Her mother set her cup down, making a little coffee slosh over the side. Rose dragged her fork through the hardened glob of cold grits on her plate. Normally, her mother would have told her to stop doing that and just eat them. But today she gathered her garden gloves and clippers from the basket by the French doors and went out to the garden to cut zinnias to put in the crystal vase in the foyer.
Rose jumped up from the table and hurried outside to look for Mavis. Today they were going to try to find the dog that Amanda had named Henry. Rose still wasn’t sure about this idea. First of all, Mr. Duffy didn’t want another dog. And second of all, she wasn’t allowed to go into those woods.
But Mavis had told her to stop worrying so much.
Mavis had said, “Trust me.”
And Rose really wanted to trust Mavis.
HENRY
Somewhere in the woods, Henry slept soundly in the shade of a white oak tree. The morning sun was still low in the sky, but the air was already hot and damp.
A red-speckled salamander scampered over the leaf-covered ground nearby, and Henry woke up. He yawned and stretched. His long, thin legs were scratched and matted with dried mud. The brown spot in the shape of Texas on his side was patchy with itchy bald spots.
His hip was throbbing, and his stomach rumbled with hunger. He made his way through the dense woods, weaving around the mountain laurel and sparkleberry bushes until he found the spot where he had left the small plastic bowl near the wrought-iron fence.
The bowl was gone.
Henry peered through the rhododendron bushes at the green lawn with the dogwood trees. He lay on the mossy ground and waited. Before long, he heard someone whistle and call for Henry. He lifted his head and stayed very still.
His heart pounded as he watched the thin, pale arm reach through the fence and push the plastic bowl under the rhododendron beside him.
The arm was sprinkled with freckles.
Then the arm disappeared, leaving the bowl on the ground nearby.
Henry leaped to his feet and gobbled up the pieces of ham and cold spaghetti and saltine crackers from the bowl.
MAVIS
Mavis slapped a hand on Rose’s shoulder and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got good gut feelings. Shoot, one time I told Mama I had a gut feeling there was a black snake in the trunk of her boyfriend’s car, and, sure enough, there “was. So I have this gut feeling that we’re going to find that dog in the woods and that he won’t belong to anyone and that Mr. Duffy will love him and everything will turn out good.”
“I’m not allowed in those woods,” Rose said.
Mavis rolled her eyes. “Oh, good grief, Rose,” she said. “No one’s gonna even know we’re there. Besides, that’s a dumb rule.”
“But what if Amanda’s back there?”
Mavis let out a big, heaving sigh and ran a hand through her hair. “Who cares about Amanda?” she said. “Besides, she won’t even see us. We’ll be sneaky. I’m really good at being sneaky.”
“But if she does see us, she’ll tell her mama and her mama will tell my mama and—”
“Okay,” Mavis said. “If you don’t want to come with me, that’s fine. I’ll go by myself.”
So she headed toward the driveway, walking real slow to give Rose time to chase after her. Sure enough, Rose ran up beside her and said, “Wait! How about if we go this afternoon? Amanda has diving lessons at the pool.”
“Well…” Mavis looked toward the driveway, then back at Rose. “I suppose. Then what are we going to do now?”
“Let’s go see Mr. Duffy.”
“Okay.”
“But don’t say anything about another dog, okay?” Rose said.
“Okay.”
So the two of them headed off up the road toward the gatehouse.
* * *
Mr. Duffy was wearing the same plaid shirt he’d worn yesterday. His baggy pants dragged on the floor as he ambled around the gatehouse, watering the droopy, yellowing begonia.
“I guess I’ve been neglecting this thing a bit,” he said.
Mavis took the clipboard off Mr. Duffy’s desk. “Is this today’s list of visitors?” she asked.
Mr. Duffy shook his head and frowned at some papers on his desk. “That baby they hired to work the night shift went and mixed up all my stuff.” He tossed some papers into a drawer. “Kid’s only got one oar in the water, if you ask me.”
Mavis nodded at some packages in the corner of the room. “What are those?”
