Penny Dreadful (3 page)

“Sorry,” he said. “But the money will work itself out. It always does, and I really wanted you to be excited with me. This isn’t a bad thing, Delia. It’s a good thing.
I
think so, anyway. Can’t you be happy too?”

Delia didn’t reply.

Penelope watched her parents fall silent again through the gap in the doors. She wondered if the silence was the end of the conversation. It didn’t
feel
like the end. It didn’t seem like anything had been finished yet.

Suddenly Penelope sneezed! It was a small sneeze, but still it was a sneeze.

Delia’s eyes flew to the library doors. “Penelope?” she called out sharply. “Penelope Grey? Are you in there?”

Penelope grimaced and took a deep breath. She stuck her head out and whispered faintly, “Yes, Mother. I kind of am.”

“Were you listening to us?” asked Delia, glancing at Dirk and then back at Penelope. She looked concerned. “You shouldn’t be. This is grown-up talk. Not for young ears.”

“Sorry, Mother,” said Penelope.

“Would you be so kind as to close the door and give us a few minutes alone?” asked Delia. She phrased this as a question, but her tone made it pretty clear to Penelope that she had no choice in the matter.

“Okay,” said Penelope meekly, shutting the French doors.

Once she was out of sight again, she put her ear to the cold glass. Her parents’ hushed voices rose and fell steadily in the next room, but Penelope couldn’t make out a thing they said. It was infuriating! At last something was happening, and she was left out. But it was frustrating to eavesdrop unsuccessfully, so eventually Penelope gave up. She headed back to her book, in which a baby was sure to bite someone shortly. Penelope thought
she
might like to bite someone too.

After a while the hum of voices died away, and Penelope went to the glass doors. Then, slowly, she opened the doors a crack and peeked out. She was just in time to see Dirk head up the stairs with his box. Delia stood at the bottom step and gripped the banister tightly as she called
out in a pleading voice, “But, Dirk, what is it you plan to do now?”

After a moment Dirk turned on the landing and paused. He looked back over his shoulder and his voice tumbled down the stairs. “Long ago,” he said, with a faraway look in his eyes, “I liked to write stories. One of my teachers said I was good at it. He said I should try my hand at a novel, but my father convinced me it was a silly thing to do. So I didn’t even try.”

“You wrote stories?” asked Delia with interest. “I didn’t know that.”

Penelope could tell that her mother was trying to be nice, but Dirk only shrugged. “There are
lots
of things you don’t know,” he said coldly, before disappearing into his office and closing the door.

“I guess maybe that’s true,” whispered Delia, her shoulders hunched in a sad way.

For the next few weeks Dirk wandered around the house in his bathrobe, clutching a cup of cold coffee and muttering, with a pencil stuck behind his ear. The messy box of papers found a home on the desk in his study. When Penelope eagerly peeked in to ask him how his book was coming, he looked up and said slowly, “Fine—I guess.”

Although she was a little concerned about her father’s
lack of continued enthusiasm, Penelope decided this must just be what writers did. Mostly she liked having Dirk around, even if he was being kind of weird. Sometimes they took a father-daughter walk together in the morning to get the paper from the newsstand down the street. It was nice, and a little different.

But Penelope wondered when things would begin to be
really
different. In books,
everything changes
were followed by all sorts of other exciting developments. Unfortunately, for the most part, Penelope’s life went on as usual. Each morning she ate a bowl of cereal and a quarter of a honeydew melon by herself. Then she spent the day with Joanna, learning about the American Revolution or decimals or something else useful, because there’s no summer vacation when you have a tutor.

As Dirk muttered and puttered, Delia wiped flower petals discreetly off the shiny surface of the dining room table and oversaw the staff. But Penelope noticed that her mother wasn’t smiling or singing nearly as often as usual. She also noticed that her parents didn’t appear to be talking to each other very much.
That
was a little concerning.

Then one day Freddie the driver suddenly wasn’t there. This didn’t affect Penelope much since she rarely went anywhere in the car, but when Chef disappeared a week later, Penelope had to wonder what was going on.
Chef’s absence had a considerable effect on Penelope’s life. Not only did Delia not enjoy cooking, she turned out not to be very good at it, as evidenced by a parade of terrible dinners, including a very burnt stir-fry, an undercooked roast chicken, and a platter of unpleasant cheeseburgers, which Penelope found especially incredible. She wouldn’t have guessed it was possible to ruin a cheeseburger, but she didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings, so she just chewed each bite as quickly as possible and drank a lot of milk.

Penelope was beginning to be sorry about her well-wish and its dismal aftermath, if that was what all of this was. She hadn’t been sure if she believed in magic before,
really
, but—

Then one evening, after another nearly silent dinner of little rolled-up things that she guessed were supposed to be enchiladas, Penelope decided it was time to take matters into her own hands. Somehow, her generally boring life was turning into a silent, tense, stressful boring life. Something needed to be done. After standing in her room examining her bookcase for inspiration and pondering the problem at hand, Penelope struck upon a book—
The Penderwicks
—and a solution. The Greys needed a vacation!

Dirk had already disappeared into his office, and
Delia was sitting in the parlor writing something down on a notepad when Penelope found her. “Mother,” she said as casually as she could, “I was thinking we need a change of scenery. A vacation. Maybe we could rent a rambling farmhouse in the country!”

Usually the Greys visited a very nice resort at the ocean in July, but Penelope found the idea of an old-fashioned trip to the country appealing. There would probably be county fairs and friendly locals and berry picking. Plus, the fresh air would surely help her parents’ moods. Wasn’t that what fresh air was for?

