Grace Stirs It Up

by Mary Casanova

  I yawned long and slow in reply. “I’m ready for bed, and…” I tilted my head under the picnic table. In the shadows, Bonbon rested her head on my feet, and from her little black nose came soft, muffled breathing. “And so is Bonbon. She’s snoring.”

  Mom smiled at Dad. “Honey, isn’t that sweet? Now you’re not the only one in the family who snores.”

  I giggled as Dad made a face at Mom.

  “How about I give you world travelers a lift home?” Grandpa said.

  We lived only a mile and a half away, but I wasn’t about to argue.

  he next morning, before I could even open the back door, Bonbon piddled on the kitchen floor. “Bonbon, no,” I said firmly. “You have to learn how to hold it.”

  Crating her was supposed to help prevent accidents, but—my goodness—she had to use a little self-control between the crate and the backyard.

  I sighed. As part of her training, I took her outside right away, just to help her understand how things are supposed to work.

  Then we came back inside and I used a wet rag to clean up the mess.

  Cleaning up after a dog wasn’t my idea of a great way to start a morning, but it came with owning a dog. Or at least this dog.

  Bonbon looked up at me with her puppy dog eyes while I worked, and my frustration melted away. “Don’t worry, Bonbon,” I said. “You’re worth it.”

  After breakfast, I took Bonbon for a walk along the towpath (with a plastic dog-waste bag, of course). Then I joined Mom on the couch. Bonbon curled up between us as I turned on my tablet.

  “How’s it going?” Mom asked.

  “We’re working on it,” I replied, scratching Bonbon under the chin. She licked my hand.

  With my feet on the embroidered footstool, I sat across from the empty fireplace and checked my online calendar. I added “walk Bonbon” to my late afternoon schedule. With her energy, one long walk a day didn’t seem to be enough.

  “You’re so organized,” Mom said, glancing over from her spiral notebook of lesson plans.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Scary organized,” Josh said, heading from the kitchen to the upright piano on the other side of the room.

  “Scary?” I asked.

  “What nine-year-old keeps a calendar?” he said, sitting at the piano, his back turned to me.

  “Scary,” Mom said, “is what I’d call your room, Josh. You were practically growing science projects in there while we were away. Good thing I returned to do an inspection before it was too late.”

  Josh’s bedroom always looks as if a hurricane had swept through it. Yesterday, Mom came out of his room with a half-finished chocolate shake growing a mound of fuzzy mold.

  “Two questions, Josh,” I said, teasing. “First, who wouldn’t finish a chocolate shake? And second, how can you even think when your room’s so messy?”

  Josh ignored me at first. He started to plunk out a one-handed melody, and then added chords. Then he said over his shoulder, “How can you sleep with your room so crazy neat and organized?”

  Pretending to be insulted, I said, “I…sleep…just…fine.”

  Though Josh had never wanted to take piano lessons, he had a way of learning on his own. He’d taught himself chords, and his fingers flew over the keys, playing music he’d heard or coming up with his own melodies.

  I was on my second year of piano lessons, but playing the piano didn’t come as naturally to me as it did for my big brother.

  “Hey, Josh?” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Then I turned back to my calendar.

  Wednesday, August 5th

  12:00 Video-chat with Sylvie

  1:00 Practice piano

  3:00 Meet at Ella’s house—walk Bonbon and Murphy

  Murphy was Ella’s dog, and I was pretty sure that Bonbon would have a good time playing with him. Only four and a half more hours until we met up!

  “Mom,” I said, “I can’t wait to share my idea with Ella and Maddy about a baking business.”

  “Sounds like fun,” she said, but I could tell that her mind was somewhere else. She still wasn’t totally on board with my plan. Every time I had tried to tell her about the baking business, she sort of tuned out—as if she imagined that I’d spend an hour with my friends in the kitchen and then move on to my next big idea.

  But this time—this idea—felt different. I carried it around with me. I went to bed thinking about it. I woke up thinking about it.

  I glanced at my calendar. There was still time in my day to try something new.

