Dedication
For Bob
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
1. All About Me
2. The Quirky Quartet
3. Maddy
4. Small Truths
5. Alpha
6. A Walk with Ellie
7. Up the Hill and into the Woods
8. The Breathing of Animals
9. Cranky Tom
10. Friends
11. Shooting Stars
12. The Truth of Me
About the Author
Back Ad
Also by Patricia MacLachlan
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Epigraph
This is a true story. The truest story ever.
You may not believe it. Your loss.
But it’s true.
I have a witness.
1
All About Me
My name is Robert. There are many Roberts before me—a family of Roberts. There are my uncles, my great-uncles, a grandfather and a great-grandfather, and on and on. I think of all those Roberts when I go to the ballpark and see a line of men waiting to go to the bathroom. All those Roberts.
I am an only child.
My parents call me Robert, and when they do, I feel like a child dressed up in grown-up clothing. I’d rather be called Rex or Bud or Duke.
Once I asked them if they would please have another child.
My mother said, “Why would we want another child? We have you.”
How dumb is that.
They did get me a dog from the shelter: a brown hound mix named Eleanor—Ellie for short. Ellie surprised us all by being obedient. She does everything we ask. Someone trained Ellie very well and then let her go. That makes me sad. Why would anyone do that?
Ellie is my best friend. Actually, Jack and Lizzie from my class are good friends, too. But they have gone to summer camp, off to swim in icy lake waters on cold mornings, to go on long hikes and forget their water bottles, to make lanyard bracelets that will unravel. They would rather go to Maddy’s house with me.
So Ellie and my grandmother Maddy are my two best friends for the summer. Most kids are best friends with their dogs. Not all kids are best friends with their grandmothers. But I am.
My parents are musicians. My mother, I think, likes her violin better than she likes me. At least she spends more time with her violin than with me. But that is the way of musicians, Maddy tells me.
“That’s my fault, Robbie. I gave her a quarter-size fiddle when she was seven years old to keep her from telling me what to do all the time,” says Maddy.
My father (yep, named Robert) is a composer and violist. He has four pianos. There’s a very big Steinway that I played under when I was little—I used to hide my glasses of milk there because I didn’t like milk. The milk curdled and was cleaned up by the housekeeper much later. She never told my mother. Maybe she didn’t like milk either. My father has two baby grand pianos, too, and a spinet—and a keyboard for traveling. Maddy says he is “overequipped.”
Maddy calls me Robbie, which I like. And she makes my parents nervous because of the stories she tells.
I make my parents nervous, too. Which is another reason I love my grandmother.
In school we had to write a description about an actual event we witnessed. This is what I wrote about my mother auditioning a second violinist to play in her string quartet.
AUDITION OVER
The second violinist who auditions wears the same dress as the first violinist and, if you can believe it, the same shoes.
The first violinist cannot stop looking at her.
The first violinist cannot stop disliking her.
AUDITION OVER.
A tall Man with a sneer auditions. He makes a grand mistake. He accuses the first violinist of being “just a trifle flat.”
AUDITION OVER.
A small woman with the body of a Jack Russell terrier auditions.
She hums.
“You’re humming,” says the first violinist.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“Are.”
“Not.”
“Are.”
“Not.”
AUDITION OVER.
My teacher, Miss Cross, laughed a lot when she read it. But she didn’t think it was true. Often my teachers don’t think what I write is true.
Maddy read “Audition Over” and laughed, too. But she knew it was true. She is my mother’s mother, and she knows.
My parents don’t exactly trust Maddy. That is, they don’t trust all that she says. They whisper and murmur about her, wondering if she’s going “over the edge,” as my mother puts it. Once my mother called Maddy’s doctor, Henry, to tell him what she thought. I know all this because I know pretty much everything.
I know Maddy says she has lots of animal friends in the woods. I know she says she once shared corn bread with a bear, the two of them sitting on a log.
But I also know something my mother and father don’t know.
Maddy has powers all her own. Powers that other people don’t have.
Jack and Lizzie know this, too. They have met Maddy.
“Maddy has gifts,” says Lizzie.
“Do you mean magic?” I ask.
“No. Gifts,” says Lizzie. “That’s different. Remember when she was here and the birds came down from the trees to see her?”
“And a fox came?” says Jack. “It came right up to her? The animals seem to know that she is safe.”
“They want to be close to her,” says Lizzie. “That’s her gift. They trust her.”
I don’t care if Maddy tells stories.
Lizzie and Jack don’t care if she tells stories.
But my parents care.
And my parents are very nervous.
2
The Quirky Quartet
There is, at last, a new second violinist for my mother’s string quartet. He is an unlikely choice, to look at him. He wears boots and cutoff jeans and has several tattoos on his arm, including one that says PLAY, BABY, PLAY! His name is David Chance, an interesting name since he takes a big “chance” playing with my mother. And though I can tell my mother does not approve of his clothes, her eyebrows rise with happy surprise when he begins to play.
