Penny Dreadful (6 page)

Penelope’s face fell. “Oh,” she said. “I thought—”

But Delia was staring at Penelope now, almost
through
her. She stood up suddenly and said, “Why
not
, Dirk?”

“Why not what?” asked Dirk.

“Why
not
move there?”

Dirk looked exasperated. “I thought you just
said
we can’t afford two houses!”

“We can’t,” Delia said. “Let’s sell
this
one.”

“What?” cried Dirk. “You want to leave The City and move to Tennessee? Sell the house I grew up in? Are you
serious
?”

“Maybe,” said Delia with a nod. “It sounds crazy,
I know, but this could be a fresh start. A chance to begin again, to begin
better
. A place we can actually afford, even now. I wouldn’t have thought to suggest it. It seems wild, and unlikely, but Penelope’s idea isn’t really so farfetched, if you consider what our life has been like the last few weeks, and what we could sell this place for! Why, we could pay off all the credit cards and make a little nest egg. Then we’d have money to live on, and you’d have all the time in the world to write.” Delia looked elated.

Penelope glanced from one parent to the other. She crossed her fingers and held her breath.

Dirk, on the other hand, looked downright shocked. “My family’s house? We
love
this house! We’re the envy of everyone we know.”

“Yes,” said Delia a little sadly. “It’s a marvelous house, and I know it was important to your parents, but maintaining it costs far more than we can afford. Besides, we don’t really
need
it, do we? Half these rooms never get used.”

Penelope squeezed her crossed fingers tighter. She could feel her face turning red.

“Even so,” said Dirk, “we have a great life here, don’t we? Do you really want to move to the country? Won’t it be boring?”

Penelope let out her breath silently but kept her fingers securely crossed.

Delia put a hand on Dirk’s shoulder and said gently but firmly, “Maybe it will, but, Dirk, let’s be realistic. We can’t afford to stay here anymore. We’re in the hole. Whether we move to Thrush Junction or not, everything will need to change. Even if we stay in The City, we’ll need to move sooner or later, to an apartment, in a cheaper neighborhood. However unexpected,
this
is a solution.
This
is an answer.
This
is fate. Like a wish come true, a dream I didn’t even know I had until this very minute.”

Penelope stared at her mother.

“But what will we
do
there?” Dirk responded. “It’s considerably away, and I’m no kind of farmer.”

“Write books?” said Delia simply. “Go hiking? Get regular jobs? Start over? Buy ourselves a little time to figure things out?” Delia’s voice sounded serious, but it had none of the sad, strained tone Penelope had been hearing for weeks.

Dirk stroked his unshaven chin again and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, but he said it slowly, as though he were now considering the idea.

Penelope crossed her arms behind her back, in case her fingers needed a little help. She crossed her legs too.

“Penelope?” said Delia, noticing. “Do you maybe need to use the ladies’ room?”

Penelope shook her head and uncrossed her legs, but inside her tennis shoes she attempted to cross her toes. Then she glanced up at her father, who was still stroking his stubble.

“How about this,” said Delia. “How about we try to
rent
this house out, to begin with? Would that make you feel better?”

“I don’t know,” said Dirk. “It all sounds crazy to me.”

Delia paused for a moment, then said, “As crazy as quitting your job on a moment’s notice?”

Penelope gasped.

“Hey! That’s not fair,” protested Dirk. “I was going
bonkers.
”

“So am I,” said Delia simply.

“Me too,” whispered Penelope. She didn’t mean to. It just slipped out. “Sorry,” she added.

Dirk looked down at Penelope, and then over at his wife, as though seeing them both in a new way. “Is it really that bad?” he asked. “
That
bad?”

Penelope bit her lip and said nothing, but Delia nodded solemnly. “I don’t think about anything else, Dirk. I never minded being poor before I met you, but being in
debt and trying to live like we’re rich when we aren’t—it’s horrible!
Please?
”

Penelope waited anxiously, with her tightly crossed fingers beginning to hurt a little. She watched her father think. Dirk looked from his wife to his daughter several times. He closed his eyes. Then, suddenly, he opened his eyes, slapped his hands together, and smiled mischievously. “Well,” he said. “I guess it’s time to pack our camels! Look out, world! The Greys are moving to the country!”

“Really?” Penelope cried.

Delia beamed and threw her arms around her husband’s neck in a way that Penelope had never seen her do before. Dirk and Delia kissed loudly, which made Penelope weirdly happy, but uncomfortable at the same time.

