“I feel this is all my fault,” said Mr. Bunny as Percy carried them to the rail. “I should have reacted sooner. I was like a deer in the headlights.”
“I froze too, Mr. Bunny. It was all my fault. Before we die a watery death I want you to know that I love you and I take full responsibility for our premature demise,” said Mrs. Bunny. Then she added reflectively, “Of course, you were the one who dragged me up to the human deck.”
“You were the one who wanted to waltz,” said Mr. Bunny. “I was perfectly happy out of sight under some table.”
“Well, you bought the economy-class tickets.”
“Well, you wanted to go on vacation. I was the one who said never leave the hutch.”
“Are you going to tell me you anticipated being thrown overboard by your ears?”
“Well, I anticipated SOMETHING bad. That’s more than you anticipated, Mrs. Bunny.”
“This is just like you, Mr. Bunny, to start out saying it is all your fault and end up blaming me.”
“You did that. You did that first.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Did not.”
“Did did too.”
“Oh, what does that mean? It goes double for you?”
Both were determined to get the last word even if that last word was “glub” as they sank to the bottom of the ocean. But just then a voice called, “AH, PERCEVAL! Just the man I wanted to see!”
It was the captain. He was, Mrs. Bunny noticed, a particularly dishy captain. She’d never seen so much starch in one uniform.
“There’re a lot of older passengers wanting to start a rumba line but they can’t seem to organize it. They’re rumbaing in six different directions and getting more and more sweaty and confused. A couple of the gentlemen are turning unnatural colors. What is the first duty of Incredible Cruises’ staff?”
“Anticipate apoplexy, sir,” said Percy.
“Exactly. I need you, man, to attend to this at once. Lead the rumba! Lead the rumba for God and queen!”
“Well, really, sir,” whined Percy. “I am in the middle of a most important chore.” He held up the Bunnys for the captain to see.
Just as he did so an earsplitting cry rent the air. Madeline and Katherine came racing up.
“You found them!” cried Madeline. “You found our stuffed animals!”
“Stuffed …,” spluttered Mr. Bunny. “I have been called many things, but never—”
“Hush,” said Mrs. Bunny, and put on what she hoped was an amiable stuffed expression.
“Ah, excellent, Perceval. You were returning to these children their misplaced toys. Now go lead that rumba! Remember the rhythm! Tada tada DA DA!” sang the captain, doing a few rumba steps on the deck to demonstrate.
“But they’re not stuffed—” began Percy.
“You see—” began Mr. Bunny.
“Hush,” said Mrs. Bunny.
“I do not like to be hushed,” said Mr. Bunny.
“Tada tada DA DA!” the captain sang on. “Run, Perceval! There’s not a moment to be wasted! There are passengers not having their full quota of FUN!”
Percy shoved the Bunnys at the girls with the whispered warning “It ain’t over till it’s over” and ran to help corral the errant rumbaers. The captain tipped his hat at the girls and walked in the opposite direction. Madeline and Katherine and Mr. and Mrs. Bunny were left panting on the deck.
“That was close,” said Mrs. Bunny.
“Too close,” said Madeline. “But, Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, what are you doing here?”
“We’re on vacation!” said Mrs. Bunny.
Katherine, who couldn’t understand anything the Bunnys were saying, was looking a bit pale.
“This is my friend Katherine,” said Madeline. “Katherine, this is Mr. and Mrs. Bunny. They understand English but they don’t speak it. I understand them because it turns out I understand all animal languages.”
“How?” asked Katherine.
“I don’t know,” said Madeline. “I just do. Uncle Runyon, who has gone to Africa to study the language of elephants, says that there are people, like dog whisperers or horse whisperers, who naturally understand certain animals but that some very few people understand all animal languages.”
“Well, I guess that’s not me. It sounds like they’re speaking gibberish to me,” said Katherine.
“I told you we should have taken that correspondence course,” said Mrs. Bunny, elbowing Mr. Bunny.
“It seems strange you never mentioned being friends with talking rabbits,” said Katherine, and sat down.
“It’s not an easy subject to introduce into casual conversation,” said Madeline.
Mr. Bunny’s fur was beginning to ruffle. “All rabbits are ‘talking,’ ” he began testily.