  “Mom, before we call Sylvie and Aunt Sophie, do you mind if I bake some cookies?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Let me know if you need help. But the better you get at baking,” she said, patting her belly, “the more miles I have to run. The half marathon is just a month away. And with the news I got this morning, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.”

  “What news?”

  She made a face that looked like a plea for help. “That I’ll be teaching fourth grade instead of fifth this year.”

  “Really? That’s great! Will I be in your class?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you and me to be in the same classroom. Nothing personal,” she said, smiling.

  “Nothing personal? Mom, but this is personal. Why can’t I be in your class?”

  “Okay, let me rephrase: because it is personal. Because you and I are mother and daughter. I think our close relationship would get in the way for me, and probably for you, too.”

  I was about to protest, but Mom touched my cheek lightly. “Sweetheart. You’ll have to trust me on this. You’ll do fine with any of the other teachers. But for me, what this change means is that I’ll have to come up with a whole new set of lesson plans—and it’s already August.” She shook her head. “I’ll be lucky if I find time to breathe before school starts up, let alone be ready for the half marathon at the end of the month. Maybe I should just let it go this year.”

  I sat straight up. “Mom, no way. You’ve been working too hard. You even ran most of the time in Paris. You can do it!”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just a little stressed right now.”

  As Mom turned back to her lesson plans and Josh’s piano music filled the living room, I set down my tablet and hopped up from the couch. Bonbon woke up and followed me into the kitchen. Immediately, she started circling on the hardwood floor by the door, a signal that she had to go out. Again.

  I didn’t get it. I’d just taken Bonbon for a walk, but maybe the change in time between Paris and here was throwing her off, too.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Hang on.” But before I could even get my flip-flops on to take her outside, Bonbon squatted and left a yellow puddle.

  “No!” But it was too late.

  “What is it?” Mom called.

  I took a deep breath. “I’ve got it under control, Mom. Bonbon had another accident.”

  I sighed, and once again took her outside to show her where I wanted her to go. And then when we came back in, I cleaned up her mess. Again.

  Taking care of a little dog that was used to living on the streets was a lot harder than I’d thought it would be. But I had to make this work. I was already too in love with Bonbon to imagine not having her here with me.

  When I finished cleaning up, I took Bonbon outside again and walked her around the yard.

  “Maybe it’s hard for you to adjust to life in the States the same way I had a tough time getting used to Paris at first,” I thought out loud. “Change isn’t easy, is it, girl?”

  Bonbon whined a little at me and then tugged at her leash.

  “You’ll get used to things,” I reassured her, following close behind. “Eventually.”

  After I finished baking a batch of gingersnap cookies, I went online with Mom to video-chat with Sylvie and her family in Paris.

 
With her sandy hair in a side-swept ponytail, Sylvie appeared on my tablet screen, holding Napoléon, her golden tabby cat, up next to her face.

  “Meeeeow,” Napoléon complained, and then wiggled out of her arms and bolted out of view.

  “Napoléon, le chat,” I said, practicing a little French.

  “Where is Bonbon, the dog?” Sylvie asked, her smile as big as her eyes.

  When I’d first arrived in Paris, I’d misunderstood Sylvie’s shyness. I’d thought maybe she didn’t want me sharing her bedroom for half the summer. But I’d learned she was just as uncomfortable as I was trying to communicate in a different language.

  Now, even though we still had so much to learn with English and French, I felt closer to Sylvie than ever. I just wished she wasn’t so many, many miles away. At least through video-chatting, we could see each other, even if we couldn’t always find the right words to say what we wanted to say.

  I pulled Bonbon closer to my side so that Sylvie could see her. “Voilà!” I said. “Here she is!”

  “Bonjour, Bonbon!” Sylvie said. She added a bunch of words in French that I didn’t understand, but her smile told me what I needed to know. She was clearly happy to see her little friend, and happy to know that the dog had a forever home.

  “Bonbon misses you,” I said. “And I miss you, too, Sylvie!”

