The Orphan and the Mouse Read online

  “Do we?” Andrew was surprised.

  Mary sat back on her haunches. “I know Caro’s merely human, but I feel the need to help her. I’m not sure why. Because my pups are gone? Because I can’t do anything for them anymore?”

  Andrew spoke gently. “But humans despise us, Mary. If we mice start helping them, where will it lead? Will we soon be helping predators?”

  Mary didn’t answer right away, and Andrew thought she had seen reason. Then she asked, “Have you ever seen the blue lady?”

  Oh dear, thought Andrew. Perhaps the stress has caused mental unbalance. Better to humor her.

  “O’Brien’s picture?” he answered carefully. “Yes, there is a copy in the chief director’s collection.”

  Mary turned, then looked back over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”

  The main body of Andrew’s collection was housed in an annex of his nest that could only be reached through a length of abandoned sewer pipe. Like the boss’s office it was on the shelter’s ground floor. By now, the two mice had been awake many hours past their bedtime, but Mary kept up a brisk place, and soon they were descending through the pipe.

  Both Mary and Andrew had viewed the chief director’s collection before. Still, when they emerged from the pipe’s dark confines into the grand expanse, they were dazzled anew by the sight. So many pictures! So much color! All this beauty in one place was more than any mouse could absorb.

  There were many portraits among the pictures. Prized for its historic significance, O’Brien’s blue lady was displayed by itself on a clean sheet of corrugated cardboard.

  “She’s not bad-looking for a human,” said Andrew as he regarded her.

  “Does that writing spell out her name?” Mary used the tip of her tail to indicate the letters.

  “ ‘Louisa May Alcott,’ ” Andrew read. “I wonder who she was.”

  “That’s it!” Mary squeaked so loudly that Andrew had to step back and rub his ears. “Wonder is precisely the point. Do you see?”

  “Uh . . . no,” said Andrew.

  Mary sighed. “It’s hard to explain, but I will try. Here in our actual lives, we mice can only ever see so much. But pictures enlarge the view, reveal the possibility of worlds we never suspected. Even the pictures that aren’t beautiful make us curious, they make us wonder.

  “Are you with me so far?”

  Andrew scratched his ear. “I guess.”

  “And when Caro asked me about being a mouse,” Mary went on, “she did the same thing. She wondered.”

  “Ah,” said Andrew, still puzzled but trying gamely to penetrate the mysteries of this female’s mind. “So you’re saying, if I understand you correctly, that you like the human pup because she rescued you and because you think she looks at pictures.”

  “I like her because she looked at me,” said Mary, “and she tried to understand what being me is like.”

  Andrew couldn’t help it, he laughed. “Ha ha ha ha ha! All right, Mary Mouse, I think I’m beginning to follow you. You’re not actually crazy. You’re just in the grip of a big idea. I’ve been there myself, which is why I will help you. But what exactly is the plan?”

  Mary thumped her forepaws in frustration. “I don’t know! And I can’t possibly”—she yawned—“think about it now. I can barely keep my eyes open.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  After Carolyn had gone, Mrs. George closed the top drawer of her desk, leaned back in her chair, and looked out the window. On full display were summer’s charms, blue sky, cotton-ball clouds, a red-breasted robin on a telephone wire.

  But Mrs. George saw only the content of her soul, and it was cold and black.

  Pretty Helen Loviscky was the oldest of six children and the apple of her father’s eye. He was fun-loving and handsome . . . till the coal dust robbed him of his health. In pain and despair, he drank. One winter night, coming home after a spree, he slid on a patch of ice, fell and hit his head. He never woke up.

  Helen was devastated, but family demands left her no time to indulge in grief. She quit school to take care of her siblings and the house while her mother went out to work, cleaning for rich people and bringing home stories about their beautiful possessions and their beautiful lives, kindling envy in the heart of an eldest daughter who wore ragged clothes and cried herself to sleep from exhaustion.

