Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers (6 page)

H
OW LONG WAS IT
before Placido was blasted out of his sleep by the sound of the telephone ringing? Then the answering machine went on full pitch:

I'M THE SANTA CLAUS CLOWN—

I'M THE BEST CLOWN IN TOWN.

TO YOUR PARTY I'll COME

FOR A REASONABLE SUM!

Placido had leaped down from the shelf, trembling from the shock of Sam Twilight's voice booming in the dark, quiet night.

LEAVE YOUR NUMBER AND NAME—

ENTERTAINING'S OUR GAME.

JIMMIE IS HERE TOO:

IF YOU WANT HER, SAY WHO.

Placido had heard that recording all day long. Now they were both home, and there was no reason for him to have to hear it yet again!

WAIT FOR THE BEEP

BEFORE YOU LET OUT A PEEP!

Placido covered his ears with his front paws.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep,
the machine screamed, and Placido rolled his eyes in agony.

“Hello? Hello? This is Mrs. Randall from Montauk. We're so very sorry to call this late, but we can't find the phone number you gave us for Critters. We're desperate to find Rex! We want to leave a message in case he's there. If we could have him for Christmas, our little boy would be so happy! There's no listing in the book for Critters. Thank heavens you gave us your business card, Sam Twilight. Hello?”

Now Jimmie was awake and calling, “Daddy? Is that Ms. Fondaloot? Am I supposed to go into New York right now?”

“Hush, honey. It's not Ms. Fondaloot.”

Mr. Twilight turned on a light, sat up in his bunk bed, and took the phone. “This is Sam Twilight …

It's all right … Critters is listed as
Hamptons
Critters Shelter, but never mind. I'll give you the number again.”

After he hung up, Sam Twilight began to tell Jimmie about the boy named Bob and the lost yellow Labrador retriever he'd heard of at the mall that day.

Goldie, Placido thought. Goldie!

Placido remembered when Goldie had first arrived at Critters on a cold afternoon, not too long ago. Placido had been taken out of the cat room to be groomed. He was in the Critters examination room, waiting for the girl with the brush and comb, when Goldie was brought in. Goldie needed a bath badly.

“My name is Placido. Welcome to Critters.”

“I won't be here long,” Goldie had said.

“Where have I heard that before?”

“I plan to escape,” Goldie had said. “You'll see.”

Placido had wished the dog luck and then purred hard, picturing a daring dog escape that would liven up the holidays.

Right before the groomer appeared, Goldie had told Placido, “My real name is Rex. Bob, my owner, named me. Do you know what Rex means?”

“King,” Placido had answered. Placido was no dunce of a cat. He had lived with a diva, after all, and Madame Fleurette de Flute had sung many roles in many languages.

C
HRISTMAS EVE AT THE
Uttergores'.

“How many lost-dog posters did you manage to get down?” Percival Uttergore asked his ailing sister when she came home crying from the cold.

“I found thirty,” she said, “and I have twenty-nine in my car. I brought in this one for you to look at.”

She put it on the table. The ink was running from the wet snow.

REWARD! LOST DOG!

Answers to Rex

Yellow Labrador retriever, 5 years old

Family heartbroken

Call 631.555.2868

REWARD
! $$$$$$$$$$$

“Sometimes I wonder about people,” said Percival Uttergore. “Imagine paying money to get a dog back!”

“Some people get great happiness from a pet,” said Ursula.

“‘Family heartbroken!'” Uttergore scoffed. Then, in an imitation of a distraught female, he whined, “Oh me oh my, me doggie is lost and me am heartbroken!”

Ursula wondered if she should proceed to the basement, where her brother had fixed a small room for her near the furnace. There were no dogs being held for rewards, only the clothesline with the leashes attached where they could walk when they were in residence.

Ursula knew her brother did not approve of Christmas celebrations, because they were just a waste of hard-earned money, but she held the hope that she might dry herself by the fire, this being a special night for some.

