The Willoughbys (12 page)

Nanny nodded. "Crème caramel," she told him, "if it hasn't burned to a crisp."

"After dessert," he went on, "we will make a fire in the fireplace and we will
burn
The Stack, little by little."

"Shall we open everything first?" asked Tim. "It would take forever."

"No need," Commander Melanoff said. "It is simply repetitions of terrible news. I stopped opening them after the first year and a half. We will burn them unopened."

They began to move toward the dining room, where the table was set for dinner. Nanny picked up Baby Ruth and carried her to her mahogany high-chair.

"He's right," Jane said sweetly from her seat as she unfolded her linen napkin and laid it tidily on the lap of her ruffled frock. "I opened a lot of them. They were very boring."

"Did you, dear?" Nanny placed the platter of chicken in front of Commander Melanoff. "Were you practicing your reading, like a good girl?"

Jane nodded. "Yes. But it was just 'when are you coming to get us, when are you coming to get us' over and over."

"Who was supposed to come get who?"Tim asked. He began to pass the plates, each with its serving of chicken, around.

"
Whom,
dear," Nanny reminded him.

Commander Melanoff drizzled some of the lemon-and-caper sauce on his chicken. He tasted a bit and closed his eyes in delight. "Yummy, Nanny," he said. "As always."

"Who was supposed to come get whom, Jane?" Tim asked again, grammatically correct this time.

Jane shrugged. "I don't know. She never said. And then the next year, she was angry. The letters kept saying, 'I never liked you anyway, you old goat. You never picked up your dirty socks.'"

"
Old goat
is not a very pleasant phrase," Nanny told her. "Let's never use it ourselves."

"Would you pass me some of that broccoli, A?" Commander Melanoff said politely. "Help yourself first"

"She said worse than 'old goat,'" Jane pointed out.

"Who did, dear?" the commander asked. "Have you tried the broccoli? There's a smidgen of grated cheese on it, I think."

"I don't know who. She didn't ever say her name." Jane tasted the broccoli. "But that last letter, the one that came last month, the one you put on the very tippy-top of the stack? That one had a bad word in it."

Commander Melanoff sighed. "Those rescuers. It must have become so frustrating for them over the years. I should have told them to stop digging long ago. I'm sorry they used a bad word, Jane. Let's never think about it again."

"It wasn't a
they," Jane
told him. "It was a
she.
May I say the bad word?"

"Just once, and very softly." Nanny gave her permission.

A hush fell over the table as everyone waited for Jane, sweet Jane, to say a bad word. Jane scrunched up her face, remembering the letter exactly. Then she recited softly what she had read:

"'You old fart, your son is just like you; he never picks up after himself. My new husband and I have sent him off to make his own way in the world. Good riddance to you both.'"

Jane glanced at Nanny. "
Riddance
is a very bad word and I won't ever say it again."

But no one heard Jane. They heard only the crashing sound of Commander Melanoff's chair tipping over as he leaped to his feet, dashed to the hall, and began pawing through the stack of mail. They could hear him sobbing loudly and repeating the words "My son! My son!"

Next, still sitting there stunned by the turn of events, they heard the shrill ring of the doorbell. Nanny rose abruptly and ran forward, and all of the children followed except Baby Ruth, who, confined to her highchair, banged her spoon happily and chortled when the two cats jumped onto the table and began eating the chicken.

"Tell whoever it is to go away," sobbed Commander Melanoff. He was kneeling on the floor surrounded by envelopes, which he was tearing open one by one as he wept. "I can't face anyone now."

Nanny opened the door politely, prepared to follow his instructions. But she stepped back, startled, at the sight of a young boy, shivering in the chilly evening. His hair was uncut, shaggy, and down to his shoulders. His face was dirty. He was thin and unkempt, wearing an odd pair of short leather pants that were ragged and grease stained. His exposed knees were scraped and bruised, and his woolen socks were torn and sagging.

"It's Peter the goat-herd," murmured Tim in astonishment, "right out of
Heidi!
We can teach him to read and write, and then we'll all smile and hug and say religious things!"

"Shhh," Nanny scolded him. She stood aside and allowed the bedraggled boy to enter. He looked around at each of them in turn with no sign of recognition. But his face changed when he caught sight of the heavy man in the tweed jacket who was kneeling and weeping on the hall floor. His eyes lit up.

"Papa!" he said. "I've come home!"

Epilogue

Oh, what is there to say at the happy conclusion of an old-fashioned story?

There are details to be filled in and explained, of course, and reference made to future events.

How did Commander Melanoff's young son make his way halfway around the world, with only a silly feathered hat full of Swiss francs and no passport or other official documents? Well, he was an old-fashioned, enterprising lad. In Rotterdam, one of the major seaports of Europe, he stowed away on a vessel heading across the Atlantic with its cargo. He was discovered, of course, and put to work as a cabin boy: badly treated, overworked, never paid, and his clean underwear was stolen by brigands in the Azores. But he made it to his destination and was the better for it, having overcome hardships so successfully. He would go on eventually to become the president of his father's company and to maintain its reputation for the finest of confectionaries.

Sad to say, the candy bar that the commander had worked so hard on never became a success. Perhaps the fault lay in its name. He had often said—thinking of Lickety Twist, such a triumph!—that the name was everything. But he had named the candy bar Little Ruthie and it simply never caught on.

He didn't care, really. His fortune was already vast, and when his son was restored to him—and when he married Nanny (it should come as no surprise that that is what he did)—he felt fulfilled in every way.

Names, though, did remain a bit of a problem. In the happy confusion on the evening of Commander Melanoff's son's reappearance, one of the twins asked the disheveled boy, "What's your name?"

