“I’m up,” Aunt Alice said, “but not exactly ‘about’ yet. Since you’re here, you might as well come in and sit down. Please don’t take this personally, Gabby, but I’d prefer that you stay in the entrance hall. Even a clean, short-haired dog might shed on the furniture.”
“Gabby, stay,” Mr. Merlin commanded sternly.
Gabby slumped into a dejected heap on the floor. However, his sad eyes brightened when he saw Andi.
“Hi, Gabby!” she said, hugging him. “It’s so good to see you!”
Gabby didn’t say anything, but his lips curled up in what Andi thought was a smile.
“What a lovely home you have, Alice!” Mr. Merlin said, glancing approvingly about the well-furnished living room. “And your garden out front is lovely too. You’re obviously a dedicated homemaker and apparently financially secure.”
“What, may I ask, is the reason for this visit?” Aunt Alice inquired, taking a seat in a chair and motioning Mr. Merlin to the sofa.
“As I said, you’ve been on my mind since we met,” Mr. Merlin said. “I was hoping that perhaps your romantic situation might have changed and you would have become available. But I see you’re still wearing the mask that symbolizes your betrothal.”
“Nothing has changed in my life,” Aunt Alice told him. “But obviously things have changed in yours. I was busy last night and was unable to watch the results of the video contest, but Andi has told me that Gabby Talks was the winner. Congratulations! I’m sure you and Gabby are thrilled. Have film offers started rolling in yet?”
“Yes, indeed,” Mr. Merlin told her. “Those started even before the results were announced. Gabby already has received offers to appear in four TV commercials, and three well-known agents want to represent him. I’ve had a call from a big hotel in Las Vegas that wants to book him for a four-week engagement in November. He’s also received a request to appear on the Eileen Stanton Show.”
“That’s wonderful,” Aunt Alice said politely.
“It would be if Gabby hadn’t stopped talking,” Mr. Merlin said.
“Really?” Aunt Alice glanced at Gabby in the entrance hall. Andi was on the floor next to him, scratching behind his ears. He looked contented.
“It was after we taped that interview for Star Burst Studios,” Mr. Merlin said. “Gabby hasn’t said a single word since. Not even last night, when we were watching TV in our motel room and Mr. Donovan announced that our video had won. I yelled, ‘Hooray!’ and Gabby should have shouted, ‘Oooray!’ right along with me. But he didn’t say anything. He just lay down on the floor and went to sleep.”
“Perhaps he’s resting his vocal cords,” Aunt Alice suggested.
“I wish that were true, but it’s something more serious,” Mr. Merlin said. “I’ve tried everything — threatening him, bribing him, punishing him —”
“You beat poor Gabby because he stopped talking?” Andi cried.
“Of course not,” Mr. Merlin assured her. “I’m not a monster. I just made him stand in the corner and have ‘time out.’ He doesn’t like that, and it’s usually enough to get him rolling. But not this time. The dog’s gone mute. He’s totally useless. We’re receiving all these offers that could make me rich for life, and I can’t take advantage of them. You can’t imagine how infuriating and frustrating that is!”
“It’s a pity,” Aunt Alice agreed. “But Gabby still has his sweet personality. I’m sure you enjoy his company even if he isn’t as chatty as he once was.”
“I have no use for a dog who doesn’t earn his keep,” Mr. Merlin said. “Having to feed and walk him is more trouble than it’s worth. Perhaps your future husband would like to buy him for you as a wedding gift? If not, I’m afraid I’m going to have to take him to the pound.”
“You can’t do that!” Andi cried from her seat in the entrance hall. “You can’t adopt a dog and then throw him away!”
“This is Gabby’s decision,” Mr. Merlin said. “I’ve described to him what the pound is like and how animals are crammed into cages and how sad it is for them when they don’t get adopted. And I’ve told him how much money he’ll earn in Hollywood and how I’ll accompany him there as his trainer and be paid as well. He doesn’t listen. He just stares off into space. One time he even growled at me! He’s not supposed to growl, he’s supposed to talk.”
“I’d love to take Gabby, but I’m afraid that’s impossible,” said Aunt Alice.
