Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers (8 page)

Now, very, very, very few visitors to Critters ever spoke to Marshall unless they were children. Adults spoke about him (“Eeeeeeeeeek! A snake!”), but they never looked him in the eye and spoke directly to him.

Marshall felt a tiny thrill of pleasure run the course of his twisted body. He could not wait for Irving to return from his walk so he could tell him.

Then Mrs. Splinter said, “Now for the pièce de résistance! Here is our newest acquisition, a rare breed. Xoloitzcuintle. Xolo for short. But have you ever seen anything like her?”

“Never!” Mrs. Tintree sucked in her breath, let it out. “Never!”

“We call her Posh.”

“Oh, and she is indeed posh.”

“The famous artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera owned xolos.”

“Fascinating.
Fascinating”
said Mrs. Tintree. “Oh, thank you for pointing her out to me.”

When Irving returned, he came back early, grumbling and lumbering about in his cage.

“What's wrong?” Marshall asked the pointer.

“My arthritis is kicking in. This cold cement floor isn't good for an old fellow.”

“Something exquisitely exciting just happened to me!” Marshall boasted, but Irving was too grumpy to hear about anything exquisitely exciting.

Irving said, “Dewey is older than I am, in case anyone should ride up on a bicycle and ask you. How did
he
get adopted? And how does that pig bull rate a warm spot?”

“Something exquisitely exciting—”

But Irving cut him off again. “Mrs. Silverman said, ‘We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.' She said that was from a speech by the thirty-fifth president of the United States: John F. Kennedy.”

“And look what happened to him!” said Marshall, peeved because he could not seem to share his news with the pointer. “So much for fearless living.”

Irving flopped down on the floor of his cage and let out a long, sad sigh. “People have their troubles too—you are right, Marshall. If they're not getting shot down, they get frozen shoulder, which Mrs. Silverman has, and she is also feeling knee pain. She says the knees are the first thing to go.”

“Irving, I am trying to tell you something, but you are interested in everyone but me, it seems. I am trying to tell you that not five minutes ago Flo Tintree spoke to me for a most enjoyable interlude.”

“Exquisitely exciting,” Irving murmured sarcastically.

“Yes, it was! Don't you realize how seldom anyone speaks to me? The trouble with being a snake is that people aren't inclined to talk with you.”

“Walter always talks to you,” said Irving.

“Walter is a small boy, and sometimes small boys
do
stop to chat. But I can't hang here waiting for Walter to pop by anymore. His grandmother has told him to stay away from the kennel from now on.”

“He won't, though,” said Irving. “You know Walter. He'll sneak in to check on things.”

“You should have listened to my warning,” said Marshall. “Goldie would be here now.”

“‘Lotho blatho' is not a warning. It is gibberish,” Irving snapped. “You should have spat out that mouse's corpse and made your warning clear! Then I could have barked and gotten Walter's attention.”

“When a snake swallows something, it doesn't come back up. I am not Placido! I am not a one-eyed Siamese. I am a king!”

Marshall unwound himself from the tree branch and dropped down into his wood chips.

He said, “Where is the boy who yearns to have a snake of his own? Without Walter around, I have no one who will tell me his secrets.”

Irving said, “I think Walter misses his mother.”

“My mother left me when I was just an egg,” said Marshall. “She never visited me on weekends or came around at Christmas. She was gone for good!”

“I'm sorry to hear that, Marshall.”

“I never gave it a thought,” said Marshall. “I was off catching grasshopper larvae when I was one week old. We snakes don't miss our mothers.”

“What I miss are the comforts of home,” said Irving. “My poor old bones hurt on this hard cement floor!”

Marshall said, “Your days of rugs and couches are over, Irving. Neither one of us is ever going to get adopted. The old and the twisted aren't appealing to people, you know.”

Irving's nose pressed against the bars of his cage. He said, “Will Posh ever shut up? Her barking is getting louder and louder!”

“Because someone's coming,” said Marshall with his tongue throbbing.

Then Mrs. Splinter's voice called out from the office. “Come in! The door is open! May I help you?”

