Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Practicing the Piano (But She Does Love Being in Recitals) (2 page)

When Moxy didn’t answer
, Mrs. Maxwell called out again, “Moxy Anne?”

When Moxy
still
didn’t answer, Mrs. Maxwell called out one last time, “Moxy Anne Maxwell!”

Moxy Anne Maxwell
heard her mother calling. But she didn’t answer. She didn’t answer because she was in the guest room watching Aunt Susan Standish sleep. And Moxy didn’t want to wake her. All the shades were drawn. It was quite dark. But you could still see Aunt Susan Standish’s sleeping mask.

Aunt Susan Standish always slept in a sleeping mask. This one was made of white satin. It had quite a shine, as you can barely see from this photograph Mark took of it.
Mark is the most famous photographer in the neighborhood.

(Mark did not use a flash because he did not want to wake her.) Mark called this photograph “Sleeping Beauty.”

“Sleeping Beauty,” by Mark Maxwell
.

Aunt Susan Standish was the most enchanting person Moxy had ever met. Sometimes Moxy couldn’t believe that she was
Moxy’s 100% Aunt and not just a Step-Aunt or a Half Aunt or a Family Friend Aunt. It meant that she and Aunt Susan Standish had some of the same genes. And Aunt Susan Standish’s genes made Aunt Susan Standish do some very brave things.

One time Aunt Susan Standish was alone in a cage with an only somewhat tamed tiger. Another time she paddled down the Amazon in a tippy canoe, though she hadn’t meant to. And sometimes she ate a flower instead of a salad for supper.

People always said that Moxy must have inherited her fearlessness from Aunt Susan Standish.

“Is this how
a coma looks?” whispered Pansy. Pansy was leaning over Aunt Susan Standish’s face.

“No,” whispered Moxy, “this is how unconscious looks.”

“It is not, Moxy,” said Mark. “She’s just asleep.”

“Is she awake?” Granny George shouted from the door.

“Not yet,” said Aunt Susan Standish without so much as removing her mask or moving any body parts. “She’ll be awake in twenty minutes.”

Then it was silent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .for that long. Then Pansy said, “Aunt Susan Standish can talk in a coma.” Then everyone got so busy telling everyone else to be quiet that no one noticed Mrs. Maxwell standing in the doorway.

Moxy hadn’t
seen
her mother since she got back from Africa. And all week Moxy had worried that her mother might accidentally run into a lion. Or that a herd of buffalo might accidentally run into her. Moxy’s mother wasn’t fearless like Moxy and Aunt Susan Standish.

Moxy could hardly wait to show her mother the Surprise Outfits she and Granny George had been working on all week to wear to the recital tonight. But when Moxy saw her mother standing in the doorway wearing a sweatshirt with a big orange sun
that said
SMILE, YOU’RE IN MIAMI
on it, she was a little startled by how tired her mother looked.

Here is a photograph Mark Maxwell took of Mrs. Maxwell’s sweatshirt. It said
SMILE, YOU’RE IN MIAMI
.

“Mom, are you okay?” whispered Moxy. Actually, her whisper was so loud, it was a borderline “regular voice.”

But Mrs. Maxwell was not okay. She was worried about her sister. She wanted to make sure no one woke her. So she did something only an experienced mother can do. She got everyone out of the room without saying a word. This is how she did it: She mouthed the word “OUT” while slicing her arms back and forth the way an umpire might.

It was very effective. Except for Mrs. Maxwell and Aunt Susan Standish, the room was evacuated in fewer than eighteen seconds.

As soon as Moxy and Pansy and Mark were gone, Mrs. Maxwell forgot all about finding out whether Moxy could stop playing her part of “Heart and Soul” tonight.
She also forgot about the note from Ms. Killingher. She also forgot about Ms. Killingher waiting on the phone.

Mrs. Maxwell went over to the bed to check on her sleeping sister.

Meanwhile, Moxy
wandered downstairs. It was her plan to make a quite large glass of the Green Grass Power Shake. You may recall that drinking the Green Grass Power Shake was number three on Moxy’s List of Nine Things to Do Before Tonight. The Green Grass Power Shake would give her the upper-body strength she needed to play “Heart and Soul.”

The Green Grass Power Shake was very powerful: It had 1,433 combined vitamins and minerals—approximately 1,405 more than the
average
power shake. There was very little it couldn’t do.

