The Genie of Sutton Place

  And another time, two summers ago: one hot August morning we were all getting ready to go to the beach when Lorenzo decided, “Nope! The National Museum!” I was really mad that time, because I do like to swim. But by the end of the afternoon, by the time Lorenzo had talked the guard into letting us stay an extra ten minutes in the Near Eastern wing, I’d forgotten all about the beach … To think, we were right next to the room of rooms—the Al-Hazred room … If I’d known that then …

  One more thing only—and not magic or kooky bicycle riding either. It’s how I learned to cook. One night Lorenzo said, “I’d like some pancakes.” Naturally I said, “So would I.” “Then go make them,” said Lorenzo. “There’s a cook book over the kitchen sink.” So, to my nervousness, I did. And, believe me, they were awful! Much too thick and starchy. For the first batch Lorenzo and Madame Sosostris had to pretend like mad. Then he took over, and none of us had to pretend at all.

  So if that’s a “bizarre upbringing,” I just wish everybody could enjoy their own as much.

  But all the time those good memories of Lorenzo were going through my mind, warming it up, that word “custody” was in there, too, freezing it! Custody is something orphans and criminals get taken into. I don’t know how a criminal feels when he hears he’s in custody, but I knew the worst. Nobody said anything, but all of a sudden the séance room was full of the fact that I was going to have to leave Madame Sosostris and go live with Aunt Lucy.

  At first I was just plain scared, and I tried to think how I could stop it all from happening. No way. I was going to say something dopey, like that Daddy had said I should take care of Madame Sosostris while he was away excavating, and that she should take care of me—but no way. I gave up on all that and started to be rational and cook up a reason to come down and see Madame Sosostris. Every day, if I could.

  While I was plotting what I thought was a pretty good idea, the others were talking. I half-heard Aunt Lucy say something about how fortunate it was that the school year had just ended, so that I’d have the summer before beginning a new school in the fall.

  Madame Sosostris shot me a glance—half worry and half fun—and said, “Oh, Tim’s very bright. He won’t have any trouble.” She knew I hadn’t been to school for ages. It was so dull, and the things I was learning there were so stupid that I just sort of phased out about two years ago. That’s when my education began. “He can even read Latin,” said Madame Sosostris.

  “Why, that’s wonderful!” exclaimed Aunt Lucy.

  One day Lorenzo was translating a juicy section from a treatise on alchemy by Paracelsus. Abruptly he stopped and said, “There’s no reason why I should be doing this.” That minute he started to teach me Latin.

  “Darn good at arithmetic, too!” said Madame Sosostris.

  She and Lorenzo had had to go to an auction, and as they were going out the door, she casually called back, “Mind the store, Tim.” By the time they got back, I could make change like anything. And that involves addition, subtraction, and all that stuff. I was lucky, though, that afternoon. We had very nice customers and nobody tried to gyp me.

  “Has he been exposed to the new math?” said Mr. Watkins.

  I was going to say that as a matter of fact I hadn’t been exposed to the new math, but I’d had on-the-job training in finance and economics, but I decided he’d just think that I was some smarty-pants kid, so I shut up.

  The talk hemmed and hawed for a while longer, and then there came a dead moment when everyone knew it was time for me and Aunt Lucy and Mr. Watkins to leave.

  “Well, Timmy, I think perhaps you’d better get your things,” Aunt Lucy said quietly.

  “All right,” I answered, very cool. Because by then I had my plan. I went up to my bedroom and packed.

  It’s very hard to describe my bedroom down there, because it never stayed the same. The only things that didn’t change were the bed and the bookcase. All the rest of the furniture was things that Madame Sosostris didn’t have room for yet in the shop downstairs. And when she did—a new table, a new chair, a new everything! I liked it. The changes made life interesting.

  I stuffed my clothes in my suitcase and put my two favorite kids’ books on top of them: The Hobbit and The Wizard of Oz. I was sure I could take at least them without interfering with the plan. Then I went downstairs.

  Oh—very important—I also brought the Good-Luck Devil from Borneo—a little statuette with a fierce but intelligent face. He certainly didn’t live up to his reputation for bringing good luck, but I loved him and I wanted him with me.