“I'm Bob Randall from Montauk. We talked on the phone Christmas Day about the yellow Labrador retriever I lost.”

“Goldie!” Mrs. Splinter exclaimed.

“Rex is his real name,” said the boy. “My mother's outside in the car with my little sister. We came to see if there's any word about Rex.”

“Not yet, Bob. I'm sorry.”

“Oh, this is sad,” said Irving. “This is right out of
Days of Our Lives.”

T
HERE WAS NO SIGN
of Snack the seagull. The man was out there on the aft deck pounding nails, his breath puffing out little clouds in the cold afternoon air.

Placido and the girl were inside, where there was a visitor: Ms. Fiona Fondaloot.

Ms. Fondaloot paraded about in her black Prada pants and her black suede three-inch-heel boots, smoking long thin brown cigarettes. The smoke was permeating every crevice inside
Summer Salt II
, and Placido was blinking his eyes against this invasive fog.

He was perched on the table watching while Ms. Fondaloot unscrewed her Mont Blanc pen.

“If you can't be Jane Brain, because you spoke out of turn,” she said in her rich Russian-accented baritone, “perhaps you'll be right for the Ballbat cookie commercial. Slip into this, Jimmie.”

“It looks like a sleeping bag, Fiona.”

“It's good velvet. Don't rip it. It was lent to me as a favor, so you can get used to it before the audition. I do a lot of extra things for you, you know, because your mother crossed over.”

“I wish you'd just say ‘died.' She
died.”

“I never say ‘died,'” said Ms. Fondaloot. She began writing on the long yellow pad with the blue lines across it. “I'll write down the address of Dolla, Dolla, and Dolla so you can give it to the limo driver tomorrow. The Ballbat client will be there at eleven. You be on time.”

The girl got into the dark-brown costume and pulled up the zipper.

“I can't move!” she complained. “Does the client know how well I sing and dance?”

“You're a cookie crumb, darling. You don't dance. You curl up in that with your head covered.”

As soon as the fresh ink was applied to the yellow paper with its blue lines, Placido marched across and sat down on it.

“That's going to cost that cat his butt!” Ms. Fondaloot hollered, trying to swat Placido as he jumped back.

“YYYYYEEEEEEEEOW!” Placido exaggerated.

“What are you doing to him?” the girl cried out.

“He's smeared the address!”

“Don't hurt him!”

Don't hurt him?
Placido nearly swooned at the sound of fear in the girl's voice. She did care about him after all! Jimmie liked Placido!

“I won't hurt him,” said Ms. Fondaloot. “I'll kill him if I ever get my hands on him! He did that deliberately!”

“He was playing, Fiona.”

“Not
that
cat. He has no game in him. They don't when they come from nothing,” she said. “What is your father doing, Jimmie?”

“The aft deck is rotting,” said the girl. “Daddy's fixing it.”

“Jimmie, you've got to get your head inside the costume too…. Get that ugly cat out of here!”

Ugly, was he? Placido stomped back to the master's cabin. As much as he hated the sound of the hammering coming from that direction, he tolerated it. One had to have priorities, and right at the moment Placido's was to nap atop Ms. Fondaloot's black cashmere coat there on the bunk. Have a hairy New Year, Ms. Fondaloot!

Placido would probably dream of Snack, as usual, but he would not mind at all if he dreamed, instead, of Jimmie.

“
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL LAB
you are!” said the lady. “Come here, boy, don't be afraid…. Someone must have abandoned you. Did someone leave you in the woods?”

She was crouching near him, one glove off, beckoning to him.

Goldie was sitting there trembling from the cold and hunger. He had been followed for a while by a brown Bronco with P U on the license plate. When a large, shaggy-haired man finally parked and got out, Goldie saw the red gloves. Every dog at Critters had warned against those gloves. Goldie had headed into the woods, even though he had to high-step his way between the trees. His Critters tags caught on a tree branch and came off his neck. Now he was just this shivering anonymity.

“I had a dog like you once,” said the lady. She was bundled up in a down coat with a plaid scarf. “His name was Elio. Come to me, boy.”

Goldie wagged his tail.

