The Genie of Sutton Place (3 page)

I kept paying attention to Aunt Lucy's chatter—like about how little luggage I had—and remembering to answer her, but my arm was around Sam as he gazed out the window. Every now and then he'd give a little reverse push of his back and a woof to let me know that he knew I was there, despite how much he was enjoying the sights. I liked feeling his back underneath my hand. Sam was a husky mutt, and maybe a little overweight, but I'd rather have dogs—and people, too—have a bit too much stomach than be scrawny and not have enough.

So we let Mr. Watkins “jump off,” and finally got to Sutton Place. Maurice let us out in front of Aunt Lucy's apartment house and told “modom” he'd return the car to the garage.

About Sutton Place. I don't have anything against it. A lot of rich people live there, but the buildings are pretty nice. There are old buildings and new ones, and a few really great town houses, but the whole place really does fit together. Aunt Lucy's apartment house was neither young nor old, but it had a nice big lobby, and the doorman was neither young nor old, but he, too, looked pretty permanent. So with everything so—acceptable—to say the least, I kept wondering why I felt so lousy on the elevator up to Aunt Lucy's apartment. I really was trying to psych myself into liking it all. But it didn't work.

And the reason it didn't, besides losing everything I was used to, was my bedroom. I knew the apartment already, from my visits with Lorenzo, and I appreciated it. Grampa Lorenzo's stuff, which Aunt Lucy didn't dare change, was like Sutton Place: old and new, and all good. A bull's-eye mirror would have fitted in very well. But then Aunt Lucy, with a grin out of a store window, said, “Now come and see
your
room, Timmy!”

She'd had the guest bedroom redecorated. And, boy, was it ever decorated! The trouble was, I didn't think the decorator knew anything about kids—much less me. I could have been four—or eighteen. Half the room was college pennants, and the other half was cuddly stuffed animals! And the worst—the most unbelievable thing—there weren't any bookcases in it! How can anybody design a room for a kid and not put at least one bookcase in it?

“Look, Timmy,” said Aunt Lucy. “You open these cabinet doors, and there's
color
television!”

I'm not underestimating color television. A lot of kids would sell their souls for it. And some of the programs are pretty good, too.

“It's very nice, Aunt Lucy,” I said.

“But, oh, dear, I'm afraid I've forgotten to include a doghouse for Sam.”

“Aunt Lucy,” I said, “Sam doesn't need anything but a piece of floor to lie down on.” (Actually, he had his box. Which I went down and got in a couple of days.)

At that moment Sam was up on top of my chintz-covered bed, sniffing a Princeton flag. He was always able to enjoy things more easily than I could.

“Well, that's fine,” said Aunt Lucy. “Just fine. I'll leave you two to make yourselves at home.” She was just as uptight as I was, and she beat a retreat to her own bedroom.

That was the worst—when Sam and I were alone in “
my
room.” It was even more lonely than “custody” down in Madame Sosostris's séance room.

I guess Sam wasn't as down as I was, though. He kept me company for a while and then padded off down the hall. (It's pretty clear, considering all the trouble that came later, that he was following the trail of perfume Aunt Lucy left in the air on the way to her bedroom.)

So there I was, all by myself, staring at a color TV set that I didn't want to turn on, with even Sam deserting me.

But I wasn't alone for long. Because just then Rose Jackson came in. Rose is one of those people who, when they come into a room—even an awful one like my bedroom—make everything feel more natural. More human, I mean.

“Hi,” she said. “I hear you're going to live with us.”

“I guess I am,” I admitted.

“Come on in the kitchen. Let's have a Coke and get acquainted,” said Rose.

Rose is Aunt Lucy's sleep-in maid, housekeeper, and cook. (Maurice, by the way, slept out. Which was going to make things easier.) Rose really is a singer, although she doesn't know yet whether she's a true dramatic soprano or a mezzo. She works for Aunt Lucy to pay for her music lessons, and part of the deal is that she can vocalize in her own bedroom as much as she likes. There's nothing wrong with being a maid, and if that's what you want, I'm all for it, but believe me, Rose Jackson is a girl who's
not
ever going to be satisfied with only washing dishes. And she's twenty-two. I found out all that while she found out all about me when we were having our Cokes in the kitchen. Rose was doing her favorite hobby as we talked, filling in a crossword puzzle.