  Everybody was in that dithery state when you’re getting ready to say goodbye. A good time to spring my idea, I decided. “Madame Sosostris,” I said, “would you mind if I left Lorenzo’s books down here for a while? There’s really an awful lot of them, and I don’t know whether they’d fit in Aunt Lucy’s apartment.”

  “Why, I’ve plenty of room—” Aunt Lucy began.

  But Madame Sosostris, who caught on right away, interrupted. “Sure, Tim. As a matter of fact, I’d like to look them over myself. And if you ever want one,” she added nonchalantly, “you can come down and pick it up any time. That would be okay with you, Miss Farr, wouldn’t it?—not to have these dusty old books around?”

  With many nods and smiles—especially between me and Madame S.—it all was agreed upon. So at least the plan worked.

  Then the march through the shop to the car began.

  Except that Sam, being his bumbly self in those days, had to interrupt it. At the door to the séance room he stepped on another button. The Fiendish Laughter rang out—pretty squawkily, I thought. Madame Sosostris apologized, and received a sniff and an understanding smile from Mr. Watkins and Aunt Lucy.

  Sam’s setting off the Fiendish Laughter made Mr. Watkins edgy. He said to Aunt Lucy, in the voice that grownups use when they don’t want to be overheard by children, even when the child is standing right there beside them, “You are really going to take that mutt up to your apartment, Lucy?”

  And Aunt Lucy, in the same fake voice, said, “Well, of course, Henry. It’s his dog!”

  The things that grownups don’t know. Kids listen. And they think.

  We arrived at the car. Maurice opened the door officiously.

  We pretended we were cool and easy, but all of us knew we were all uptight …

  The best thing was to get it over with quickly.

  I said, “Madame Sosostris, you better get some new Fiendish Laughter. The old laughter’s wearing out.”

  At that point so was mine.

  3

  Worse Yet

  The drive uptown to Sutton Place took nearly an hour. Traffic. I love New York, but I hate the cars. But what is New York without the cars?… It’s a problem for everybody, I guess.

  The three of us were sitting in the back seat—Sam, Aunt Lucy, and me. I sat in the middle and let Sam have the window, because I knew he was going to enjoy the ride a lot more than I was. Mr. Watkins was up front with Maurice. He said he was going to “jump off” at his office on Third Avenue and Forty-first Street. Their two heads looked sort of alike up there.

  I kept paying attention to Aunt Lucy’s chatter—like about how little luggage I had—and remembering to answer her, but my arm was around Sam as he gazed out the window. Every now and then he’d give a little reverse push of his back and a woof to let me know that he knew I was there, despite how much he was enjoying the sights. I liked feeling his back underneath my hand. Sam was a husky mutt, and maybe a little overweight, but I’d rather have dogs—and people, too—have a bit too much stomach than be scrawny and not have enough.

  So we let Mr. Watkins “jump off,” and finally got to Sutton Place. Maurice let us out in front of Aunt Lucy’s apartment house and told “modom” he’d return the car to the garage.

  About Sutton Place. I don’t have anything against it. A lot of rich people live there, but the buildings are pretty nice. There are old buildings and new ones, and a few really great town h
ouses, but the whole place really does fit together. Aunt Lucy’s apartment house was neither young nor old, but it had a nice big lobby, and the doorman was neither young nor old, but he, too, looked pretty permanent. So with everything so—acceptable—to say the least, I kept wondering why I felt so lousy on the elevator up to Aunt Lucy’s apartment. I really was trying to psych myself into liking it all. But it didn’t work.

  And the reason it didn’t, besides losing everything I was used to, was my bedroom. I knew the apartment already, from my visits with Lorenzo, and I appreciated it. Grampa Lorenzo’s stuff, which Aunt Lucy didn’t dare change, was like Sutton Place: old and new, and all good. A bull’s-eye mirror would have fitted in very well. But then Aunt Lucy, with a grin out of a store window, said, “Now come and see your room, Timmy!”