My father is playing viola today. Marybeth, the wild-haired cellist, is going to have a baby, though you can’t tell behind her cello.
My mother is annoyed with Marybeth for having a baby, I can tell. It means my mother will have to find another cellist. I think it is Marybeth’s business if she wants to have a strange-looking, wild-haired baby of her own.
They are an odd bunch, I think. They are called the Allegro Quartet when they play concerts. I call them the Quirky Quartet.
The reason for the new second violinist is that the first one died in the middle of a concert, falling forward slowly into his Mozart music. That disturbed my mother’s sense of how things should be. They had to stop the concert, attend to him, carry him offstage, and cancel the concert.
Today they are playing the same Mozart. They come to the soft, sweet place where the second violinist died. I suppose it is better to die in a nice, slow melody rather than a snappy one.
I almost wrote about this event for my teacher, but, for sure, Miss Cross wouldn’t have believed it to be true.
They are rehearsing today in our living room before they go off on summer tour and I get to stay with Maddy. Ellie is half in love with David Chance, leaning against his leg, looking up at him as he plays.
David reaches down and scratches Ellie behind an ear
, and my mother frowns. David knows she is frowning. He winks at me. He smiles brightly at my mother and plays so beautifully that she can’t frown anymore.
They play and stop to talk about a note that they all hold together. Then they play again. Ellie lies down on David’s foot with a sigh. She rolls over on her back. Soon, when the music reaches a crescendo, Ellie will “pass gas,” as my mother puts it; and they will have to pick up their music and stands and flee to the porch to play.
Until then, Mozart and sunlight fill the room.
It is evening. A moon hangs above the meadow outside the kitchen.
My mother is on the phone.
“Yes, he’s packed, Mother. We’ll drive him over tomorrow. We’ll be in a hurry, so we can’t stop to visit.”
There is a pause.
“Robert? Pick up the phone. Maddy wants to ask you a question.”
She watches as I pick up the hallway phone. She doesn’t hang up. I can hear her breathing.
“Robbie? Are you bringing Ellie?” asks Maddy.
“Yes,” I say. “Is that all right?”
I move back in the hallway and look at my mother, still listening on the phone. She sees me but doesn’t hang up.
“Is she friendly with other animals?” asks Maddy.
“Very,” I say. “She likes all dogs, and cats, and some rabbits that come around. Except for squirrels,” I add. “She chases squirrels.”
“We’ll have to work on that,” says Maddy.
Work on that?
Still my mother listens.
“I’ll call you back,” I say, suddenly angry.
I hang up the phone and go into the kitchen, where my mother still holds the phone. I walk up to her and take the phone out of her hand and hang it up.
“You forgot to hang up,” I say to her.
She frowns at me, but I am used to that.
My father calls to her from the other room.
“Judith? Are you taking a case of bows?”
She turns and leaves without saying anything.
I pick up the phone and dial Maddy’s number.
“Hello?”
“It’s Robbie.”
“What I meant was, will Ellie be all right with animals in the wild?” asks Maddy.
“Yes,” I say, hoping that somewhere in the house my mother is listening. My voice echoes in the kitchen.
“Yes,” I say firmly.
3
Maddy
Maddy’s house sits on a hill bordered by woods.
My father drives the half-hour trip there, my mother lecturing me about “keeping watch” over Maddy.
“If she does anything strange, you can call Henry,” says my mother.
Maddy always does strange things. And my parents are leaving me for two months while they go off to play. If they were really worried, they wouldn’t leave me. Would they?
I don’t say that out loud.
Henry, the town doctor, lives four houses down the road from Maddy. Maddy and Henry are friends. Better friends than my parents know. Maddy and Henry eat dinner together at least three times a week. Usually Henry cooks. Maybe this would make Henry strange to my mother, too.
I decide not to mention that to my parents.
Maddy’s house looks like the house in Little Bear, one of my favorite books when I was little. It is a cottage with whitewashed plaster walls, big, colorful braided rugs, lots of bookshelves of books, a fireplace, and overstuffed chairs. She has a big stove, but sometimes Maddy forgets to cook supper on time. Once we had doughnuts for dinner.
I never told my parents that either. My mother and father are always cooking dishes with Swiss chard and couscous and beans and spices that are strange to me: coriander, ginger, and cloves.
There are many things that I don’t tell my parents. Many things I don’t say out loud. That means there are many things rolling around inside my head.
We drive into Maddy’s driveway.
The car stops.
“Here,” says my mother softly.
Ellie jumps out of the car first and runs to Maddy’s front door. Ellie remembers the doughnuts.
Maddy comes out, tall and thin with short, spiky white hair. She wears jeans and boots. My parents don’t get out of the car. My father leans out of the window to kiss my cheek, but he doesn’t hug me.