  In a way, Carolyn McKay had reminded Mrs. George of herself. Both were bereft after the loss of a parent, both determined to make the world right again through sheer effort of will. In their minds, any mistake was disastrous—caused the cosmos to spin out of control. Even now, this anxious and single-minded determination was Mrs. George’s emotional reality. Because of it, she understood Carolyn . . . and how to manipulate her.

  But now obedient, reliable, responsible Carolyn was about to betray her. The child did not realize it herself yet, but it was true. Assaulted by the child’s own powers of reason and observation, the myth of the good Mrs. George would melt away, and when it did, Carolyn would communicate her suspicions to others, perhaps even to Frank Kittaning.

  Mrs. George didn’t like the deed she was contemplating. It was distasteful and, worse yet, a risk. But it was safer than allowing Carolyn to remain at Cherry Street. Mrs. George reminded herself that she hadn’t achieved her place in the world by succumbing to sentiment. She had always done what she needed to do to advance and protect her own interests, and she would do so now.

  Mrs. George looked away from the window and toward her desk. Then she picked up the telephone and dialed 0.

  “Operator?” she said shortly. “I want to place a long-distance call.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Rather than sleeping in her own nest every day, Mary had been trying out new ones to see how they suited her, With the colony gone, there were plenty to choose from. That day’s sleeping quarters once had been occupied by a first-generation daughter of Randolph’s. Mary had been attracted by the fluffy bedding. On awakening, she noticed there was something else to appreciate: a picture of a full-grown human female wearing a red scarf around the fur on her head. The female’s paw was upraised to show off the muscles of her foreleg; she looked directly at the viewer; her expression was resolute.

  There were words on the picture, and after Mary had groomed herself, she went to wake Andrew, then brought him back to read the words aloud.

  “It says, ‘We can do it,’ ” Andrew explained, “which is an excellent motto to inspire us. Now, shall we try the dining room for breakfast? I believe they had fresh bread at dinner.”

  On their way, the two mice stopped off at the main larder and selected dry comestibles to round out their foraging. Mary took a shriveled kernel of corn. Andrew gnawed the head off a petrified ant. Once they had arrived in the dining room wall, Mary said, “It’s my turn.”

  “But I don’t mind,” said Andrew.

  “Nor do I,” said Mary, and before he could argue further, she squeezed through the portal. From elsewhere in the home came the sounds of human activity, but by this time of the evening, the dining room was deserted. Knowing where Jimmy sat, Mary checked first beneath his chair and was rewarded with an ample supply of bread crumbs, the best of them coated in margarine.

  When she returned, Andrew made a fuss over her skills.

  “With only the two of us here, it’s so easy a pup could do it,” said Mary. “But let us get to work on a plan. How do we communicate what we know to Caro?”

  “Can she read?” Andrew asked.

  “Of course,” said Mary loyally. “She’s exceptionally bright.”

  “Then I have an idea,” said Andrew, and it turned out to be so simple, Mary wondered why she had not thought of it herself. Given the human pups’ schedule, however, they would have to wait till morning to carry it out.

  Meanwhile, it was time for their nightly spy mission on the third floor.

  Chapter Forty

  The boss’s mate had yet to arrive when Andrew and Mary posted themselves beneath the overhang of t
he kitchen cupboards. The boss herself was seated with a book in her lap, but she was not reading. Rather, she picked the book up, laid it down again, and mumbled, “Of all nights for him to be late.”

  Finally, Mary felt the quaking of the floorboards that meant the judge was on the stairs. The predator heard it, too, and looked up from his cushion on the sofa. Seconds later came the knock at the door, and the boss rose from her chair to answer it.

  “Good evening, Judge,” she said.

  The boss’s mate stepped forward and put his arms around her. The mice had observed that she often resisted affectionate gestures, but on this night she did not.

  “Do sit down and I’ll pour the sherry,” she said. “I have a lot to tell you. I’m afraid we may have a problem.”

  The boss took two glasses and poured a generous amount from the decanter into each. Meanwhile, the judge went through the rigmarole of lighting his cigar, in the process filling the room with a cloud of smoke. Only with the greatest self-control did Mary keep herself from coughing.