“Some packages that came for the Grahams over on Mimosa Drive when they were on vacation last week,” Mr. Duffy said.
“Did you tell them they’re here?” Rose asked.
“Of course I did,” Mr. Duffy snapped. “Believe me, those biggety folks’d be flinging a hissy fit if I hadn’t.” He took a sip of coffee from a mug that had GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK on the side with a picture of a bear.
“But naturally, I didn’t tell them fast enough,” he said. “Everybody’s so all-fired impatient these days. They wanna eat the corn pudding before the corn’s even planted.”
Mavis pointed to the dog bed beside Mr. Duffy’s chair. The fluffy round bed with QUEENIE embroidered in blue. “You ought to give that to the Salvation Army. I bet there’s lots of people who could use it for their dog.”
Mavis jumped when Rose jabbed her with her elbow.
Hard.
“That’s Queenie’s bed,” Rose said.
Mr. Duffy looked at the bed with sad, watery eyes and scratched his chin.
“I reckon I ought to get rid of that thing,” he said. “That do-nothing Jarvis who works the weekend shift keeps grumbling about it.”
“Or you could save it for another dog,” Mavis said.
Rose widened her eyes at Mavis and shook her head.
Uh-oh. Mavis had gone and done it again.
Sorry, she mouthed silently to Rose.
“I have to go,” Rose said and marched out of the gatehouse, her sandals slapping on the linoleum floor.
Then the phone on Mr. Duffy’s desk rang, making him jump. Somebody on the other end of the line was hollering and a car behind the appliance repair truck honked and Mavis decided it was time to go home.
* * *
While Mavis sat on her bed and watched TV in the little apartment over the garage, her mother heated leftover macaroni and cheese in the microwave and complained.
“I don’t know why they have to eat every meal in that dining room. Would it kill them to eat in the kitchen like normal people do?” she said. “But no. I have to schlep that precious china in and out about a hundred times a day.”
Mavis turned the television up a little louder.
“And you’d think maybe they could use a paper napkin once in a while so I wouldn’t have to wash and iron those fancy cloth napkins of theirs.” She wrote a big T in the air with a finger and added, “Monogrammed, of course.”
She scooped macaroni and cheese onto a paper plate and brought it to Mavis.
“Tomorrow I’m supposed to make melon balls,” she said. “Who in the world has even heard of melon balls?”
Then she jerked open the tiny window over the sink and lit a cigarette.
“This might’ve been a big mistake, May May,” she said after blowing a stream of smoke through the window screen. “Oh, and you should’ve heard her when I used a dust rag on that ole painting in the library,” she went on. “You’d’ve thought that ugly thing was the Mona Lisa or something.”
She stubbed her cigarette out in the sink. “Library,” she said, rolling her eyes, and then let out a little pfft. “I’m telling you, May May, that woman’s got her nose so far up in the air she’s gonna drown in a rainstorm.”
She flopped down on the bed and draped an arm over her eyes. “The best part of the day is taking the garbage out when Monroe Tucker is in the garden,” she said. “He’s a bit of a looker, don’t you think, May?”
But Mavis didn’t answer.
She was too busy thin
king.
She was thinking about Rose, who was mad at her for mentioning getting another dog to Mr. Duffy when she had promised she wouldn’t.
She was thinking about why she was so bad at being a best friend.
And she was thinking about how she was going to find that dog, Henry.
ROSE
Rose couldn’t believe that she was mad at Mavis again.
But she had every right to be mad.
Didn’t she?
Hadn’t Mavis gone and done exactly what Rose had asked her not to do?
It nearly broke Rose’s heart thinking about Mr. Duffy’s face when Mavis said that about giving Queenie’s bed to the Salvation Army.
When she had gotten home, Rose had gone up to Grace’s room and sat on the thick pink carpet. She looked around at Grace’s gymnastics ribbons taped to the dresser mirror, the dried-up prom corsage on the bookshelf, the teddy bear some boy had given her nestled in the cushions of the rocker by the window. Before long, Rose realized she wasn’t mad anymore. Maybe a little sullen and brooding, but not actually mad.
