Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things: Mister Max 1

  No, he’d seen their tickets. Their tickets were real, he was sure of that.

  But why had this happened to him? He wasn’t adventure-mad. That was his father, with his mother going along with whatever William wanted and probably wanting it herself, too. All Max wanted was not to have been left behind. What was wrong with him that he had no friends and his parents could just leave him behind like that?

  “What did you do today?” Grammie asked him that evening.

  Max shrugged but said, “I already read both those books.”

  Grammie said, “Well, I got a lot done. In case you’re interested.”

  She didn’t need to be sarcastic at him.

  Grammie said, “According to the manifests, both of those passenger vessels are making stops in India. Well, one is in Ceylon, the Australian liner.” Grammie looked at him expectantly.

  “Miss Koala,” Max supplied.

  “Yes. She makes port at Lisbon first, then Tenerife, before she rounds the Cape of Good Hope at Cape Town and takes a northern route to Colombo before her last long lap, to Melbourne. She is due in Colombo about the first of June—these sea voyages don’t have strict schedules, because they are so dependent on weather.” When Max didn’t say anything, Grammie added, “Colombo is not far from the tip of India.”

  “The letter said they’d be met in Bombay.”

  “Well, the Eastern Star actually lands in Bombay, which,” she said to the expression on his face, “makes it more likely. It’s due to land there about the tenth of May, and it’s taking the Mediterranean route, via the Suez Canal, so it’s more likely to be on schedule.”

  Only three weeks, then, Max thought. “Do you think that’s the one they’re on?”

  “It’s the likeliest choice, isn’t it? That Simón Bolívar is a cargo ship. According to its manifest, it was delivering a load of raw copper and carrying back fabrics, lumber, plus some crates of wine for a distributor in New York City and picking up there—the suspicion is arms, but that Harbormaster likes his suspicions, so I don’t know if he’s to be believed. The ship is going on to Caracas, with a fueling stop in Miami. It’s due in Caracas on the tenth of May. Cargo ships don’t make good time, you know.”

  How would Max know something like that? He nodded anyway.

  Grammie went on. “I didn’t recognize any of the names on the passenger lists. Both of the liners had lots of couples traveling first-class, and before you ask, yes, I looked hard at the entire list, and the crew, too, just in case. There were no Starlings, not in first class, or any other class. None. And no other names that looked like a clue—no Birdwells or Crowells or Robinsons or Swansons. Nothing. What staterooms they had on the Simón Bolívar had all been taken by some Spaniard with one of those y names. Carrera y Carrera. I don’t know why they have names like that,” Grammie grumbled.

  Max knew that his grandmother was as unhappy as he was, but he was too unhappy to try to cheer her up.

  The third morning after, Saturday, Max woke to the light and to birdsong, and he felt, for a moment, normal. It didn’t last long, that good feeling. It didn’t last more than a minute, but it was wonderful to be himself for that minute. Before he remembered and sank back down into helplessness and fear and anger. He heard Grammie in the kitchen below. He heard her steps on the stairs. He closed his eyes.

  That morning, she made no pretense of believing he was asleep. She yanked the covers off, and when his eyes flew open in protest she said, “If you think you’re going to lie around wallowing in self-pity another day, in my house? You have another think coming. If you won’t go out and find yourself a job, you can clean up my kitchen. Weed the garden and your mother’s flower beds, too, and if I return here at midday and find you still lying in bed there will be trouble.”

  Max felt his eyes fill with the unfairness of it all.

  “You’re not the only one who’s worried and afraid and bereft. You’re just the only one who’s taken to his bed,” Grammie announced, and she sounded disgusted with him. She turned on her heels and marched out of the room.

  On Saturdays the library closed at noon. Usually, on Saturday afternoons, Grammie did her marketing and any other errands, then gave her little house a good sweeping out and washing down, if the weather was bad, or worked in the garden, if the weather was fair and there was gardening that needed doing. There would be no peace for Max today.

