by Betsy Byars
That night when everyone was in bed at the Mason house, Carlie got up. She slipped into Thomas J’s room and shone a flashlight in his face. “You asleep?”
He put his hand up to block out the light. “No, I was just lying here thinking.”
“About Harvey?”
“Yeah. I’m used to him being on the bottom bunk and shifting around and all. I can’t get to sleep without him. It’s too quiet.”
“Me either. Now, listen, I got an idea. You want to go in cahoots with me?”
Thomas J wasn’t sure what that was, but he said, “I’d be glad to.”
“All right, look, I went through the newspaper after supper and guess what I found in the ads!”
“What?”
“Look, it’s right here.” She shone the light on the folded newspaper. “Can you read it?”
Thomas J bent closer to the paper. Carlie was too impatient to wait for his eyes to focus. She read it herself. “Puppies free to good homes!”
“Puppies?”
“Yeah, Thomas J, we’re going to go right over there first thing in the morning and get Harvey a puppy.”
Thomas J couldn’t seem to take it in. “A puppy?”
“Yeah, he’s always wanted one—remember? It was the first thing on his list. And it’ll cure him, Thomas J, I know it will. Why, if I was in the hospital half-dead and somebody hooked a floating opal around my neck, I’d get up and do the hula.” She broke off. “And the best part is they’re free. See? Free to good homes.”
“But is this a good home?”
“If it’s good enough for us, it’s good enough for a dog, isn’t it?”
“What about Mrs. Mason though? She might get mad.”
“I’ll take all the responsibility. I’m used to people being mad at me. It doesn’t bother me a bit. I’ll say I forced you to come with me and—”
“No, I want to come on my own. She can get mad at me too.”
“All right then, after breakfast we’ll go over to Woodland Circle—wherever that is—and we’ll take a shopping bag—see, we’ll have to sneak him into the hospital—and we’ll pick out a puppy and take him over to the hospital and pull him out and sing ‘Happy Birthday to You.’ How does that sound?”
“It sounds good to me.”
“I know it’ll cure him. I mean, who is going to lie there staring up at the ceiling when a puppy is licking his face? It just can’t be done.”
“What if the puppy doesn’t lick him though?”
“We’ll pick one that will. After all, there’re bound to be—how many puppies in a litter—six? Seven? There’s bound to be one licker.” At the door she paused and said, “Not a word of this to Mrs. Mason, you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Or Mr. Mason.” Carlie sensed the bond that had grown between them.
There was a pause, then, “All right.”
“See you in the morning.”
23
Carlie and Thomas J walked slowly down the hospital hall with the shopping bag between them. “I wish he wasn’t such a wiggler,” Carlie said, looking straight ahead.
“That’s why you picked him—because he was the liveliest one.”
“I know, but I feel like we got a tiger in there, the way the bag’s shaking. I’m afraid he’s going to bust out the bottom.”
“If he wets, I know he will.”
“Don’t even think such things,” Carlie said. “And remember, every time you see a nurse, get in front of the bag. Nurses are known for their sharp eyes. Doctors aren’t. We could bring an elephant in here and the doctors wouldn’t notice.”
Thomas J and Carlie went straight to Harvey’s room. “Shut the door, shut the door,” Carlie said quickly.
She ran over to Harvey’s bed. He was staring at the ceiling. “Hey, it’s just me, Carlie. You can look at me in safety. I’m not wearing one of my famous halters.”
He turned his eyes to her. “See, I lied.” She grinned. “I’ve got on my shocking-pink one—your favorite.” Before he could look back at the ceiling she said, “Hey, we brought you something.”
Harvey didn’t speak.
“And I’m not even going to make you guess what it is. I’m just going to tell you that it is fat, spotted, wiggly, that it has a tail and a pink nose and that it is dying to get out of this shopping bag.” She reached down and brought up the puppy. “Taa-dah! Puppy-time!”
Carlie nudged Thomas J. “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday, dear Haaaaaarvey, Happy Birthday to you.”