“Your evening clothes are lovely,” said Madeline quickly to deflect him. She had almost forgotten how sensitive to slights he was.
“I like your tuxedo!” said Katherine to Mr. Bunny, trying as best she could to make her way in these unfamiliar social waters.
“Hmmm, it is nice,” said Mrs. Bunny, eyeing it critically. “But I wonder, Mr. Bunny, if we can’t change it for a nice white uniform?”
“Why?” asked Mr. Bunny suspiciously.
“Oh … no reason,” said Mrs. Bunny airily, but a little string of drool was forming on her chin as she watched the captain ascend some stairs.
“All right. Enough about clothes,” said Mr. Bunny. Sometimes when he was surrounded by women, as he always seemed to be of late, he did get tired of the endless need for haberdashery chitchat. “Madeline, the important question is what are you doing here?”
“It’s synchronicity,” said Madeline. “You see, Flo found some Pop-Tarts that he thought were mystical and he decided to become the Dalai Lama of sugar and then we wanted to take a trip and he found out we could go free if his band played on board and he said it was synchronicity, that everything lined up in the stars so that the universe could attain its one ultimate good. According to him, Zanky’s thirty acres for sale and my mother’s organic vegetable growing and the candy store and the Dalai Lama of sugar are all connected.”
Madeline took a deep breath. The Bunnys’ eyes went back and forth as they tried to process all this.
Katherine added, “Except now Mildred has had a sea change and is buying everything in sight with money that should go to Madeline’s college education fund but still Flo says it will all work out because of synchronicity. We just have to ‘go with the flow’ and ‘trust the universe.’ ”
“Oh, Mr. Bunny!” said Mrs. Bunny. “Synchronicity. Trusting the universe.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” said Mr. Bunny. “Lunacy and magical thinking. And you have glossed right over the most important point completely, Mrs. Bunny. What is this about a college education fund?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said Madeline, not wishing to worry the Bunnys.
Katherine was elbowing Madeline in the ribs every time the Bunnys spoke, wanting a translation. “What is he saying?” she said.
“He wants to know about the college education fund.”
“Oh, well, I have one and Madeline doesn’t, but she needs one more than me because she wants to grow up and be a scholar.”
“Of course she should be a scholar,” said Mr. Bunny.
“She would be an ace!” said Mrs. Bunny.
“An ace plus,” said Mr. Bunny. “But she’ll never have a college fund if she relies on those ridiculous parents and their magical thinking to provide it. It’s a cruel world out there, and you have to push and claw your way to the top.”
“Oh! Oh!” said Mrs. Bunny in distress. “Not so very cruel, surely, Mr. Bunny. Retract your claws! Retract your claws!”
“Torturously cruel,” said Mr. Bunny with satisfaction.
“Not everywhere,” said Mrs. Bunny.
“Everywhere,” said Mr. Bunny, who did so like bold statements that got big reactions.
“Not on Incr
edible Creature Cruises, ‘where anything is possible,’ ” said Mrs. Bunny, reading from the brochure. She was wringing her handkerchief and darting worried looks at the girls. “And not when you’re in a time of synchronicity where everything works together to bring you the one ultimate good.”
“Synchronicity indeed. One ultimate good indeed. Cash, Mrs. Bunny. That’s what Madeline needs. Try applying to college saying you plan to pay your tuition when the synchronicity kicks in. We worked hard to put our bunnies through college. Did I leave my job at the carrot marketing board to take up skydiving because the universe wanted it? Did I go around linking breakfast sausages, new age poetry and left-handed buttonhooks in the mistaken belief they were clues to a greater good? Let us all just GET AHOLD OF OURSELVES. Madeline, Mrs. Bunny and I would help you pay for college but our money would be useless to you,” said Mr. Bunny.
“Because your currency is on the gold standard,” said Mrs. Bunny to Madeline.
“And ours is on the carrot standard,” said Mr. Bunny, sadly shaking his head. “It wouldn’t work.”
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Bunny. “We’ll find a way for you to make money. Perhaps you can send in box tops. Mrs. Treaclebunny says that humans are always sending them in for swell prizes. Mr. Bunny once got a secret decoder ring that way, and I am still waiting for my handy-dandy ear fluffer. They say delivery in six weeks. Although so far it has been four years and seven months, but I am sure it will arrive anytime now.”