  Max stormed out of bed, had breakfast without even sitting down at the table, and cleaned up the kitchen. Grammie hadn’t even cleared her plate off the table. If she was going to be like that, Max would show her. He would move into his parents’ house, his own house, and see how Grammie liked that.

  After he had packed his things back into his carpetbag, he carried that, plus his watercolor paint box and pad, downstairs. He removed the key his parents had left with Grammie from its hook beside her back door, then left her house. He locked the kitchen door behind him with the key she kept on a hook under her back steps. Let her come home to a locked house, and wonder. He was angry enough at everyone to be glad to make his grandmother unhappy.

  But when he stepped into his own kitchen and put his carpetbag down on the floor, his watercolors down on the table, Max felt different. Entirely different, as if the short crossing between the two little houses had been a long, long journey. The empty house quivered around him. Already its rooms smelled a little musty. Max felt jittery, in his stomach, and it might have been fear, but it might also have been excitement. Because he suddenly realized that he was going to do it—live in his own house, independent, on his own.

  He unpacked his clothing and books and then wandered through every empty room, opening windows to let in fresh air. There weren’t many rooms: upstairs two bedrooms and a bathroom; downstairs a kitchen, a dining room, and the front parlor, where his parents had left a trunk of the costumes they’d chosen to do without. This was the room where they walked back and forth reciting lines, or sat discussing the plans for a season’s productions. Its two windows looked out over a narrow porch across a small front lawn to Thieves Alley. A low white wrought-iron fence separated the lawn from the street; a sweet-toned brass bell hung beside the gate, for visitors to announce themselves. Not that there were many visitors. The Starlings lived an irregular life, at work when most people had time off.

  Of course Max also searched each room for any kind of clue, looked in desk drawers and dresser drawers he’d never opened before, but he found nothing of interest or use. Everything was as it had been, everything was in order, everything taken care of in preparation for a long absence. Nothing pointed to any possible solution to the mystery of his parents’ whereabouts. So Max went out to buy milk, butter, cheese, and apples. He stopped at the baker’s for a loaf of bread, then carried his purchases back to the empty house.

  Nothing felt quite right. Buying his own groceries out of the dwindling number of coins he had in his pocket didn’t feel right, and neither did being alone in a silent house that was usually filled to overflowing by the presence of his charismatic parents. It wasn’t going to be easy, living here alone and waiting. It wasn’t going to be easy not to worry, either. It wasn’t going to be easy to live independently. But that was what Max intended to do.

  While spring breezes from opened windows washed through the rooms, Max decided to go outside and do a little weeding in the front garden before lunch. With all the organizing and packing and cleaning of the last few days, his father hadn’t had time for the gardens, not Mary’s flower gardens near the porch and along the fence nor the vegetable garden out back. Max didn’t like weeding, but that morning, when he felt more like his old self and yet also like some whole new person, he welcomed the work. It gave him something to be doing. Max dressed for the chore as his father, who always dressed the part, whatever part it was, on or off the stage, would have. He wore overalls without a shirt, and work boots. He tied a red bandanna around his neck and set a wide-brimmed straw hat on his head.

  He worked patiently, loosening
the soil and pulling up weeds, thinking about the employment possibilities available to a twelve-year-old boy. Could he actually take a job doing this, hour after hour, day after day, in some stranger’s garden? He didn’t think so, and he was imagining himself saying “No, thank you” to an imagined housewife who was offering him work as a gardener, when the bell rang at the gate.

  Max pretended not to hear it. He didn’t even turn his head to see who it was. It wouldn’t be his parents, they’d walk right in; and it wouldn’t be his grandmother, who was at the library. He pulled up a stubborn weed, concentrating on the task.

  It rang again, the musical sounds of the round brass clapper striking the heavy brass bell. This time Max turned his head to see who was being so insistent.

  A woman stood at the gate. She glowered at him, and then she opened the gate to let herself in. Quickly, Max got to his feet and turned to meet her.