“I don’t see why.” Mr. Merlin gestured about him at the spacious living room. “You seem to be fond of Gabby and have plenty of space to keep a pet, while I live in a small apartment that can’t possibly accommodate two dogs.”
“Two dogs?” Andi exclaimed. “I thought Gabby was your only dog.”
“He is at the moment,” Mr. Merlin told her. “But since Gabby is no longer talking, I plan to get another dog and immediately start training it. It will have to be a rush job, but I can’t let all these high-pay opportunities go to waste. I’ll have to intensify the training and allow fewer potty breaks, but now that I’ve developed my teaching techniques, I can probably get my new dog ready within a year. But not with Gabby lazing around, doing nothing. What kind of example would that be for his replacement?”
“As I said, I would happily take Gabby if I could,” Aunt Alice said. “However, I must confess with a bit of embarrassment that I have misled you about the reason for this face mask. It has nothing to do with cultural betrothal traditions. It’s an allergy mask. I am terribly allergic to dogs.”
Mr. Merlin regarded her accusingly.
“You lied to me, Alice!”
“I most certainly did not,” Aunt Alice said. “I dissembled. You chose to believe that this mask meant one thing, and I didn’t attempt to dissuade you, because I didn’t want to encourage your attentions. The truth, Mr. Merlin, is that there are things about you that are of concern to me. I don’t like the way you treat Gabby, and I have some problems with your marital history. You’ve had almost as many wives as King Henry the Eighth.”
“How would you know how many wives I’ve had?” Mr. Merlin demanded.
“Aunt Alice is a private investigator,” Andi told him.
“You’re joking, of course?” Mr. Merlin said. But he was starting to look nervous.
“Indeed she is not,” said Aunt Alice. “And now, Mr. Merlin, I do think it’s time that you left. It’s a long drive back to Philadelphia.”
“No!” Andi cried, wrapping her arms around Gabby. “He can’t take Gabby to the pound! Mr. Merlin, please let me adopt him!”
“Be my guest,” Maynard Merlin said sullenly, getting to his feet. “I can’t imagine why you’d want him, but it will save me a trip to the pound.”
“I hope you won’t mind if I don’t see you out,” said Aunt Alice. “I’d hate for the neighbors to see me ushering a man out of my home as I stand in the doorway in my dressing gown.”
“I’m perfectly capable of letting myself out,” snarled Mr. Merlin. “And you can tell your fiancé that he has my sympathy.”
Once his car had rumbled out of the driveway, Aunt Alice said, “Andi, I understand your reason for acting impulsively, but are you sure your parents will welcome another dog?”
“Probably not, but I’ll talk them into it,” Andi said. “I couldn’t let Gabby suffer because of me.”
“Because of you?” Aunt Alice repeated in bewilderment. “Dear, you are not responsible for this dog’s not talking.”
“But I am!” Andi cried. “As I was saying good-bye to him, I whispered, ‘Take control of your life! Don’t let anybody force you to talk unless you want to.’ Gabby listened to me, didn’t you, Gabby?”
Gabby barked.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Her parents agreed to the adoption with so little argument that Andi was stunned. One reason was that while Andi, Bruce, Tim, and Debbie had been watching the Star Burst show at Aunt Alice’s house, Mr. and Mrs. Walker had been watching at home.
Both had been shocked by Mr. Merl
in’s description of Gabby’s training program.
“That poor dog deserves some rest and relaxation,” Mrs. Walker said sympathetically. “He needs to live in a loving home.”
Gabby smiled. Now that he had stopped talking, he had become very good at smiling. He stretched his big lips to both sides and turned them up at the corners whenever anybody said something nice to him.
Even Mr. Walker, who had stated over and over, “Two dogs are more than enough for any one family,” had melted at the sight of Gabby’s smile.
“If it’s us or the pound, then it has to be us,” he said.
Red Rover, who had gotten to know Gabby during their time together in Hollywood, seemed delighted to renew their friendship and watched with interest as Tim helped Bruce build a second doghouse in the Walkers’ backyard.
The only member of the family who was not happy was Bebe, who went into a snit at the thought of having to share her mistress’s affections with an outsider.
