Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure

  3

  The Freeforalls

  IT WAS A warm Saturday afternoon, and Mrs. Hudson Freeforall was trying to enjoy the nice weather. She sat at the desk in her home office and breathed in the late spring smells that wafted through the open window. From her comfortable leather chair, she could see the last of the azalea blooms on the bush outside the window and hear the gentle call of a mourning dove. How anyone can appreciate nice weather while working at a desk is baffling. And why anyone would choose to sit behind her desk on a Saturday, which is a perfectly good weekend day, is even more baffling. But that’s exactly what Mrs. Freeforall was doing. Also, she was recalling fondly the spring Saturdays of her youth when she and her older sister would sit on their porch and pursue quiet activities such as making clothes for their dolls or building dollhouse furniture out of toothpicks.

  Mrs. Freeforall turned away from the window and back to her computer. She tapped a few keys, then shuffled through a stack of papers on the desk. She was just reaching for her phone when she heard a loud crash, saw a basketball sail through the window and slam into a table, and watched splinters of glass shower onto her lovely, recently vacuumed Oriental carpet. The pictures on the table tumbled off, and one landed on Muffet, the cat, who yowled and ran from the room with a fat tail.

  Mrs. Freeforall said nothing. She let out a sigh—a very loud one—and walked to the window, where she stood gazing speculatively into the yard. In her youth (Mrs. Freeforall thought often of her youth), she and her sister always played peacefully. They were cooperative (everyone said so), they remembered their pleases and thank-yous, and they were never loud or messy or rude. They were like little princesses.

  Her own children, on the other hand—her dear Honoriah and Petulance and Frankfort—could be referred to only as ruffians. They were responsible for the basketball that had just plunged through her window, but they weren’t going to own up to it. They had already run off.

  Children today, Mrs. Freeforall reflected, so rarely took responsibility for their own actions. At any rate, her children rarely took responsibility for their actions.

  Mrs. Freeforall saw Honoriah’s bicycle lying on its side, the wheels still spinning. She saw a flowerpot that had been upended, the sad geranium now splayed on the lawn, roots and all, wilting in the sun. She saw a book in a puddle and the wrappers from granola bars flapping about in the breeze.

  The yard looked as though a troop of gorillas had charged through it.

  Mrs. Freeforall thought of the charming and respectful children who lived next door, Della and Peony LaCarte. Della and Peony were never rude or grabby or noisy. They were courteous and conscientious and tidy.

  They were forbidden to play with the Freeforalls.

  How had the LaCartes managed to raise such angels? That was what Mrs. Freeforall had wondered the previous weekend when she had also been working at her desk, and when her husband had been working at his desk in the next room, which was his office. Their children had been banging on the office doors, demanding that their parents come out and play with them, and Mrs. Freeforall had thought, I can’t get a lick of work done with all this noise and commotion. How did the LaCartes ever raise such angels?

  But that was not what had prompted her to call Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. No, she had put through her call to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle a week before that, after her dear children had decided to play tattoo parlor and had given one another large tattoos—spider’s webs, fake black eyes, skulls, mustaches—in black ink that turned out to be indelible, which is a fancy word for permanent. The Freeforalls had been forced to send their children off to school and out into the world in general looking like the hooligans they were.

  After that, Della and Peony were not even permitted to walk to school with them.

  Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle had said she thought she knew just the cure for such children but that she wanted to think things through. She promised to call Mrs. Freeforall back, but Mrs. Freeforall hadn’t heard from her. She had heard, however—from Mrs. LaCarte, who was the one who had given Mrs. Freeforall Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s number in the first place—that the magic lady with the potions for children had been called away and that her great-niece was coming to stay in the upside-down house.

  This was the thought that was going through Mrs. Hudson Freeforall’s mind as she stood surveying the basketball and the shards of glass: that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was gone and apparently for a long time. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle had been Mrs. Freeforall’s one hope for her children. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do now.

  And then the doorbell rang.