  She was not someone he knew. In fact, he’d never seen her before. He glanced at her from under the brim of his hat but did not speak. Max knew, from being on stage, the value of not speaking. The woman wore an olive-green suit, with a row of silver buttons closing the jacket, and a small black hat that fitted close around her head and entirely covered her hair, giving her face a foxy, pointy look. Long silver earrings hung down from her ears. Or perhaps, Max thought, looking more carefully, the earrings weren’t all that long. It was her earlobes that were long, he thought, staring. Her earlobes were much, much longer than normal.

  She smiled, an unpleasant smile that showed bright teeth. “I am Madame Olenka,” she announced in a deep, throaty voice.

  Did she expect him to know who that was?

  “I did not think to find anyone here, so I have to wonder, who are you?”

  Max would have reached out to shake her hand and introduce himself, because he knew how to be polite, but his hands were caked with dirt, so he jammed them into his overalls pockets instead, and before he could tell her who he was—and what would he have told her?—she went on.

  “The family has gone away,” she said, looking past him to the house, not really seeing him, not interested in a gardener. “I know them, the actors and their little boy. I’m here to find out if the house is for rent. Or for sale?” She still wasn’t looking at him. “Do you know? Is there an agent?” When Max didn’t answer, she asked, speaking very slowly and more loudly, as if to someone simple-minded, or deaf, “Who … is … paying … you … your … wages?”

  “Lady pays,” he answered. He concentrated on acting like Greek Jonny, one of the unsuccessful suitors in Adorable Arabella.

  Then she did look at him, not pleased. “Do you speak our language?”

  Max nodded. “Speak good.”

  “Who can I talk to—do you understand talk to?”

  Max answered, “Need to work, Missus.”

  When she sighed in exasperation, the silver earrings danced beside her neck, like long-stemmed flowers bowing to the breeze. “I like live here,” she said, pointing to a silver button on her chest and then to his house. “Who let me live here?”

  “Me.”

  “Not you, you ninny. Obviously not you, but who? Who can I rent—pay coins to—so I live here.” She waved a hand at the house. “For my home. You know home? Sleep, eat there.”

  “Me,” Max said again. “I live. Here.” He waved a hand at the house behind him. “Work”—he indicated the garden—“here.”

  “Who hired you?” she asked him, and headed for the steps to the front door.

  He moved to stand in her way. “Why you doing, Missus?” Of course, he could see that she wore no wedding ring, no rings at all, in fact; but he felt that this was the way the gardener might address an unknown lady.

  She stepped backward, to get away from him. “Foreigners,” she muttered.

  When she stepped back, Max stepped forward, forcing her to move away from the house. He was wearing work boots, and she was wearing pumps with low, narrow heels. His feet looked dangerously large and clumsy next to hers. She stepped backward again, and again, and again, with Max moving right along with her, smiling pleasantly, until she got to the gate.

  There, she reached a hand out behind her to find the latch, but before she slipped through the gate she said, “Let me tell you something, Mister. I’m going to talk to someone about you. How you act around here, as if you own the place. What’s your name?”

  “Name Mister,” Max said, and now he glared at her until she had backed through the gate and let it close after her. She went down the street slowly, to let him see that he hadn’t really driven her away, to make it clear that she had chosen to leave. Every now and then, before she turned the corner and went out of sight, she looked back over her shoulder at Max.

  He was waiting for this, and watching for it. When she turned to look, he raised his hand to wave at her: Hello, goodbye.… When she had rounded the corner, he latched the gate again and returned to his labors. There was something suspicious about the woman, and she might just come right back to catch him out. He didn’t want her to think he wasn’t really a gardener named Mister, whose name—as he ran the scene through his head—struck him as pretty funny.

  When Grammie got home, carrying a basket heavy with a chicken, some bread, butter, cheese, and a box of tea, Max went to join her in the kitchen. After all, he didn’t want to make her feel worse than she already did. “Good,” she greeted him, then asked, “You’ve been in the garden? Will you bring me up some potatoes and carrots from the cellar? And an onion, too. I need to get this chicken into the oven.”