About this time on that first afternoon, I was beginning to think that Sutton Place was a place where you could feel at home.

But the feeling didn't last long. Aunt Lucy came brisking into the kitchen, patted her leg to summon someone, and said in a very persnickety way, “Come, Sam. Come, Sam. Sam,
come
!” Then after Sam had plopped in, she looked at me with a smile that if it had been glass could easily have been broken and said in the same kind of voice, “I
love
having you here to live with me, Timmy—but there's one thing we have to have clear. Sam's
not
to follow me around! And he's not to come into my bedroom. All right?”

“All right, Aunt Lucy,” I said.

Rose said softly, “Come on, Sam—over here.” And Sam went to her hand. But he kept looking back at Aunt Lucy. Rose flicked me a glance that advised me not to start worrying—yet. Like me, she always knew right away when everything was
not
all right.

*   *   *

The trouble was, Sam just downright fell in love with Aunt Lucy. It was love at first sight and love at first whiff of her beautiful perfume. A lot of it was my fault. I left them alone together.

You see, I had this scheme. As long as I was going to have to live in my bedroom, I wanted to make it as friendly as I could. I asked Aunt Lucy if she'd care if I made a few changes in it. She said, Why, dear, of course not!—not knowing at all what I had in mind. So little by little I began to take things out of my bedroom and down to the antique shop. It gave me an excuse to see Madame Sosostris every day, too. Even better than the books.

By the end of a couple of weeks I'd gotten rid of the college banners, the cutesy cushions, and the worst of the pictures. They were a series of framed illustrations from a really rotten children's book—about this courageous little boy who overcame some dopey phony handicap—and they must have cost Aunt Lucy a fortune. Of course Madame Sosostris wouldn't sell junk like that in her shop, but she palmed them off on some of her less intelligent colleagues.

Instead of that junk, I'd smuggled up to Sutton Place my big Bavarian pipe with the bowl in the shape of a skull, my fake mummy's hand—you can love a fake, it just has to be real—and, best of all, my bone. One day Lorenzo and I had discovered this strange bone inside an Aztec urn. Well, it could have been anything. It could have been from a dinosaur or it could have been—I won't even hope what. But I wanted it for my own. And since there was no retail value in it, Madame Sosostris gave it to me. My favorite was still the Good-Luck Devil from Borneo, but he looked much more at home with my other things all there, too.

Oh, I also bought a couple of little bookcases from the shop next to ours. That day I had to take a taxi, to get them back. If I'd known what was going to happen, I'd have taken a taxi—and Sam—every day. But Lorenzo had trained me to save money—we never had much—so I'd walk over to Third Avenue and take the E train down to the Village. You can't take dogs on the subway, unless they're in a box or something. Or unless you're blind. Sam was much too big for me to carry in a box.

But that meant that all the time I was schlepping everything around, Sam was left up in Sutton Place. And he was bugging Aunt Lucy. I didn't really know how much till the day she blew up. Then Rose told me …

I guess that you can love somebody and still be a terrible nuisance to them …

Rose told me that that hassle in the kitchen on my first day was just the beginning. Of course, Rose has a great sense of humor, so she could see the funniness of it in spite of Aunt Lucy's explosion. The time she got the biggest kick, she said, was when Aunt Lucy was getting ready to go out to lunch with Mr. Watkins. She'd just gotten out of the shower, and was dressing and primping, with Rose helping her, telling her how pretty she looked.

“Then all of a sudden we heard this pitiful woof from the doorway,” said Rose, through her laughing. “And there was Sam, looking even more moony than usual.” You know that a dog who turns out to be half basset hound looks pretty soulful anyway. “Your aunt acted as if poor old Sam was a peeping Tom.”

A few of these embarrassing moments I saw myself, but I didn't put them all together. Like the time Aunt Lucy was teaching me about French cooking. She always had my place set at the opposite end of the table from hers, very formal and uncomfortable, and she was explaining the chocolate mousse we were having for dessert. I didn't want to tell her that I already knew what a mousse was and that Madame Sosostris could make an even better one than Rose. I know I have a tendency to come on like a smarty-pants kid, and Aunt Lucy did seem to be enjoying herself, explaining about how it was really just a fluffy chocolate pudding, when all of a sudden she let out a squeak and her eyes got that glass look.