“Please do not start again with the box tops. Your ear fluffer may have been only thirty-two box tops but the shipping and handling was forty-two dollars. I saw a perfectly fine ear fluffer at the drugstore for nine ninety-nine,” said Mr. Bunny.
“It did not come with a flea and tick detector and a free trial-sized bottle of fur-curling lotion,” said Mrs. Bunny with dignity.
Mr. Bunny turned to Katherine, wishing to include her even though Madeline had to translate. “Mrs. Bunny went to Bunnycostycost and brought home seventeen cartons of Frosted Flakes just for the box tops. She didn’t even check first to see if Mr. Bunny liked Frosted Flakes.”
“Oh well, it made excellent mulch,” said Mrs. Bunny faintly. “The roses liked it, even if you did not. And besides, you may make fun of box tops, but have you a better idea?”
“Naturally I do, Mrs. Bunny. While you have been nattering on, Mr. Bunny’s big brains have been cranking it out. They cannot help themselves. Crank, crank, crank.”
“That certainly is the word that comes to mind when one is around Mr. Bunny,” said Mrs. Bunny quietly to herself.
“If I did not know better, Mrs. Bunny, I would think you were being unkind, but never mind,” said Mr. Bunny. “Here is what my gigantic bunny brains have come up with. Organic vegetables are expensive.”
“They are,” said Katherine when Madeline had translated. “My mother only buys organic, and she says the stuff at the Comox farmers’ market is much more expensive than the supermarket but it’s worth it.”
“Arrant nonsense, but never mind,” said Mr. Bunny. “I have taken the disparate pieces you mentioned and put them in logical order. You are going to England because Flo and Mildred plan to make money with the candy store.”
“That’s right,” said Madeline.
“They want to use the money to buy the thirty acres next to your own. Then Mildred will grow organic vegetables and sell them at the market.”
“Yes,” said Madeline.
“Which will make yet more money.”
“Yes.”
“What will Mildred do with the money she makes selling vegetables?”
Mr. Bunny had been pacing up and down the deck as he related all this. How it did remind him of his fine performance the time he and Mrs. Bunny were called before the Bunny Council, where his quick thinking and fine histrionics had once more saved the day.
“I don’t know,” said Madeline. “Until her sea change, Mildred always said money made her uncomfortable and Flo said that the crime of robbing a bank was nothing compared to the crime of founding a bank.”
“He would,” said Mr. Bunny. “Well, it seems to me if that is how they feel, then they would be uncomfortable keeping that organic-veggie money. They need to drop it like a hot potato. Right into your college education fund.”
“OH!” said Madeline. “Oh, oh, oh!”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Bunny. “Mr. Bunny!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Bunny, “for so I am called.”
“You are so brilliant!”
“What have I been telling you, lo these many years?” said Mr. Bunny. “I fear, Mrs. Bunny, that you often present me to your readers in a skewed manner that does not display my giant bunny brains in their true light.”
“Whatever,” said Mrs. Bunny. “What you have outlined is synchronicity leading to the one ultimate good.”
“Humph,” said Mr. Bunny. “Not synchronicity but the logical progression of events put in an organized manner by a brain not awash in magical thinking.”
“It’s just a matter of semantics,” said Mrs. Bunny, and then turned to the girls to discuss, with Madeline doing some swift translating, what she should wear to dinner the next night. She was thinking a flame chiffon but she realized she hadn’t quite the right shoes. You needed something you could both hop and dance in.
“Yes,” agreed the girls eagerly. “Shoes are always a problem.”
Mr. Bunny rolled his eyes. Mrs. Bunny got out her writing notebook and scribbled:
Poor Mr. Bunny. We must find him a male bunny pal he can hawk and spit and scratch with. Or try harder to interest him in tulle.
“What are you writing?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing,” said Mrs. Bunny, putting away her notebook and giving him her most winning smile.
So Mr. Bunny got out a notebook of his own. It was full of trip expenses and had no room left to write in and the pencil he took from his pocket was missing its lead, but, thought Mr. Bunny, scribbling away with an evil smile on his face, Mrs. Bunny didn’t know that.