Andi considered telling her that Gabby was Aunt Alice’s dog and was only there to visit while Aunt Alice was out of town. Then she reminded herself that she had given up lying. Lies had a way of catching up with you. Her statement to Mr. Donovan that Jerry’s hand had been smashed in a garbage disposal had caused her a lot of embarrassment.
Also, Bebe was no dummy. She knew quite well that Aunt Alice was allergic to dogs.
So Andi told Bebe the truth while she held and cuddled her.
“You will always be special, because you belonged to me first,” she told Bebe. “But Gabby is special too, in a different way.”
Bebe sulked for a while, but seemed to feel better when she realized that Gabby would be sleeping in the backyard. Andi’s bedroom closet was not large enough to conceal two dogs.
The rest of summer vacation disappeared as quickly as toilet paper when you got near the end of the roll. There seemed to be so much left, and then, suddenly, it was gone, and you couldn’t even remember using it up.
Mrs. Walker took the children shopping for school clothes, and Andi discovered that she had graduated from the children’s department to the juniors. More startling still, Bruce had to buy jeans in the men’s department. They were the smallest jeans on the rack, and he had to wear a belt to keep them up, but he needed the extra length.
Over the summer, Bruce had gotten his growth spurt.
Elmwood Middle School was very different from Elmwood Elementary. Andi found that both exciting and disorienting. There was a different teacher for each subject, and there were armloads of books to carry around, and she had a locker with a combination lock that she could never remember how to open. Arithmetic was called math, and instead of recess, there was P.E., where they had to do jumping jacks and learn to climb a rope. Bells kept ringing, and messages blared over a loudspeaker.
The whole experience was so chaotic that it made Andi’s head spin.
But there were good things, too. The best was the Creative Writing Club. Andi and Debbie had both joined that as soon as they had learned about it — Debbie because she had written the gossip column for The Bow-Wow News and considered herself a journalist, and Andi because she had been longing for such a group all her life. She felt certain her future husband was a member of the club and would eventually emerge and reveal himself. She wasn’t in a hurry for that to happen, because it would spoil the suspense, and besides, she wouldn’t need a boyfriend for at least three years. There wouldn’t be any proms until she got to high school, and she wasn’t sure she’d want to go to one even then. The thought of Sarah’s purple-sequined shoes was a definite turnoff.
One Saturday morning, a few weeks after school had started, Andi was in her bedroom, working on a project for the Creative Writing Club, when Bruce rapped on her door and said, “Kristy’s here.”
“So what’s new?” Andi called back, irritated by being interrupted at a point where words were coming easily and her story was starting to take shape. “It seems like Kristy is always here.”
She still liked Kristy but was getting a little tired of her. Ever since the night when Bruce had walked Kristy home and had not come back in an hour like he had said he would, Kristy had been at the Walker house so constantly that she had become as familiar as the furniture. All Bruce’s free time, except when he was eating or taking Red for a run, was spent doing something with Kristy. They were always working together on a photography project or studying together at the kitchen table or watching TV in the family room. Even at school, when Andi caught sight of her brother in the hall between classes, he and Kristy were usually walking together, hand in hand, like Hansel and Gretel on their way to the gingerbread house.
“She wants to talk to you about something,” Bruce said now.
“About what?” Andi asked him through the door.
“Come out and find out for yourself,” Bruce told her.
So Andi set her notebook aside and reluctantly went downstairs, where Kristy was waiting in the entrance hall.
“Hi, Andi,” Kristy said. “I’ve got a favor to ask you. There’s a very old man, Mr. Sherman, who lives at Glenn Ridge, and his mind is sort of wandering. He drifts back and forth between now and when he was a kid. He keeps talking about a dog named Silver that he had when he was seven years old. He must have had a lonely childhood. He talks about Silver as if he was his only friend.”
“That’s sad,” Andi said. The idea of it made her uneasy. She didn’t like to imagine how it would be to get so old that you couldn’t tell the past from the present. Aunt Alice was old, but that hadn’t happened to her. Andi prayed it never would.
“My mom thinks a therapy dog visit might help him,” Kristy said.