I peered under the table, and there was Sam, who had just lain down with his head over Aunt Lucy's foot. I think it's nice when a dog loves you enough to lay his head across your foot, but I knew that Aunt Lucy didn't share my opinion, so I hauled Sam off to my bedroom. I was hoping she'd go on describing the chocolate mousse, but she'd tightened up by the time I got back. And she was sneezing, too … Honestly, I never did believe those sneezes.

I never saw the worst moments. The one Rose enjoyed most—but Aunt Lucy sure didn't—was when she'd left her bedroom door ajar and woken up one morning to find Sam's head asleep beside her on the pillow. She'd screamed, “Sam!”—and he'd said, “Woof,” and gone back to his box.

Then there was the incident of Mr. Watkins. Rose told me she happened to have some work in the hall, so she couldn't help but overhear them talking in the living room. About my “schooling” and whether I was “adjusting” or not. I think it was the very day that I was “adjusting” my bookcases up to the apartment. Well, I don't think it came to actual biting—I hope not anyway—but it seems that Sam, who had not adjusted to Mr. Watkins too well, chased him up on a chair, and it took all of Rose's persuasion and strength to drag Sam back into my bedroom.

Then came the big blowup. It happened on the great day … You never know in the morning what you'll find in the night.

*   *   *

I was sitting in the kitchen, having breakfast. Rose was keeping me company with a cup of coffee and doing the
New York Times
crossword puzzle, which she said meant just as much to her as her first cup of coffee. Maurice was there, too, fidgeting and waiting for Aunt Lucy.

Suddenly there came this terrific crashing from Aunt Lucy's bedroom. We all froze. Then we heard Aunt Lucy squeaking, “Oh! oh! oh!”—and we rushed to see what had happened.

Aunt Lucy was standing on the threshold to her bathroom—I guess she'd been in there doing a last little bit of primping—and staring at the catastrophe. The catastrophe was Sam, lying under the wreckage of her vanity table, covered with a gooey mixture of perfume and face powder. He'd obviously been up on his hind legs, enjoying a sniff, and pulled the whole thing over on him. Half the bottles were broken, and all of them were leaking, and he was some smelly mess! (But despite it all, he was still grinning.)

I heard Rose murmur, “Oh, man, that dog has really done it now!” Then she pitched in and started to clean things up.

I was going to begin to apologize for Sam, when Aunt Lucy said, as loftily as a little woman could, “Timothy, I want that mongrel out of here.” I thought she meant, just out of her bedroom. “Lock him in your bathroom. Then come into the living room. It's time we had a talk.” She was being as formal and grownup as possible, but a fit of sneezing got hold of her and sort of undid the act. I still think it was only all the perfume in the air.

I stowed Sam in the bathtub and told him to stay there—by now he had his tail between his legs—and went in to face the music. Aunt Lucy was calmer and talked very reasonably. Which made me even more worried. “Timmy,” she said, “I'm afraid that you'll have to get rid of Sam.”

“Get rid of—”

“Yes, dear.” She forced out a laugh. “I'm sorry, the simple truth is that I'm allergic to him.”

“Aunt Lucy, that's just the—”

“Whatever it is, dear,” she interrupted, “I've made up my mind.” It didn't help for me to notice that Maurice was out in the hall eavesdropping. I wouldn't have minded if it had been Rose I was being put down in front of. “Sam's a part of your life that's behind you,” Aunt Lucy went on. “I haven't wanted to say anything, because I've wanted you to—” Even Aunt Lucy couldn't stomach that word “adjust.” “I've wanted you to feel at home here, but those things you've brought into your bedroom, bones and that awful little idol—oh, yes, I admit I've been snooping—I think they're downright morbid. I don't mind your changing the things that I picked out, but—”

“I didn't know you picked everything out, Aunt Lucy. If I had, I'd have left it the way it was.”

“That's very sweet, Timmy, but—”

But—I'm not going to go over the whole of the talk we had. It still squeezes my stomach to think about it. What it came down to was, I had to get rid of Sam
that day!
Aunt Lucy tried to sweeten the sour by saying I could pick out a nice new poodle puppy if I wanted another dog. I tried to imagine Sam with his tail and paws cut into poodle puff balls, but it wasn't possible—much less funny. There was also some stuff about my not having made any friends in Sutton Place. Which I had—Rose—but I shut up and let her talk.