Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little (4 page)

Could this be
the solution to world hunger? Moxy wondered. Everyone must have something they
had
to do that they hated so much they would do almost anything but that thing. Mark would probably milk cows in Africa for starving children if it meant he didn’t have to mow the lawn. She knew her mother would give up all her worldly possessions, fly to China, and pick rice for poor people if it meant she didn’t have to keep telling Moxy to read
Stuart Little
. The possibilities went on and on.

Moxy was just turning her attention to the problem of global warming when it occurred to her that someone had better remember to water the new peach orchard. It wasn’t hot out, exactly, but it wasn’t September either.

“Sam,” Moxy called out. Sam was helping Pansy dig holes. “After you’ve buried all the peach pits, we must, must,
must
remember to water them. Thank you so much.”

Even now Moxy’s mother was on her way home with the great daisy cake
.

Around the time she was thinking about Mark and cows, Moxy had begun to feel a little, well, nervous. She didn’t know why exactly. It had something to do with something she had thought about while she was thinking about something else, but she couldn’t think what it was. There was no point in thinking about it, of course. It was
like trying to remember a dream—the harder you thought, the further away it got.

Even now Moxy’s mother was getting closer to home with the great daisy cake
.

Suddenly Moxy realized she was in the middle of an in-between! It was the perfect time to read
Stuart Little
! Then she noticed the green hose resting between a pair of dahlias in her mother’s prize garden. Again she called out to Sam.

“Sam, when you have a spare minute would you mind coming over here?”

Sam always had a spare minute for Moxy. He jogged right over.

“See how the hose in Mother’s dahlia garden is too short to reach all the way back to the orchard? What we need is a second hose to connect to the first hose so we can get it out of Mother’s dahlia garden and back to the new peach orchard ASAP—don’t you agree?”

On his way
to get the second hose so that he could attach it to the first hose so that it would reach beyond Mrs. Maxwell’s prizewinning dahlia garden and all the way to Moxy’s new peach orchard, Sam stopped in the kitchen to eat three peaches.

“I’ve already had five,” said Pansy. She was standing on the counter eating what must have been her sixth peach.

Pansy was just about to reach for her seventh peach when her mother walked in.

Reader, I tremble still when I think of the moment Moxy’s mother walked into
that kitchen at exactly 2:42 on that fateful afternoon of August 23.

“Hello, Sam,” Moxy’s mother said.

“Hello, Mrs. Maxwell,” said Sam.

“Hello, Pansy,” said Mother.

“Hi, Mom,” said Pansy.

Sam, who was always polite, took the great daisy cake in the big white cake box from Mrs. Maxwell’s arms and set it on the counter.

Here is the photograph Mark took of three-quarters of the great daisy cake
.

“Sam, would you be kind enough to take Rosie outside and get my dahlia fertilizer from the car …” is as far as Mrs. Maxwell’s sentence got before it stopped.

“Is that Moxy out there swinging in the hammock?” she asked.

Sam paused.

Pansy paused.

The
pad, pad
of Ajax typing on his laptop upstairs turned back to thunder.

“I believe that is Moxy swinging in the hammock, Mrs. Maxwell,” Sam said.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Maxwell, “was there a fire in her room?”

“Not that I know of, Mrs. Maxwell,” said Sam.

When Moxy’s mother
went out to work in her prize dahlia garden, she was always very careful not to slam the screen door. Everyone else in the family, including Ajax, who was a grown-up, let it slam behind them. But Moxy’s mother always turned back around and closed it quietly. This time she let it slam.

Moxy had been
frightened before. The first time she and the seven petals had linked arms and dived off the diving board to practice their Daisy Dive, Moxy had been petrified.

But when she heard her mother slam the screen door, she thought,
This must be what “terror” feels like
. It reminded her of when she was eight and her mother told her she couldn’t keep a (very small) portion of the money she had made selling Girl Scout cookies (ten percent).

Let it never be said that Moxy Maxwell did not think quickly. Even before her mother’s sandals came into view, Moxy’s right hand was reaching for
Stuart Little
. She groped for him among the peach pits and paper towels and the hammock pillow and a little pink summer blanket I forgot to tell you about that Pansy brought out to Moxy ten pages ago, when Moxy mentioned that the ever so slight pre-September breeze was beginning to chill her knees.