  “I’m moving back,” he told her. “Home,” he announced, and went down the narrow cellar steps before she had time to say anything about that.

  When he returned, hands full, she said, “We’ll talk about it.”

  “I’ve decided,” he answered. He tried to explain, “Otherwise, it’s … Otherwise I just …”

  “You’re twelve,” she said.

  “Almost thirteen,” he said. “At thirteen I could leave school and go to work. It’s the law.”

  “I know the law,” she said.

  “I was over there today,” he told her, and sat at the table to watch her strong fingers pulling overlooked feathers from the pale chicken carcass. “Weeding the front garden, and there was a woman.” He began the story of his performance as Greek Jonny. Telling it, he realized something he hadn’t noticed at the time. “She said foreigners, the way people do who aren’t foreigners. So she must live here, and not be a real Madame Olenka, which sounds Russian. Or Bulgarian …”

  “Name, ears, bad hat, and bad manners—I don’t like the sound of this woman at all. Not at all. She had no idea who you were, did she?” Grammie looked thoughtfully at the boy. He was tall for his age, and accustomed from a young age to being in costume.

  “What’re you staring at?” Max asked her.

  “Nothing,” she answered him. “You.” He looked like any ordinary twelve-year-old boy, but as she studied him his grandmother thought how unusually ordinary and unmemorable his looks were, always excepting his strange eyes, which had the look of one of the library’s oldest volumes that time and damp had turned browny moldy gray. He had normal-length hair that was mostly brown but also looked sort of sandy blond, and his features—his nose and chin, his eyebrows and ears—were unremarkable. He wasn’t particularly thin or particularly fat. The way he walked, the way he ran, the width of his shoulders … there was nothing anybody would notice in particular about Max. No wonder this Madame Olenka person didn’t doubt that he was the gardener, given how he was dressed, and a foreign gardener at that, talking the way he had.

  She put the oiled and salted chicken into the oven and joined him at the table to make her own report. “I looked up the Maharajah of Kashmir, in the encyclopedia.”

  Max put his hands on his knees, gripped hard, and waited. It would be, he knew, bad news.

  “There’s no such person,” Grammie said. “There never has been such a person, although Kashmir is a
real enough place, even famous, because it’s where cashmere comes from. Your father’s green scarf is made of cashmere.”

  “He was wearing it Wednesday morning,” Max remembered, with a sudden sinking feeling. “He said there would be cool breezes out on the open sea. My mother was wearing that brooch.”

  They both fell silent then, briefly, before they shook off the sadness and unease. Grammie waited for Max to draw the obvious conclusion, and eventually he did: “That invitation really was a trick. A lure.”

  She nodded.

  “But why?”

  She shook her head, she didn’t know. “That’s what we’re waiting to find out. All we can do is wait, I’m afraid. I’m sorry to say. This Madame Olenka, however, worries me. I doubt she’ll come back on a Sunday, but I’ll take Monday off so we can both be at the house. You’d better continue being the gardener. What did she call you?”

  “Mister,” Max reported with a smile.

  Grammie rose to fill a bowl with cold water in which to soak clean the carrots and potatoes. “I don’t think you should be living over there alone,” she told him then. “But I’ll accept it, for a night or two at least. I do expect you to come have supper here.”

  “But—”

  “By six at the latest.”

  “You’re being bossy,” Max complained.

  “I’m the grown-up around here, for now,” she explained. “If you get hungry, you know where I hide my key, and you know where I keep my cake stand. So go back over there and see to the garden, which needs attention. I’ve got cleaning to do, and we can organize your life tonight after we eat.”

  Max didn’t bother to object. But he knew he’d better make his own plans, or he’d be bossed out of his own life and have no hope at all of independence; and if he didn’t have his independence, he was stuck being abandoned and helpless.