While I wait for Grandpa, the empty white tent fills up with rows of wooden fold-up chairs, dangly streamers, and flowers in purple and yellow bunches. By the time Grandpa returns to me, a wedding day has sprung up right in front of us, like from the pages of a pop-up book.
“We’re going to start over here,” he tells me, pointing to the stone path behind us. “This way.” He presses his hand on my shoulder and leads me down the path along a row of pine trees. “Now, you’ve got to stick close so I can switch cameras when I need to. Got it?”
“Can I take some pictures, too?”
“No, ma’am. Not today.”
“When can I?”
“Some other time,” he says.
“You always say that.”
“Then it must be true.” He takes one camera from around my neck and holds it up to his eyeball. “Besides, this isn’t the kind of camera you’re used to.”
While Grandpa has his face pressed up against the camera, a white-haired man in a black suit comes over and taps him on the shoulder. “Felix Crumb,” he says.
“That’s me,” says Grandpa, without looking at the man.
“I’d recognize that nose anywhere.” He sticks out his hand.
Grandpa Felix tucks the camera under his arm and shakes the man’s hand. He doesn’t let go, not for a long time. He stares into the man’s eyes like he’s looking on a map for the next turn. Finally from somewhere hidden in one of his brain wrinkles, Grandpa Felix remembers. “I don’t believe it,” he says.
“It’s been forty years, and you’ve still got a camera in your hand,” says the man.
“Mandrake Trout,” says Grandpa.
“Mandrake?” I say. Because it sounds more like a kind of long-legged bird than a person’s name.
Grandpa squeezes my shoulder. “This is my Penelope. I mean, she’s my granddaughter.”
“I see the resemblance,” he says. And I know he means my nose. I flare my nostrils at him. Twice. Mandrake smiles at me and says, “How do you do?”
I tell him that I do just fine.
Then he’s back to Grandpa. “I can’t believe it,” he says, knocking him in the shoulder. “Still a shutterbug, eh? Is that the same Leica Rangefinder?” He grabs the camera from Grandpa and puts it up to his eyeball.
“Right,” says Grandpa, pulling on the camera strap until Mandrake lets go.
Mandrake says, “Same old Felix, stuck in the past.” He puts his hands on his knees and bends down so his face is right at mine. “Penelope, your granddad and I grew up together. Stickball, Maryland’s Young Explorers, summer camp at Deep Creek Lake, Photography Club.” He looks at the cameras around my neck. “So, he’s roped you into this nonsense gig?”
I don’t know what that means, so I just nod and shrug. Which seems to work okay, because he goes on about how his niece is getting married to some big-shot newspaper man, and that he’s only in town for a couple of days.
Grandpa moves a piece of tree bark along the edge of a stone with his shoe. He nods along, but he seems a lot more interested in the tree bark than, what Mandrake has to say. And he has a lot to say.
“So let’s catch up before I leave,” Mandrake says. Then he hands Grandpa a card with his name and phone number on it. He pats me on the head like I’m a stray dog that needs a bath. I want to bite him. He tells me it was nice talking with me. Even though he’s the one who did all the talking.
“Mandrake,” I say, after he’s gone. It gets caught on my tongue. “Mandrake.”
“Yep,” says Grandpa.
“Mandrake. Man. Drake. Mannnnd. Raaaake.”
“Penelope.”
“Sorry. I never met any of your friends before,” I say. “Except for Mr. Caldenia, who lives in your building and always asks me if it’s going to rain.”
“I haven’t thought about Mandrake Trout in years.”
“He sure did remember your camera,” I say.
Grandpa tightens his grip like he’s holding on to something more than just a camera. “This is a thirty-five-millimeter Leica Rangefinder. This one uses actual film.”
“The same kind that Eisenstaedt used,” he says. “I don’t expect you know who Eisenstaedt is.”
“Sure I do,” I say. “The really smart old guy with funny white hair.”