After a while, she went downstairs to the library and called Grace. She used to call her every day, but Grace was always busy doing fun things at that lake in Maine. So now she only called when she really, really needed to talk.
Today, Rose really, really needed to talk.
The phone rang and rang, and Rose was ready to give up when Grace answered in that breathless way of hers, saying, “Rosie!”
Rose told Grace how worried she was about Mr. Duffy. How he seemed so sad and how folks in Magnolia Estates were always complaining about him.
And Grace said the perfect Grace thing.
“Aw, those old biddies complain about everything. Don’t worry about it.”
Then Rose told her about her new friend, Mavis. How they had a Best Friends Club and how Mavis wanted to find a dog for Mr. Duffy.
“A Best Friends Club?” Grace squealed. “That’s great, Rosie! And looking for a dog sounds like fun.”
Rose felt a wave of comfort settle over her. Grace had a way of doing that.
She was going to tell Grace about the dog in the woods, but then she heard girls jabbering and laughing in the background, and Grace said she had to go.
After that, Rose went outside and found Mavis, who was drawing with chalk on the apartment steps.
“I’m sorry I got mad,” Rose said.
Mavis looked up from her drawing and said, “That’s okay.” Then she put the chalk down and stood up. “I shouldn’t have mentioned a dog to Mr. Duffy again. You asked me not to, but I did anyway.” Mavis blushed a little and added, “I’m sorry.”
Then Mavis made up a special handshake that involved slapping palms and snapping fingers and bumping fists. They practiced it over and over until they could do it perfectly every time. Then they made a plan to look for the dog in the woods the following afternoon.
* * *
That evening at supper, Rose took tiny bites of creamed corn and tried hard not to make a face. Making faces over food she didn’t like irked her mother.
Her father was on his third helping of beef Wellington and sipping red wine when her mother launched into a tirade about Mr. Duffy.
“Gerald Berkley said nearly every time he gets to the gatehouse, the coffee is practically burnt up in the bottom of the pot with the coffee maker on.”
Mr. Tully glanced at Mrs. Tully.
A most disinterested glance.
Then he sliced a piece of beef Wellington and said, “Who is Gerald Berkley?”
Mrs. Tully crossed her arms.
“I told you,” she said. “The new night-shift gatekeeper.”
Mr. Tully just nodded and said, “Oh.”
Mrs. Tully went on. “And Connie Jacobs says that when Mr. Duffy goes out to check on something, he leaves the keys right in the door lock so every criminal in town can go in there and help themselves.”
“Help themselves to what, Cora?” Mr. Tully asked.
“I don’t know, Robert,” her mother said. “Whatever’s in there, I suppose.”
Mr. Tully lifted his eyebrows, said “Huh,” and went back to eating and sipping wine.
“And not only will he not wear that uniform he was given,” Mrs. Tully continued, “but he wears the same raggedy clothes day in and day out. It’s embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing to whom?” Mr. Tully said.
Her mother placed her fork carefully on her plate, put her hands in her lap, leaned forward, and said, “To everyone, Robert.”
She looked at her plate and frowned. “This beef Wellington is way overdone.”
Mr. Tully winked at Rose, and she winked back.
The dining room grew quiet. The sound of silver forks on china plates seemed to echo and bounce against the flowered wallpaper and drift up to the crystal chandelier.
When Miss Jeeter came in to clear the table, Rose quickly spread the creamed corn around on her plate so it looked like she had eaten some.
“Do y’all want that sherbert now?” Miss Jeeter asked.
“Sorbet,” Mrs. Tully corrected her. “And yes, please,” she added.
Rose was certain she heard Miss Jeeter say, “Whatever,” as she left through the swinging kitchen door.
* * *
That night in bed, Rose thought about that dog, Henry. Would she and Mavis be able to find him? Was he out there in the woods behind Amanda’s house right now? And if they found him, would Mr. Duffy want him? And if he wanted him, would he be able to love him as much as he had loved Queenie? And if he loved him that much, would he stop being sad and forgetful?
