The Death of Perry Many Paws (2 page)

In addition to the conflicts with my editor, I had been suffering from empty nest syndrome since Abbey, my only child, had left for college in Boston the previous month. I wasn’t able to wallow in it too much, though, because Cam was even more upset and lonely than I was. I spent a lot of time reassuring him that Abbey was doing what we raised her to do and we were good parents. Being a woman of a certain age had its difficulties. In many ways it had been easier being a teenager—hormones, angst and all.

I was jarred out of my self-indulgent reverie by the sound of purring. We had long ago learned not to look around on the floor for a cat,
as it was the ringtone of Diane’s phone. Since no one in her family could go for long without calling her, we had become oblivious to the sound. She ratted around in her purse trying to find the phone.

“Hello …” As was the custom, Diane would just murmur and nod for most of the call. No one in her family seemed to understand the art of conversation but they were well-versed in the practice of venting.

“Both keys? Well, they must have one at the front desk. Or the housekeeping people can … No, I don’t have an extra key. Just go to the front desk … Yes, I’m sure it happens all the time. No one is going to move you to the dementia wing. No, sorry, I don’t know what
gourmet
macaroni and cheese is. Okay. Bye.”

“Your mom?” Syra asked. “How are they settling into their new apartment?”

“They love it at Bugg Hill but they haven’t gotten used to taking a key with them when they leave their apartment. My mom is in constant fear of letting anyone know they forgot something, or that they’re confused. She thinks they’ll haul her screaming and fighting to the dementia wing. Oh, and they’re having
gourmet
macaroni and cheese for dinner,” Diane informed us. I was sure that tomorrow would start with a phone call from her mom telling her exactly what made macaroni and cheese gourmet when served at the Bugg Hill Senior Living Home.

Diane didn’t seem too worried about her parents, so I started in again about my career frustrations. “Is it unreasonable for me to want to do something else with my characters? After all, I’m the author. I created Perry Many Paws. If I want Perry to have new friends or to do something different I have the right, don’t I?”

Everyone nodded and murmured various levels of agreement.

“My editor doesn’t like any kind of change. With him, everything is so formulaic. If it worked in books one through five then we need to
do the same thing in book six. Well, what if I don’t
want
to do the same thing in book six? If Dr. Seuss had my editor he would have followed
The Cat in the Hat
with
The Pig in the Wig
and
The Frog in the Fog
. We would’ve been deprived of
Green Eggs and Ham
…”

“Exactly. What kind of world would that be?” Grace chimed in.

Diane leaned toward me timidly. “But Perry Many Paws and his friends are so successful, why …”

“Now you sound like my editor!”

“Maybe you could use the same characters but have them do something a little different,” Diane suggested. “What if you change the location of their next adventure? Take them out of the woods and away from Perry’s cave and have them go to a lake or the mountains or something. Would that make you feel more fulfilled as a writer?”

“No. I want to do something completely different with Perry. Give him some new friends, for instance. Whatever made me give him friends with names like Squeaky Squirrel and Friendly Frog? Squirrels don’t squeak and even if they did, squeaking is an annoying sound, not an endearing one. And Friendly Frog is so bland. If he has to be friendly all the time he’s impossible to work with in an interesting way. I hate Squeaky and Friendly. I want some edgier characters.”

Diane shook her head. “I don’t think children’s books are supposed to have edgy characters.”

“How about Promiscuous Pig and Horny Owl?” Grace suggested. “Having a slutty pig and a randy owl to work with should give you a little more leeway in your story lines.”

“Now, Grace …” Diane admonished, but I burst into laughter. This was the Grace I knew and loved.

“That’s exactly what I need, Grace. I wish my editor understood as well as you do.”

“Well,” Grace pulled herself into a more upright position on the couch. “Now that we’ve resolved Tamsen’s crisis, maybe we can work
on the fact that my marriage is falling apart and my stepson hates me and the feeling may be mutual.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“For starters, you all know he hates me. I understand that his life’s been totally uprooted in the past two years since his mother died and he moved in fulltime with Hugh. Then I moved in shortly after, but that was two years ago. Shouldn’t things be better now?”

“So what has he done now?” I asked. I was sure there was more to this than just the same old “he hates me” complaint.

“Last night he told Hugh that he didn’t want to have friends come over to the house because he was embarrassed …”

Diane shook her head, her hair continuing to vibrate for several seconds after she stopped. “That doesn’t make any sense. You and Hugh have a beautiful house with …”

“It’s not the house that embarrasses him, Diane, it’s me. He told Hugh that he was embarrassed to have friends over because I was so fat …”

“And Hugh
told
you he said that?” Bing burst out. He jumped up and squeezed onto the couch with Grace, hugging her. If anyone could commiserate with Grace it would be Bing. Grace was 5’7’’ and carried her weight well; Bing was about 5’1” and built in a perfect circle.

