Maurice’s Room

by Paula Fox

  It took Maurice an hour to put everything back. Patsy watched him from the door.

  “Thief!” he said to her. She wagged her tail.

  The next day Maurice did not feel very well. His mother said he could stay home provided he kept to his bed. “None of this wandering around in bare feet,” she said.

  Maurice was happy to stay in his room. He watched Patsy as she paced back and forth outside his door. When she tried to sneak in, he shouted, “No, you don’t!”

  That afternoon he heard his mother speaking with his uncle on the telephone.

  “Maurice and Patsy are inseparable,” she said. “You were quite right. We must get him a dog of his own.”

  “A whole week,” said Maurice to himself. He began to feel really sick. Suddenly Patsy made a dash for the chest of drawers. She put one paw on a drawer pull.

  “Out!” shouted Maurice, standing up in the middle of his bed with the blankets flapping around him. Patsy ran from the room, but she sat down right in front of the door.

  The next day Maurice felt poorly again. His mother took his temperature. He had no fever. His throat wasn’t red. But his eyes looked strained. The strain came from staring through the dark at Patsy half the night. But the dog had fallen asleep before Maurice had and so she had been unable to steal a single thing from Maurice’s room.

  “I think you should go to school,” said Mrs. Henry.

  “No!” said Maurice, kneeling on his bed.

  “Mercy! You don’t have to kneel,” she said. “What is the matter?”

  “I can’t go to school,” Maurice said.

  Mrs. Henry called Mr. Henry.

  “I think he is developing a school phobia,” Maurice heard her say to his father as they stood in the hall outside his room.

  At that moment, Patsy raced in, threw herself at the bed, snatched a blanket, and made off with it. Maurice jumped to the floor and ran after her. They both slammed into Maurice’s father.

  “If you don’t stop playing with Patsy, I’ll have to send her home!” said Mr. Henry.

  After that, it was easy. Maurice played with Patsy every minute he could, and soon his uncle came to get her. He dressed Patsy in her plaid coat, clipped on her leash, put on his hat, and left.

  “You see?” said Maurice’s father.

  Maurice nodded.

  5. THE BEAR

  One Saturday morning, a few weeks after Patsy had left, Maurice awoke at six o’clock. His window was blurred because it was raining so hard. The hamster stirred in its cage.

  “You’re up too early,” Maurice said. The robin lifted one wing slowly and opened its good eye. Maurice went into the kitchen and made himself a grape-jelly sandwich. It felt good to be eating a sandwich and walking down the hall so early in the morning. No one else was awake. He gave a piece of bread crust to the robin and one to the hamster. Then he got dressed.

  Soon there was a soft knock on the front door. It was Jacob, who always arrived early on Saturday mornings and who usually brought something with him. Today he was carrying a paper sack.

  “Do you want a jelly sandwich?” asked Maurice. Jacob nodded. Then he showed Maurice what he had brought in the bag.

  “What is it?” asked Maurice.

  “I think it’s for weighing things. I found it in a box on the street,” Jacob said, holding up a large white scale. The paint was chipped, and when Maurice pressed his hand down on the platform, the needle on the dial jiggled.

  “Your arm weighs six pounds,” said Jacob.

  Maurice’s mother walked by. She was yawning. She glanced into the room. “Good morning, children,” she said.

  “My arm is very heavy,” said Maurice.

  “That’s nice,” said Maurice’s mother, and yawned again and walked on.

  “I forgot to tell you,” Jacob said. “Mr. Klenk said to come and get the bear.”

  Maurice put the scale on his bed. Then both boys ran to the front door and down the five flights of stairs to Mr. Klenk’s room in the basement. Mr. Klenk was blowing on the cup of coffee he was holding in one hand. He still carried a broom in the other.

  “It seems I hardly have time for coffee,” said Mr. Klenk. “I’ll be glad to get rid of that bear.”

  He left them standing at the door, peering into his room. There was so much cigar smoke in the air, it was hard to see the furniture. In a minute Mr. Klenk was back, pushing the bear before him. The bear’s feet were strapped into roller skates. It was as tall as Jacob.