“So you’re going to take Lamb Chop?” Andi asked.
“I tried that,” Kristy said. “Mr. Sherman didn’t like Lamby. He said when he put his hand on her, it was like petting a mop. That hurt Lamby’s feelings.”
“I’m sure it did,” Andi said. She knew how easily Bebe’s feelings got hurt, and Lamb Chop was probably even more sensitive. After all, she was used to having everyone adore her.
“The way Mr. Sherman describes him, I think Silver must have looked a lot like Gabby,” Kristy said. “He was sort of a hound, but not purebred, and had floppy ears and short, smooth hair. Will you come with us to take Gabby to meet Mr. Sherman? Bruce says Gabby won’t go without you.”
“I’m not old enough to be his handler,” Andi reminded her. “Neither is Bruce. We’d have to be sixteen.”
“Not if a parent or guardian comes with you,” Kristy said. “I already asked your mom, and she said she’d be glad to. She told me that ever since she saw my video, she’s been thinking that this might be a good thing for you and her to start doing together.”
“She was probably thinking about taking Bebe,” Andi said. “Bebe loves being with people. She’d be a great therapy dog.”
“She would,” Kristy agreed. “But she wouldn’t be right for Mr. Sherman. Mr. Sherman is dreaming about a hound. If he didn’t like Lamby, he won’t like Bebe. Even with floppy ears, she’s still definitely a dachshund.”
“Come on, Andi,” Bruce coaxed. “It won’t take long. Then you can go back to your writing or whatever you were doing. Mom’s outside in the car, but Gabby’s acting stubborn. When I told him we wanted to take him for a ride, he ran into his doghouse.”
“I told him he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do,” Andi said.
“Then make him want to do it,” Bruce said impatiently. “He’ll listen to you, but he doesn’t seem to trust me. He’s scared, but I don’t know why. And of course he won’t tell me.”
“Please, Andi, try,” Kristy said. “This could mean so much to Mr. Sherman. He doesn’t have any family or friends to visit him. All he has are memories of his dog.”
“Okay, I’ll go talk to Gabby,” Andi said. “But I’m not going to pressure him. If he doesn’t want to go to Glenn Ridge, he shouldn’t have to do it.”
When she opened the kitche
n door to go into the backyard, Red came racing to greet her. If only Mr. Sherman’s childhood pet had been a setter! Red was always eager to go anywhere with anyone, unless, of course, it was Jerry.
“Not this time, Red,” Andi told him, pausing a moment to run a hand over his silky head. Then she went to Gabby’s doghouse and knelt down to peer in at him. His nose was between his paws, and his eyes held a look of desperation.
Andi knew at once what the problem was.
“You don’t have to worry about going to the pound,” she assured him. “You belong to us. This is your home now. Red and Bebe are your brother and sister. You’re never going to see Mr. Merlin again, and we’re never going to give you away. Even if you do something naughty like pee on the carpet or throw up a strawberry sundae, we’re going to keep you forever. Do you understand?”
Gabby raised his head and stared up into her face. He seemed to be trying to decide whether to believe her.
Then, slowly, he inched his way out of his doghouse and stood up.
“We’re going to visit a man named Mr. Sherman,” Andi told him. “Then we’re going to come back home.”
She got to her feet and started across the yard.
Gabby fell into step beside her.
Mr. Sherman was alone in his room. It was a sterile room with no pictures on the walls, no books on the shelves, and no potted plants on the window ledge. He sat in a wheelchair with his back to the window. He wasn’t reading or working on a crossword puzzle. He was simply sitting there.
The door to the hall stood open.
“Who’s that?” he asked anxiously when Kristy rapped on the door frame and stepped into the room.
“It’s me,” Kristy told him. “Kristy Fernald. Remember the other day when I brought my dog, Lamby, to see you, and you didn’t like her because she felt like a mop?”
“Did I say that?” Mr. Sherman seemed bewildered. “Maybe I did. I certainly don’t like mops.”
“I’ve brought some visitors today that you might like better,” Kristy said. “My boyfriend, Bruce; his mom, Mrs. Walker; and his sister, Andi.”