Penelope Crumb Never Forgets (6 page)

12.

I
have to do a report for Miss Stunkel?” I say to Mom as soon as she gets home.

“Nice to see you, too, Penelope,” she says. “Do you mind if I take my coat off and put my bag down?”

I help pull off her coat and slide the bag off of her shoulder. The bag is loaded full of books, probably on brains, and it drops to the floor. “Careful,” she says.

“How come you didn’t tell me?” This is what I want to know.

Mom says, “Penelope Rae.” (Swollen abdomen.)

“What?”

“You were sitting right there when Miss Stunkel told us all about it,” she says.

“Well, why do I have to do it?”

Mom says, “Because Miss Stunkel is under the impression that you don’t think museums are worth good behavior.”

“Why does she think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe from your outburst and disrupting the whole experience for your class.”

I don’t see how my outbursting could be disrupting when all everybody was doing was just shopping, anyway. But I decide to keep this to myself. “I do like museums,” I say. “I like them a whole lot.” For a second or two, I think about telling her about the museum in my closet. So she’ll know that I’m not pretending. But my museum isn’t the kind that’s open to visitors.

“Then you shouldn’t have any problem showing how much you like them in your report.”

“Fine,” I say. But it really isn’t.

My museum floor is getting a little crowded, so I curl up in a corner, hugging my knees to my chest. I look over what I have so far: a necklace, hair, some teeth, and a shoehorn. Only, the teeth don’t count because they are just there for protection.

“A museum is not truly a museum without some art,” I can practically hear Leonardo say. And he would be right.

After Mom goes to bed, I sneak into the laundry room. I switch on the light, and this time it’s me surprising Terrible. Apparently you can sneak up on an alien, because he jumps and yells, and he must have had some of Mom’s drawing pencils in his hand, because they spill everywhere.

“What are you doing with Mom’s good pencils?” I say. “They’re supposed to be just for drawing.”

On his hands and knees, he reaches underneath the dryer/desk to get the pencils that rolled away. “So?”

“So, you don’t draw,” I say. “You don’t even like art.”

He gets to his feet and shoves the pencils back into the glass jars on the dryer/desk. Then he starts to walk away, but I plant my feet wide apart and block him. I get a look on my face that says, I’m Not Afraid of You. Even though I kind of am. Aliens are like dogs, though, and he must sense the fear in me, because he shows me his alien teeth and lets out a growl.

“Move,” he says.

And I do, but not because he said so. Because I am on official museum business.

After he’s long gone, I look around the laundry room to see if I can tell what Terrible is really up to. But all I see are brains. Drawings of them, I mean. All different sizes, and all full of wrinkles. There are piles of books of people’s insides on the desk/dryer. And a stack of drawing pads on Mom’s wooden stool.

I pick up a drawing pad from the top of the stack and start flipping through it. Lots of creepy insides—brains, hearts, and one that looks like a giant, puffed-up worm that says “lower intestine.” More of the same in the next two. When I get to the one on the bottom of the pile, I’m expecting to see more creepy insides, but instead on each page is a drawing of my mom.

I knew Mom was just as good at drawing people’s outsides as she is at drawing their insides, but she doesn’t do it very much, so I forget. It isn’t easy to draw yourself, that I know. I can only draw my face if I trace around it, and even then, with my big nose, I end up looking more like a penguin with long hair than me, a non-penguin-type person.

My mom doesn’t have a big, stand-out nose like me and Grandpa Felix. Her nose is thin and small and suits her face just fine. The most stand-out part of her is her eyes. They are big and round and blue, and when she’s happy, you just want to dive right into them and do the backstroke.

In these drawings, though, Mom’s eyes are shut. There are no big pools of blue to go swimming in. I don’t know why she would draw herself that way, because truth be told, without her eyes, she doesn’t even look like Mom. I keep turning the pages, hoping that she’ll open her eyes and see me and invite me in.

But she never does. That’s when I decide that maybe what Mom needs is some help in the eyeball department. I take her drawings back to my room, and on every page, I erase her shut eyes and draw wide open ones that say, Come On In—the Water’s Fine.

“Oh me, oh my, this is splendid,” Leonardo would say. “Thank lucky stars that she has you around to help.”

Then I grab another plate from the kitchen cupboard and set the drawing pad on it, open to the first page. The card I make says this:

This is becoming a real museum, I say to myself. Now I won’t ever forget.

13.

W
hat do you think of this one?” asks Grandpa Felix, sliding a photograph to me across his kitchen table.

He got the pictures made from the wedding, and he’s checking over his work before handing them in. In this picture, the bride and groom are standing under an archway holding hands.