The first thing
Moxy noticed when she got downstairs was the phone cord. It was stretched like a clothesline across the kitchen floor and into the hall. Then she noticed that the phone was off the hook. So she hung it up.

The next thing Moxy did was step over the phone and into a big glob of marshmallow frosting. At first she thought it was gum. But as she walked on, she realized it had a
generally
sticky texture and not a
specifically
sticky texture, like normal gum.

It wasn’t until she saw the 150 cupcakes
cooling on all the counters that she realized she was walking on marshmallow frosting.

Here is a photograph that Mark, who was already in the kitchen, took of the 150 cupcakes squished together on the counter-top. He called it “150 Cupcakes Made by 1 Mother in 183 Minutes.”

“150 Cupcakes Made by 1 Mother in 183 Minutes,” by Mark Maxwell
.

Moxy went directly
to the cupboard to get the jar of Green Grass Power Shake powder.

But it wasn’t there. It wasn’t on the first shelf, where it belonged. It wasn’t on the second shelf, where it didn’t belong. It was on the highest shelf, where it had never been before.

“Mark, could you please get the Green Grass Power Shake powder down?” asked Moxy.

But Mark just stood there taking
pictures of cupcakes, which is why it wasn’t Moxy’s fault she had to climb up on the counter. And reach a little higher than her comfort zone. And grab the jar of Green Grass Power Shake powder.

Just as it wasn’t her fault when the Green Grass Power Shake powder slipped a little from her grip, bounced briefly on the counter, and exploded on the kitchen floor (taking down seven marshmallow-frosted cupcakes with it).

The Green Grass
Power Shake powder was

And the Green Grass Power Shake powder was, well, it was everywhere. It was on
the floor and on the counter and sifting through the air. And when the air cleared, Moxy could see that the Green Grass Power Shake powder was all over her mother’s hair.

Here is a picture Mark miraculously took of the Green Grass Power Shake explosion just as it went off.
^*

“Why, Mother!” said Moxy after the green dust had cleared. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Q: What did Mrs. Maxwell
say to Moxy next?

(Circle one)

1. “Oh, Moxy, sweetheart, are you hurt?”

2. “Don’t worry, I had to wash my hair anyway—after all, today is
your
big day!”

3. “Darling, let me clean up this unavoidable mess while you go upstairs and warm up your voice in case they ask you to sing tonight.”

4. None of the above.

And the correct answer
is: 4!

Even though
there was Green Grass Power Shake powder in her hair and on her sweatshirt and all over her bunny slippers (with the happy exception of one left ear), Mrs. Maxwell said nothing about it. Instead, Mrs. Maxwell said,
“Where’s the note from Ms. Killingher, Moxy?”

Have you ever
noticed how sometimes houses have hums running through them? You can’t really hear a Hum in a House. But you know it’s there—sort of the way you know that your own heart is beating—even if you’re not exactly listening. It happens when everyone in the house is happy.

And just before Moxy spilled the Green Grass Power Shake powder all over her mother, everyone in the Maxwell house was happy.

Pansy was in Moxy’s room trying on
one of the glitter crowns that Moxy had made for them to wear at their piano recital tonight. She was humming “Heart and Soul.”

Granny George was happy. She was at her sewing machine out on the porch, enjoying the slight (5 mph) spring breeze coming from the northeast. She had almost finished stitching the red satin linings into the black velvet capes she was making for Moxy and Pansy to wear.

And Ajax was happy. He was in his office muttering
“Beak like a broad-head spear—The Elephant Bird, the Elephant Bird—Had nobody else to …”

Here’s a photograph Mark took of Ajax trying to figure out what the last word of the second verse of “The Elephant Bird” should be. He called it “The Thinker.”

“The Thinker,” by Mark Maxwell
.

(This photograph, by the way, was so good—as you can see—that Ajax later used it on the back cover of his book. It is reprinted here with Mark’s permission and a fee of four dollars.)

Happy too was Aunt Susan Standish. She was upstairs making the soft, happy
sounds a person who has on a white satin sleeping mask makes when she or he is having a good dream.

And Mark was happy. He was wandering around the house taking pictures of everyone else. And taking pictures of everyone else was what made Mark happiest.