Delia appeared not to have even heard her daughter’s suggestion. She looked lost in thought as she scribbled numbers on her pad. Periodically she consulted her checkbook.

“Mother?” Penelope tried again softly. Then louder, “Mother!”

This time Delia looked up. When she did, Penelope was shocked to find that there were tears standing in her mother’s eyes. “Yes, Penelope?” Delia asked softly. “Did you need something, dear?”

“Oh,” Penelope said, taken aback. “It’s nothing,” she mumbled. “I just—had an idea.”

Delia set down her pen and asked without inflection, “What’s that?”

Penelope hesitated. Suddenly her idea seemed silly, but she had already begun, and so she said, “Just—to go to the country, like in a book. But we can talk about it another time. It’s really no big deal. Is—is everything okay?”

Delia smiled weakly, and with the back of a finger wiped away the tears that hadn’t fallen. “Of course it is. Or anyway, it will be. But I don’t—I
don’t
think we can afford to go to the country, or the beach, or anywhere else. Not this year. Maybe next summer?”

Penelope nodded slowly, absorbing what her mother had just said. Not afford it? The Greys always went away to the beach in July! They had rented the same ocean-view suite every year since Penelope could remember. Penelope stared into her mother’s sad eyes, and suddenly she understood. This was bad. This was serious. If the Greys could not afford to go to the beach, things must not be okay.

“Sure,” she said at last. “Next year. Or—not. I mean—it doesn’t matter,” she continued, fumbling.

“That’s my good girl,” said Delia.

Penelope tried to smile, but the smile got stuck halfway. It felt awkward, false.

“And, Penelope?” added Delia. “Please don’t mention anything to your father about this. Let’s have this be our
secret for now. I don’t want to worry him with unpleasant money talk. Not until he’s feeling a little more—himself.”

Penelope nodded again, slowly, and felt her fake smile slip into a frown. She had thought her parents were mad at each other, because of the not talking, but that wasn’t the case. Her mother’s voice sounded kind, and she didn’t look angry so much as worried and tired.

Delia sighed. “It’s just, he’s going through a rough patch, and I don’t want to make things any harder for him. Though, honestly, I’m not quite sure how to manage things myself. I know we
will
, of course, but I’m not sure
how
, exactly. We’re broke, I’m afraid.”

Broke?
Penelope hesitated. “But I thought,” she said quietly, because it felt like a strange thing to say out loud, “we were—
rich
.”

“Well,” said Delia, “in a way we are.” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “You see, your father’s family has always been rather well-to-do, and your grandparents left us this house when they passed away, but the cost of the maintenance for a house like this is huge. There are so many bills each month, and the staff to pay. We really depended on your father’s salary to keep everything going. Plus, I’m embarrassed to admit that we often spend more than he makes, which means a lot of credit cards, and that gets tricky, juggling all of
them. I’ve already had to let Chef go, and Freddie too. Maybe you noticed?”

Penelope nodded.

“Oh, Penelope,” Delia said, “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t talk about this with you at all, but I have to tell someone, and until your father is more himself …” Delia sighed. “Besides, I don’t know how else to explain to you about why we can’t have a vacation this year. Or anything else
extra.
”

“It’s okay,” said Penelope. “There are probably a lot of bugs in the country anyway, and snakes.” She patted Delia’s shoulder.

And it
was
okay. Despite the weird seriousness of everything her mother was telling her, it felt strangely good to talk about it all. It felt nice to understand things a little better, to actually
know
instead of guessing.

She only hoped her well-wish hadn’t caused this mess. This wasn’t at all what she’d meant by
interesting
.

Delia looked at Penelope and sniffled. “I love you,” she said. Then, without warning, she reached out to pull Penelope toward her. She folded her daughter up in a big startling hug.

Penelope, caught in the hug, felt many things all at once. Mostly it was just nice to be hugged, but underneath the warmth Penelope had the feeling that her pleasant,
boring life, with her small family in their large stone house, had been until recently like a movie with the sound turned down low. Since she’d never been able to hear what anyone was saying, she’d just assumed things were fine, if dull. Suddenly it was as if someone had turned the sound up, and she was discovering that the story had complications.

“Everything will be fine, Mother,” she said into Delia’s warm shoulder. “Just wait and see. I bet things will be better again really soon.”

Penelope thought that sounded right, like the sort of thing a daughter might say in a book.

P
ENELOPE
O
PENS THE
D
OOR

A
s it turned out, Penelope was dead wrong about things getting better. Because after that day things around the house only slipped further. Since she had no idea what to do about any of it, Penelope just watched it all fall, like rain through a window.

First, Joanna was given the summer off. When she politely asked why Penelope did not require summer instruction for the first time in seven years, Delia mumbled something about how Penelope was being sent to a special arts camp.

Of course, this was not the truth at all, and Penelope was startled to see her mother lie. She stared curiously at Delia, who looked at her feet until Joanna turned and left the room. Penelope had never especially liked Joanna, so it was with a bewildered sense of relief that she watched her tutor walk away from the house for good.

Shortly after that people began calling from fancy stores and credit card companies. Each time Penelope answered the phone and told whoever was at the other end of the line that her mother was away, they asked her to please tell Mrs. Delia Grey that she needed to call and discuss her bill. Penelope stopped answering the telephone.

Then one Thursday, Josie the housekeeper quit, saying that she absolutely refused to keep up with the trail of litter that Dirk left behind him as he wandered the house lost in thought. She stormed out, waving her hands in the air and yelling, “Crazy man! Owes three weeks’ back pay and can’t pick up his own socks! I am
not
your mother, and I don’t have to put up with your mess anymore, thank goodness!”