“Good,” I say.

“What’s good about it?”

I study the picture. “Well, for one thing, they are both smiling.”

“That’s the best you can do?” He raps his finger on the picture.

“Okay.” I try again. “They don’t have red eyes or anything. And you didn’t get your thumb in the way, which is what usually happens when Mom takes pictures.” I slide the photograph back to him. “Like I said, good.”

Grandpa Felix shakes his head. Then he grumbles something about wedding photography and puts that picture in a pile with others.

“Don’t you like weddings?”

“Not particularly.”

“Me neither,” I say. “I mean, I’ve only been to one, Aunt Renn’s. But Mom made me wear pantyhose and shoes that pinched my feet, and after it was over, they ran out of yellow cheese before I could get any.”

“Sounds hideous.” Then he pauses and says, “That means really terrible and awful.”

“It was,” I say. “Hideous. But taking pictures at weddings isn’t so bad.”

Grandpa Felix scratches his whiskers and says, “If you say so.” He slides his chair back from the table. “You can never go back.”

I’m not sure where he wants to go back to, but before I have a chance to ask, he says, “Coffee?” Then he smiles at me, and the creases in his face get deeper.

“Grandpa Felix.”

“Oh, right, I forgot. You’re trying to cut back. Wise girl.”

As he takes a mug from the cupboard, I weave through the piles of pictures stacked knee-high on the floor. There are so many that, no matter how many times I visit, I always find new ones. Well, ones that are new to me, I mean. This time I find one of a hummingbird, so close up, you can see green feathers on its belly.

“Botanical gardens, on assignment for
Life,
” he says when I show him the picture. “I had to hold still for more than an hour to snap that one. I can remember I was suffering from allergies awful that day, so it took a lot out of me not to sneeze.”

That hummingbird’s got a surprised look on his face like he is supposed to be on a diet but got caught with two scoops of butter pecan ice cream. I tell Grandpa Felix this, and it makes him laugh. “Butter pecan?”

I look at the hummingbird again and nod. “It’s his favorite.”

Grandpa shakes his head at me and smiles. “Ah, Penelope.”

Getting Grandpa Felix to smile isn’t easy, but it’s something I like to try to do. Because when he smiles, sometimes I can see my dad in his face. “When I found out that you weren’t Graveyard Dead, I thought you might be a world adventurer, catching rare butterflies or something.”

“Is that so?” he says. I tell him that it is so, and he says sorry to disappoint.

“You didn’t disappoint,” I say. “You were out on adventures catching hummingbirds, except with a camera instead of a net.”

His face begins to fall a little. So I dive into another pile to find something that might prop it back up again. A black-and-white picture of a gigantic waterfall looks like it might do the trick. I pull it from the pile, but when I do, a piece of paper the size of a postcard floats to the floor.

Mr. Crumb,

Thank you for your application for the position of staff photographer with
Living in Portwaller
magazine. We received applications from many people. After reviewing your submitted application materials, we have decided that we will not offer you an interview.

Best of luck in your pursuits.

“What’s this?” I say, bringing the card to him.

He sets his cup of coffee down on the table and squints at the card. Then he takes it from me and tosses it into the trash. “That’s nothing. Which is just about what my life as a photographer is worth these days. Forty years working for the big boys, and now I can’t even get a job taking pictures for a small-time rag.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to get a job with that magazine,” I say.

“I don’t.” He pats me on the head. “I don’t.”

“But then why—”

“You can’t go back,” he says. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone.” He sighs and then looks at the piles of pictures about the room. “Sometimes you just have to let go.”

“You can’t let go,” I say. Especially when I’ve been trying so hard to hold on.

“It’s just as well.” He picks up a picture from the top of a pile. “It’s about time I did something with all of these. Good timing, too. My landlord is having all the apartments painted, so I’ve got to get this stuff out of here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Right now, I’m going to lie down.” His shoulders are in such a slump when he walks away that I’m afraid he might break in half. He doesn’t, somehow, but after he closes the door to his bedroom, it’s just me with all of his things.

“You shouldn’t let go,” I say quietly. And then to the piles. “I’m not letting go.”

I can almost hear Grandpa Felix’s cameras, his friends, in their bags over by the bookcase, clicking away in agreement. From the small brown leather bag, I pull out Alfred, keeping a listen for Grandpa. Alfred is solid and cold in my cupped hands. The silver buttons and knobs are pebble-smooth and have what’s left of a shine that’s been rubbed dull by Grandpa’s big rough hands.

“Alfred,” I whisper, placing it carefully in my toolbox next to my drawing pad, “you are coming with me.”

14.