  She’d had the guest bedroom redecorated. And, boy, was it ever decorated! The trouble was, I didn’t think the decorator knew anything about kids—much less me. I could have been four—or eighteen. Half the room was college pennants, and the other half was cuddly stuffed animals! And the worst—the most unbelievable thing—there weren’t any bookcases in it! How can anybody design a room for a kid and not put at least one bookcase in it?

  “Look, Timmy,” said Aunt Lucy. “You open these cabinet doors, and there’s color television!”

  I’m not underestimating color television. A lot of kids would sell their souls for it. And some of the programs are pretty good, too.

  “It’s very nice, Aunt Lucy,” I said.

  “But, oh, dear, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten to include a doghouse for Sam.”

  “Aunt Lucy,” I said, “Sam doesn’t need anything but a piece of floor to lie down on.” (Actually, he had his box. Which I went down and got in a couple of days.)

  At that moment Sam was up on top of my chintz-covered bed, sniffing a Princeton flag. He was always able to enjoy things more easily than I could.

  “Well, that’s fine,” said Aunt Lucy. “Just fine. I’ll leave you two to make yourselves at home.” She was just as uptight as I was, and she beat a retreat to her own bedroom.

  That was the worst—when Sam and I were alone in “my room.” It was even more lonely than “custody” down in Madame Sosostris’s séance room.

  I guess Sam wasn’t as down as I was, though. He kept me company for a while and then padded off down the hall. (It’s pretty clear, considering all the trouble that came later, that he was following the trail of perfume Aunt Lucy left in the air on the way to her bedroom.)

  So there I was, all by myself, staring at a color TV set that I didn’t want to turn on, with even Sam deserting me.

  But I wasn’t alone for long. Because just then Rose Jackson came in. Rose is one of those people who, when they come into a room—even an awful one like my bedroom—make everything feel more natural. More human, I mean.

  “Hi,” she said. “I hear you’re going to live with us.”

  “I guess I am,” I admitted.

  “Come on in the kitchen. Let’s have a Coke and get acquainted,” said Rose.

  Rose is Aunt Lucy’s sleep-in maid, housekeeper, and cook. (Maurice, by the way, slept out. Which was going to make things easier.) Rose really is a singer, although she doesn’t know yet whether she’s a true dramatic soprano or a mezzo. She works for Aunt Lucy to pay for her music lessons, and part of the deal is that she can vocalize in her own bedroom as much as she likes. There’s nothing wrong with being a maid, and if that’s what you want, I’m all for it, but believe me, Rose Jackson is a girl who’s not ever going to be satisfied with only washing dishes. And she’s twenty-two. I found out all that while she found out all about me when we were having our Cokes in the kitchen. Rose was doing her favorite hobby as we talked, filling in a crossword puzzle.

  About this time on that first afternoon, I was beginning to think that Sutton Place was a place where you could feel at home.

  But the feeling didn’t last long. Aunt Lucy came brisking into the kitchen, patted her leg to summon someone, and said in a very persnickety way, “Come, Sam. Come, Sam. Sam, come!” Then after Sam had plopped in, she looked at me with a smile that if it had been glass could easily have been broken and said in the same kind of voice, “I love having you here to live with me, Timmy—but there’s one thing we have to have clear. Sam’s not to follow me around! And he’s not to come into my bedroom. All right?”

  “All right, Aunt Lucy,” I said.

  Rose said softly, “Come on, Sam—over here.” And Sam went to her hand. But he kept looking back at Aunt Lucy. Rose flicked me a glance that advised me not to start worrying—yet. Like me, she always knew right away when everything was not all right.

  * * *

  The trouble was, Sam just downright fell in love with Aunt Lucy. It was love at first sight and love at first whiff of her beautiful perfume. A lot of it was my fault. I left them alone together.

  You see, I had this scheme. As long as I was going to have to live in my bedroom, I wanted to make it as friendly as I could. I asked Aunt Lucy if she’d care if I made a few changes in it. She said, Why, dear, of course not!—not knowing at all what I had in mind. So little by little I began to take things out of my bedroom and down to the antique shop. It gave me an excuse to see Madame Sosostris every day, too. Even better than the books.