Grace hugged him back. “I was witness to the whole thing. Hugh was outraged and completely lost it. He and Ryan followed each other around the house screaming and threatening each other. I was afraid they were going to get in a fist fight and we were going to end up featured on some horrible reality show.”

“I hate those shows,” Bing said.

“It was so ugly. I’ve never lived like that before. My family was always so quiet. I pretty much hate my life right now. I loved being Grace Trenary but I hate being Grace Kelly.”

Diane nodded. “I just want a minute to myself. I hate my cell phone.”

“I just want my body to feel normal again. I hate feeling sore and tired all the time,” Syra added.

“I want Abbey to move back home and I want the freedom to write what I want to write,” I chimed in. “I hate Perry Many Paws. I wish I could kill him.”

I was lying in bed thinking about what it would be like to wish I hadn’t gotten married, when the man who made me glad I was married came to bed.

“I was just texting with Abbey,” he said. “Is there some reason no one actually
talks
on the phone anymore? It takes ten times longer to have a conversation by text, but when I tell Abbey I’ll call, she says she likes texting better.”

I snuggled into the crook of his arm. “That’s because she can do other things while you text,” I explained. “The last time we talked by text she was able to put her laundry in the dryer and was writing an anthropology paper on the Bog Man. It’s the younger generation multitasking with more efficiency than we ever imagined.”

Cam rubbed my back and nuzzled my neck. “Regardless, I would like my daughter’s full attention at least once in a while. I’m going to call her tomorrow and have a real conversation with an immediate response rather than asking a question and waiting until she changes her sheets before she replies.”

“I’d be thrilled to think she was even changing her sheets. Please don’t interrupt that.”

“You know what I mean …”

I rolled over on top of him. “Do you know what I mean?”

Cam laughed and pulled me close. “I sure hope so.”

I completely forgot to ask him if he was glad he’d married me. Anyway, I already had the answer.

’m not being modest when I say that I live in the ugliest house in Birdsey Falls. The house was built in the 1880s by Roger Behrends, Cam’s great-grandfather. Unfortunately, Roger Behrends, aka Birdsey Falls’ own “Robber Baron,” as he was nicknamed, had more money and ego than taste. He designed the house himself based on castles he had visited during an extended stay in England in the early 1860s, successfully avoiding the “unpleasantness” of the Civil War. He hurried back to the United States in 1865 at the conclusion of the war to take advantage of the post-war cleanup—financial cleanup. He made his fortune in the South and then settled up north in Birdsey Falls, and built this monstrous house.

If he’d kept to a single design, the house might have been more pleasing to look at. Instead, he created a sprawling Victorian style house and added what he considered improvements, making it ostentatious—his intent—and ugly as sin—probably not his intent. I’m quite attached to the house and while I know it’s ugly I have grown to love it. The library and the solarium are my favorite rooms. The library is dark paneled with a high ceiling. There is a massive fireplace on one wall, and tall long windows that stretch from ceiling to floor on the opposite wall. The other two walls are ceiling to floor dark cherry built-in bookcases. There’s even a secret passage behind one of the bookcases that contains a narrow staircase that leads to the master
bedroom. I sometimes make use of it running back and forth on the perilous staircase to exchange a book late in the night when the hot flashes hit and I can’t sleep.

Roger the Robber Baron outlived each of his three wives and most of his eleven children. When he died, he left the house to Alden Behrends, his only surviving son, apparently forgetting that he also had three living daughters. Growing up among numerous brothers and sisters, Alden had a more realistic view of his place in the world and, thankfully, more aesthetic taste. He had the enormous Arc de Triomphe, the stone lions and the six story watchtower at the entrance to the property removed and replaced with beautiful wrought iron gates. He took the monstrous ballroom and divided it into several cozy family-sized rooms, including a train room for his three children, Alden Jr., Franklin and Claudia. He also added the solarium, a perfectly proportioned circular room with walls made up of windows that look out on the gardens.

The solarium is the one true beauty in this rambling hodgepodge of a house. You walk down a dark, paneled hallway lined with portraits of Behrends that seem to extend back to the days of cave painting. This dreary passageway leads you to a breathtaking sight that can actually bring tears to your eyes as you enter the room flooded with light and color. It’s the feeling you get when you go from the cacophony of a crowded restaurant to the silence of a church. You are physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally lighter, as if you are walking into the presence of a great spirit. You cannot be unhappy in this room. Entering my solarium is the closest you’ll get to “walking into the light” and still be alive to tell about it.

You are instantly enveloped by a rainbow of colors streaming through all the windows. It’s like you’re in a Monet garden, with the light and the windows giving the outside flowers the foggy and unfocused look of an Impressionistic painting. On various delicate antique
tables around the room are enormous vases of flowers from the garden, echoing the outdoor vista with an added dimension of color and fragrance. It is my spot of heaven on earth and I wish that its architect had been allowed to tackle the rest of the house.