  Mrs. Freeforall closed the door to her office behind her, noting that she must go in there with the vacuum later and clean up the mess. She was on her way to the front of the house when she heard pounding feet and shrill cries as her children stampeded for the door. The last time she’d seen them, they’d been in the backyard. She wanted very much to think that they had come inside to apologize for throwing the basketball through the window, but she couldn’t remember the last time her children had apologized for anything.

  She listened to their voices.

  “I want to answer the door! It’s my turn!” That was Petulance.

  “No, it isn’t. It’s my turn! You had a turn this morning!” That was Honoriah.

  “I don’t care what you girls say; I’m going to answer the door!” That was Frankfort.

  “No, me!”

  “No, me!”

  “No, me!”

  Mrs. Freeforall, who was getting a headache, couldn’t even tell which of her children was yelling now. The yelling was soon accompanied by three thumps as the children, one by one, ran into the door. Their mother hurried into the front hallway just in time to see all three children grab for the doorknob, wrench it around, and pull the door open with such force that they fell backward onto the floor.

  “Goodness me.”

  This was spoken by the woman standing on the Freeforalls’ stoop.

  Mrs. Hudson Freeforall stepped around her children and said, “Yes?”

  The woman was wearing a straw hat. Strands of wild red hair poked out from beneath it, as if nothing at all could contain it. She was wearing a strange blue outfit, and she was holding a leash, at the other end of which was a pleasant-looking dog whose tail was wagging, even though he was sitting down.

  Mrs. Freeforall stared at the woman. Was she … glowing?

  “Are you the Freeforalls?” asked the woman.

  The children righted themselves. “Who are you?” was their reply.

  “You’ll have to excuse them,” said their mother. “Yes, we are the Freeforalls. And you are?”

  “I’m Missy Piggle-Wiggle. My great-aunt left—”

  Missy had thought she would need to offer a lengthy explanation as to why she had dropped by, but Mrs. Freeforall let out an enormous sigh of relief and pulled her inside.

  “Oh, thank heavens!” she exclaimed. “I’m at my wit’s end. The children are out of—” She stopped speaking abruptly. “Twins, Frankfort, why don’t you go up to your rooms for a while?”

  “No,” said Petulance.

  “Why should we?” asked Frankfort.

  “We can eavesdrop better from down here,” said Honoriah.

  Missy looked at the children. She raised her eyebrows. Honoriah, Frankfort, and Petulance ran up the stairs.

  “My!” exclaimed their mother. “I’ve never seen them do that before.” She listened to the silence in the house. Extraordinary.

  Mrs. Freeforall led Missy into the living room, where they sat down and Wag fell asleep.

  “The thing is,” Mrs. Freeforall began, “I called your great-aunt a while ago for help with the children. As you can see they’re a bit … difficult.” She thought fleetingly of the mustache tattoos and the yard that looked like an ape pen. “Mrs. LaCarte next door suggested that a touch of magic—a potion or tonic—from your great-aunt might be helpful. I don’t suppose that you—”

  “We’re cut from the same cloth,
” said Missy.

  Mrs. Freeforall nodded and looked very relieved. “The worst of it,” she went on, “is that we have a sitter who comes in Tuesday and Thursday afternoons to watch the children after school. But she recently gave notice that she’ll be leaving in a couple of weeks.”

  “I see,” said Missy, recalling the commotion that had greeted the ringing of the doorbell.

  Mrs. Freeforall had the feeling that Missy truly did see, that she understood everything, and she felt grateful that she wouldn’t have to go into any more detail about her children’s unruly behavior.

  A crash came from somewhere above, followed by a shout of “Give it back!”

  Mrs. Freeforall rubbed at her aching temples.

  Missy said, “I’ll take it.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll take the job. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for the foreseeable future.” The Freeforalls were going to be a lot of work, and Missy would need plenty of time with them.

  “Well, that’s—that’s wonderful.”

  “Now to start, I’ll need some information about the children.”