  But Bonbon wriggled this way and that, trying to escape. The more tightly I held on, the more she slipped like a bar of soap, right out from under my arm. She dropped to the floor with a thud.

  “Oh no,” I said, reaching down for her. “Bonbon, are you okay?” But she bolted away from me and out of the room.

  When I glanced back at the screen, Aunt Sophie appeared with Baby Lily (short for Lilou in French) in her arms.

  “Hi! How are you feeling, sis?” Mom asked her.

  Unlike the tired Aunt Sophie I remembered from the days after Lily was first born, now Aunt Sophie almost glowed. “My energy is starting to come back. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to start training for a half marathon. Yours is coming up, isn’t it?”

  Mom nodded. “I’m a long way yet from feeling ready.”

  “You’ll do great,” said Aunt Sophie. “Hey, Grace, how’s Bonbon?”

  “She’s super sweet,” I said. “But she ran off. I don’t think she likes video-chatting that much.”

  My aunt smiled back. “Tell me, how is your new business idea coming along?”

  “It’s not very far along yet,” I said, “but I’m telling my friends all about it this afternoon.”

  Then Sylvie leaned in and asked something in French. My aunt translated and said, “Sylvie wishes you lived closer so she could help.”

  Sylvie beamed at me.

  “Moi aussi, Sylvie! I wish we lived closer, too. And I would love your help!”

  What I wished I could tell her was that she already helped me, every time I saw her face on my tablet screen. Remembering the fun we’d had together in La Pâtisserie made me that much more excited about starting my baking business!

  Before I met up with my friends, I found a black-and-white polka-dot ribbon in Mom’s sewing supplies. I made a little bow with it and tied it onto Bonbon’s collar. We were ready! Before heading out, I snapped a photo. Click!

  Bonbon snuffled and sniffed her way without any problems for seven blocks. But the moment we walked up Ella’s driveway toward her green house with overflowing flower boxes, my well-behaved little dog turned into a wild dog. Bonbon’s yipping and yapping turned as shrill as nails on a blackboard as she strained at the end of her leash.

  “No, Bonbon. Settle down,” I said. “No barking!” Quickly, I reached into my pocket for a dog treat, but she didn’t see it.

  Her whole body was fixated on Murphy—the shaggy gray dog that was twice her size. At the other end of Murphy’s leash, Ella hung on as her dog bounded toward us, pulling Ella behind in her shorts and tennis shoes. She looked taller and her copper-brown legs looked longer than at the start of the summer.

  “Mur-phy!” she scolded, flipping her long black braid over her shoulder.

  Trailing after them was Maddy, her wavy red hair kissed with sun and her face, arms, and legs sporting more freckles than I remembered.

  “Hi, Maddy! Hi, Ella!” I shouted above the ruckus. “This is Bonbon!”

  When we let the dogs get close enough to sniff noses, Bonbon stopped yipping. I was ready to pull back on her leash if either dog started acting mean. But as I squatted down, Bonbon finally caught sight—or scent—of the treat I held in my hand.

  She sat down and looked up at me.

  “Good dog,” I said, and offered her the treat.

  Murphy caught on fast. He sat down, too. And I gave him a treat, as well.

  Seconds later, the treats were already forgotten and the dogs were yipping at each other again. Their backs turned into hairbrushes—bristles up! Uh-oh.

  But I soon saw that along with the growling and whining, Bonbon was wagging her tail, too.

  “She’s confused,” I said, and then joked, “Maybe dogs speak a different language in Paris?”

  Ella laughed.

  Murphy started wagging his tail, too—a good sign—as the two dogs began to circle and sniff, circle and sniff.

  Bonbon lowered her head to her paws, her little rump in the air, tail keeping time.

  “I think she wants to play,” I said.

  “Let’s take them into the backyard instead of walking them,” Ella suggested. “That way they can play—and work on their dog languages.”

  Ella’s backyard was framed by a tall wooden fence, perfect for a doggy playdate. Soon Bonbon and Murphy were taking turns chasing each other around the swing set, sandbox, and tire swing.

