Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers (11 page)

If that wasn't bad enough, Ms. Fondaloot had left her with a cleaning bill for hairs on the brown crumb costume and upchuck and hairs on her black cashmere DKNY coat.

“When you tell your father about all of this, don't blame me,” she'd said. “None of this was my doing.”

Of course it wasn't Fiona Fondaloot's doing. None of anything that went bad was an agent's doing; an agent's doing was a callback, a sale, a contract, residuals.

Jimmie didn't tell her father anything, and he was at the point now where he didn't ask how an audition went. She was glad she didn't have to admit that she wasn't even able to get the part of face in the crowd. She had met a girl her age weeping in the john because she had not qualified for back of the head in the same crowd.

“Hey, Jimmie? Come and meet my friends!” Sun Lily was coming toward her.

Treat it like a gig, Jimmie told herself, not like a party.

But she had no lines. She couldn't say, “A yogin is one who practices mental training or discipline.” She couldn't say, “Where did the little crumb come from? Not from a Ballbat cookie.”

Then Sun Lily was grinning at her, holding out the Walkman, saying, “I love ‘The Dragon Is Dancing'!”

“You like his music?” said Jimmie.

“We all do. I played the CD for my friends, too!”

The Pekingese and the greyhound trotted after them.

“I can tell you I am fed up with that song,” Peke complained. “Do we have to hear it day and night?”

“I don't mind it,” Catherine said.

“You don't mind anything, Catherine. A snake is in the house and you have no reaction. That racetrack damaged you dreadfully, dear.”

“Be nice to Marshall, Peke. He never gets asked anywhere.”

“Oh, what a surprise
that
is,” said Peke.

“He is a very smart snake. He taught me the word ‘depauperate.' I bet you don't know what it means. Want to bet?”

“Why should I know what it means? I don't talk snake.”

“It means ‘stunted or severely diminished.'”

Peke wrinkled up his nose and shrugged. “Why would anyone say ‘depauperate' when ‘stunted or severely diminished' means the same thing?”

“Because, Peke, it's good to have a big vocabulary.”

“You will do anything to be liked, Catherine,” Peke said. “Your heritage, as you presume to call it, has taken its toll. Mine has made me particular. You might even say that I am a wee bit snobbish, since I am descended from Lootie, who was Queen Victoria's dog.”

“So you keep telling everyone, Peke. But I thought you were from China, the same as Sun Lily.”

“No, my ancestors were. Then when the British sacked Peking (from whence came our name), they chose us as a gift fit for the queen,” said Peke with another smug sniff of his nose. “And others of my ancient Asian ancestors were palace pooches who hung out with the emperor.”

“You think too much about how aristocratic your ancestors were,” said Catherine.

“You
never
can think too much about that, Catherine…. But I do not find you a depauperate companion,” Peke answered, his mouth curling up with pleasure at his own cleverness.

“C'mon, Catherine and Peke. Keep up with us,” Sun Lily called out. “Walter Splinter is here too,” she told Jimmie Twilight. “You know him, don't you?”

“The boy from Critters?”

“And guess what! His father is here. His father is famous. We heard his father broadcast from Israel just the other night, and now he's in our house. Turn right, Jimmie. We're going down the back way.”

“Where to?”

“The basement. My grandmother is going to put on a little show. She does it every year.”

“What kind of a show?” They were heading down the stairs.

“It's always different.”

“Oh, this one's going to be different, that's for sure,” Peke muttered to Catherine.

Sam Twilight appeared behind them on the stairs, heading for Mrs. Tintree's performance himself.

Sun Lily looked over her shoulder at Jimmie and said, “What about Jimmie Spheeris? Was he as famous as Walter's father?”

“Was he, Dad?”

“No, Spheeris wasn't that well-known. Now he's sort of a cult personality.”

“Like Elvis Presley?” Sun Lily asked.

“He was never that big. But you can find him on the Internet. There's a web page for him, even though he's dead.”

“Guess what, Jimmie.”

“What?”

Whatever Sun Lily said, Jimmie couldn't hear it, for when she opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, the noise of the party drowned out her words. Sun Lily ran ahead of her.

When Jimmie looked down, a thin length of something that looked like a hose with eyes peered back at her, a tongue darting out, flicking.

Then “Eeeeeeeeeeek!” Jimmie cried out. “A snake!”

Sun Lily was cupping her mouth with her hand, laughing, saying, “I just tried to tell you to watch out, there'd be a snake.”

Jimmie jumped away from the stairs while the dogs ran past her, barking.

“A snake!” Her heart was pounding.

“He's big, too,” said Sam Twilight.

Sun Lily said, “He's a king, but Grandmother says he's not a king of any country. He's just a king!”

“H
E CAN EVEN HAPPILY
make

Dinner of another snake.”

But Marshall had dropped down into his wood chips, and stayed there, soon after the girl had screamed “Eeeeeeeeeeek! A snake!”

“Marshall, I am partial to you.

Marshall, we all say ‘howdy do'!”

Applause.

Applause, even though no one could see Marshall. Only a few very watchful members of the audience had seen him at all.

“Oh, dear, dear, dear,” Mrs. Tintree exclaimed. “I think all this fuss over him has frightened him, but he's there. You can just about see his yellow crossbands.”

Then, buried in the wood chips, Marshall heard a familiar sound.

It was Catherine barking at his cage. “She went all the way to Critters for you, Marshall. The least you can do is show yourself.”

“Want to bet I won't?” Marshall answered her.

“Please get the dogs away from his cage!” Mrs. Tintree called out. “I believe he is frightened of the dogs.”

Then, miraculously, Marshall felt warm fingers reach for him, and he heard Walter say, “Would you like to meet my dad, Marshall?”