And now, as
she thought about it, Moxy realized she had not seen
Stuart Little
all day or the day before or the day before that. She wasn’t sure about the day before that. She might have seen it then.

Moxy’s mother was so close that she was blocking the sun. Moxy had never seen a full solar eclipse before, but she suspected it might look a little like this. At least Moxy no longer had to squint.

Maybe this is what “shock” feels like
, Moxy thought. It was a little like having a heart attack and a little like what it must
feel like to be serene. (Moxy loved the word “serene” because it sounded like what it was, which was calm and clearheaded.)

Or maybe she was not in shock or having a heart attack or even serene. Maybe this was the end of the world.

“Was there a fire in your room?” her mother asked.

“A fire in my room?”

Was a fire in her room a good thing? Was a fire better than not reading
Stuart Little
?

“Not that I know of,” said Moxy.

She could see her mother clearly now. Her mother’s eyes were quite nice, though Moxy had long felt they would benefit from a pair of aquamarine contacts. But as with many of Moxy’s suggestions, her mother had not followed up on it.

“I guess you must be taking a little rest after reading
Stuart Little
,” her mother said.

Moxy didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no.

“Did you cry when Stuart Little died?”

“He dies! Stuart Little dies?” Moxy exclaimed. “I wish you hadn’t told me the end.”

Moxy’s mother leaned in closer. “You haven’t even started to read
Stuart Little
, have you?” She held Moxy’s chin and studied Moxy’s eyes.

Now, Moxy was fond of the truth. But the truth was not as simple as people like her mother made it seem. Often the “yes” or “no” the truth seekers sought really truthfully called for a “but.” “But Mother,” Moxy did not have time to say, “we do have a new peach orchard, which will pay for my entire college education and dental school too, if that’s the Career Path I choose, and I did clean my room.”

Things were quite bad for Moxy now. She’d never seen her mother so calm.

“Are you aware that you are swinging in a hammock and eating peaches and petting Rosie?” her mother said.

Moxy hadn’t realized she was petting Rosie. Rosie looked very good. The groomer had done an excellent job. She had even put a pink butterfly bow in Rosie’s hair.

This is the photograph Mark took of Rosie with her pretty new butterfly bow
.

Moxy scanned the horizon as if Stuart Little himself might appear and rescue her. But Stuart Little was not over by the new orchard. He was not sleeping beside the spade and shovel. Stuart Little was nowhere near the hose and Stuart Little was not in the dahlia garden.

Because the dahlia garden was gone.

“That’s odd,”
said Moxy. She closed her eyes and opened them quickly. She looked up at her mother, who looked down at her. It seemed to Moxy that everything had stopped moving. That the clouds had stalled over the sun. That her mother had not blinked in a long time. She looked back at the garden.

The garden was still gone.

Rosie growled
at the garden. Whenever Rosie growled, Mudd barked. And barked. And barked.

Then Mudd ran. And ran. And ran. But this running and barking sequence was not your average “Sam is here to visit” running and barking. This was more serious. Mudd was so loud and so freaked out that if a UPS truck had driven through the house, he wouldn’t have stopped.

Something had moved, and from the sound of it, Mudd did not like it one bit. Moxy looked up just in time to see what Mudd saw.

Here is a confusing photograph of Mrs. Maxwell’s dahlias being swallowed alive
.

It was obvious
to Moxy that the dahlias in her mother’s garden had been sucked underground by quicksand. Quicksand happened to be number 42 on Moxy’s List of 76 Things That Frightened Her Most.

No wonder Mudd had started barking. It was an odd and scary sight.

Racing full speed
to where the dahlias had once been, Mudd slammed and then slid into that muddy garden. Then he began to dig up the sunken, drowning flowers.

That it was
all her fault. Moxy didn’t know how. But she would soon. First she had to figure out who had turned the hose on, because it was water from the hose, rather than quicksand, she now realized, that must have sunk the dahlias.

Moxy knew the hose had not been turned on by Sam. Sam was still in the garage. And obviously she hadn’t done it herself. She had been thinking hard in the hammock most of the afternoon.