There was a silence. Thomas J said, “We wanted to get a white one so we could name him Snowball, but they all had spots on them.”
Carlie set the puppy on the bed beside Harvey. She nudged him forward.
Delighted to be out of the bag, the puppy rushed for the nearest face—Harvey’s—and began licking his neck.
Carlie looked at Thomas J and rolled her eyes upward. “Thank goodness,” she mouthed.
Harvey didn’t move. “Don’t you like him, Harvey?” Thomas J asked. It was the first present he had ever been in on. He wanted more than anything that it be a success. “He’s real nice—and fat too,” Thomas J said. “Feel him.”
“Yeah, pleasingly plump is not the word,” Carlie said.
“And soft too,” Thomas J said anxiously.
Harvey did not move. Thomas J squinted up at Carlie. “Should we sing the birthday song again?”
Suddenly Harvey lifted his hand. He laid it on the puppy.
“I don’t think so.” Carlie grinned.
Harvey spoke for the first time in two days. “Is this for me?” he asked.
“Compliments of Carlie and Thomas J,” Carlie said.
“It’s mine?”
“Yeah, it’s your birthday present. We picked it out special.”
“Permanently?”
“Sure, what kind of gifts do you think me and Thomas J give? If we’d wanted to give you something unpermanent we’d have gotten a Popsicle.”
“I can keep him?”
“Yeah, sure, what else? As a matter of fact, he’s unreturnable.”
The puppy was wiggling against Harvey’s neck, and suddenly Harvey started to cry. It was the first time he had cried since the accident. It was like the turning on of a spigot. He sobbed, and the tears rolled down his cheeks in streams. The puppy, wild with all the excitement, licked at the tears.
“Go ahead and cry all you want to,” Carlie said happily. “You got your own personal crying towel now.”
She turned to Thomas J. “You know, when I get to be a nurse, every morning I’m going to bring a basket of puppies to the hospital with me. They’re better than pills.”
Harvey was still crying. “It just makes me feel so—” He broke off. “I don’t know. It’s just that I didn’t think— Oh, I don’t know how I feel.” He cried again.
The nurse on the floor was passing the door and heard the commotion. She stuck her head in the room.
“Under the covers, quick!” Carlie said, poking the puppy under the sheet.
“What’s going on in here?”
“Believe it or not,” Carlie said, “we are having a wonderful time.”
The nurse kept looking at Harvey. She said, “Harvey, are you all right?”
“Yes’m.”
“Are you laughing or crying?”
“Both, I guess.”
The nurse kept standing there. She noticed the bulge under the sheet, but she decided to ignore it. This was the first time Harvey had shown any sign of life in two days. “You want anything?” she asked.
“No.”
“Cokes,” Carlie hissed at him.
“Oh, yeah, could me and my friends have a Coke?” Harvey asked. “It’s my birthday.” He wiped his remaining tears on the sheet.
“Of course.”
“Want to see what I got for my birthday? My friends gave it to me.”
“Don’t—” Carlie started to say, but Harvey reached under the sheet and pulled
out the puppy before she could finish.
“Now, you know better than to have a puppy in here,” the nurse said. “Why, if I had seen that puppy I would have to send him out right this minute.”
“Yes’m.”
She smiled. “I’ll bring the Cokes.” She started out the door and then leaned back in. “And many happy returns of the day, Harvey.”
“Thank you.” As the door closed, he held up the puppy so he could get a good look now that his eyes were dry. “This is the nicest puppy I have ever seen.”
“Thomas J and me only give the best,” Carlie said.
“There was six of them,” Thomas J said, “but this one came running over and started licking us and we knew it was the one for you.”
Carlie said, “Listen, don’t think this puppy is all you’re getting for your birthday though. I’m making my famous mayonnaise cake and bringing it over tonight.”
“And will you bring the puppy back then too?”
“Listen, this puppy is not so easy to lug around,” Carlie said. “If you want to do any real playing with him, you’re going to have to get out of this hospital.”