  “Here he is,” said Mr. Klenk. “Think you can handle him?”

  Jacob and Maurice stared. The bear was plump. Its fur was black. Its two front paws stuck out straight in front of it. The claws were of different lengths, and some of them pointed upward as though the bear had been pushing against a wall.

  “Why is it wearing skates?” asked Maurice.

  “It came that way,” said Mr. Klenk.

  “It looks tired,” said Jacob.

  “It had a long sea voyage, all the way from South America.”

  Maurice pulled and Jacob pushed and they got the bear up the stairs all the way to Maurice’s front door, and inside. Because of the skates the bear moved easily on a level surface, but it had been a slippery business getting it up the stairs.

  “I think we’d better wait a while before we show it to my mother and father,” said Maurice. “They don’t like surprises.”

  “Mine neither,” Jacob said.

  Maurice said, “Why don’t you get your hat and coat and put them on the bear and maybe they’ll think it’s you if we push him down the hall fast.”

  Jacob went to get his outdoor clothes. They dressed the bear, pulling Jacob’s hat almost all the way down its muzzle. Then, running, they propelled it down the hall. As they went by his parents’ bedroom, Maurice’s father poked his head around the door.

  “Who’s that?” asked Mr. Henry in a sleepy voice.

  “Jacob!” said Maurice.

  “Maurice!” said Jacob.

  Mr. Henry went back to bed. “You shouldn’t roller-skate in the house,” he said.

  At last they got the bear into a corner of Maurice’s room. “The bear has a funny smell,” said Jacob.

  “You’re right,” said Maurice. “But we’ll have to get used to it.”

  They took Jacob’s clothes off the bear. Then they stood and looked at it. It was pleasant to have a big animal in the room with them, even if it was stuffed.

  “Maurice,” Mrs. Henry called. “Come and drink your apple juice.”

  “We’ll have to disguise it. Then one day when they’re feeling good I’ll just tell them I have a bear,” said Maurice in a whisper. Then he called out, “We’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Couldn’t we hide it under the bed for a while?” asked Jacob.

  “No,” said Maurice. “It won’t fit because the Victrola’s there. But wait a minute.” Maurice opened his closet door and pulled out a heap of clothing. Pretty soon he found what he wanted. It was a penguin costume.

  “It was for Halloween,” said Maurice.

  They started dressing the bear. They had to cut holes in the feet to fit the costume over the bear’s roller skates. Then they zipped up the front and pushed the bear between the table and the window. Nothing was left showing of it except the big bumps where its paws were.

  Then they went to the kitchen and had apple juice and doughnuts.

  6. PATSY AGAIN

  The next day, which was Sunday, Maurice’s uncle was coming to visit. When Maurice heard that Patsy was coming with him, he went to his room and began to pile up things behind his door.

  Maurice’s father knocked, and Maurice opened the door a crack.

  “Maurice,” he said, “you’ll have to clean out the hamster’s cage. There’s a very strong smell coming from your room.”

  “All right,” said Maurice. “I’ll do it right now.”

  He looked at the bear in its penguin costume.

  “I wonder if I could spray you with perfume,
” he said.

  Then he took a piece of rope and tied one end of it around the bear’s neck and the other to his bedpost. If somebody came in, he decided, he would just roll the bear out the window and then pull it back into the room when the coast was clear.

  A few minutes later, he heard his mother let his uncle in at the front door.

  “Well, Lily, how are you?”

  “Fine, and you?”

  “Fine, and your husband?”

  “Fine, and Patsy?”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine,” said Maurice to the hamster.

  “And how is Maurice?” asked the uncle.

  “Fine,” said his mother.

  “He’ll be delighted to see Patsy.”

  “He surely will be delighted.”

  Maurice added his boots to the heap behind his door.

  A large object suddenly hurtled down the hall and against Maurice’s door. It was Patsy. The barricade gave way, and Patsy raced into the room, stomping and huffing and panting. The snake slid under its rock, the lizard froze, the hamster burrowed in its sawdust, and the bird closed its good eye.