  By the end of a couple of weeks I’d gotten rid of the college banners, the cutesy cushions, and the worst of the pictures. They were a series of framed illustrations from a really rotten children’s book—about this courageous little boy who overcame some dopey phony handicap—and they must have cost Aunt Lucy a fortune. Of course Madame Sosostris wouldn’t sell junk like that in her shop, but she palmed them off on some of her less intelligent colleagues.

  Instead of that junk, I’d smuggled up to Sutton Place my big Bavarian pipe with the bowl in the shape of a skull, my fake mummy’s hand—you can love a fake, it just has to be real—and, best of all, my bone. One day Lorenzo and I had discovered this strange bone inside an Aztec urn. Well, it could have been anything. It could have been from a dinosaur or it could have been—I won’t even hope what. But I wanted it for my own. And since there was no retail value in it, Madame Sosostris gave it to me. My favorite was still the Good-Luck Devil from Borneo, but he looked much more at home with my other things all there, too.

  Oh, I also bought a couple of little bookcases from the shop next to ours. That day I had to take a taxi, to get them back. If I’d known what was going to happen, I’d have taken a taxi—and Sam—every day. But Lorenzo had trained me to save money—we never had much—so I’d walk over to Third Avenue and take the E train down to the Village. You can’t take dogs on the subway, unless they’re in a box or something. Or unless you’re blind. Sam was much too big for me to carry in a box.

  But that meant that all the time I was schlepping everything around, Sam was left up in Sutton Place. And he was bugging Aunt Lucy. I didn’t really know how much till the day she blew up. Then Rose told me …

  I guess that you can love somebody and still be a terrible nuisance to them …

  Rose told me that that hassle in the kitchen on my first day was just the beginning. Of course, Rose has a great sense of humor, so she could see the funniness of it in spite of Aunt Lucy’s explosion. The time she got the biggest kick, she said, was when Aunt Lucy was getting ready to go out to lunch with Mr. Watkins. She’d just gotten out of the shower, and was dressing and primping, with Rose helping her, telling her how pretty she looked.

  “Then all of a sudden we heard this pitiful woof from the doorway,” said Rose, through her laughing. “And there was Sam, looking even more moony than usual.” You know that a dog who turns out to be half basset hound looks pretty soulful anyway. “Your aunt acted as if poor old Sam was a peeping Tom.”

  A few of these embarrassing moments I saw myself, but I didn’t put them all together. Like the time Aunt Lucy was teaching me about French cooking. She always had my place set at the opposite end of the table from h
ers, very formal and uncomfortable, and she was explaining the chocolate mousse we were having for dessert. I didn’t want to tell her that I already knew what a mousse was and that Madame Sosostris could make an even better one than Rose. I know I have a tendency to come on like a smarty-pants kid, and Aunt Lucy did seem to be enjoying herself, explaining about how it was really just a fluffy chocolate pudding, when all of a sudden she let out a squeak and her eyes got that glass look.

  I peered under the table, and there was Sam, who had just lain down with his head over Aunt Lucy’s foot. I think it’s nice when a dog loves you enough to lay his head across your foot, but I knew that Aunt Lucy didn’t share my opinion, so I hauled Sam off to my bedroom. I was hoping she’d go on describing the chocolate mousse, but she’d tightened up by the time I got back. And she was sneezing, too … Honestly, I never did believe those sneezes.

  I never saw the worst moments. The one Rose enjoyed most—but Aunt Lucy sure didn’t—was when she’d left her bedroom door ajar and woken up one morning to find Sam’s head asleep beside her on the pillow. She’d screamed, “Sam!”—and he’d said, “Woof,” and gone back to his box.

  Then there was the incident of Mr. Watkins. Rose told me she happened to have some work in the hall, so she couldn’t help but overhear them talking in the living room. About my “schooling” and whether I was “adjusting” or not. I think it was the very day that I was “adjusting” my bookcases up to the apartment. Well, I don’t think it came to actual biting—I hope not anyway—but it seems that Sam, who had not adjusted to Mr. Watkins too well, chased him up on a chair, and it took all of Rose’s persuasion and strength to drag Sam back into my bedroom.

  Then came the big blowup. It happened on the great day … You never know in the morning what you’ll find in the night.