Not For Sale Page 2
“Some buyers are coming to look at the house. Could you please clean Einstein’s aquarium?”
“Why doesn’t Rudy have to do it?”
“You know how Rudy feels about cold water.”
I remember Rudy up to his waist in various lakes and swimming pools, bawling his eyes out.
“I don’t like cold water either.”
“You like it better than Rudy does.” Mom hurls the scrubber at me. “I’ll pay you a dollar.”
“Two dollars,” I say.
“A dollar fifty.”
“Dollar seventy-five.”
“Dollar sixty-two.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll do it.”
It’s actually pretty easy to clean Einstein’s aquarium. The difficult part is not bumping Einstein with the scrubber. He’s active today, wriggling back and forth. It’s like he’s asking me question after question. When are we moving? Where are we going? You’re not going to forget to pack my food, are you? Why are your pants all puckered?
“They’re here!” Mom calls out. “Hide!”
Rudy and I scramble up onto his bedroom-closet shelf. It’s a place we often hang out in. We’ve got two flashlights, a deck of cards and even some leftover tortilla chips stashed away. The tortilla chips taste a little like wet dust, but we eat them anyway. We play War, then make up a game called Peace. It’s not the most exciting game. When the bedroom door cracks open, we stop playing and sit very still. I gesture to Rudy to hold his breath.
Clip clip clippity. Someone wearing high heels enters the room. “This would be a marvelous room for my office,” she says.
A man answers, “Hmmm.”
“We’d have to change the ceiling light though.”
“Tacky,” the man mutters.
“You can say that again.”
“Tacky.”
Clip clip clippity. Clump clump clump. The two walk across the bedroom floor. “We’d give these windows a wash too,” the woman says.
“Filthy,” the man says.
“You can say that again.”
“Filthy.”
At this point, Rudy decides it’s a great time to scratch his head. As he lifts his hand in the dark, his elbow bashes my lip. My mouth goes numb and fattens like a marshmallow swelling over a fire. As I wince from the pain, the closet shelf creaks beneath me.
“Did you hear that?” the man asks.
“Hear what?”
“In the closet. Rats.”
“You’re always hearing things, Arnold.”
Rats. Good idea. I draw my fingernails against the shelf. Scritch scratch scritch.
“What about that?” the man squeaks.
“What about what?”
I draw my nails along the shelf again, this time more loudly. SCRITCH SCRATCH SCRITCH.
“Now that I heard,” the woman says.
“There’s rats in this house, Alissa. Hundreds, I bet! Giant rats with long teeth and disgusting pink tails.”
“What’s that?” the woman asks. She has clearly seen something she doesn’t like.
“It’s…a potato! It looks like it has been gnawed on by the rats!”
“We’ve got to get out of here, Arnold. Immediately. Quick, out that dirty window.”
Rudy and I listen as the two clamber through Rudy’s bedroom window and crash into the hydrangea bush below.
Rudy and I unfold ourselves from the closet, laughing so hard we can barely catch our breath. We watch the couple get into their car and start the engine. Martian Planet runs to the front door and starts chasing them down the road. “Hey! Where are you going?” She dives into an electric car and tears off in hot pursuit.
As soon as she’s out of sight, a big dirty F-350 pickup truck drives up. Dad!
I always forget how enormous my father is. He makes Popeye look puny. He’s wearing his plaid shirt with the sleeves torn off. He still has his work boots on, but within two hours he’ll be wearing his pink fluffy slippers. Mom got them for him as a joke, but he loves them.
“Hey!” Dad opens his arms wide, and I swear the lawn shrinks.
“Dad! Your lip.” Rudy touches Dad’s mouth.
Dad has a fat lip just like I do!
“Did a tree fall on you?” I ask.
“No, nothing like that,” Dad says, shaking his head. “You won’t believe it. We were having a surprise birthday party for one of the guys in camp. Three of us were hiding in the closet. Then one of the guys decides to scratch his head and I get an elbow in the mouth!”
“I believe that,” I say.
“What happened to your lip?” Dad asks.
“A tree fell on me.”
Dad laughs. “Ice cream?”
“Yeah!”
As we always do when Dad gets home, we walk down to the Scoop. Rudy rides on Dad’s left shoulder and I ride on Dad’s right. Sure, Mom says we get it from our great-grandmother. But I’ll bet that riding on Dad’s shoulders is the real reason Rudy and I like to be up high.
Chapter Seven
“Goodnight!” I yell, and turn off my light.
