Two hours later, finally, after chaos, confusion, consternation, and at last pecan pie with vanilla ice cream all around, everyone was once again in the drawing room. But there were two more people now, dressed in hospital garments that came to their knees and tied in the back with a good deal of unfortunate flapping-open. They sat on the velvet-tufted sofa, on either side of Tim Willoughby, who looked stunned. His arms were around them both. “Father!” he kept saying. “Mother!”
Henry Willoughby handed his son Tim an envelope. “This is all crumpled,” he said apologetically. “It was in my pants pocket when we went to the hospital. And now my pants are kaput. I’m afraid I barfed on them. All I have is this ridiculous hospital gown with no pockets, but—”
“I’ll find you some clothes,” Tim said. “We’re about the same size. And for you too, Mother. I know we have Nanny’s clothing packed away.”
“Anything but brown,” Mrs. Willoughby said.
Henry Willoughby interrupted his wife and indicated the envelope. “I kept that throughout the hospitalization,” he said to Tim. “It’s an official statement.”
“Please,” Tim said. “Let’s not discuss statements. I’ve been reading too many discouraging bank statements lately.”
“That will change,” his father said. “And this is a different kind of statement.”
“What is it, Dad?” asked Richie, looking at the sealed envelope in Tim’s hands.
“I don’t know. Let me open it.” Tim tore open the envelope and withdrew a colorful card with a handsome picture of a horse with his mane flowing. “I’m sorry . . .” he read aloud.
“I looked for anything but bunnies or flowers,” Henry Willoughby explained.
Tim opened the card to reveal the other end of the horse, with its tail swishing away flies. “. . . I’ve been a you-know-what,” he read.
Richie leaned over to see the card more clearly. “You’ve been a horse’s tail?” he asked Henry Willoughby.
“I have. I was a bad dad. I didn’t pay enough attention to my children.”
“I have a great dad,” Richie said happily. He stroked his father’s arm.
Tim Willoughby put his arm around his little boy. “You realize,” he said to the couple in the hospital gowns, “this is your grandson?”
They looked startled for a moment. “But we’re not old enough to have—” Frances Willoughby began. “Or maybe we are? I can’t figure any of this out!”
“And that reminds me,” said her husband. “We had other children! What about the twins? And—oh, dear—what has become of little Jane?”
“All grown up,” Tim explained. “Successful. Happy. Tell you what! We’ll go upstairs to the computer after we finish our coffee and we’ll FaceTime them all. You’ll be amazed to see Jane. She has tattoos.”
“Do Skype, Dad!” Richie suggested.
“What’s FaceTime?” asked Henry Willoughby. “What’s Skype?”
Commander Melanoff had been putting away the projector he had used for his PowerPoint presentation. He looked up suddenly. “You know,” he said, “I remember when your accident happened. I was actually subscribing to some Swiss newspapers, because not long before, my wife had decided to take up with the Swiss postmaster. Not that that was in the news! But my attention was caught by an article about how two Americans had decided to climb a Swiss mountain peak—”
“Alp,” said Mr. Willoughby. “It was an Alp.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” the white-haired man went on, “but the Americans didn’t have the proper clothing or equipment. I’m sorry, but the reporters all said that—”
“We had crampons,” Mrs. Willoughby said. “It was just that we didn’t know how to wear them. I blame L.L.Bean. Is that where we bought the crampons, dear? From L.L.Bean?”
“No, I think it was some other company. But it was definitely their fault. They didn’t tell us how to wear them.”
“I thought they looked nice on our heads, though, didn’t you, dear?” She reached over and took his hand.
“You know what?” Tim Willoughby said. “I think that you two, at least in the realm of mountain climbing, were dolts.”
Henry Willoughby looked shocked. “That’s a terrible thing to say to your father!” Then he paused. “But I used to say it to you, didn’t I, Tim?”
“You did. All the time.”
“Can you forgive me?”
“Of course,” said Richie’s father.
“You know what?” Winston said. “You should have Googled crampons. Or looked on YouTube. I bet anything there’s a YouTube video showing how to use crampons.”
Mrs. Willoughby stood up suddenly. Then, when she realized that her backside was exposed, she sat back down. Still, she spoke in a loud voice. “That’s it!” she said. “I am so tired of all this Googling and YouTubing and FaceTiming and Zappo-ing or whatever it is, and Instagram and—Skype? What on earth is that? Henry, we missed out on everything while we were frozen! It’s not fair! What on earth is Twitter? And I have no shoes!” She began to cry.
Mr. Willoughby reached over and patted her hand. But he too looked a little frustrated and weepy.
Their son Tim tried to reassure them. “Mother,” he said, though the word felt a little awkward to him, “don’t worry about any of that. It will all fall into place.”
“We’ll make the best of it,” Mrs. Poore murmured.
“What does that mean, exactly?” asked Winifred, but no one responded.
“But look at me!” Mrs. Willoughby wailed. “I’m younger than my son is!”
Her husband suddenly leaned forward, closer to her. “Frances,” he said, “even without my glasses, I think I see some wrinkles starting in your neck! A little like—what’s that wrinkly dog—a shar-pei? You look a little like that! It could be that you are actually starting to age!”
“You think?” She calmed a little. “I hope not too fast.”