“What are you writing?” asked Mrs. Bunny, looking perturbed.
“Oh, nothing, certainly no searing notes about your character,” said Mr. Bunny. “Certainly not an alphabetized list of your flaws.”
Mrs. Bunny started to protest but Mr. Bunny gave her his most winning smile. So they left it at that.
Madeline found it hard to keep her mind on the problem of Mrs. Bunny’s shoes. For Mr. Bunny had showed her a light. A light at the end of the college-fund tunnel. Maybe the universe was appearing with help for her just when she needed it. Maybe the stars were aligning after all.
She and Katherine said good night to Mr. and Mrs. Bunny. Everyone was exhausted but vowed to meet up again the next day.
Then Mr. and Mrs. Bunny went back down to the bunny deck to find Mrs. Treaclebunny and tell her about Madeline and Katherine. They found her in the Hopping Haven, wearing a pink leotard and pink terry-cloth sweatband, aerobicizing her little heart out. She would not stop hopping no matter how frantically Mrs. Bunny waved at her to join them, so Mr. Bunny finally had to hop over and sit on her.
“Interesting variation,” said the aerobics instructor, nodding enthusiastically at Mr. Bunny. “That looks excellent for core strength. Quick, everyone, hop on someone and pin them to the ground!”
There was a lot of excited commotion as all tried to be the hopper-on, not the hopped-upon.
“Talk about sloshing your brains back and forth in the cranium too much,” said Mr. Bunny through gritted teeth, nodding back to the aerobics instructor while he tried to get Mrs. Treaclebunny, who kept banging her tail to the beat, to sit still.
Finally, he gave up and yanked her right out of the room.
“What did you do that for?” she complained as she panted out in the hallway with the Bunnys around her.
“Listen, you—” began Mr. Bunny, who did not like tackling sweaty bunnies when he was in formal attire.
Mrs. Bunny interrupted him. “We came to tell you abo
ut startling and exciting new developments.” Mrs. Bunny clasped her hands in front of her chest in the thrilling pose of an operatic heroine. She thought this must look particularly effective in fancy dress. “Madeline is on board and so now every fiber of Mr. and Mrs. Bunny’s being will no longer be directed toward Mrs. Bunny becoming queen—”
“I don’t recall Mr. Bunny’s fibers ever being so directed,” interrupted Mr. Bunny.
“But rather toward making sure Madeline gets a college education fund. And you can join us anytime,” said Mrs. Bunny generously.
“College education fund,” snorted Mrs. Treaclebunny. “That’s what this world needs. More useless eggheads. Now, my dear nothing-left-but-the-bones dead husband was a self-made bunny. No college education. He graduated from the eighth grade and then built his rubber empire from scratch. I cannot in all good conscience recommend anything less for your little Madeline. Tell her to pull herself up by her bootstraps. Tell her there’s no time like the present for quitting school and going to work in the mines.”
“Work in the mines? What mines?” said Mrs. Bunny.
“Rubber empire? He had one small rubber factory!” protested Mr. Bunny. “And speaking of mines, you have been hopping down here nonstop in Hopping Haven for hours.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bunny. “I fear any second you are going to aerobicize your brains into mush.”
“Nobody likes a fat queen!” said Mrs. Treaclebunny, looking pointedly at Mrs. Bunny’s new little smorgasbord belly. She had been practicing power eating at home in preparation for the trip.
Mrs. Treaclebunny flounced back into the Hopping Haven and immediately started a lot of sweaty up-and-down gyrations until two bunnies hopped on her and pinned her to the floor.
“Do you see what you started!” she called to Mr. Bunny, but her voice was drowned out by the music of the Village People.
“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Bunny. “Do I look fat?”
“It is never a bad thing to take up your fair share of space,” said Mr. Bunny ambiguously.
“I have been thinking, Mr. Bunny,” said Mrs. Bunny. “Rather than go up north, we should perhaps go to Bellyflop, where Madeline says this candy store is. We can keep an eye on her, all the while pursuing my dream to be queen.”
Lord and Lady Bunny—Almost Royalty! Page 6