  “Oh, they’re lovely,” said Mrs. Freeforall. “Really. I mean, they’re capable of being lovely.” She paused. “Honoriah and Petulance are twins. Identical, as you could see. They’re nine. And Frankfort is seven. My husband and I work long hours, and we travel a lot, too. We have offices here at the house so that we can work at home in addition to going into the city.”

  “What are the children’s schedules?” asked Missy.

  “Their schedules?”

  “What do they do on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons when I’ll be here?”

  Mrs. Freeforall scrunched up her face and thought. “Whatever children do, I suppose.”

  “What are their interests, then?”

  “Oh, they play in the yard,” said Mrs. Freeforall vaguely. “They ride their bicycles and … Well, really, they’re allowed to do whatever they want. We don’t have any rules here. Except that the children must go to school. They must do that!” she added brightly.

  “Of course,” murmured Missy. “And what about meals?”

  Mrs. Freeforall once again looked puzzled. “There’s plenty of food in the kitchen,” she said at last. “They know where everything is.”

  Missy stood up abruptly. She adjusted her hat, which was listing to the side. “I believe I have enough information,” she said.

  Mrs. Freeforall looked helplessly up at her. “I know my husband and I run the household a bit loosely. It’s just that we spend so much time working. We don’t want to be strict with the children on top of everything else. We want them to have fun.”

  “That’s perfectly understandable,” said Missy. “Could I spend some time alone with them before I leave? I’d like to get acquainted with them.”

  When Mrs. Freeforall called for the twins and Frankfort, they came barreling down the stairs just as noisily as you might imagine.

  Honestly, thought their mother. They sound like cattle.

  “Yeah?” said Frankfort as he reached the bottom of the steps.

  “What do you want?” asked Honoriah and Petulance.

  “Missy is going to be your new babysitter,” announced their mother.

  This was greeted by groans so loud that Wag woke up and began to slink from the room, tail between his legs.

  Missy waited for the children’s mother to admonish them. But Mrs. Freeforall simply smiled indulgently at her brood.

  Missy clapped her hands together. “Let’s go outside,” she said.

  “Right now?” whined Petulance.

  “With you?” said Frankfort.

  “Do we have to?” asked Honoriah.

  “Yes, yes, and yes,” replied Missy. “Frankfort, you start the parade. Wag and I will bring up the rear.”

  “Rear!” hooted Petulance. “She said rear!”

  But Frankfort said, “I like parades,” and set off through the kitchen waving an imaginary baton. His sisters fell into place behind him. They walked sullenly along as though they had weights in their shoes, until Missy cried, “Use your imaginations!” Then the twins became musicians and played invisible instruments until everyone had marched into the yard and gathered around the picnic table.

  “Now,” said Missy. “Let me see what I have here.”

  “Have where?” asked Honoriah.

  “Right here.” Missy shrugged her shoulder, and suddenly a red satchel appeared on the table, fastened with all sorts of interesting buckles and snaps and ties.

  “Ooh,” said Frankfort. “What’s that?”

  “Where did it come from?” asked Honoriah.

  “Can I open it?” asked Petulance. She grabbed it without waiting for an answer. “Let me open it.” And she did.

  What spilled onto the table was the biggest collection of art supplies the Freeforall children had ever seen. Tubes of glitter, bundles of markers, packages of pipe cleaners and pom-poms and sequins, bottles of glue, stacks of paper, yarn and feathers and stamps and ink pads.

  “Whoa,” whispered Petulance.

  “I still don’t get where it came from,” said Honoriah. “You weren’t carrying anything.”

  “Who cares?” asked Frankfort. He reached for the tube of blue glitter—one of seven tubes of glitter—and Petulance smacked his hand away.

  “I want that one!” she cried.

  Missy removed a small book from her purse and wrote a note to herself.

  “What’s that? Your spy notebook?” asked Honoriah.

  “Personal business,” said Missy crisply.

  “What are we supposed to do with all this stuff?” asked Honoriah, surveying the table.

  “My goodness. Haven’t you ever used your imaginations? Why don’t you make crowns? Today we are all royalty.”