All the screams, crude remarks, and unpleasant noises a snake had to endure when he appeared in public filled the recreation room of the Star-Tintree house. But Walter's loving hands were warm and sure.

T
HEY USED A DOWNSTAIRS
guest room to get into their costumes. Sam Twilight was wearing a sheet around him, and he would carry the scythe that was resting against the wall. In the circus he had often been the clown chased by the skeleton. On his face was a mask frozen into a look of horror. A papier-mâché skeleton was fastened to the back of his wide red-silk trousers. The polka-dot arms of his costume flapped as he raced ahead, looking over his shoulder, only to find the deathly figure still in pursuit of him. Kids loved that act.

Jimmie had changed to her Twinkle Toes tutu and was lacing up her dance shoes.

“How do you like these young people, Jimmie?”

“The only one I've really had a chance to talk with is Sun Lily.”

“And?”

“And she's fine, Dad. Stop worrying about me.”

He walked over to the bed and sat down, shaking his head. “I could see your mother in you tonight.”

“Thanks.”

“It's not really a compliment, Jimmie.” He cleared his throat the way he always did before he said something he didn't enjoy saying. “I see now that we really do have to sell
Summer Salt II.”

“You love that boat.”

“I love you more, Jimmie. I've got to get you into a good school. You're going to miss out on your teen years if I don't. I want you to have normal teenage years.”

“Why? So I can hang out with kids who all dress alike? They all have on the same kind of clothes. Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Armani. Do you want me to be a carbon copy?” She was exaggerating, of course, and what truth there was to it hadn't bothered her at all. She imagined it was something like belonging to a club. In fact, the time at the Star-Tintrees' was passing quickly, and Jimmie was easy with everybody. But she knew her father was about to try and sell boarding school again.

“You sounded just like your mom tonight: Jimmie Spheeris, Jimmie Spheeris, Jimmy Spheeris.”

Jimmie laughed. “
I
didn't start it.”

“That little girl never heard of Spheeris before tonight.”

“Actually, she did,” Jimmie told him. “She heard of him when I dropped off the Magic House, on my way into the Ballbat audition. I lent her my CD of ‘The Dragon Is Dancing.'”

“You have lots of CDs. You had to lend her one by Spheeris?”

“I always listen to him before an audition, for luck.”

“Luck?”
her father said. “Is that what you call it?”

From the other room they could hear the beginning of the countdown.

At five, the scythe went over Sam Twilight's shoulder, and Jimmie stuck the Velcro banner across her body, announcing the new year.

They went into the Magic House through a tunnel of blankets.

“I'm old and I'm weary and my job is now done.” Sam Twilight was shuffling away from the Magic House wrapped in a sheet, carrying the scythe. “There's a new year that's coming—stay well and have fun!”

Then Twinkle Toes danced out of the Magic House in her white spangled tutu, a white net sequined skirt over it, a glittering crown on her head.

“Miss New Year brings doves of peace!”

She was twisting a balloon to make a white dove.

“May all your pains and troubles cease!”

She tossed up the dove and someone caught it. She began another, saying, ‘“Auld Lang Syne' now shall we sing! Ring it out and ring it in!”

Then everyone began to sing while Twinkle Toes made more dove balloons.

Although she had played to larger rooms and livelier audiences, her heart was thumping with the pleasure of performing.

She could see Walter with the snake wrapped around his neck, standing beside his father. She could see Sun Lily with her school friends all grinning at her and clapping. There was Mrs. Tintree. Ginny. Nell. Mrs. Splinter. Mr. Larissa.

She sailed by them on her toe taps, while she made more white doves from her balloons.

Dotty D, the dog-faced woman, had taught Jimmie how to sculpt balloons at lunches in the pie car. It became an art with Dotty; she could make a balloon into anything: an angel, a duck, a swan, a rooster. Now so could Jimmie.

Someone had let the Pekingese and the greyhound back into the room, and they were running after the balloons.

Dancer used to do that too. That was what dogs did. But Jimmie was thinking of Placido. She was saving one white balloon to take home. It would not be turned into a dove either. It would not be pushed playfully by black dog noses or barked at. Jimmie knew exactly what would happen to it when she blew it up and presented it to Placido.

B
ECAUSE HER BROTHER WOULD
not buy her eyeglasses, Ursula Uttergore had to be very close to things to understand what her eyes weren't seeing clearly. She spoke the letters aloud. “W. e. a. l. l. m. a. k. e. m. i. s. t.”

“Madam?” a voice called from the deck of the large boat. “Is that you, Madame U?”

“Yes! I am Madame U.” True to her brother's rules, she never told anyone her last name, for Percival Uttergore was too well-known—and, as he enjoyed adding, too well liked—to be doing the things he forced his ailing older sister to do.

“I think you came here about the dog,” the fisherman said.

“The boat I have been sent to is not called
We All Make Mist,
though that is quite a poetic name for a lobster boat, quite a poetic thought.”

“We
All Make Mistakes
is her name, ma'am!”

“Yes, yes, we do,” said Ursula Uttergore, whose biggest mistake in life had been answering the fatal postcard ten years past, imploring her to come “just for the summer” to care for poor young Percival, suffering from gout and greed.

“Come aboard, Madame U. I'm Robert Ketchum.”

She slowly huffed and puffed her way up the gangplank.

“He's a beautiful dog,” said the fisherman. He opened the small cabin door for Ursula Uttergore.

She could
see
that he was a beautiful dog. Splendid, he was!

But Ursula Uttergore had not spent a decade with Percival Uttergore and learned nothing.

She said, “He looks a bit downtrodden, captain. Did you say you were selling him?”