“You know,” added Delia once she’d untangled her arms from her husband’s bathrobe sleeves, “I
do
like the sound of this. Whatever happens, it’s sure to be an adventure.”

BOOK TWO
C
ONSIDERABLY
A
WAY

O
UT OF THE
S
HADOWS OF THE
C
LOUDS

P
enelope watched in awe as the house began to wake up around her.

Overnight Delia stopped avoiding bill collectors and chewing her nails. Instead, she spent her days packing boxes and printing out maps. She sold most of their furniture for great wads of folded bills, and then (with a huge sigh of relief) took the wads to the various places where she owed money around town. Delia paid Josie her back wages and found a real estate agent to work on renting out the mansion. She also traded in the shiny black car Freddie had driven for a used van. It was a hideous clunker the color of dried mustard, but Penelope liked it. Her mother named it Dijon, which seemed just right.

While Delia was readying for the move, Dirk woke up, got dressed, put away his box of papers, and surprised Penelope by taking complete charge of the housekeeping.
She’d hardly ever seen her father lift a finger around the house before.

Of course, the place wasn’t quite as tidy as it had been under Josie’s watchful eye, but slowly the doors began to open again. The lights came on and the house was no longer a pit of despair. In fact, Penelope thought her father actually seemed to enjoy sweeping the porch, dusting the shelves, and making lunch. It was funny, how he’d stand back, mop in hand, admiring a particularly clean floor, and say proudly, “Now, would you just
look
at that shine!
That’s
a job well done. Nobody could expect a man to do better.”

Penelope packed her own room, carefully fitting her books into boxes and labeling them. She also helped her parents, wrapping up glasses in newspaper and lemon-oiling the furniture to be sold. Each night as the Greys sat in the kitchen together, eating pizza or Chinese takeout and laughing, Penelope found she was happy, and a little proud too.

Whether or not her well-wishing had played a part in this strange turn of events, it had been Penelope who’d answered the door and signed for the telegram, and Penelope who’d first suggested they move to Thrush Junction. As things got better and better, she felt good about whatever it was she’d done to help.

Still, it was all a little baffling. “Do you
like
being poor?” she asked her mother one afternoon, seated on a box in the library eating a peanut butter sandwich while Delia packed up books.

Delia answered slowly. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m beginning to think that maybe I didn’t especially care about being rich.”

It took a few weeks for them to get ready, but finally the house was packed and Dijon was loaded. They all climbed into the van, buckled their seat belts, and—pulling a trailer with a few pieces of furniture, some suitcases, and several boxes of books behind them—headed off into the unknown. As they crossed a big bridge and
left The City in their dust, Delia rolled down her window and sang out, “
Take me hooooooome, country roooooads!
”

Penelope smiled in the backseat, wedged between a box fan and a garment bag. She’d never heard her mother sing quite so
out loud
before, but it made her feel like singing too.

Dirk drove, smiling and telling the occasional joke.

Penelope was in charge of the map. She followed with her finger, tracing their slow progress along the tiny lines that cut across rivers and lakes, mountains and state lines. Whenever she looked out the window, she found herself mesmerized. First by the wide highway and all the other people, the strangers on the road beside them. Kids in cars picking their noses, and truckers smoking cigarettes. Then she stared at mountains: blue mountains in the distance and green mountains up close, low and lush and filled with small creeks and rickety bridges. The big highway gave way to a smaller highway, which in turn gave way to a winding two-lane road that cut deep into the hollers and hills.

Funny
, thought Penelope,
that once you’re in the mountains, you can’t see the mountains. I guess maybe things look different when you’re part of them
. She noticed that some of the mountains had dark places on them. Large spots that were a heavy green color, almost black.

“Why do they look like that, with some spots that are darker than the rest?” she asked her parents, straining against her seat belt to lean forward into the gap between the front seats.

“I think those are shadows,” her dad said without taking his eyes off the road.

“Shadows of what?” asked Penelope.

“The shadows of the clouds,” said Dirk. “They’re there all the time, but you can only see them in the mountains or on big open plains. Isn’t it pretty?”

It was pretty, though Penelope found it strange to think that she’d been living her whole life under shadows she hadn’t known were there.

The Greys stopped occasionally for bathroom breaks, and twice so that a deer could finish crossing the road. Once, they parked at a small produce stand by the highway, where they bought the reddest tomatoes in the world and ate the most delicious peach pie any of them had ever tasted.