Winifred, who’d been listening, said to Richie’s father, “Mr. Willoughby, there’s a book on the MBD stack about orphans. But you’re not an orphan anymore! Your parents are alive!”
“So is my ex-wife,” Commander Melanoff pointed out. “She and her husband have retired from the post office. They’re very old now. But when we were all younger, Nanny and I . . .” He paused. “There once was a woman named Nanny . . .” he recited wistfully.
“No, Commander,” Tim said gently, and patted his hand. “Not now.”
“Incomparable.” The old man bit his lip. “Well. Anyway. Nanny and I would go to visit them now and then, in their Swiss village. It was quite boring, actually.”
“There’s an MBD book about the Swiss postal system! I’m going to go and get that whole stack of books and we’ll . . . I don’t know, throw them in the fireplace or something!” Winifred left the drawing room and they all chuckled as once again they heard a young person’s feet thundering up the stars.
In a minute she was back, and breathless. But she was holding only one book, and a magnifying glass.
“That’s not MBD,” Winston pointed out. “That’s the book about—”
“Right! Geology! I’d left it there on the chair where I’d been reading. When I saw it, I suddenly remembered—” She began turning the pages of the thick book. “Tellurium, calaverite, let me see . . . Winston?”
“What?” her brother glanced over from the little toy car with the new wheels that that he’d been showing his father.
“Run over to our house, would you, and get those rocks that Father brought us? They’re on the windowsill in the kitchen.”
“Oh, all right. But you owe me.” Winston left the room.
“I’d go,” Winifred said, “but it’s urgent that I find the page I’m looking for. Krennerite? I wonder if those shiny streaky things in the rocks . . . ? Could it possibly be . . . ? Father, when you were in Alaska, were you in gold-mining territory?”
“I guess I was. But no one wanted to buy a set of outdated encyclopedias.” Ben Poore said sadly. He glanced over at the fruit bowl. Amazingly, he was still slightly hungry.
“What do you mean, outdated?” Henry Willoughby asked. He leaned forward, adjusting his hospital gown carefully over his knees.
Mrs. Poore explained. “They’re thirty years old. So there’s nothing in them about artificial intelligence, or about, let me think, or— What else is missing, Winifred?”
“Gluten intolerance. Gene therapy. Global warming. The whole G volume is a mess, it’s so outdated.”
“Probably no Google in it, then?” Mrs. Willoughby asked.
“Oh my, no, I think not,” said Mrs. Poore.
Winifred agreed. “No Google. And the V volume is horrible. It still has vampires, and Queen Victoria. But there’s nothing about vaping, or Verizon Wireless, or—”
Winston reentered the room, carrying the two rocks. He handed them to his sister. “Here. And the mailman left a big package on the porch. From you, Father. You mailed it from Alaska. It’s really heavy.”
“More rocks,” Ben Poore explained. “Lots more.”
“I want one,” Henry Willoughby announced loudly.
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Willoughby,” Winifred said politely. “Our dad sent them to me all the way from Alaska. They’re mine.” She picked up her magnifying glass.
“I didn’t mean the rocks. I meant the outdated encyclopedias. I want one. I want two. More than two! I want all you have. Tim? Son? You haven’t spent all my money, have you? There’s some left?”
“There’s some left. It’s in the bank. I didn’t need your money because I’d inherited Consolidated Confectionaries. Of course, now that—”
“Just make out a check to Mr.— What’s the name again? Penniless? Write a check to Mr. Penniless.”
“It’s Poore, Dad. His name is Poore.”
“I want to read about what the world was like before we were frozen. I want to provide them to the schools! Everyone should know what it was like! Write a check to Mr. Poore and buy every single outdated encyclopedia he has.”
Ben Poore looked up. His mouth was full. He had found a lovely ripe peach in the fruit bowl. “Someone wants to buy my—?”
Winifred set down her magnifying glass. In a quiet voice she said, “We don’t really need the money anymore. These rocks are gold nuggets. They really truly are. Father? Guess what! You struck gold!”
Her father wasn’t listening. He was looking around the table at what food remained. “Does anyone else want those last grapes?” asked Ben Poore. They all shook their heads no, and with a happy sigh he reached for them. “Probably a good thing that candy’s disappeared,” he said. “Fruit is so much better for you.” He popped a grape into his mouth.
Tim Willoughby looked up. He had taken his pen from his pocket and been adding figures on a pad of paper. “In any case,” he said, “if they decide to reinstate candy someday, by then we’ll have the toothpaste production up and running. By my calculations, we could produce Lickety Twist and Lickety Spit simultaneously, maybe even package them together? You think? I’m picturing a commercial in which a kid munches on a piece of licorice, makes his teeth turn all black, so he gives a funny grin—maybe we’d use a laugh track there—then he goes into the bathroom, picks up his toothbrush, and—” He paused, then picked up the pen again. With a contented look, he scribbled a few more figures.
Winifred stood up. She picked up the small knife that her father had used to peel his peach and tapped it on a glass until everyone had stopped talking and was paying attention to her.
“I just realized what making the best of it means!” she said. “This is the best of it. This!” She gestured around the room, at all the gathered people who were talking and smiling. “The absolute best.”
Then she grinned. “Oops. I think I just Marmed,” she said.
In the hallway, looking down from the gold frame at her newly large and very happy family, Nanny seemed to be smiling.
THE END