The Most Mauve There Is

by Nancy Springer

  The Most Mauve There Is

  By Nancy Springer

  Copyright 2013 by Nancy Springer

  Cover Copyright 2013 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  Previously published in print in This Family Drives Me Crazy! M. Jerry Weiss and Helen S. Weiss, Eds., Putnam, 2009.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Other Titles of The Literary Works by Nancy Springer and Untreed Reads Publishing

  Alpha Alpha Gamma

  Ruth

  The Third Silence

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  The Most Mauve There Is

  By Nancy Springer

  The true horror of my situation didn’t hit me until the family females took us family males to be measured for our “formalwear.” Up till then, I thought my sister’s wedding, and her sugar-brained idea of what I was supposed to do in it, would just go away, you know? She was always breaking up with guys, so what made this Mark whatshisface any different? I hadn’t been paying much attention.

  But what I saw in the Tuxedos and More store woke me up so fast I freaked.

  “I’m not! I won’t! You can’t do this to me!” I yelled when they brought out my “ensemble”: shiny black buckle shoes like Christopher Robin going to visit Winnie-the-Pooh, and white stockings, short pants with black ribbon bows at the knees, a little bitty black jacket with tails, a white shirt with ruffles, and I’m thirteen years old, for gosh sake. “Ewww! I’d rather be the flower girl!”

  “Hush up, Avery Alexander.” Mom’s use of my first and middle name signaled an orange level of alert for potential parental terrorism. Quick, I checked Dad, but the look on his face didn’t belong there. My father’s all about taking charge, so why did he seem, like, helpless?

  “I’m the flower girl!” screeched my brat kid sister who always takes everything seriously. “I get to scatter the rose petals! Valerie said!”

  “Shhh, Julie,” Mom told her a lot more gently than she had shushed me. “Of course you’re the flower girl. Avery’s just being—”

  I cut her off. “I’m just being sane! Get some little kid who won’t care. I’m too big to be a ring bearer!”

  “You’re small for your age,” said Mom, like my being the midget of middle school was real helpful. I’d been told that as a kid Dad had been undersized, too, till he had a growth spurt and shot up a foot in one year.

  “I don’t mean that kind of too big!”

  “I know exactly what you mean, Avery Alexander, and my response is, suck it up.”

  “Easy for you to say! You don’t have to face my friends.” When my Avery-hating girl cousins got me in the sights of their cell phone cameras, and everybody in school saw me wearing—

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” I yelped as the Tuxedos and More lady, a large woman with hair like coils of steel wire, bent over and put a big satin thing around my waist. “What’s that?”

  “Your cummerbund. To go with your Little Lord Fauntleroy tie.”

  “But it’s pink!”

  “Not pink,” Mom snapped. “Mauve.”

  Julie whined, “But you told me my dress is going to be pink! I like pink!”

  “Mauve is a very special kind of pink.”

  I’ll say. Like the color you might get if a pink cat coughed up a hairball.

  Here came the metal-haired lady with the tie, another huge satin monstrosity made of pink ribbon in a bow. I jumped back. “I’m not doing it!” My voice came out deep at first but slipped up into a squeak; I hate that. “Not if I have to wear this stuff! It’s not natural!”

  “Avery,” said Dad with a sigh. “If I have to wear a monkey suit with a pink vest and a pink tie—”

  “What sort of family are you?” my big sister Valerie burst out. Up till then she’d just been standing around holding Mark’s hand and looking like he was the pancake and she was the maple syrup. But all at once there she was in our faces, leaking tears, aiming big wet eyes at Dad and me. Mostly at me. “All my life I’ve dreamed of having a real Victorian wedding,” she bleated like a weepy sheep, “with satin and lace and roses and mauve, which is the most Victorian color there is and my favorite color in the whole world, with my little sister as flower girl and my little brother as ring bearer, is that too much to ask?”

  “Of course not,” Mom said right on cue. “It’ll be your day, Valerie, and you’ll have it just the way you want.” She turned on me. “Avery Alexander Holsopple, not another word out of you.” Three names; threat level red. “Stand still and let the lady take your measurements.”

  So there I stood, as helpless as if they had handcuffed me, not so much because of my Mom’s warning as because of the hurt-lambie look in my sister’s eyes. That look gets me every time, and I hate it. I let that wire-for-hair woman put her tape measure all over me and I didn’t say another word, but I thought of plenty. Harsh ones. Especially when I saw that the groom, Mark, didn’t have to wear pink, or mauve, whatever; he had a white tie and vest with his tux. I glared at him the whole evening after that. I hated him. Why’d he have to marry my sister?

  *

  When I said my wedding outfit wasn’t natural, what I meant was, all my life I’ve been running around the farm—Holsopple Orchard, Fine Apples, Peaches, Plums, Apricots—and fishing in the creek and swimming in the pond and taking care of cows, goats, Julie’s pony, whatever, and helping with the work; that’s what I mean by natural.

  And dogs. I’ve always been good with dogs. We adopt stray dogs, and I train them to come when they’re called, sit and stay, keep off the road, and leave the chickens alone even when nobody’s looking.

