The Orphan and the Mouse (23 page)

Caro might be feeling terrible, but she wasn't so far gone that she didn't want ice cream. “I don't mind.”

Mrs. Burnett smiled. “All right, that's lovely. I'll tell him and perhaps we can set things up for tomorrow.”

The soda fountain was on Walnut Street. Caro didn't want to be greedy, so she ordered a single scoop of vanilla.

Frank Kittaning frowned. “Caro? You can do better than that. My own daughter's younger than you, and she likes strawberry ice cream sodas. Do you like strawberry ice cream sodas?”

“I think so,” Caro said. She had never had one. It sounded fancy.

“I'll join you, then,” said Mr. Kittaning, and he ordered two. When they came, they were in tall goblets with cherries on top.

With its gold chairs and white tables, the soda fountain was the loveliest place Caro had ever been, and in spite of
herself, she felt better. Mr. Kittaning was kind. The pink soda was delicious. It was a sunny day, and the other people in the soda shop were smiling and laughing. They didn't know she was wicked. They probably thought she was as good as anyone else.

“Caro, what did Mrs. George tell you about the day of the accident, the fire?” Mr. Kittaning asked after a while.

Caro's pleasure evaporated, and she wanted to say “Nothing” or “I don't want to talk about it.” Instead, some instinct—or possibly just the good influence of ice cream—told her to trust him.

“She told me I ran away,” Caro said, “and left my mama to die. She told me I was a coward, but it was okay because a lot of people are cowards. She told me if I was very good, then God might be able to forgive me. So I tried to be good. I really, really tried.”

On those last words her voice broke, and she closed her eyes to squeeze back the tears. What, she wondered, did those happy, laughing people think of her now? She was determined not to put on a show. So she took a few ragged breaths and wiped away the lone tear that had escaped. When she opened her eyes, she saw the expression on Mr. Kittaning's face and asked, “Are you okay?”

He nodded, took a breath, let it out, and spoke very softly. “Oh, Caro, no. That's not what happened at all. And of all the horrible lies Mrs. George told to so many people, I think maybe that was the worst.”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn't run away, Caro. You ran to help your mother, but it was already too late. The firemen had to pry you away. You were pounding on the door, trying to turn the knob—that's how you were burned. By then, you had inhaled so much smoke, you were near to passing out. Even so, when they picked you up to carry you to safety, you kicked and struggled, trying to go back.”

Caro didn't believe him. “How would you even know?”

“Because I was there, Caro. I wrote the report, interviewed the firemen. All along, I thought you knew the true story. That's why I never said anything. You were only six years old, but you were a fighter.”

Caro finished her soda, aware only that Mr. Kittaning was a nice man and the day was sunny and she had just learned she liked strawberry ice cream sodas. Her gloom had begun to dissipate, but as yet she didn't know it.

During the upheaval in human territory, Mary and Andrew lay low, keeping an eye on Caro, glad when at last they heard her laugh again.

“Do you think she knows what she owes us?” Andrew asked Mary over breakfast one evening in October.

“You're the one who tackled the shoe of that singularly nasty human, slipped beneath his trouser cuff, and ran up his leg.” Picturing this made Mary shiver with disgust. “For that, she may indeed owe you. But I owe her my life.”

Later that night, the two mice at last got around to hanging a new picture in their nest. It was the one they had found in the box with the gray metal key on the boss's desk. How the picture got into the box neither of them knew, but they were art thieves, so they took it.

This picture was not a portrait. Rather, it depicted a full-grown male human alongside a large and mysterious animal pulling a vehicle with enormous wheels. The words said:
Minnesota Territorial Centennial 1849–1949. Red River Ox Cart
.

The picture was just the kind of window to a world beyond the colony that Mary liked to ponder. Was the Minnesota territory nearby? What were the mice like there? And the animal
in the picture—was it called an ox? It was bigger than the human but seemed to be obeying him. Or maybe the cart belonged to the ox, and it was the human that obeyed.

The following day, Andrew was giving Mary a reading lesson near the alley door when a scout entered through the portal there. His name, he said, was Tobias. He was young and very nervous.

“Ex-ex-excuse me, Auntie, uh . . . Uncle? Chief Director Randolph sent me,” he stammered.

After such a long time, it was a shock to hear another mouse voice and see another mouse frame. And what did this young one want?

Andrew sat back on his haunches and fluffed his fur. “What is your mission, Tobias?” he asked.

“To establish whether it's safe for the colony to return, sir. Uh . . . excuse, me, Uncle, uh . . . are you Andrew Mouse? If you don't mind my asking? I grew up on stories about Andrew Mouse. Is that you?”

“Ha ha ha ha ha!”
said Andrew. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Do any particular stories come to mind?”

Mary interrupted. “My pups,” she said, “Millie, Margaret, and Matilda Mouse. Do you have news of them?”