“I will,” Harvey said, “but will you bring him tonight?”
“If,” Carlie said, “Mrs. Mason will lend me her tote bag.”
24
“Well, that’s what’s known as a successful gift, Thomas J,” Carlie said. They were walking home from the hospital with the puppy between them.
“Yeah.”
Carlie threw back her head and breathed in the morning air. “You know, Thomas J, I just feel real good.”
“Me too.”
“This is probably what it feels like to be famous.”
“Famous?”
“Yeah—hey, get the puppy, will you, he’s going under those bushes.” She waited, then said, “Like one time Harvey was making up one of his lists and he was deciding how he wanted to be famous—he said that one day everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes—and he was figuring out what he wanted his fifteen minutes to be like.”
“What did he decide?” Thomas J paused to pull the puppy back on the sidewalk. “This is really a nice little puppy.”
“Oh, I can’t remember. I think he wanted to be an astronaut and land on the moon, something like that. Or write a best-seller. Anyway, the point is, Thomas J, that this is probably what we’ll feel like when we get famous.”
“Yeah.”
“A preview of coming attractions. Nice feeling, isn’t it?”
“I think this puppy’s getting to know me. Look how he follows.”
“Anyway,” Carlie went on, “until I do get famous, Thomas J, fifteen minutes like this every now and then will keep me going.”
They could see the Masons’ house in the distance, and they both got silent. Finally Thomas J said, “How are we going to tell Mrs. Mason what we did?”
“How do you think we’re going to do it?” she snapped. “Write it in the air with a sparkler?” She straightened. “We’re going to walk in and say ‘Look what we got Harvey for his birthday.’ Anyway, don’t worry about it. Anybody that would take us in isn’t going to turn away a puppy.”
“I hope not.”
“Plus the fact that Mrs. Mason has been real worried about Harvey. I heard her talking to Mr. Mason—it was like he was their real child, they were so worried.”
Carlie opened the screen door and went into the house. She could hear the mixer going in the kitchen, so she went in and said, “Hey, look what we got Harvey for his birthday!” She held up the puppy. She didn’t sound as confident as she had when she had been outside on the sidewalk.
Mrs. Mason looked at the puppy. She wiped her hands on her apron. She said, “Now who thought of that?”
“I did,” Carlie said. She stepped a little in front of Thomas J.
“But I helped,” Thomas J said, accepting his part of the blame.
“Why, what a lovely thing to do!” Mrs. Mason came over and hugged Thomas J and Carlie, one in each arm.
In the curve of her arm, Thomas J felt like a stick. He wanted to say “What a lovely thing for you to do too,” but he couldn’t.
He remembered a talk he and Mr. Mason had had. You can’t just blurt out things about love, they had decided, without some training.
Thomas J wished suddenly he had had some training. He thought of himself on an imaginary mother’s lap.
“Who do you love?” she would say.
He would not know the answer.
“Well, do you love Ma-ma?” she would prompt.
“Yes.”
“Then say it.”
“I love Ma-ma.”
“Say it again, real loud.”
“I love Ma-ma.”
Later, maybe, Thomas J thought, with a little training from Mrs. Mason he could learn to say something nice, even if it wasn’t the word “love.”
Mrs. Mason stepped back. “We’ll have to tell Harvey about the puppy. It’ll give him something to look forward to. We can take a picture of him with the Polaroid and—”
“He already knows.”
“You didn’t take it to the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Why, the nurses would have had a fit if they’d seen it.”
“No, there was one real nice nurse—I’m going to copy myself after her—and she saw it but pretended not to,” Carlie said.
“And did it perk him up?” Mrs. Mason asked.
“Oh, yeah, he cried at first,” Carlie said, “but it wasn’t a bad sort of crying, and then he sat up—I rolled up the bed in my best professional manner—and we all had Cokes. It was a real happy occasion.”
“Harvey needs a few of those.”