  The backyard was usually occupied by one or all of Ella’s three-year-old brothers—a set of triplets. But as we settled into red Adirondack chairs, Ella explained that they were all inside napping. “My mom decided to do the same,” she said with a grin.

  I nearly bounced on the edge of my chair, eager to share my new business idea with my friends. But first I had to answer all their questions about Bonbon. And listen as they told me about wakeboarding on Lake Liberty.

  Ella giggled. “You should have seen Maddy’s wipeout!”

  “My wipeout? What about your face-plant?” Maddy replied with a laugh.

  “I was just trying to avoid those ducklings!” Ella said.

  “You wakeboarded, too, Ella?” I asked. She’d never been brave enough to try it in the past.

  “Uh, no.” She dropped her gaze to the grass, and then looked up again. “I was going to jump off the end of the dock. Then just as I pushed off, a bunch of little mallards shot out from under the dock. I thought I was going to land on them, so I did—”

  Maddy interrupted. “She did what is now known as the famous Ella Twist.”

  Ella nodded. “To avoid them, I did a giant bellyflop instead.”

  “Awesome!” Maddy said, and they both started giggling again.

  I smiled, but I felt completely left out. They’d had five weeks of fun without me. They’d shared laughs and moments over the summer that I would never know about.

  I tried to close what felt like a widening gap between us. “Hey, you know how we talked about starting a business before I left in June?” I began.

  “Yeah,” Maddy said. “And now school’s only a month away! I can’t believe it. My mom’s already got our back-to-school shopping all planned out. Maybe you two can join us!”

  “I still can’t wait to find out who we have for teachers,” Ella said.

  I wanted to get back to talking about my business idea, but first I shared Mom’s news about teaching fourth grade.

  “Maybe we’ll all be in her class!” Maddy said right away.

  “You two might be, but I won’t,” I said, my mood dampening. “My mom said moms and daughters are ‘too close’ to be in the same classroom—that it gets too personal.”

  Bonbon suddenly squeezed under
my chair to escape Murphy, and then stretched out to rest. Murphy flopped on the grass beside Ella, panting. Ella laughed and reached down to scratch Murphy’s belly.

  Before the conversation could get away from me again, I said, “Maddy, Ella, listen to me”—a little louder than I’d intended. “I have a business idea I really want to tell you about.”

  A look crossed between them, making me wonder if they’d completely cooled off on starting a business together. Neither said a word, so I jumped in. I had to!

  I told them about how much fun it had been working in the pâtisserie. I told them how I’d looked around me the whole time I was in Paris, trying to find business ideas.

  “What I didn’t realize until just before I flew home was that the idea was right in front of me,” I explained. “My grandpa gave me advice: ‘Do what you love. And make it unique.’ So I thought, I love baking, and to make a baking business more unique, we could bake French treats!”

  Ella chewed her lip, the way she did when she was thinking hard.

  “French treats?” said Maddy.

  I nodded.

  She tilted her head of copper-red hair. “But this is Massachusetts, Grace. You’re back in the U-S-A. Do you think anyone really wants French treats?”

  Maddy’s words stung, taking me by surprise. Maybe she was jealous about my trip to Paris. I really didn’t know, but either way, I pushed ahead.

  “Wait till you see what I learned to make, Maddy. They’re like pieces of art,” I said. “It’s like making art you can eat.” I smiled, trying to convince my friends.

  “Hmm,” Maddy said. I could tell she was warming up. “I like the artsy part of it.”

  Ella was still silent, but she was thinking hard, I could tell. So I kept going. “We’d have a lot of fun together, and we could bake things that are really unique.”

  Maddy slowly nodded. “We’ll have to buy supplies,” she said, “but I have some money saved up.”

  At that, Ella’s forehead wrinkled, her lower lip quivered, and tears suddenly fell.

  “What’s wrong, Ella?” I asked. “Is my idea that bad?”

  Ella shook her head and took in a shaky breath. “No, it has nothing to do with your idea. I’ve been wanting to tell you two, but I was waiting for the right time. Now that you’re back, Grace…”