“That's right. I won't hurt you. You know I won't hurt you.”

Goldie watched her as she came toward him very slowly.

“You have no collar. Poor boy. Someone deserted you. How could someone do that?” She reached out and petted his head. “Come along with me, boy.”

Exhausted, almost ready to give up hope of ever seeing Bob again, Goldie went with her.

W
HEN THE SWANKY WHITE
stretch limo stopped in front of the house, Mrs. Tintree said, “Who could that be?”

“I'll go,” said Sun Lily, rousing the dogs, who were intent on going too.

“Put a coat on.”

“I'm not cold.”

Catherine was. Catherine always was. She shivered behind Sun Lily as they went toward the car. Of course Peke was right behind Catherine. These days, if you wanted to know where Peke was, he was following the greyhound, the way a policeman shadowed the steps of a suspect. Peke was on-territorial alert. If he did not protect his turf, who would?

The chauffeur ran around and opened the door for a girl just about Sun Lily's size. They were different in other ways. The stranger's hair was long and blond. Sun Lily's was dark and ear length. The stranger had a Walkman over her head and jeans on with Adidases. Sun Lily wore the new red Runway pants and jacket she'd gotten for Christmas.

The chauffeur was supposed to ring the bell and tell whoever answered the door that he was delivering the Magic House for the New Year's Eve performance. He was not happy about it; he was grumbling that the stop was not written on his ticket.

“Hello?” the stranger called out. “We have the Magic House.”

“I'm Sun Lily Star-Tintree. What does this magic house do?”

“You'll see at the party. I'm Jimmie Twilight. We're just dropping it off.”

“Are you famous?” Sun Lily asked.

Jimmie slipped the Walkman from her head to her shoulders and said, “Where did you get that idea?”

“From your father. He said you were a star.”

“That's why I'm on my way to New York to try out as a cookie crumb.” She laughed, and so did Sun Lily. Catherine's tail pounded the ground, but Peke scolded her for listening to the girls' conversation. Peke declared it was about New Year's Eve, a family celebration, not for Catherine's ears.

Sun Lily told Jimmie, “I'm not famous either, but I've been to China. Were you ever there?”

“The farthest away I've ever been is to Canada.”

“I saw the Great Wall of China. It took ten years to build, and a million people were forced to work on it day and night…. What are you listening to on your radio?”

“I'm listening to a CD. I'm listening to a song called ‘Snakeman.'”

Sun Lily clapped her hands. “Hey, one of my mothers was born in the year of the snake! Do you know the animal sign for your birth year?”

“No. I hope it's not a snake. I don't like them. My astrological sign is Gemini.”

“I'm Virgo. If you come inside and meet three of my mothers, then I can find out your animal.”

“There isn't time,” said Jimmie. “How many mothers did you say you have?”

“I have four. I have Ginny Tintree, my real mother; I have Nell Star, my godmother; I have Grandma Flo, my grandmother; and in China somewhere is my birth mother.”

“My mother died. But you met my father.”

“He said he liked being Santa Claus, and he was once a professional clown.”

“We both were. And my mother's family was with the circus for generations. This CD I've been listening to? It's Jimmie Spheeris. He was a circus kid too. He wrote songs like ‘Lost in the Midway' and ‘The Dragon Is Dancing'… and that's where ‘Snakeman' came from too.”

“‘The Dragon Is Dancing'? Like Chinese New Year?”

Jimmie shrugged. “It could be.” She took the Walkman off and handed it to Sun Lily. “You can hear his songs, and I'll get them back New Year's Eve.”

“Oh, thank you! You're very kind, Jimmie.”

“Not really.”

“You aren't kind?”

Jimmie blushed. “I don't know
what
I am sometimes.”

“I don't always know either,” said Sun Lily. “Sometimes I think I might want to be a doctor.”

The chauffeur was pushing the Magic House inside the front door.

They stood there watching him a moment.

Peke was in a big snit, not only about Catherine listening to personal conversations, but now about this chauffeur who had just marched up the sidewalk as though he were part of the family too. How dare he go in the front entrance!

Peke began to scold him with sharp, snarling barks.