  At last the two humans were settled. “What happened?” the judge asked.

  “Carolyn suspects there may be something irregular about the adoption this week,” the boss replied.

  “But how . . . what . . . did . . . ?” Blink-blink-blink.

  The boss waited for her mate to finish stammering, then said, “I underestimated her,” and went on to describe her conversation with Caro that morning in her office.

  “She is bright,” the judge said when the boss was finished.

  “Bright enough to make trouble—especially considering Frank Kittaning’s interest in her.”

  “Do you think she would betray you?” the judge asked.

  “The risk is there . . . for me, and for you. So, reluctantly, I made a telephone call.”

  It was silent for a long moment. Finally, the judge said, “But aren’t you fond of the child?”

  There was another silence, then a sigh, and finally the boss said, “I can’t afford to be fond of her. I’ve told you about my father, how he abandoned us?”

  “I thought he was killed. An accident.”

  “It amounted to the same thing,” said the boss. “He was a drunk. I didn’t know it at the time, but his death was the making of me. I learned how to survive because I had to.”

  “We were speaking of Carolyn,” said the judge.

  “We were,” said the boss. “She’ll learn the same hard lesson that I did. You can’t count on anyone.” When the judge coughed and cleared his throat, she added, “Present company excepted.”

  “I wonder if you mean that, Helen,” said the judge.

  “Of course, I do, dear,” said the boss. “We need each other.”

  The judge took a sip from his glass and puffed on his cigar. “It’s an awful thing to do to a child.”

  “We always knew it might be necessary,” the boss said. “That’s why we forged the necessary, uh . . . relationships.”

  “I suppose you’re right. You always are,” he said. “Now tell me what happened with the infant.”

  “The baby nurse was here at dawn. The infant was gone before the children rose. I had a telephone call from Miss Grahame’s assistant this afternoon. The boy had arrived, and mother and child were getting acquainted.”

  “I don’t suppose she’ll be much of a mother,” the judge mused.

  The boss shrugged. “Many children have bad mothers. This one at least will have the comforts money can buy.”

  The judge nodded. “Speaking of money?”

  The boss smiled thinly—“I was waiting for you to bring that up”—then rose, walked to her writing desk, opened a drawer, and removed two envelopes, one sealed and one unused. With a letter opener, she slit the top of the sealed envelope, removed from it five green pieces of paper, and placed them in the second envelope. Then she reclosed the first one with paper clips, sealed the second one, and tossed it toward her mate.

  “You’ll see we made out rather well,” she said.

  Primly, the judge said, “Thank you,” and tucked the envelope into an inner pocket of his jacket. “When will Mr. Puttley’s, uh . . . representative be here?”

  “Day after tomorrow—Saturday,” said the boss. “I will tell Carolyn tomorrow.”

  “Tell her?” The judge looked up.

  “That she’s to be adopted. She will be surprised, certainly—surprised and overjoyed.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  After the judge departed, the two mice watched Mrs. George place the paper-clipped envelope in her hiding place in the cold white box. Then she retired to her bedroom, and the mice descended to the ground floor, arriving at last at a pleasantly cramped and sawdust-strewn spot in the wall behind the kitchen.

  Agitated, Mary began to pace. “Caro is being sent away! I don’t understand where it is she’s going, but it is someplace terrible. That I know.”

  The smell of the previous day’s cooking combined with rotten garbage made Andrew’s mouth water. He wanted lunch, but could see he’d get none until he and Mary had discussed the latest intelligence. Resigned to the delay, he focused his mind on Caro.

  “If we’re going to help her,” he said, “we must remain calm and analyze the situation. It’s money in the envelopes; I know about money from watching transactions at the newsstand. The boss traded the newborn—sold him. And her mate helped her in some way related to the papers in the cold white box. His payment was in that envelope she gave him.”

  Mary agreed and shook her whiskers. “Stealing a pup from its mother for trade! Such wickedness!”