“The kind of people who get great happiness from a pet are the kind of people who have very little life,” said Uttergore.

“Yes, Percival. I suppose you're right.”

“Then why did you say some people get great happiness from a pet?”

“I'm too cold to think straight. I cannot feel my feet.”

“They're there,” he said. For a moment she had imagined he was consoling her, saying, “There, there,” but she quickly realized he was talking about her feet being there.

“Tomorrow,” said her brother, who had put his Barcalounger in the reclining position before the fire, “we'll drive around and see if we can find this Rex. Set your clock for seven
A.M
., Ursula, and this time I think I'll have my eggs over easy. Rye-bread toast. Bacon crisp. Coffee as usual. Good night.”

“Good night.”

“Be glad you don't live with someone who goes boo hoo hoo over an animal.”

P
EKE COULD NOT FORGET
that on Christmas Eve he had been yelled at by Nell, all because of the greyhound.

His fitful slumber had been blessed with a dream that Percival Uttergore's red gloves had reached out for Catherine, and
pfffft,
she'd disappeared. Rich dog or poor dog, family dog or stray, you had at one time or another been told of the evil man who captured dogs. When a new dog was introduced to an only-dog household (even just as a visitor), what only dog did not dream of the dogcatcher coming to snatch the new arrival?

Now this lowlife had come in from a long morning walk with Ginny and Sun Lily, and she was tracking wet paw marks across the hall floor. On Christmas Day! Peke looked at her with utter disgust.

“Sorry,” Catherine murmured to him.

“Save your apology,” Peke told her. “It is too late! Because of you I was beaten on Christmas Eve.”

“Nell didn't beat you. She barely raised her voice,” Catherine said.

“No wonder they put you greyhounds to sleep after you can't race anymore,” said Peke. “You're informers! I would never have told on
you!”

“We're not informers,” Catherine insisted. “They put us to sleep because they are cruel. They think just because we've never had any home life, we won't get along in people's homes.”

“They're right about that,” said Peke. “You don't know enough to keep your mouth shut!”

“I've kept my mouth shut, Peke. I know you have a secret place where you take ribbons and rubber dog bones and mittens. I've been watching you.”

“You don't know where it is, though.”

“I bet I can find it,” said Catherine. “Let's bet the red rubber hot dogs that Sun Lily gave us for Christmas.”

“It's a bet. And stay away from Sun Lily.”

“Why should I stay away from her?”

“Because you're not family. You're the dregs.”

“She
doesn't act like I'm the dregs.”

“Because she's polite. I don't happen to be. Sun Lily and I have a special bond, both of us having Chinese origins. You are from Critters, and before that you were from the racetracks. You have no breeding!”

In the kitchen Nell Star was talking on the telephone.

“We'll have to call the volunteers to start a search party,” she was saying. “Goldie couldn't have gotten far. Oh, what a shame. Just when we may have located his owner, he bolted.”

Catherine gnawed nervously on a chew stick.

Peke sighed. “Another lost dog! Ginny and Nell don't get any rest, not even on Christmas Day!”

“Don't you feel sorry for the lost dog too?” Catherine asked.

“You down-on-your-luck dogs bring trouble on everybody, including yourselves,” Peke declared. “You
belong
at the dogcatcher's!” His small goldfish eyes had a very cross expression. The plume he had for a tail bristled. “You are the outcasts of society!” he continued. “I happen to be a direct descendent of Lootie, Queen Victoria's Pekingese!”

“Please get your face out of my face,” said Catherine.

“Pekingese do not have faces!” Peke snarled. “We have masks. You would know that if you were not just racetrack riffraff!”

Catherine did not have an answer to that. Anyway, Catherine was worried now about what Nell had said on the telephone. Something about volunteers going out to look for Goldie.

How could Goldie have gotten loose?

As much as Catherine hated losing bets, she was glad she had lost her Christmas stocking to the Labrador retriever. Maybe he had eaten the doggie doughnuts in both stockings before taking off. Catherine didn't want to imagine Goldie running lost and hungry in the cold.