The alarm clock under my pillow digs into the back of my head. The pillow will muffle the bell when it rings at 2:00 AM. And Dad’s snores will muffle my footsteps.
I fall asleep to the clock’s faint tick-tick-tick through the feathers. I have a nightmare about a woman in high heels prying the walls off our house. It’s a relief when the alarm goes off and wakes me. I shuffle into my slippers and quietly open my bedroom door. Dad’s snores rumble through the house. It’s like he’s got logging machinery in his throat.
I unlock the front door and step onto the porch. This is too easy! I head straight for Martian Planet’s toothy face. I give the sign a yank. It slides out of the ground, heavier than I imagined. I lug it to the back of the house and hide it under the back stairs. Piece of cake!
Then something moves in the dark. A pair of eyes gleam in the night. A raccoon? Or something scarier? As I run, my ankle brushes against the beast’s fur. I’m pretty sure it swats at me with its long claws as I fly into the house. I’m lucky to be alive!
I curl up under the covers with my heart pounding. But I’m happy. After all, our house is officially not for sale!
* * *
I wake up to the whistle of the kettle, and I lie in bed listening to Mom and Dad murmuring in the kitchen. Every so often, they burst into laughter.
Eventually, Rudy’s door creaks open and I hear him pad into the kitchen, yawning.
“Here’s my big boy!” Dad says. “Let’s see how much you’ve grown.”
The Taller Cupboard door whines on its hinges. The inside of the door is covered in pencil marks. Rudy, 3 years old. Cyrus, 7.
“Are you on your tiptoes?” Dad asks.
“Stop trying to squish me!”
I know Dad is pushing on Rudy’s head, accusing him of cheating. He always does that. And I know Mom is watching from the kitchen couch, drinking coffee from her green mug with the broken handle. I’ll go down any minute and get measured too. But for now, I’m cozy, listening to the music of my family’s voices.
“You’ve grown an inch in two months! What has your mom been feeding you?”
“Kumquats and quinoa.”
Then it happens. Mom notices. “The For Sale sign is gone!”
I hear Rudy run to the window. “Does that mean we’ve sold the house?” he asks.
I put on my slippers and try to saunter casually into the kitchen.
“What kind of person goes around stealing For Sale signs?” Mom asks.
“A For Sale-sign stealer?” I suggest.
Mom gets on the phone. “Marsha? Some thief stole our sign. Yes, I need another one.”
Rudy looks freaked out. “We had a thief? In our yard? While we were sleeping?”
“Breathe, Rudy,” Dad says.
“Yeah, Rudy.” I wink at him. “Looks like some rat came and took our For Sale sign.”
I put my finger to my lips when Mom and Dad aren’t looking. Rud
y’s eyes go wide.
Chapter Eight
“Rudy” finds me in the change room before gymnastics. He pulls out a fancy, old-fashioned-looking piece of paper from his backpack.
“How did you know my full name wasn’t Rudy James Walker?” he asks me.
I hold the birth certificate to the light, make a big deal of inspecting it. Sure enough, the boy isn’t Rudy James Walker. He’s Rudyard James Walker.
“Wow. You were born in Kamsack, Saskatchewan?”
“I don’t know. I was born in a hospital.”
“In 1946?”
Rudy shrugs. “Maybe?”
“I don’t think this is your birth certificate. Could it be your dad’s?”
“It’s probably Grandpa’s. He lives with us.”
“Don’t you know your grandfather’s name?”
“Yeah. It’s Grandpa.”
“Right.”
“My name is Rudy. I swear!”
“Okay,” I say. “I believe you.”
I don’t, really. But the world sure doesn’t need another anxious Rudy.
* * *
When I get home from gymnastics, there’s a new sign in the yard. Good as new. When no one’s looking, I give it a push. It’s loose enough.
At bedtime, I set the alarm clock. At two in the morning, I tiptoe out of the house and pull the second sign out of the ground. I tuck it under the back stairs with the first one. Then I run as fast as I can back into the house, avoiding sharp-toothed raccoons, hungry coyotes and a blood-thirsty lynx. I fall asleep again to the sound of my thudding heart.
“The rat hit again,” Rudy tells Mom in the morning. He winks at me.
Mom slams her green mug down. Coffee splashes everywhere. Mom gets on the phone. “We need ten this time,” she tells Martian Planet. “You heard me. Ten.”
Martian Planet’s at the house in no time with a forest of For Sale signs. Mom and Dad hammer each one deep into the ground with sledgehammers.
When they’re done, Dad gives each sign a little tug. “Nice and tight,” he says.