  “It’s unnatural,” said Andrew, “and it must be deemed unnatural by humans as well. That’s why they’re afraid of getting caught. So, to keep Caro from telling what she knows about the infant, they’re sending her away.”

  “But Caro is not a threat,” Mary said. “She still believes the boss is good. That’s the heartbreaking part. We have to warn her that the boss is evil. We have to warn her to resist!”

  “All right,” said Andrew, trying hard to ignore the empty feeling in his stomach. “But how?”

  Mary thought for a moment, then said, “It would seem that the money and papers in the hiding place reveal the truth about the newborn pup. What if Caro were to find them?”

  Andrew clapped his paws. “Excellent! You’ve solved the problem. Now can we eat?”

  Mary ignored his outburst. “The question,” she went on, “is how to tell her where to look. Perhaps if she were to find a key to the boss’s apartment? There is one in the ivory-inlaid box.”

  “Of course,” said Andrew. Mice don’t use keys themselves, but like all the colony’s art thieves he was thoroughly acquainted with the geography of the the desktop plateau. “And . . . ?” he said encouragingly.

  “And—what if Caro were to find that key on her pillow at the same time she found our other, uh . . . gift?” Mary said.

  “Would she recognize the key?” Andrew asked.

  “I think so,” said Mary. “The boss’s door is the only interior one with a lock. Its key is made of gray metal, and it’s a different shape from those for the exterior.”

  Andrew was daydreaming. The children had eaten spaghetti for dinner. With luck, there would be bits of salty, powdery Parmesan cheese to forage. Andrew could almost taste it. Even as his hunger raged, he asked another question. “Will she know what to do with it?”

  “That’s the problem.” Mary sighed. “I don’t suppose you learned to write when you learned to read? The hero Stuart Little could write.”

  “The hero had the advantage of humans to teach him,” Andrew said.

  “In other words, you did not learn to write,” said Mary.

  “No,” Andrew admitted.

  “Not that reading’s a small accomplishment,” Mary added.

  “Thank you,” Andrew said.

  “But in that case,” Mary went on, “we will have to devise some other means of directing Caro to the boss’s hiding place. Doing this will requ
ire thought. What do you say if first we eat our lunch?”

  “Ha ha ha ha ha!” said Andrew. “Excellent idea!”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  It was a car crash that orphaned Jimmy Levine. He was four years old and riding in the backseat when his dad, lighting a cigarette, drove the family’s Ford sedan into a truck that had stopped on the highway to allow a groundhog to cross.

  Jimmy’s parents went through the windshield. This was in 1943, a time before safety glass, seat belts, or airbags. The Levines’ only son wasn’t in a child seat; those didn’t exist yet, either. But Jimmy was lucky and only hit his head. The blow was enough to knock him out—which turned out to be lucky, too, because he never saw the sad sight of his parents’ remains, in fact didn’t remember the accident at all, only waking up in the hospital, where the nurses gave him ice cream.

  With his parents gone, Jimmy’s closest relatives were clear out in California. None had the wherewithal or (in truth) the desire to take in a little kid they’d never met. Jimmy would have to go to an orphanage, but here he got lucky one more time. The child welfare officer took a shine to him and got him placed at Cherry Street, the best orphanage in the region. Even so, the boy’s first few months were miserable as, day by day, reality sank in: His parents weren’t coming back. This strange building full of people he didn’t know was now his home.

  Then something shifted in his mind and, young as he was, Jimmy came to a profound realization. He had survived the worst thing that could happen to a kid; he could survive anything.

  This realization bred confidence, the kind that didn’t care what other people thought. So it was that he could be best friends with someone, Caro, who was not only a girl but a goody-two-shoes besides.

  Not that being Caro’s friend was easy.

  Take their recent discussion about reincarnation. Jimmy had read about it in a Superman comic. He grasped the idea right away and decided he wanted to live his next life as a cat like Gallico. He would gladly put up with some old lady petting him in exchange for square meals, a soft sofa cushion for napping, and—most important—no chores.