Maddy hugs me, though, and waves goodbye to my mother and father and Mozart, who is living in two big suitcases in the backseat of the car. The printed music of Mozart, that is.
Another suitcase carries some Beethoven and Schubert and some modern music I call “wikkeldy pikkeldy” music.
“We’ll call,” says my father.
“Don’t worry, we’ll have fun!” says Maddy.
“Bye, Robert!” calls my mother.
She doesn’t look back when she calls to me. Her mind, I know, is already on the first concert. Then the next.
And the next.
And all the concerts after that.
“She’s gone,” I say out loud.
“Yes,” says Maddy, understanding that I don’t mean that my mother is just driving away in the car.
“She is,” repeats Maddy.
Even though it is the beginning of summer there is a small fire in the stone fireplace. Maddy likes a fire. Ellie likes it, too. She edges closer and closer, stretching out on the huge bluestone hearth.
“Which room, Robbie?” asks Maddy.
There are three bedrooms downstairs and a loft upstairs that I used to choose until I got Ellie. Ellie can’t climb up the ladder, and she is too big to carry.
“That one.”
I point to the small room that looks over the hill going up to the woods outside. There is a high bed with a patchwork quilt.
“Can you get up there, Ellie?” I ask, patting the bed.
In a quick movement, making it look easy, Ellie leaps up onto the bed and turns around twice and lies down. She can see out of the window from the bed, and her ears stand up at something she sees.
I look out. Squirrels.
Maddy watches Ellie carefully. I know what she is thinking.
“She’s a very good dog, Maddy,” I say.
Maddy smiles.
“I know she is, but she is a hound. Hounds are known for hunting.”
“She is well trained,” I tell Maddy. “And she’s a mix. That mix is something special, and it is why I know she will be fine in the woods.” I take a breath. “With wild animals.”
“And what is the mix?” asks Maddy.
“Stuffed dog,” I say very seriously.
After a moment Maddy laughs for a long time.
“Okay, Robbie,” says Maddy. “I trust you. I trust Ellie.”
Maddy pats Ellie, and Ellie rolls over so Maddy can rub her stomach.
“I’ll go pick lettuce in the garden,” says Maddy, going to the kitchen. “Come on out when you want. Henry’s coming for dinner tonight.”
“Is Henry cooking?” I call to her.
“What do you think?” she calls back.
I stare at Ellie after Maddy leaves.
“Stuffed animal, remember,” I whisper to Ellie. “I made that up,” I add. “Maddy trusts you.”
Ellie looks at me with her dark eyes and tilts her head.
“Maddy trusts you,” I repeat, my voice sounding very serious in the little room.
I sound a little nervous, too.
I look out of the window and see Maddy in her fenced garden, picking lettuce leaves.
Why am I nervous?
Because Ellie may not be good with the wild animals of the woods?
Or because I’m afraid that there are wild-animal friends of Maddy’s in the woods?
I sigh.
“Maybe it’s easier at home with my mother and father,” I say to Ellie. “At least I always know what to expect.”
Ellie stares at me, her eyes big and steady and bright.
4
Small Truths
Henry comes through the doorway carryin
g a black cast-iron pot by its looped handle. He has a stethoscope in his jacket pocket. He is tall, with speckled hair.
“Hello, Kiddo,” he says, setting the pot on the stove and turning on the gas burner.
I like Henry calling me “Kiddo.”
“Hi, Henry. Did you cook that?”
Henry peers at me.
“You don’t think I’d let Maddy cook, do you?”
I smile.
“She heats up doughnuts very well,” I say.
Henry laughs.
I peer into the pot on the stove.
“Does this have coriander, ginger, and cloves in it?” I ask.
“No,” says Henry, as if he’s used to this question.
That’s the nice thing about Henry. Everything you say and every question you ask he considers serious enough to answer.
Maddy says that’s because he’s a doctor and he is used to stupid questions from his patients.
“Where’s Maddy?”
“In the shower,” I say.
Henry takes the stethoscope out of his pocket and sits down at the kitchen table. He pats Ellie.
“Hello, Eleanor,” he says. He always calls Ellie Eleanor.
He looks closely at me.
“All right. What?” he says.
He knows. Henry always knows when someone wants to ask a question.
“My parents called you,” I say.
Henry nods.
“I heard them,” I say.
Henry nods again. He sighs.
“Kiddo, your parents . . . actually, your mother thinks things should be a certain way. Her way,” he says.
I think about my mother being upset when they had to cancel a concert because the second violinist died. I think about her being upset because wild-haired Marybeth is having a baby.
I nod now. I’m turning into Henry.
“They worry about Maddy and her wild-animal stories,” I say. “They think it’s strange.”
I’d like to say that I worry, too. But that’s another thing I don’t say out loud.
“We all have our truths, Kiddo,” says Henry. “Some are big truths. Most times they’re small truths. But those stories are Maddy’s truths. Your parents have different ones of their own.”