  “Even him?” asked Frankfort, pointing to Wag.

  “His name is Wag, and yes, even Wag. Today we are kings and queens, and Wag is His Royal Dogness.”

  “Ha!” exclaimed Honoriah. “His Royal Dogness. Dogness isn’t even a real word. You just made that up.”

  “I most certainly did. Now let’s get to work.”

  “How do you make a crown?” Frankfort asked Missy.

  “You start with gold paper, of course,” said Honoriah. “Everyone knows that.”

  Petulance pulled a stack of gold paper in front of her.

  “Hey!” cried Honoriah. “You can’t have it all.”

  “But I need it all.”

  “Hog!” said Frankfort, grabbing the stack.

  “Frankfort,” said Missy, “when you call someone a name, you hurt her feelings.”

  “I don’t care. She is being a hog.”

  Petulance grabbed the paper back. “Mine!”

  Suddenly three pairs of hands were pulling at the papers. And just like that, the paper—the entire stack—disappeared. Petulance, who had been grabbing the most fiercely, fell forward onto the table.

  “Hey! Who did that?” Frankfort turned accusingly to Missy.

  “I think,” said Missy, “that each of you needs just two pieces of gold paper.” Two sheets appeared in front of each Freeforall.

  Wordlessly, the children set to work. Frankfort carefully cut his papers into points.

  Honoriah stared at him. Finally she exclaimed, “That’s not how you do it!”

  “Whatever. That’s how I do it. Work on your own crown.”

  From the end of the table, Missy muttered, “Whatever,” and made another notation in her book.

  “La, la, la,” hummed Petulance as she worked. “I am the Queen of Everything. In fact, that’s going to be my royal name. Petulance, Queen of Everything.”

  “How can you be the Queen of Everything?” asked Honoriah. “That’s impossible.”

  Missy made another notation in her book: know-it-all.

  She looked down at Wag, who rested at her feet, his front paws lined up neatly. The afternoon sun shone on the table, and for a while the Freeforalls worked silently.
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  “Ready to decorate,” said Petulance presently, and she opened her arms and swept as many of the supplies to her spot at the table as she could manage.

  Missy opened her notebook again. This time she wrote, on the greedy side.

  Twenty minutes later, the Royal Freeforalls sat at the table wearing their crowns. Honoriah had declared herself the Queen of Smartness.

  “Who are you?” Missy asked Frankfort.

  “Nobody,” he replied. He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever.” He dashed around the yard in his crown, grabbed a handful of pebbles, and began bouncing them off Wag’s back. “Come on and play with me, dog,” he said.

  Wag turned mournful eyes to Missy.

  “Come on, dog! Come on, dog!” Frankfort took a step toward Wag, who rose to his feet and ran away. Frankfort followed him.

  He almost bumped into Missy—that was how quickly she appeared in front of him.

  “Wag does not like what you’re doing,” said Missy. Her hands were on her hips. “And please use his name when you talk to him.”

  Frankfort stopped in his tracks. For just a moment he felt as though he couldn’t move his feet. He teetered in place. He lifted one foot, then the other. He found that they worked fine. “Sorry,” he said, and checked his feet again.

  At the picnic table, the Queen of Everything and the Queen of Smartness had stopped what they were doing and were staring at Missy. Then Petulance bonked Honoriah on the head and bent her crown, and Honoriah began to cry. Missy got out her notebook again.

  Later, as Missy and Wag walked back to the upside-down house, Missy thought about the Freeforalls. She thought about her cabinet full of cures and of the notes she had made to herself that afternoon.

  “We’ll need a Greediness Cure,” she said to Wag. “That’s for Petulance. And a Know-It-All Cure for Honoriah, and for Frankfort, a Whatever Cure. Oh, and the Shyness Cure for Melody. I’d better get to work.”

  Missy began to whistle as she walked along. Then she began to skip, just a little. Wag gave her a doggy grin.

  “It’s lovely to be back in Little Spring Valley,” said Missy, and she began to plan her cures.

  4