“Later I’m going to make my famous mayonnaise cake—it’s the best thing you ever ate—you can’t even taste the mayonnaise—and take it over. I’m going to put candles on it and silver Decorettes—the works.”
“Listen, I’ve got an idea,” Mrs. Mason said. “Why don’t you two go down to the grocery store—they have pet supplies there—and get, oh, a little collar and a leash, maybe a toy bone or something, and we’ll wrap them up as gifts and take them over with the cake.”
“And worm pills!” Carlie said. “That’ll be funny. Come on, Thomas J.” At the door she paused. “This is going to be a really nice birthday.” She grinned. “Just remember me and Thomas J have one coming up in three weeks, haven’t we, Thomas J?”
“Yes,” Thomas J said, “August seventh.”
Then she and Thomas J went out the door.
25
The remaining Benson twin, Thomas, died on Monday, and it was decided that Thomas J should have a haircut before going to the funeral. In the barbershop he felt his first sadness about her death.
He had climbed up into the chair, excited at his first real haircut, and the barber had looked at him and said, “Who’s been hacking at your hair, Son?” in an uncomplimentary way.
As soon as the barber said that, Thomas J had been once again on the Benson farm with the twins clipping away at his head as if it were a bush. He had closed his eyes, lost in unhappiness.
“There!” the twins would cry. They always finished at the same time. He never knew what he would look like till he got to the bathroom mirror.
The barber had brushed him off and said, “Now, you’re a real nice-looking young man, if I do say so myself.”
Thomas J had opened his eyes. Looking at the neatly trimmed boy in the mirror—the two halves the same at last—he had felt his sorrow draining from him.
Now, seated beside Mr. Mason in the car, he felt only pleasure in an outing with Mr. Mason.
“Mr. Mason?”
“What?”
Thomas J paused.
“What is it, Thomas J?”
Thomas J wanted to bring up some problem so that Mr. Mason would say “I know how you feel, Thomas J, because the same thing happened to me. Let me tell you about it.” Only Thomas J couldn’t think of a problem.
“Oh, nothi
ng,” he said. He looked out the window. He saw the reflection of his own face, neatly framed in the new haircut.
“Did I ever tell you about the time my daddy took me to Bear Rocks and I got lost?”
Thomas J turned to him, his face bright. “No.”
“Well, one time—I was just about your age—and my daddy got the idea that we should …”
Thomas J and Mr. Mason stood looking at the Benson twin in her coffin. She was wearing her good black dress and her cameo pin, the same outfit her sister had worn. Thomas J was glad about that.
Mr. Mason put one hand on Thomas J’s shoulder. “You know, Thomas J, they thought they were doing you a kindness when they took you in. You should always remember that.”
Thomas J looked up at Mr. Mason. “They were doing me a kindness.”
Mr. Mason nodded. “I’m sure they thought so.”
Thomas J looked back at the Benson twin. Now, dead at age eighty-eight, she actually resembled the president for whom she had been named. “I’ll remember,” Thomas J said.
“Well, Thomas J is off to another funeral,” Carlie said as she settled on the foot of Harvey’s hospital bed. “It’s a good thing they weren’t triplets.”
Harvey was lying with the head of his bed rolled up. “How’s my dog?” Every time he mentioned his dog, he felt good. He had even told his father when he came for a visit. “I have a dog now,” he’d said, looking right into his father’s eyes. All his father had said was “That’s all right.”
“Oh, your dog’s fine,” Carlie said. “He went on the paper two times yesterday. You know, Harvey, you’re beginning to look like yourself again.”
“Too bad I can’t look like somebody else, huh?”
“No, I like the way you look. Hey, wait a minute, I’ve got an idea. Comb your hair down in bangs.”
“No.”
“But I think you’d look good in bangs, and then push your glasses up on top of your head, Hollywood style.”
“I can’t see without my glasses.”
“Well, I’ll tell you how you look. Come on.”
There was a pause while Harvey brushed his hair over his forehead. “Now put your glasses on your head.” Carlie looked at him with her head to one side. “Harvey,” she said.