And the boy replied, "Barnaby."

The twins looked at each other. "C?" one suggested.

"See what?" asked the new Barnaby.

"See my son!" Commander Melanoff exclaimed, still beside himself with joy. He cupped the boy's dirty face in his hands, kissed each cheek, and beamed down at him.

"No," the twins explained. "We meant that we're also Barnabys."

"I'm Barnaby A," said one.

"And I'm Barnaby B. So he has to be C."

"Nonsense! No son of mine is going to be C! Do you two have middle names? We'll rename you with your middle names."

The twins sighed and shuffled their feet in embarrassment. Tim stepped forward to explain. "I'm Timothy Anthony Malachy Willoughby," he pointed out, "because our parents, who were—excuse me, Nanny—
dolts,
thought it was important to have as many syllables as possible. That is, if one was a boy." He glanced sympathetically at his sister, Jane.

"And so the twins are—?"

"Well, the night the twins were born, they had just been to an Italian restaurant. So they are—" He looked at his brothers. "Do you want to say it?" he asked them. The twins nodded.

"I'm Barnaby Linguini Rotini Willoughby," one said with a sigh.

"And I'm Barnaby Ravioli Fusilli Willoughby," his brother, blushing, explained.

"Oh my goodness," Commander Melanoff said. "I don't quite know what to do about that. But I am not fond of A, B, and C. I fear it will hinder you eventually in the business world.

"Any suggestions?" He looked around, seeking help.

"Why don't we change their names?" Tim said.

"Yes! I'd so like to be Bill!" Barnaby A said.

"And could I be Joe?" his twin asked.

And so it was done. They went before a judge, were adopted along with their sister and brother, and became Bill and Joe, which they remained their entire lives, very happily. After the children all became official Melanoffs, the commander stopped wondering where he had heard the name Willoughby before. (Had he not burned it along with all the Swiss correspondence, he might have reread the note that had once been attached to Baby Ruth, noticed the penciled instruction—" If there is any reward to be had for this beastly baby, it
must
go to the Willoughbys"—and it would have answered the question. But it might have raised new questions, and so it is fortuitous that the note—and the mystery—disappeared.)

The third Barnaby retained his name but was always known as Junior. (Commander Melanoff's name, it seemed, was
also
Barnaby.) He later invented something called Junior Mints, which might have been quite successful, had someone else, as it turned out, not already invented them. Nothing ever surpassed Lickety Twist.

Baby Ruth, when she became an adult, made a search for her biological mother and found that the woman's life had taken a turn for the better and she was now living quite comfortably in Champaign, Illinois. Ruth had the wicker basket gold-plated, as a souvenir, and gave it to her for Christmas.

She married, surprisingly, her stepbrother Tim, who, as predicted, became an attorney. The brass plate on his office door at the candy factory said:
TIMOTHY ANTHONY MALACHY WILLOUGHBY MELANOFF, ESQUIRE, OF COUNSEL
. The job allowed him to be bossy and belittling, but he adored his wife and was never ruthless again.

The twins, Bill and Joe, never married. Today they operate a chain of clothing stores called Big Sweaters, which offers two-for-one prices to parents of twins.

Jane grew up and became a professor of feminist literature. Eventually she married a man named Smith and had triplet daughters, whom she named Lavender, Arpeggio, and Noxzema.

The postmaster and his wife, in Switzerland, ran the little post office efficiently for many, many years. They never had children, and just as well, because they didn't care for the mess that children made. Sometimes Commander Melanoff, with his second wife, Nanny, and their six children when they were still young, visited Switzerland on vacations: hiking in the summer, skiing in the winter. They always cordially stopped in the village post office to say hello and have a cup of tea.

During such visits, the four former Willoughbys, who had no connection, after all, to the postmaster and his wife, always excused themselves politely and took a few moments to walk together up the serene little path nearby. There, at the foot of the mountain, they stood solemnly, passing binoculars back and forth and gazing at the treacherous peak that had orphaned the four of them. Together they saluted the distant figures of their parents, who had frozen into place, happy to have achieved such heights, with gleaming smiles on their faces forever.

It was not a sad occasion, really. Just something the Willoughbys did and always followed with cocoa.

THE END

Glossary

ACQUISITION
means something that you have just gotten or received. Libraries and museums actually have acquisition departments, which obtain new things for their collections. If your dad is a stockbroker or a lawyer, ask him what "mergers and acquisitions" means. Fifty points if you understand his answer.

AFFABLE
means good-natured and friendly. There are whole groups of people who are known for being affable. Cheerleaders, for example. Or Mormon missionaries.

ALABASTER
is actually a kind of mineral used for sculptures. But it can also be an adjective meaning white like that mineral. See if you can remember where the word
alabaster
appears in "America the Beautiful." Then you can be a
Jeopardy!
contestant, as this author once was.

AUSPICIOUS
means that there are a lot of good omens indicating that something is going to turn out well. If you happen to see a large number of people wearing scarlet footwear in October, it is auspicious. It means the Red Sox are going to win the World Series. Yes!

BEASTLY
means thoroughly unpleasant and has nothing to do with beasts, really, unless you are describing a warthog or a hyena, both of which are beastly as well as being beasts.

BILIOUS
has several meanings, and one pretty disgusting one is "about to vomit." Another is "extremely unpleasant to look at," and that is what the Willoughby twins meant when they described their sweater as bilious.

CONFECTIONARY
has to do with candies. You can also spell it with an
e: confectionery
(remember that, if you are ever on
Wheel of Fortune
). A confectioner is a guy who makes or sells candy. Willy Wonka was a confectioner.