  We had three mutts, and a few days after Tuxedos and More, I was taking them for a long walk to get away from all the mayhem, melodrama and mauve in the house: tables piled with ribbons and fake flowers and lace so a person had to eat standing up over the sink, no place to sit because in every chair was one of my aunts making velvet roses or fancy pink fans, Valerie running around with fake ivy decorating everything except the toilet seat, and yelling at me not to track in any dirt, keep the house clean, clean, clean for the wedding, which was going to be inside if it rained, but she hoped outside under the apple trees.

  “That makes a lot of sense,” I remarked. “We’re supposed to dress up all Victorian to go tramping through a field?”

  “Hush up, Avery,” ordered my Mom, who was trying to bake, from original Victorian recipes, the worst cookies I ever was told not to eat, while Julie paraded around with a frilly basket practicing how to be a flower girl, and my cousins, the ones with the deadly cell phones, showed off their high heels and long dresses—how come they got to be bridesmaids but I wasn’t a groomsman?

  I was the ring bearer. I was supposed to carry the rings on a pillow. Satin. Mauve. With lace hanging down from the edges.

  The whole thing had me so bummed that, walking through the shadowy old part of the orchard, I didn’t look up until all three dogs started barking.

  I t
old the mutts to hush, but when I saw who was jogging toward me between the rows of gnarly trees, I wished they’d bite him. It was Mark.

  “Hi, Avery,” he puffed as he caught up with me. He had, like, followed me?

  “What do you want? Why aren’t you down at the house sucking face with my sister?” Finally, I had a chance to be rude to let him know how extensively I didn’t like him—I mean, what was to like? There was nothing special about Mark that I could see, no reason for Valerie to put me through mauve-colored hell so she could marry him. He wasn’t a football player or anything like that, just an average sort of geek.

  But he didn’t seem to mind my dissing him at all. “I want to talk with you,” he answered, keeping up with me easily no matter how fast I tried to walk away. “I want to ask you for some advice. Val tells me you’re really, really good with dogs?”

  Huh.

  “Well, yeah, I guess,” I muttered.

  “Well, that’s awesome. I don’t know a thing about dogs, but I’d like for Val and me to have one. I thought I might get her one for a wedding present.”

  “Yeah?” I still wanted to be rude, but I have to admit I was interested.

  “Yeah. But my question is, what kind? See, it would have to be a Victorian sort of dog.”

  Under the circumstances, the words “Victorian” and “dog” together in one sentence made me groan out loud and say something I can’t repeat.

  “Yeah, I know,” Mark agreed placidly, “but Val has reasons for wanting a Victorian wedding. Did she ever tell you?”

  No, she hadn’t. Actually, I’d never thought to ask.

  “Val says her main skill as a person is boiling apple butter,” Mark went on. “All her life she’s been doing that, or gathering eggs or butchering beef or shoveling manure. Which is fine—but for just this one day she’d like to get away from all that, the manure end of things especially, and be different. Just for her wedding she wants to be a lady.”

  We walked out from under the hunchbacked old apple trees and started through a newer part of the orchard with more sunlight. I still felt like my sister was stupid but maybe not Mark so much. I wished I could think of something to say but my mind was in kind of a mess.

  “So anyway,” Mark went on after a while, “what kind of dog would a Victorian lady like?”

  And, get this, the mess in my mind cleared up. Right away I knew the answer. “A lap dog. Maybe a Papillon or a Pekingese or a Bichon Frise. Something cute and little and fluffy and probably it should be white, unless you want to dye it mauve.”

  He laughed so hard I had to smile as he asked, “Could we do that? Really?”

  “It probably wouldn’t be good for the dog.”

  “Then we won’t,” he said. “But listen, here’s what I was thinking…”

  We walked and talked for quite a while. By the time we headed back toward the house, I had a whole new outlook on the wedding and a very different, much better opinion of Mark.

  “Are you sure?” I asked him last thing before we went back inside to all the mauve mayhem.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “It’s my wedding too, isn’t it? Don’t worry, Avery, I take full responsibility.”

  He held up his hand, and I gave him a high five.

  *

  The first really cool part wasn’t even planned. It just happened, the day of the wedding—which, luckily for everybody, turned out sunny, the way Valerie wanted it. I put on my ring-bearer outfit and went downstairs for inspection. There stood Val in her white princess bride dress, satin skirt big enough for a parachute and lace up to her ears, with her hair piled on top of her head full of flowers, looking like a real lady—but she sure didn’t sound like a lady when she saw me and screamed, “Oh, my God!” Her freshly manicured hands flew to her professionally made-up face. “Avery!” she wailed.

  “What?” I hadn’t even done anything yet, just thrown on my “ensemble,” ruffles and ribbons and all, not caring because it didn’t matter anymore—but Val didn’t know that, and I had to keep acting like I hated her wedding.

  So I scowled, while my sister looked like she was going to cry. “Avery Holsopple, you must have grown three inches since they measured you!”

  Whoa. My growth spurt at last? I stood up taller, and it was hard not to grin.

  “Mom!” Valerie yelled toward the kitchen. “Ma! C’mere, please! I don’t know what to do. Avery looks like a scarecrow!”