It’s raining when I sneak out after midnight. It takes forever to pull all of the signs out of the lawn. They’re slippery. I stack them under the back stairs while black bears and wolverines sniff at my ankles. Finally, I climb back into bed, soaking and muddy, my hands raw with slivers.
“Some practical joker,” Mom is muttering when I wake up. “Maybe that group Anonymous that hacks into websites.”
“I don’t think so,” Dad says. He raises his voice. “I think it’s closer to home. Maybe these muddy size-5 slipper prints in the hallway have something to do with it. And look, they lead right to this bedroom door.”
Uh-oh.
“CYRUS!!!!!!!!”
I leap out of bed, getting tangled in my sheets. I fall onto my Battle of Helm’s Deep LEGO set and whimper as its thirteen hundred pieces scatter.
I stumble into the hallway. “Y-y-y-yes?”
“Really, Cyrus?” Mom says.
Dad hands me the sledgehammer. “Put them back.”
“Why did you do it?” Mom asks.
My heart lurches. “Isn’t it obvious? I don’t want to move! I don’t want to be—nowhere!”
I run back into my room. I burrow under my covers. My stomach hurts, and I can’t catch my breath. I feel angry and ashamed, but mostly I feel frightened.
Mom comes into my room. “Sweetheart…”
I don’t answer.
“Cyrus, breathe. Take deep breaths. Like this.”
Mom starts drawing long, slow breaths, like she’s done a hundred times with Rudy.
It’s hard at first, but I take a few long swallows of air. “Is this what Rudy feels like?” I ask. My voice is trembling.
“Yep.”
“It’s awful.”
“It sure is.”
“Rudy is pretty brave to go through this all the time. A brave wolf.”
Mom smiles. “Are you ready to talk now?”
“I had a nightmare last night,” I say. “You, Dad and Rudy were in a new house and I was outside, crawling past like a baby. You were all happy and celebrating. You didn’t even see me.”
“Oh, Cyrus,” Mom says. She kneels beside my bed. “That’s just a nightmare. That would never really happen.”
“But when I was a baby, I had to find you and Dad. You didn’t even know that I existed. I don’t really have Great-Grandma’s trapeze genes—not like Rudy does.”
“We found you too, honey. You might not have Great-Grandma’s genes, but as soon as I laid eyes on you, I knew you were my son. And—don’t forget this—I knew that I was your mother.”
I start to cry. But it feels nice, like a warm rain.
“Listen. I’ll tell you what. On moving day, when we drive to our new house, I’ll hold your hand the whole way. I won’t let go, okay?”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Mom smiles and squeezes me. Everything starts to feel normal again. I can’t believe that I was so frightened.
Chapter Nine
“The new owners won’t miss this,” Mom says. She has removed the screws from the Taller Cupboard hinges and is hoisting the door onto her shoulder.
Everything is in the moving van, including Einstein, who splashes around in a mason jar. Dad is trying to talk Rudy down from the top of the moving van, where he’s been sobbing for an hour.
“Take your last breath of urban air,” Mom says, shoving the Taller Cupboard door into the back of the van. “Soon your nostrils will fill with the marvelous aroma of manure.”
We didn’t have to get a smaller house after all. Mom and Dad bought a farmhouse in the country, with a pond and a barn filled with real rats.
“Come on, Rudy,” I call up. “Let’s go see the cows!”
“No.”
“They’re pretty cows.”
“No!”
“Wait, I know!”
I run into our empty house. My steps echo as I enter my old bedroom. I feel around on the top shelf of my closet. Sure enough, I find our old stash. A pile of potatoes with holes drilled into them. I run back outside.
“Look, Rudy. We’ll take these with us.”
Rudy looks at the potatoes in my hands. He smiles.
“It’ll feel like home in no time,” I tell him.
Once we’re all in the van, Mom reaches for my hand and squeezes. I squeeze back.
At a red light a block from home, a car pulls up beside us. The driver is gesturing wildly at us. He rolls down his window. “There’s a cat!” he yells. “On the roof of your van!”
As Rudy helps Dad rescue Wigglechin, Mom and I stay in the van, holding hands. We hold hands all the way to the new house. Except once. Just to see if I’ll go hurtling into space, I let go for half a second. But I stay right where I am, hurtling down the highway with my family.
Sara Cassidy has worked as a youth-hostel manager, a newspaper reporter and a tree planter in five Canadian provinces. Her poetry, fiction and articles have been widely published, and she has won a Gold National Magazine Award. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her three children. For more information, visit www.saracassidywriter.com.
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