  Patsy stopped dead in her tracks. Maurice stood up slowly from where he had been crouching near his bed. Patsy’s nose was in the air. She was sniffing. She slid one floppy paw forward, then another. Maurice sprang toward the bear, his arms outstretched.

  “Don’t lay a hand on that bear!” he cried.

  It was too late. Patsy leaped. Over and down crashed the bear. All eight wheels of the roller skates spun in the air. Patsy sat on the bear and began to bay. Maurice could hear his mother, his father, and his uncle racing down the hall.

  He ran to the window, flung it open, and deposited the turtles on the floor. He grabbed a blanket from his bed and threw it over Patsy, who fell into a tangled heap alongside the bear. In a flash, Maurice had the bear up on its skates and on the sill. He gave it a shove, and out it went through the window, the rope trailing behind it.

  Mr. Klenk, who was sweeping the courtyard below and whistling softly to himself, heard the whir of spinning roller skates and looked up.

  “Ye gods!” he cried. “A giant penguin!”

  7. THE TRUMPET LESSON

  “Today you are going to start your trumpet lessons,” said Mrs. Henry. She held out a black case that reminded Maurice of a crocodile’s head. Maurice put it on his bed and opened it. The trumpet glittered. He could see his face reflected in it.

  He looked out of his window. A light rain was falling, a March rain that might be warm. It was exactly the kind of Saturday Maurice and Jacob liked to spend hunting for new things for the collection.

  “You’ll have to leave very soon,” said Mrs. Henry as she started back to the kitchen to finish her cup of coffee. Maurice lifted the snake out of its cage. The snake wound itself around his wrist. It was a dull green color and quite small.

  “The trouble with you is you don’t have enough interests,” he said to the snake. He put it back in its cage and pulled the chicken wire over the top. Then he put on his light jacket.

  When he got to the front door, his mother said, “Just a minute. Haven’t you forgotten something?” She was holding out the trumpet case. “And Maurice, really! It’s raining! Put on your rubbers and your heavy jacket.”

  “Maurice, you must learn to be more responsible,” said his father, who was standing at the other end of the hall eating a piece of whole-wheat toast.

  Maurice went back to his room, dug into his closet, and found one of his rubbers and one of Jacob’s. He wished he had been born wearing one pair of shoes and one suit of clothes.

  Jacob was waiting for him in front of the building.

  “Do your lessons really start today?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Maurice. As he had guessed, it was a warm spring rain.

  “Will you have to go every Saturday morning?”

  “For six weeks,” said Maurice. “Then they’ll see.”

  “See what?” asked Jacob.

  “If I get new interests.”

  On their way to the music school where Maurice was to take his lesson, they passed a big junk yard. A sign hung over the wire fence that surrounded the yard: Auto Parts. A man wearing a hat was walking around the piles of bumpers and tires and car bodies. Now and then he would kick an old fender.

  “Why don’t you wait for me in there,” Maurice suggested. “Maybe you can find something good.” The man with the hat walked into a little house not much bigger than a telephone booth. There was a small window in it. Maurice could see the man fiddling with a radio.

  “Maybe he’ll chase me away,” said Jacob, looking at the man.

  “I’ll stay for a minute,” said Maurice.

  They walked toward the rear of the lot. The man looked out of his window but didn’t seem to see them. He was chewing on a toothpick and still twisting the radio dials. Just behind the little house, Maurice and Jacob could see the long arm of a crane.

  “Look at that!” said Maurice, pointing to a pyramid of heaped-up car parts. Poking out of the pile were hubcaps, fenders, tires, fan belts, radiator caps, pipes, window frames, steering wheels on shafts, and at the very top, lying on a car hood, a pair of headlights that looked almost new.

  “We could use those headlights,” said Maurice.

  Jacob looked back at the little house. “He won’t give them to us,” he said.

  “Maybe he’d make a trade,” said Maurice.

  “What could we trade?” asked Jacob.

  “We’ll think of something,” Maurice answered. “But first we have to see those headlights.”

  “How will we get them?” asked Jacob.

  “Climb,” said Maurice. “See all the places you can put your feet?”

  “Me?” asked Jacob.