Grandpa Felix shakes his head and tells me Eisenstaedt, not Einstein. But when I give him a look that says, What’s the Difference? he says, “Alfred Eisenstaedt was a photographer. Albert Einstein was a physicist. Both were geniuses.”
“Were?”
“Yes, Penelope,” he says, “they’re both long dead. The point is, you know how you feel about Leonardo da Vinci? That’s how I feel about Eisenstaedt. Get it?”
“Got it.”
He turns the camera over in his hand. “This was my very first. I bought it at Driscoll’s flea market with the money I saved from delivering newspapers. Still works like a charm.” He looks through the viewfinder at the sky and then at the trees behind me. “They don’t make them like this anymore.”
“We should name it,” I say. “Let’s call it Alfred. After, you know, the guy.”
“Eisenstaedt.”
“Yeah, him.”
Grandpa Felix says, “Whatever you say.”
“Maybe it will be in a museum someday,” I say.
“What will?”
“Alfred. So that people will remember you. And know that you took very nice pictures.”
“What means something to me isn’t going to be worth the dirt we’re standing on to anybody else long after I’m gone.” He points the camera at me and presses the button until it clicks.
I bet Maynard C. Portwaller never thought his gray hair would be on display for everyone to see. But it is. And people must think that one piece of hair is worth more than the dirt we’re standing on if it’s in a museum. I tell Grandpa Felix this, but all he says is, “I’m no Maynard C. Portwaller.”
“That’s right,” I tell him. “You’re Grandpa Felix Crumb. And I’ll remember you long after you’re gone. And when I’m a famous artist, people will see my drawings and remember me long after I’m Graveyard Dead. Just like Mister Leonardo da Vinci.”
Grandpa raises his eyebrows at me. “You know, you probably shouldn’t be wasting your Saturday with an old man like me when you could be having some fun with Patsy Cline.”
What I don’t say is how Patsy Cline is probably already having fun with Vera Bogg. Here’s what I do say: “This is fun, Grandpa.”
He shakes his head. “Well, I’m glad you think so.”
“Do you know what would make it even more fun?” I say. “If you let me take some pictures.”
“Nice try.” He walks along the stone path toward the pine trees. “This way. Let’s get this over with.”
I grab the camera bags and sling them over my shoulder. “How come you haven’t thought about Mandrake for so long?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I just haven’t.”
“But you were friends?”
He nods. “The best.”
“Then why?”
“Nothing is forever. You’ll learn that someday.”
I say, “Some things are.” Like my dad being gone forever. And what about what’s on Patsy’s and Vera’s necklaces? FRIENDS FOREVER.
“Sometimes you forget about things or people that seemed really important long ago.” He holds Alfred up to his face.
“I won’t,” I say. “I don’t want to forget.”
What are you doing in there?” asks Littie Maple.
I stick my head out from inside my closet. “Nothing.” I throw the last of my shoes and hang-up clothes onto the Heap. Which now comes up to Littie’s eyeballs.
&nbs
p; “It doesn’t look like nothing.” Littie grabs my pair of my polka-dotted rain boots from the Heap and holds them up to her feet. She tells me I must be related to Sasquatch and then throws the boots back on the pile. She finds a pair of my sandals and buckles them over her socks. “Can I have these,” she asks, “if you’re going to throw them out?”
“I’m not throwing them out,” I tell her.
“Oh.” Littie clunks over to my dresser and kicks up her leg to try to get a look at her foot in the mirror. “I really like them. I’m just saying. And they fit me perfect.”
I give Littie a look that says, That’s a Good One. But I don’t say anything about the sandals, because if she doesn’t know she has tiny bird feet, then I’m not going to be the one to tell her.
“Is your brother at home?” asks Littie.
“I hope not.”
“Remember the other day when he pulled my hair?” she says, standing on her tiptoes.
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“Remember? We were out there by the couch and he was going somewhere, because he just put his jacket on and he said something to you and then he pulled on my hair? Remember?”
I shrug and push some of my clothes and shoes to the top of the Heap.