  Mom came out with her biggest apron covering her mother-of-the-bride gown, looked me up and down, then said, “Oh, dear.”

  Julie came out too, all angelic in her fluffy mauve flower-girl dress, that is if angels say, “Ew.”

  “His bony wrists are sticking out!” Val wailed. “The jacket’s short! The knickerbockers don’t cover his knees!”

  “I told you to get some little kid!” I was starting to feel bad for her, and I hate that.

  “Avery Alexander, hush,” Mom said, turning to Valerie. “Honey, don’t worry about it. Nobody will notice.”

  “The heck they won’t!” It was time for me to throw my fit.

  Mom ignored me, telling the teary-eyed bride, “They’ll all be looking at you.”

  “Fine!” I yelled. “Then I don’t have to be there!”

  “Yes, you do!” Mom snapped at me.

  “Avery, I’m sorry!” cried Valerie at the same time, which was the last thing in the world I expected her to say and it really upset me. Why’d she have to turn human just when I needed her to be a pain? She was ruining everything, making me want to hug her and tell her it was okay when I was supposed to be throwing a tantrum. I couldn’t even remember what to say, so I just yelled, “You ought to be sorry!” then ran upstairs to my room and slammed the door.

  And locked it.

  Whew.

  Thank God that part was done. It was time to put the rest of the plan in motion.

  “Okay, Secret,” I whispered, opening my closet, “you can come out now.”

  She pricked up her ears like she understood every word, and I swear to God she smiled at me. Victorian Secret—that’s what Mark and I named her—was not only the cutest little curly-haired white lap dog that ever lived, but she was smart. I should know. I’d been spending hours with Mark, helping him train her, and she was as quick as any dog I ever met.

  Mark didn’t do too bad either; he seemed almost as smart as Secret.

  All shampooed and sweet-smelling, she zinged spring-loaded out of the carrier I’d used to sneak her into the house, circled my room a couple of times to get the bounces out, then hopped onto my bed, ready for whatever.

  Somebody knocked at my bedroom door. Secret didn’t bark. She never barked. Where she came from they debarked the dogs, which was a good thing, because Valerie didn’t want any barking during her wedding. Our dogs were staying at another farm for the day.

  I’m the one who barked. At the door. “What!” Making sure I sounded really bratty and pissed off.

  “Avery.” As I expected, it was my dad. Mom had sent him up to talk to me. “Open up.”

  “No.” Mouthier than I ever could have done it if it was for real. “What do you want?”

  “Avery Alexander Holsopple.” But Dad didn’t sound threat level red like he should have; he just sounded tired. “You come out of there. The preacher’s here. It’s almost time to start.”

  I knew that, because through my bedroom window I could see the back field with rented chairs facing a kind of stage loaded with flowers. I could see people in their best clothes being shown to their chairs by ushers in black tuxedos with mauve vests and ties. I could see the string quartet playing.

  “I’ll be down when I’m darn good and ready!” I yelled at my father.

  “You’d better be down when Valerie is ready. You have the rings in there, don’t you?”

  “Yes!”

  “You better come on down now.”

  “I’ll be there! When I have to! And not a minute sooner!”

  “Why is it,” Dad ap
pealed in that weary tone he’d been using a lot lately, “that a wedding invariably brings out the utmost lunacy in every member of any given family?”

  “Go away,” I told him.

  Without much heart, more like he was programmed to do it, Dad lectured my door about attitude, maturity, consideration for other people, et cetera, but finally he had to leave, because Mom and Val were calling him.

  Meanwhile, I opened my back window a crack so I’d be able to hear what was going on. Also, being quiet so nobody would realize I was on the move, I took off my big floppy pink bowtie and put it onto Secret’s neck instead. It looked a heck of a lot cuter on her than it did on me. Made me smile, and I grinned even wider as I took off my pink cummerbund and put it on her too. It looked like a fancy silk skirt. Now she was all ready except for the rings.

  I tiptoed to my closet to get the basket—Mark and I had sneaked Julie’s flower girl basket to a craft store and found a little Secret-sized basket just like it, plus the right kinds of frilly stuff we needed to fix it up. We’d spent an evening making fun of each other while we decorated it with lace. And ribbon. Mauve.

  So there was Secret’s basket, with the rings in it on a little satin pillow Mark had rigged. I checked to make sure they were there—yeah. Two gold rings, one for the bride and one for the groom.

  Meanwhile, from underneath my bedroom window I could hear the voices of the wedding party getting organized inside the screen porch. “We might have to do it without Avery,” Mom was saying.

  “We can’t!” Valerie wailed. “He has the rings!”

  “I could go break his door down and drag him out here by the ears.” Dad sounded like he almost meant it.

  “No, don’t, Mr. Holsopple. Please. ” That was Mark, all earnest. “Avery is going to be my brother-in-law. I don’t want to get off to a bad start with him—”

  My jaw dropped. So did the ring basket, almost, as I realized something, standing there with my mouth airing.

  “—and when he says he’ll be here on time, I believe him,” Mark went on. “I think we ought to trust him. Let’s go ahead. Okay? Valerie?”