  “I think you can do it better. I’m heavier. If I tried it, everything might crash down,” Maurice said.

  “Are you going to ask him first if we can?” asked Jacob.

  “He’s not even looking at us,” said Maurice.

  Jacob put his right foot on a tire rim, then grabbed hold of the fender above him and brought his left foot up to another tire. Slowly he climbed toward the top, using the tires as steps.

  Suddenly there was a loud clanging of metal, then bangs, screeches, and a crash. When the dust cleared, Maurice saw Jacob almost at the top of the pyramid, stretched out on a silver-colored car hood, clutching its sides.

  The man ran out of his little house. When he saw Jacob, he threw his hat on the ground.

  “What’s the meaning of this!” he shouted.

  “We’d like to make a trade,” said Maurice.

  “Trade! At a time like this?” bellowed the man. “Get off my property!”

  “Help!” said Jacob in a weak voice.

  “How will we get him down?” asked Maurice.

  The man picked up his hat and jammed it back on his head. “Can’t he fly?” he growled; then he turned and walked to the crane. He jumped up to the seat and began to push the levers around furiously.

  “Don’t worry,” Maurice called up to Jacob. “He’s going to get you down.”

  Jacob didn’t answer. He wasn’t scared now, and he rather liked being so high above the ground.

  There was a grinding of gears and a maniacal roar as the man maneuvered the crane into position.

  “Clear away,” shouted the man to Maurice. Maurice ran back toward the little house and watched as the claw at the end of the cables lowered its jaw, then clamped onto the hood where Jacob lay, gripped it, and lifted it down slowly like a plate. Several tires dislodged by the crane rolled along the ground.

  “Well, get up,” said Maurice to Jacob. Jacob was feeling sleepy. He shook himself a little and stood up.

  “How was it?” asked Maurice.

  “Okay,” said Jacob.

  The man jumped down from the crane, picked up a tire, and kicked it so hard it rolled all the way back to the pile. Then he started toward them.

  Maurice and Jacob
hurried to the gate. But Maurice stopped suddenly and darted into the little house, where he placed the trumpet on top of the radio.

  “It’s too late for my lesson anyhow,” he said to Jacob as the man yelled after them,

  “I’ve got a friend on the police force!”

  On the way home, Jacob said, “What will your mother and father say?”

  “Plenty!” said Maurice.

  8. A BIRTHDAY PRESENT

  In a few weeks Mr. and Mrs. Henry stopped mentioning the trumpet. After that, whenever Maurice happened to hear them, they were talking about moving to the country. “We’ll have to move anyway, at the rate Maurice is going,” Mrs. Henry said once. “If he puts one more thing in his room, he won’t have a place to stand.”

  But Mr. Henry wanted to wait.

  On a morning late in April, Mrs. Henry brought Maurice a glass of fresh orange juice on a little tray. There was a sign leaning against the glass. It read: “Happy Birthday to Maurice.” She couldn’t get into the room so Maurice got up from his bed and went to the door to get the tray.

  Jacob came at noon and they had a birthday lunch. Maurice blew out all of his nine candles but he forgot to make a wish. Then Mr. and Mrs. Henry brought in a large box.

  Maurice looked inside. It was a three-foot-long sailboat. The rigging was made of cord. The sails were of canvas, the winches really turned, and the hatches could be taken off and put back. It had two masts.

  “It’s a ketch,” said Maurice’s father, who was sitting on the floor next to him. “Look at those lines! Some boat!”

  “Will it really sail?” asked Jacob.

  “It will,” said Mr. Henry.

  “Can we take it to the lake right now?” asked Maurice.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Henry. “But be very, very careful with it.”

  Maurice’s mother smiled. “It’s nice to see you so interested in something,” she said to Maurice.

  The two boys carried the boat to the park. They dropped their jackets on the grass and sat down on the cement ledge that ran all around the lake. Then they rigged the sails.

  A brisk wind was blowing. Maurice and Jacob slid the boat into the water. Instantly, it raced toward the center of the lake, its sails puffed out with wind. The boys ran around to the other side, but Jacob suddenly stopped. His hair was blowing almost straight up.