“Commander,” said Tim Willoughby, “I have the projector and the screen all set up for you.” He turned to the guests and explained, “The commander is going to use PowerPoint.
“I do want to add that we have checked with the authorities, and it is not illegal to display photographs of candy, or to talk about candy.”
Everyone (except Ben Poore, who had discovered a small dish of illegal mints on an antique table and had surreptitiously put fourteen of them into his mouth) smiled politely.
“I’ll advance the slides, Grandfather,” Richie said.
The first photo on the screen was of a simple unwrapped chocolate bar.
“This was my very first confection.” Commander Melanoff explained. “Quite simple. Just chocolate—semisweet, if I remember correctly. No nuts or raisins. I created it after a vacation in Mexico, where I learned about the ancient art of chocolate-making. Mayan tombs contained vessels with residue of a chocolate drink dating back to 400 CE.”
He advanced to the next photograph, which showed a Mayan tomb.
“We took Richie to Mexico on a vacation when he was a toddler,” murmured Richie’s mother, “but he didn’t display much interest in the museums, I’m afraid. He liked the kiddie pool at our hotel.”
“Yes, I remember when dear Winifred was a toddler,” Mrs. Poore murmured back. “Of course, we could never afford a vacation. But we had a plastic wading pool in the yard until the cat’s claws made it unusable. After that I cut the plastic into rectangles for placemats.”
“I know my dad would like to join us on a vacation, if we could afford a vacation,” Winston said. “Wouldn’t you, Father?” He looked at his father, who had just noticed a bowl of grapes on a nearby table and was trying to sidle his way across the sofa so that he could reach it. His father murmured in agreement that yes, he would like to join his family on a vacation.
“But one archeological site on Mexico’s Pacific coast suggests that chocolate beverages may date back to 1900 BCE,” Commander Melanoff continued, and nodded to Richie, who clicked on the next picture, which was a chart and a timeline.
Ben Poore groaned slightly, lifted the grapes from the bowl, and filled his mouth.
“The Aztecs adopted cacao into their culture but were not able to grow cacao beans themselves. They valued it so highly that some people paid their taxes in beans. This lovely little statue is of a man carrying a cacao pod. It’s in the Brooklyn Museum.” Richie advanced to a picture of a primitive stone statue.
“How interesting,” Winifred said. “Isn’t that interesting, Father?” She looked at Ben Poore, who now had such a large mouthful of grapes that he was unable to speak. “Mmmmm,” he mumbled.
The next picture was of a marshmallow bunny posed in an Easter basket.
“I went on, as you know, from those early unadorned chocolates to much more sophisticated confections. Richie, would you just run through some of our most popular items? Please let me know if there are questions about a specific candy, and we can linger.”
Ben Poore leaned over and whispered a question to Richie’s mother. “Are those real apples in that bowl on the table under the window?” he asked. “Or are they made of wax?”
“Real,” she whispered back.
“Excuse me,” he said to the people seated around them, and got up and made his way to an antique chair near the window. “Please go on. I’m listening,” he assured Commander Melanoff.
Picture after picture appeared. Chocolate bars. Candy eggs decorated with spun sugar. Peppermint sticks. Fudge. The famous licorice sticks known as Lickety Twist. (Everyone said “Awwww” when that photo appeared.)
From the chair by the window, a crunchy noise revealed that Ben Poore had bitten into an apple.
Commander Melanoff straightened his bow tie and adjusted his cummerbund.1 “To be honest,” he added, “my first wife and I were not terribly compatible. I know I’ve explained that she was a very tidy woman. Nothing wrong with being tidy! But every night she went up to my lab on the third floor, the very lab where I concocted my incredible mixtures as I invented newer and more delectable candies, and she dumped everything out and washed all the containers and tore up my formulas and threw them away. So every morning I had to start all over again. I was actually relieved when she went on vacations without me. It gave me a chance to work without interruption.”
“Where did she go on vacations, Grandfather?” asked Richie.
“She went to Europe. Would you run up to your Book Room and bring back the book about the Alps?”
Richie glanced nervously at his mother. “It’s MBD,” he said.
“Go ahead, dear,” his mother said, “if your grandfather is sure he wants you to.”
Commander Melanoff nodded to Richie, who left the room. They could hear him dashing up the stairs. In a moment he returned, handed the volume to his grandfather, and took his seat again.