Flustered, the scout looked from Andrew to Mary. “Apologies, Auntie. I should have reported. They are well. They send their love.”

Mary felt weak with relief and overjoyed at the possibility she might yet see her darlings again. Even after all that had happened, she had never lost hope.

“Why did the chief director send you?” Andrew asked. “Are conditions poor where you are living?”

They were, it turned out. The humans in the new home were very tidy, never left crumbs, set traps every night. Some of the young mice had been caught, and there was precious little to eat. The mice were facing a cold and hungry season.

“Our spies report there is a new boss at the Cherry Street Home,” said Tobias. “Are there any residual toxins from the extermination?”

Andrew fixed the scout with a gimlet eye. “Do we look as if we'd been exterminated?”

Tobias opened and closed his jaws; Mary suppressed a laugh. “No exterminator came,” she explained. “It was a lot of brouhaha over nothing.”

“In fact, this territory remains quite a nice one,” Andrew assured him. “The predator is also gone. New management has allergies.”

Tobias dipped his nose and flipped his tail. “I must be off to file my report.”

“Scurry safe,” they told him . . . and only days thereafter, the Cherry Street colony returned.

This time the migration came off with minimal casualties and only a single fatality, Chief Director Randolph himself, who fell behind his division and was ambushed by a rat. In due course, a state funeral was conducted with all the pomp and ceremony traditionally accorded a great leader.

Pleading headaches, neither Mary nor Andrew attended.

Mary's reunion with her pups was happiness itself. And when Millie, Margaret, and Matilda found out that Andrew had taught their mother to read—well, they wouldn't stop squeaking till he agreed to teach them.

“You don't think the other pups will want to learn, do you?” Andrew asked Mary.

“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “The pups, the auditors—every mouse will want to learn.”

Andrew remembered Stuart Little's experience teaching school and sighed. “I fear my new job will be harder than the old one.”

Caro wasn't convinced at first that Mr. Kittaning had told the true story about the fire. Still, she started sleeping better, and her appetite came back. Then, after a few days, she saw in her mind's eye something long forgotten: a pattern of tiny green leaves on a white background, the wallpaper in the hallway between her bedroom and her mother's.

Along with the image came powerful sensory memories that included the sound of her own voice screaming
“Mama!”
and the pain in her throat and chest that silenced her screams at last.

In their house, Caro's bedroom had been near the front, while her mother's adjoined the kitchen in the rear. If Caro had run away that night, she would never have been in that hallway at all. Nothing would bring back her mother. But from that moment, Caro began to rebuild her sense of herself based on a new story, a true story. And unlike the story Mrs. George had told, this one gave her strength.

Soon the other intermediates registered Caro's improved spirits and felt free to press their one remaining question: How had she and Jimmy known to look in Mrs. George's freezer? Caro tried evasion, then hit upon a better idea, the truth: “The mice that live in the walls told us.”

This provoked stunned silence, a collective
“Ewww,”
and more questions: “How did the mice find out?” “How many are there?” “How do they live?”

Caro's knowledge of the mice was more limited than her listeners' curiosity. To satisfy them, she invented a world within the walls. And the more she told her friends about it, the more they wanted to know. It was a pleasure for them to imagine their home from the perspective of creatures even smaller than children and more modest than orphans.

On a Friday morning in November, the students in Miss Ragone's class were restless. It may have been sunspots or barometric pressure or possibly the new brand of cereal, Sugar Crisp, that Mrs. Spinelli had served at breakfast. Whatever it was, spelling went nowhere, and neither did long division or world capitals.

At her wits' end, Miss Ragone pulled out her secret weapon, a book.

“Where were we?” she asked the suddenly attentive children.

“Mr. Toad just crashed the caravan,” Jimmy answered.

Miss Ragone found the place and began to read but had completed only a paragraph when Virginia interrupted. “Read louder, Miss Ragone, so the mice can listen, too!”

Miss Ragone repeated, “Mice?”

“They live in the walls,” Barbara explained.

“They have churches and grocers and saloons,” said Bert.

“Oh, dear,” said Miss Ragone.

“They drink root beer,” said Jimmy.

“And they have tiny bicycles and tiny Victrolas,” said Barbara.

“And how do you know all this?” Miss Ragone asked.

The children glanced at one another but, for the first time that morning, were silent. At last, Caro spoke up. “I told them.”

“Did you, Carolyn?” said Miss Ragone. “And are these stories of yours true?”

Caro looked over at Jimmy, who was trying not to laugh. “They're true,” she said, “but not entirely factual.”

Miss Ragone smiled. “I see. Well, in that case, I will raise my voice a little.”

Miss Ragone read two chapters before lunch. Then all the children except one erupted from their desks and jostled their way out of the room.