“Christmas with riffraff is no Christmas at all,” Peke grumbled, waddling away from Catherine.

“You should be more sympathetic,” Catherine called after him. “You're lucky to have such a nice home!”

“It won't be a nice home until you go back to Critters!” Peke barked over his shoulder.

Christmas Day

D
EAR DIARY
,

Radio City Music Hall is a madhouse.

Outside, there are long lines waiting for the six-o'clock show.

Inside, all the talent is hanging out in various places
—
behind the 144-foot stage, upstairs in the rehearsal rooms, and down in the basement, where I am.

This year I appear at the very end of Act 1, “Christmas in Central Park.” I am onstage for four minutes, right before the thirty-six Rockettes storm out. Then I am onstage for two minutes with the dancing dwarfs in “Santa's Home,” Act II. Then again two minutes in the finale.

Now I am in one of the dressing rooms, soaking my feet. The actors from the Nativity Scene are hanging out here. The Three Kings of Orient are playing gin rummy on one side of me. Joseph and Mary are playing backgammon on the other side.

Next door the Rockettes get into their costumes for the March of the Wooden Soldiers.

I am supposed to be doing a homework assignment for online correspondence school.
Write about something unique in a country
was the lesson that came up on the computer last week.

I'm wearing the red kimono that belonged to Mom. In the pocket is the last photograph of her, holding Dancer. It was taken last summer just after we'd all closed in
Nursery Rhymes.
Mom was Mother Goose, her final role.

We were docked in Miami when I took that picture. Mom was sitting on the deck with Dancer in her arms. Dad had gone into town for supplies.

If she hadn't loved that dog so, she'd probably still be alive. When the hurricane roared into the harbor, we got off
Summer Salt.
But Mom called out, “I'm going back for Dancer!” The last time I saw them both, Mom was swimming toward
Summer Salt.
Dancer was huddled near a life preserver, shivering and yipping.

The Christmas card from Check and Shirley made me think of times in the rain we'd talk in the pie car. One time Check said what he liked was leaving to go someplace new. The train would move slowly at first, so you didn't feel it. Then you'd hear a click, feel a sway, and you were started, steel wheels over rails.

He said sometimes when you did something new in your life, there'd be a click, too, as you'd start to get it. Then you'd get it and pretty soon you'd be going fast. He said it was that way when he met Shirley, and I remember Shirley said, “Get out of here, we never went fast doing anything, including making our minds up to leave this freak show.” She'd be smoking no hands, teasing him, saying it was a freak show, but we all knew she loved it.

The thing is I can't just go
pfffft
from that world to the Real World.

Now I hear the lambs from the Nativity Scene baaing in their pen down the hall: There's an old donkey down there too, and other farm animals.

Dancer used to bark and bark at their smells and
-
their sounds, but he was like Shirley. It was just noise he made. He loved it since he was a real back-lot dog, who knew just how close he could get to the big cats, the camels, the trucks, and the forklift.

But his barking would get the Sugar Plum Fairy mad. She would snarl, “Cork it!” Dewdrop, who led the Waltz of the Flowers, always said Sugar Plum was just jealous because Dancer got so much applause.

I made up my mind to forget all about flubbing the BrainPower audition. I am not going to blame myself anymore for saying “consensus of opinion.”

“Five minutes!” a stagehand just shouted.

I've got to get into my white spangled tutu.

One of the Three Kings of Orient is fastening back his big ears with adhesive tape called Earies.

My heart pounds every time I listen to the sound of the Rockettes charging up the stairs.

No matter how many shows a day I do, I always get a charge when it's time to go on.

S
OME CATS THINK AND
dream in poetry.

People believe cats lie around all day and do nothing important, but some cats are very busy composing verse.

Such a cat was Rags Randall, a coon cat from Montauk.

He had several poems that were his favorites, and as he sat in the window looking outdoors, he recited one or two.