Commander Melanoff opened the book to the center and found a brightly illustrated map. He held the open book up with his finger on the map and walked back and forth in front of his audience so that they could each get a glimpse. “Zermatt,” he said. “That’s where she went.”
From the window seat where he was munching on an apple, Ben Poore announced, “If anyone is interested in more information about Zermatt, I have Volume Z of a wonderful encyclopedia just next door.”
“She never got there, actually,” the commander said. “That’s where she was headed—by private railroad car, incidentally, very luxurious—but along the way . . .
“Richie, would you run back up to your Book Room and bring back the volume about avalanches?”
“Oh dear,” murmured Richie’s mother. “Are you certain? That’s so MBD.”
Commander Melanoff ignored her, nodded to Richie, and once again they heard his feet pounding up the long staircase. In a moment he was back with the book about avalanches.
“You don’t mean to say she was—” Winifred said in a terrified voice.
“Yes, dear. Buried by an avalanche.”
“Oh, my! But she managed to be saved?”
“Eventually. But she and our son—”
“Other Barnaby,” Richie explained. He looked around. “Moment of silence?” he suggested.
They all fell silent for a brief moment. Then Commander Willoughby continued: “They stayed in the small village where they had emerged, and she met the postmaster, who was just as tidy as she was—everything had to be alphabetical, of course, in the post office—just as orderly, and eventually I got word that our marriage had ended and she was becoming Mrs. Hans. Or maybe it was Mrs. Fritz.”
Richie’s father stood up. “But then you met Nanny—”
“There once was a woman named Nanny,” Commander Melanoff said in a reverent voice. “Who had an incomparable—”
Tim interrupted him. “An incomparable skill in the kitchen! I remember crème caramel for dessert!”
Ben Poore shot up from his chair. “What did I just hear?” he asked. “Did someone say crème caramel?”
“Let’s make our way to the dining room,” Richie’s mother said, rising from the sofa. “We won’t wait for our other guests. It appears that they’ll be late.”
As they all began walking toward the dining room, Winifred made her way to Commander Melanoff and took his hand. His story had made her terribly sad.
“I’m so sorry your wife was in an avalanche,” she said. “That’s why the book about avalanches MBD: must be distressing.”
He looked down at her in surprise. “Oh, goodness, no,” he said. “It’s true that avalanches are distressing. But my wife survived, and I was thrilled that she decided not to return. I only wish she had not taken on the task of reorganizing the Swiss postal system. It made it almost impossible to ship my licorice candies to Switzerland. I ended up with a whole shipload of Lickety Twist held hostage in Rotterdam for months.”
“Goodness!” said Winifred. “That—”
Commander Melanoff finished her sentence as they entered the dining room. “Yes,” he said, “indeed. Very MBD.”
“And now it’s all illegal anyway,” Winifred said sadly.
“Wait a minute!” Winston spoke in a loud voice. “I’ve been thinking a lot about this while my sister has been thinking about minerals, which do not interest me in the slightest. I’m really interested in machinery. And while we were watching the presentation about Consolidated Confectionaries, I thought about the vats and the compressors and the label-makers and the robots, and the flavor dispensing machine— Do you still have the flavor dispensing machine, Mr. Willoughby?”
“Of course,” Tim Willoughby said. “We’ll be auctioning everything off, now that the factory has closed.”
“Not so fast,” Winston said. “You can repurpose it all! Just think about it! Every night, every morning, what does every one of us do? We go into our bathrooms and we . . . what?”
Richie giggled. “That’s inappropriate,” he said.
Winston winced. “I meant,” he explained, “that we all brush our teeth.”
Everyone nodded.
“And,” Winston went on, “what if we had toothpaste that tasted like the one wonderful taste we remembered from the past?”
“Lickety Twist,” Commander Melanioff murmured.
“Exactly! It will be so easy to convert the machinery so that it uses the same flavoring, puts it into paste, squishes it into tubes, and there you have it! And we’ll call it . . .”
He waited. No one replied.
“Lickety Spit!”
The entire room burst into spontaneous applause.
Richie’s mother had heard a noise outside and had gone to the front door. She returned to the room looking very concerned. “Tim,” she said, to her husband, “there’s a vehicle pulling into the driveway. It looks like a hearse!”