A
s the metro rattles and shakes, I hold tight to my toolbox. At every stop, I peek inside, just a peek, to make sure Alfred isn’t getting jarred around too much. And maybe, every once in a while, just maybe, I might even say something like “You okay in there?” and “Wait until you see your new home,” until a woman in the seat behind me taps me on the shoulder and says, “What you got in there? A kitten?”

No, I tell her, just a camera. She scrunches up her forehead like she doesn’t believe me and says, “Come on, now.” So I let her see real quick. But I think she must have been really hoping to see a kitten in there, because afterward she gives me a mean look that says, Don’t You Try to Make a Fool of Me. And then she moves to another seat.

After that, I keep my toolbox shut for the rest of the way home.

When I get to our apartment building, Littie and her momma are on the way out. Momma Maple says hello to me, but Littie gives me a fake smile that says, I Still Want to Know What’s in Your Closet.

I give her a look that says, I Don’t Know What You’re Talking About, and then I go inside.

I borrow another plate from our cupboard and put Alfred on it, right next to Patsy Cline’s necklace and hair. Then I make a card that says

There’s some trouble between Patsy and Vera Bogg, thank lucky stars. I know this because on the way to my desk, Patsy Cline grabs my arm and pulls me over to Miss Stunkel’s bulletin board. Under the big green letters
ORGANIZATION IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS
, Patsy whispers to me, “I’ve got trouble.”

“You’re wearing a turtleneck shirt,” I say. Which she doesn’t ever do, because turtles have tails.

She says yes, scratching her elbow, but that’s not the problem. Then she looks over my shoulder and says, “I need to tell you something.”

I can’t help but smile. Finally, Patsy Cline is going to tell me her problem just like a best friend should.

“You remember the shell necklace that I got at the Portwaller History Museum?”

“I’m not sure,” I say, because when you’re pretending not to know something, you have to act like you don’t have it sitting on a dinner plate in your closet at home.

“It says ‘friends forever.’ The same as Vera’s. You don’t remember?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Is it a necklace?”

“I just said it was a necklace,” says Patsy. “Anyway, I lost it somehow.”

I say, “You did? Where? In here? In the hallway by the coatrack?” Pretending is harder than it looks.

“Penelope, if I knew where I lost it, then it wouldn’t be lost,” she says. “It would be found. And I would be wearing it right now. What’s the matter with you?”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“The trouble is, Vera keeps asking about it, but I don’t know what to tell her.”

“Just tell her you lost it,” I say. “Or wait! Let
me
tell her for you.”

“No,” Patsy says. “Vera is different.”

“She’s different, all right,” I say, shaking my head. “All that pink.”

Patsy Cline rolls her eyeballs at me and says that’s not what she means. And then she says in a shy voice, “I want her to like me.”

“Why?”

She huffs. “So she’ll be my friend.”

Those words practically kill me dead. I’m left behind again, just like in the Portwaller History Museum, alone with all the other things that have been left behind. This is what it feels like to be a mangy teddy. “What about me?” I ask, holding my breath. Before she has a chance to answer, Vera Bogg is beside us.

“Do you think we’ll have a surprise quiz today on percentages?” Vera asks, staring at Patsy.

Patsy looks like she’s having some sort of allergy attack from her shirt and doesn’t answer. So I say, “I think we have a fifty percent chance.” Which is a pretty clever thing to say, in my opinion. But Vera just looks at me all serious and says, “Really?”

Well, then.

Vera goes on about how Miss Stunkel likes to give surprise quizzes, which everybody already knows anyway. And the whole time Vera’s talking, she’s got ahold of her necklace, sliding the sand dollar back and forth along the chain and staring at Patsy’s turtled neck. Finally, she says, “Did you forget your necklace again, Patsy Cline?”

Now Patsy looks like she’s the one that’s going to die. “Ummm, well, ummm. I don’t know. Ummm, lost.”

“Lost?” says Vera. “Where?”

“If she knew where she lost it,” I say, “then it wouldn’t be lost. It would be found. And then it would be hanging around her neck.” Then I give Patsy a look that says, Aren’t You Lucky to Have Me for a Best Friend?

But Patsy must not think she’s very lucky at all, because she says, “Don’t be that way, Penelope.” And then she says to Vera, “The chain kept getting caught in my hair. And I took it off for a minute and then it got lost. I’m sorry we can’t be matching anymore.”

I don’t know what Patsy expected Vera Bogg to do, but all she says is, “I can help you look for it.”

All at once Patsy seems to be over her allergic reaction. And she has a smile on her face like I haven’t seen. And somehow, even without matching necklaces, Patsy is still on her way to being gone.