Melanie Martin Goes Dutch (20 page)

“On the Mayflower,” Mom added. “You've heard of the Mayflower,” she said, and squeezed Matt's angelic little hand.

Matt took that as his cue to tell his second-favorite
joke (after the pea soup joke). He asked Cecily, “If April showers bring May flowers, what do Mayflowers bring?” “June bugs?” Cecily said just to be nice. “Pilgrims!” Matt said, all proud of himself. Dad and Mom exchanged a Matt-is-precious smile. Cecily and I exchanged a Matt-is-dorky smile. “The Pilgrims started the Plimoth Plantation,”

Dad said. “My dad took me,” Cecily said. “It's where they had

the first Thanksgiving. They ate with spoons, not forks.” “Cool,” Matt said. “Meanwhile, to the south,” Dad droned, “a

Dutchman named Peter Minuit was tying up a little real-estate deal—he bought the island of Manhattan for twenty-four bucks! Some say he paid more; some say the Native Americans never thought of it as selling Mother Earth—”

Matt yawned. “Can I run around?” Mom said, “Sure,” and Matt scampered off like an American squirrel. Cecily and I wandered off too. Mom said that nuns used to live around here, so Cecily and I tried to
pretend we were nuns. We walked along with our eyes cast down and our hearts full of goodness. But then one of us would look at the other and we'd both burst out giggling.

After a while, Matt said, “Cecily, let's play Pencil Portraits.” So now I'm writing and they're drawing. Cecily's picture of Matt is about a bazillion times better than Matt's of Cecily. (If I were Cecily, I'd be insulted.)

Dad's telling Mom about an opera called
The Flying Dutchman
. It's about a doomed ship's captain who gets stuck far out at sea. It sounds like he'll never ever get to go home. Ever.

“Does it have a happy ending?” I asked.

“No,” Dad said. “But some operas do. One of these days, I'll take you to the Met.”

“And I'll take you to the Frick,” Mom said, “so you can see my favorite Rembrandt.”

I considered saying “Goody goody gumdrops,” but didn't.

Mom said, “How about if right now I take all of you to a wax museum?”

“Wax?” Matt said. “Who cares about wax? We already learned about cheese.”

I was about to agree that we couldn't care less about candles, but Mom said it's not a museum
about
wax, it's a museum of people
made
of wax.

“You're going to love it,” Mom said.

“I went to the one in New York,” Cecily said. “It has George Washington and Helen Keller and Whoopi Goldberg. It was fun but sort of scary too.”

“Like how?” Matt asked.

“Like Marie Antoinette's head gets chopped off over and over and over again.”

“Awesome!” Matt said.

Well, we are going to the wax museum. I have no idea
what
to expect. But I'll tell you this: If it stinks, I'm going to be mad.

Dear Diary,

Madame Tussaud's is the funnest museum I've ever ever ever been to! In fact, I think all museums should be wax museums!

You pronounce it Mad Am To Sew. Everyone in it (except the tourists) is made of wax. You know how Michelangelo sculptures are made of marble? Well, these sculptures are made of wax! And some of them look totally alive! There's a wax Oprah, wax Einstein, wax Gandhi, wax Winston Churchill, wax Martin Luther King, and a wax Pope. Matt loved a spooky scene of two upside-down dead guys with wax blood dribbling out of them. (He kept saying “Awesome!” but also kept clinging on to Mom for dear life.)

The museum takes you on a history tour, starting from when Spain ruled Holland through the Golden Age, when Rembrandt and Vermeer were painting
like crazy and Amsterdam was the world's richest and most free city. (Is “freest” a word? “Freeest” can't be.)

Anyway, it was pretty cool to be walking among so many famous people. Dad took a picture of Mom blowing kisses to Vincent van Gogh and of me curtsying before Beatrix, Queen of the Netherlands.