“I mean, on a regular day, he usually pays no attention to me at all. Doesn’t even say hello or anything. But the other day, he pulled my hair . . . You really don’t remember?” she says, folding her arms across her chest. But when I don’t answer, she says, “I do. I remember.”
“You can tell Mom if you want,” I say. “Terrible pulls my hair and does worse to me all the time and hardly ever gets into trouble, but maybe if you told Mom, she would do something.”
“I don’t want to get him into trouble,” she says, and her face turns red. “That’s not what I’m after.”
“Then what?”
“Nothing, Penelope,” she says. “Nothing.”
“Why are you so bothered about Terrible, anyway?”
She unbuckles my sandals and kicks them off. “Never mind.”
I crawl into my empty closet, curl into a corner, and run my hand over the white walls. If Mister Leonardo da Vinci were here, he would surely say, “My goodness, thank lucky stars for such a place as this. Oh me, oh my, indeed the plain walls should not be plain for long.” Because that is how dead artists talk.
Littie clucks her tongue like a pigeon from the other side of the Heap. And then maybe because sitting in an empty closet makes my brains work better, all of a sudden it hits me why Littie is so bothered about Terrible. I grab a shoe from the bottom of the Heap and throw it at her. My aim must be pretty good, because she lets out a yowl. “What the heck did you do that for?”
“Because, Littie Maple, if you’re meaning to say that you like Terrible the space alien, blech, then maybe you’re an alien, too.” I crawl back into my closet and prop my feet against the wall.
“What are you doing in there?”
“Nothing,” I say.
Her clucks get louder. “Well, what are you doing with all this stuff out here? And don’t say ‘nothing.’”
“I just don’t want it in my closet.”
“Why not?” she says.
I sigh. “Because.”
“Because why?”
“My closet isn’t going to be a closet anymore, that’s why.”
“What’s it going to be?”
I can almost hear Leonardo say, “I am simply unable to think with all this clucking in my ears. Thank lucky stars that this wonderful room has a door.”
I tell Littie that I don’t know what it’s going to be.
“You don’t know?” she says. I bet she’s got her hands on her hips now. “Penelope Crumb, if you don’t want to tell me what you’re doing, then just say you don’t want to tell me instead of saying you don’t know. Because if you—”
“Okay, Littie,” I say. “I don’t really want to tell you.”
“You don’t want to tell me!” she yells. “Well, that’s just a bruise on a banana, isn’t it! Why? Why don’t you want to—”
I close the closet door then, and the clucking stops soon after. “Ah, how lovely and quiet when the pigeon leaves the windowsill,” Leonardo would say. “Now, let’s get to thinking. Whose things are you going to put in this wonderful museum of yours?”
7.
I call Patsy Cline the next day. “Do you want to come over?”
“It’s Sunday,” she says. “I’ve got practice.”
“Oh, right,” I say. “I forgot.” I tap my brains to wake them up. “Maybe I could come over, then?”
Patsy doesn’t say anything. But I can tell she’s still there because I can hear her mom in the background calling her to come finish her scrambled eggs. “I guess that would be okay,” she says finally.
I hang up the phone and yell to Mom, “I’m going over to Patsy Cline’s!”
Patsy lives two metro stops away. On the train, I flip the handle of my toolbox back and forth, while my stomach does some flipping of its own. “I hope I’m not getting the stomach flu,” I tell my stomach. The man sitting next to me says, “I hope not, too,” and then he changes seats.
When I finally get to Patsy’s building, my stomach is making all kinds of noises, and I’m worried the elevator might not be fast enough. But then as I’m getting ready to knock on Patsy’s door, my heart is really pounding, and I know that what I have isn’t the flu: It’s nerves.
I don’t know why I would be nervous about visiting Patsy Cline, whom I have visited more times than I can count, but I take a deep breath and try to slow my heart. Then I knock.