Rose wished she could be sure about everything, like Mavis was.
But she wasn’t.
MAVIS
Mavis rode the skateboard up and down the driveway and waited for Rose to come outside. She wished Rose wasn’t such a worrywart.
Worried about going into the woods.
Worried about Amanda Simm tattling.
Worried about Mr. Duffy.
But still, Rose was her best friend. Mavis supposed you had to accept your best friends just the way they are, even if they happen to worry a lot.
When Monroe Tucker started using the weed whacker around the edges of the flower beds, Mavis left the skateboard in the driveway and went around back to peer through the window in the kitchen door. Her mother was in there scrubbing the copper bottom of a pot, something Mavis knew she hated to do.
“I don’t get why the bottom of a gol-dern pot has to be shiny and perfect. It’s a pot, for criminy’s sake,” her mother had complained just the night before. “Hasn’t she ever heard of ‘the pot calling the kettle black’?”
Mavis opened the door a crack and said, “Where’s Rose?”
“How should I know, Mavis? I’m too busy being Cinderella.” She slammed the pot onto the kitchen counter and reached for another one.
Mavis pushed the door open, and, before her mother could holler at her, she darted across the kitchen, through the swinging door, over the thick dining room rug, across the shiny marble floor in the foyer, and up the stairs to Rose’s room.
“Hey,” Mavis said. “Let’s go look for Henry.”
Rose looked surprised to see Mavis in her bedroom. But she looked even more surprised when Miss Jeeter burst into the room and let out a string of harsh words for Mavis.
What on earth was she thinking, busting into this house like that?
Couldn’t she go one day without giving her mother a headache?
How many times had they gone over the rules?
Mavis’s answers were short.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“About a hundred.”
Then Miss Jeeter stormed off back downstairs. When the stomp, stomp, stomp of her angry footsteps faded and the rattle of pots and pans drifted up from the kitchen, Mavis grinned at Rose.
“Let’s go look for Henry,” she said.
Rose hesitated but then said, “Um,
okay.”
So off they went, down the driveway and up the road toward Amanda’s house, Rose running along beside Mavis on the skateboard.
When they got closer, Mavis got off the skateboard and said, “Okay, now we have to be stealthy.”
Rose didn’t answer. She looked around nervously as if Amanda was going to jump out from behind a tree any minute.
“Here’s what we do,” Mavis said. “We run as fast as we can through Amanda’s front yard and then along the fence until we get to the woods. Then we start looking. Easy peasy.”
Mavis put the skateboard behind a shrub on the side of the road and motioned for Rose to follow her. Then she took off running across the yard, up the brick walkway that ran beside the garage, along the wrought-iron fence that enclosed the backyard, and into the woods behind the house.
When they were far enough into the woods, Mavis stopped, her hands on her knees, panting.
Rose sat on the ground and dumped dirt out of her sandals and brushed pine needles out of her hair. Then she looked up at Mavis and said, “I don’t think I should be here.”
“Oh, good grief, Rose, don’t be such a scaredy-cat.”
“I’m not a scaredy-cat.”
Mavis lifted her eyebrows and crossed her arms.
“I’m not,” Rose said, not very convincingly.
Mavis shrugged. “If you say so.”
Then she started off through the woods, stepping over rotting logs and pushing past tangled vines and overgrown shrubs.
Every now and then, she glanced behind her. Rose was following, looking very unhappy.
Mavis cupped her hands around her mouth and began to call. “Henry! Here, boy! Henry!”
Then, imagine Mavis’s surprise when a dog poked its head from behind a cluster of holly bushes.
Mavis stopped.
Rose stopped.
The dog’s face was white. His ears were brown. His nose was very long and very thin.
“This is Henry!” Mavis said. “It has to be.”
Mavis took a few slow steps toward the bushes, saying, “It’s okay, fella. I won’t hurt you.”
The dog stayed put, watching Mavis with fearful brown eyes, but Mavis could hear his tail wagging.
Swish, swish, swish in the bushes.
Wonderland Page 5
