playing as he did, and he always had to cajole them into it.
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, and everyone happened to be home. They were sitting ducks.
“Who’s up for a game of Monopoly?”
No reply. Not even from Dewey’s mom, who busied herself at the computer and tried not to look up.
“Aw, come on. Let’s just play. You guys love Monopoly. It will be fun.”
“Dad,” explained Stephanie, “I’d love to. Really I would, but I’m right about to, um, clean my room. And Mom’s been really asking me to do that lately, right, Mom?”
“Ha! Don’t rope me in to your escape, missy, unless you plan on saving me in the process. And since I have no interest in cleaning your room with you . . . while I’d love, adore, even, for you to clean your room, no. It’s not ringing any bells.”
Mom smiled.
Stephanie glared.
“Dewey? You’re in, right, son? Come on! I’ll let you be the dog!”
“Oh, Dad. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I feel bad. You don’t want to play right, right now, do you?” sighed Dewey, hoping to guilt his dad out of it. A little reverse psychology seemed like a good strategy right about now.
“Come on! It will be fun!”
Geez. Was his dad seven years old? What was wrong with him?
His little sister was only too excited to play. She was a complete nightmare to try to play any sort of organized sport with, let alone a board game.
“I want to have that fimbwe ovuw on my side, and I need some mowe houses, and I don’t wike to have that money. I just want to have one dollooow, but why awe you moving youuw dog when it’s my tuwn? I want twee tuuuwns . . .”
So they all played a rousing game of Monopoly. Dewey got to be the banker, at least.
Once they got going, he could admit it wasn’t too terrible, though it still made him mad inside when things didn’t go his way. At least he was older now and knew not to express his disappointment or cry anymore, but he still felt like throwing over the board when he was losing.
Later, after they cleaned up—they never actually managed to finish the game, since Dewey’s mom had said that they had to put it away because they needed the space on the table for dinner—everyone went their own ways. Pooh Bear went to bed. Stephanie went out with her friend and their family to a movie, and Dewey went up to his room to play on his computer. His propensity to spend time alone in his room was part of what enabled him to be able to sneak off so easily to the attic to meet with his clients.
This week, though, work was slow, and Dewey actually just spent some time in his room. He wondered if it had always been this way, or maybe it had something to do with how he and Clara had messed with the air conditioning ducts, but he could hear everything his mom and dad were talking about through the air vent in his bedroom that evening.
What he heard shocked him.
Clara Cottonwood
“Well,” his dad was saying, “we’ll have to tell the kids sooner than later. Moving is going to be a pretty big deal for them.”
What?! Did he say “moving?” Dewey felt the blood run hot to his face. He must have misheard.
“Dewey will be fine,” his mom said. “He can make friends anywhere he g
oes. But I’m worried about Stephanie. She’s been so successful at Woodbine School. She has so much invested there. Plus Pooh Bear is just starting to get speech therapy going—though I’m sure they have that in Alaska,” his mother sighed.
Alaska?! Dewey’s heart raced now, and he stood directly under the air vent to make sure he didn’t miss a thing.
“In any case,” his dad continued, “I’m just saying that summer is right around the corner, and before you know it, we’ll be off. I think it’s time we let them know.”
Summer? This summer? Dewey’s stomach actually felt sick.
“Not yet, Don. Not yet.”
“It’s not going to change, you know. Stalling isn’t going to—oh, honey, please don’t cry!”
“I’m not crying! I love a place where the state sport is dog mushing!” she gushed through her tears.
Then the phone rang, and his dad picked it up. It was Grandma. Mom pulled herself together to talk to her, and that was the end of the conversation.
Dewey sat on the edge of his bed, stunned. Moving? Alaska? Mom sobbing? He felt amazed by how quickly he could go from not even realizing he had a stomach or a throat to knowing those parts of his body existed. There was a knot the size of a jawbreaker in his throat, and his stomach felt like someone had turned it upside down and inside out.
He didn’t even know who to tell or what to do, so he did the only sensible thing—he sat down and clicked cookies. He was up to 55 quadrillion cookies.