Patsy Cline’s dog, Roger, barks and scratches at the door. I can hear Patsy tell Roger to keep it down, and then the door opens. There’s Patsy in her blue cowgirl outfit with Roger tucked under her arm. “Howdy,” she says.
As soon as I see her, my nerves go away, but then I see her FRIENDS FOREVER necklace around her neck, and my stomach does another flip. It doesn’t help that Roger, who has a face like a vampire bat and is missing a great number of his teeth, growls and lunges at me like he wants to gum me to death. With a face like that, Roger should thank lucky stars he doesn’t have a tail, because if Patsy Cline hadn’t adopted him, he’d still be at that shelter. Or worse.
“He’s having one of his bad days,” Patsy explains.
It’s not easy being a dog when you’re missing your tail, I guess. “I know the feeling,” I say quietly, and follow her inside. Somehow between the knock and Roger’s bad day, I decide the best thing to do is to keep talking and not let there be any empty space, because empty space will leave room for Vera Bogg. So right away I tell her about how Mr. Drather was singing a Patsy Cline song on the bus the day of the field trip and how I drew a picture of him and about how I think he wants to be a singer but is driving a school bus now instead. And how I had forgotten to tell her about that on the way home from the Portwaller History Museum on account of the fact that my brains were on Miss Stunkel and the note she sent home.
And then without giving that story a chance to settle, I start telling the one about Mandrake. But before I can even get to the part about Grandpa Felix’s camera, the one we decided to name Alfred, Patsy’s mom says from the other room, “Patsy, let’s run through this song one more time.”
“Hi, Mrs. Watson,” I yell.
Patsy’s mom says, “Honey child!” Patsy’s mom always calls me honey child. And especially today it sounds so nice when she says it. A child made of honey. That’s what she thinks of me. And then she says this: “You make yourself right at home, Vera. Patsy has just about got this song handled.”
And that’s when I just about go dead. I know I do, because all of a sudden, I can’t feel my tongue, and I can’t feel my toenails. And I wonder how long I have until my hear
t stops going.
Patsy Cline’s face turns bright red. “It’s not Vera,” she yells to her mom. “It’s Penelope.”
“Oh, no matter,” says her mom. As if Vera is also made out of honey. Which I know she definitely is not. Then Mrs. Watson tells me to make myself at home anyway. But she doesn’t call me honey child. Not even once.
I wait for Patsy in her room. She’s got shelves and shelves of trophies for singing, and a big poster of Patsy Cline, the dead country-western singer, above her bed. I plop down on her bed and close my eyes. I know this room by heart. With my eyes closed, I make a list from my memory of everything in the room.
Thirteen gold trophies, three silver ones, four blue ribbons, one red, a Patsy Cline poster, green bedspread with tiny yellow butterflies and curtains to match, yellow shaggy rug, white desk and chair, blue plastic bins filled with her cow collection, a keyboard with a microphone, and a lamp with a cow-print shade. Patsy Cline really likes cows.
I open my eyes and check my memory. Pretty good, except I forgot about the framed picture of me and Patsy on the roller coaster at FantasyLand last summer. And also there are fourteen gold trophies—somehow I missed one. I kneel on her bed and pull down the last trophy in the lineup. It’s small, but heavy, and the gold part is in the shape of a music note. At the base, there’s an engraving: PATSY CLINE ROBERTA WATSON. FIRST PLACE. PORTWALLER’S TALENTED VOICES.
I turn over the trophy in my hand and wonder if one day I will forget about Patsy Cline, about our trip to FantasyLand, about how much she likes cows. Just like how Grandpa one day stopped thinking about Mandrake Trout and then forgot all about him.
There is one way to make sure I don’t forget. I open my toolbox and try to stuff the trophy inside. Only, it doesn’t fit too good because of all the other stuff I keep in there. So I dump out my drawing pad and pencils, markers, shoehorn, flashlight, change purse, granola bar, and then try again. The top of the music note scrapes against the side of my toolbox. I push down the lid, but it won’t close all the way.