Matt tried an experiment. He tried to stand perfectly still to see if anyone would think he was a famous wax boy and take a picture of him. Well, Matt can't freeze for even two seconds, so—big surprise— nobody even paused. He did not fool a single solitary person!

Cecily said she liked this museum more than the one in New York.

At the gift shop, I bought a postcard of Anne Frank. Cecily bought a postcard of Mel Gibson for her mom, and my mom gave her shoulder a squeeze and smiled at her in a serious sort of way. I saw a postcard of Tina Turner in fishnet stockings and a leather bathing suit, so I said half jokingly, “We should send this to Christopher and sign it ‘Your secret admirers.’”

Cecily laughed. “We should. Let's.”

“It would have a Dutch stamp on it. He'd know it was from us.”

“Then forget it—no way!”

I have to say: It's way more fun to laugh with Cecily than to watch her laugh with everyone else! (But I wonder if deep down she's feeling extra worried right now. When I think about it, she was a little quiet at the museum.)

I showed her my latest poem:

Outside Madame Tussaud's is a big square called the Dam (pronounced Dom, not you-know-how). We saw a statue of a knight in shining armor. You couldn't tell if it was made of wax or metal or what, so Matt marched up to the knight statue, and it… moved! It was alive!! It patted Matt on the head!!!

Matt jumped about a foot (hee hee) and Dad snapped
a picture and Mom gave the man a few coins. That's what we do in New York when someone on the street plays music or does something artistic.

Suddenly, it started drizzling, so we had to find a restaurant.

On the way, though, I almost lost my appetite because we saw a little boy eat raw fish. Right in the street! His dad held a fish by the tail and lowered it right into the little boy's mouth and the boy ate it!

Gross!
Yuck! Ewww
!

Dad said it's a Dutch tradition and he'd be happy to buy us some herring.

I said, “In your dreams.”

Matt said, “No way, José.”

Cecily said, “No, thank you.” (Even she is not thaaaat good at trying new foods!)

Dad said the Dutch say: “A herring a day keeps the doctor away.”

I said, “Forget it.”

Matt said, “We're not Dutch.”

Cecily said, “No, thank you,” again.

We did end up eating a fast lunch of pancakes or
pannekoeken
(Panna Coook Ahn). Yum yum yum. And now it has stopped raining, so we're finally going back to the canal house, where our luggage should be by now.

Hang in there, Hedgehog. I'm on my way!

afternoon at the canal house

Dear Diary,

Hendrik, the check-in man, who is chubby if I may be perfectly honest, has been acting like Mr. Busy whenever he sees us. I think he's been trying to avoid us because we always ask about our luggage when it's not his fault it got so lost.

Well guess what? This time he said, “I have good news for you,” only it sounded like “I hof gooood noose.”

Mom said, “Did our luggage come?”

“Yes,” he said, and pointed to a pile of stuff—all ours!

Matt started jumping up and down and I went right up to my duffle and unzipped it and reached in and pulled out Hedgehog.

I looked into her brown eyes and kissed her pink snout and petted her soft stick-uppy fur. She is even sweeeeter and cuuuuter than I'd been picturing. She was probably as happy to see me as I was to see her. I could almost swear she licked my nose (even though I know that's impossible).

I also yanked out DogDog and tossed him to Matt and he started dancing around in a half-cute, halfdorky way.

Now we are all upstairs and our animals are on our pillows and our clothes are put away except for the clean ones we changed into. I put on my blue jeans and my soft pink sweater.

We would probably be celebrating except that the chubby check-in man handed Mom and Dad a note. It said that Cecily's dad had called from the hospital. But
there was no message. The note just said that he called—not that her mom is okay.

Poor Cecily! She read the piece of paper over and over and tears started shining in her eyes. She really wants to talk to her parents! And I don't blame her.

Even though her parents are divorced, they act like friends. I once asked Cecily if she thought there was a chance they'd ever get remarried and she said, “Zero.” Still, it's good her dad is taking care of her mom while we're taking care of Cecily.