All About Max, page 14
Max, in the meantime, couldn’t decide whether to stay, disappear, or just faint dead away. The man was no other than Mr. Fitzbottom!
“What can I do for you, Mr. Fitzbottom,” said Moose. “If you’re here to check up on Max...er...Maximilian, as you can see he’s here still, alive and well.”
“It wasn’t so much checking up on him,” said Mr. Fitzbottom, “but I do have something important to say to him.”
Moose motioned to Max, who slowly crossed the room, dragging his feet.
All Mr. Fitzbottom had ever had for him was bad news, and with all that was happening, he didn’t need any more. But when he arrived at the front door, Mr. Fitzbottom opened up a large brown envelope he was holding, pulled a letter from it, and handed it to him.
“Read it, young man,” said Mr. Fitzbottom.
Max did. But it didn’t make much sense to him. It had something to do with some very large amounts of money, but as he was now pretty much penniless except for some pocket change left over from the collection taken up for him by Mr. Fitzbottom’s office, he couldn’t see what all this money had to do with him. Was somebody expecting him to pay this? Were they being funny?
“What is this supposed to mean?” said Max, when he had finished reading.
“It means,” said Mr. Fitzbottom, his pudgy face wreathed in smiles, “that your father had done a very fine job of hiding something that he somehow never managed to reveal to anybody. It was locked up in a vault in a bank that somehow or other only one person knew about, and that person was no longer there. This was discovered quite accidentally, but it seems your father left you a pile of money that can’t be touched by anyone but you.”
A “pile”! There was one after all! An ENORMOUS “pile”, actually!
“Is...is...it enough to buy a building?” asked Max.
“Take another look at the figure. I’d say there’s enough to buy fifty buildings. Why you can live just about anyplace you want to now!” said Mr. Fitzbottom, somehow managing to look as if he were the one responsible for all this.
“Well, Moose is still my guardian, isn’t he?” said Max.
“I...er...suppose he is,” said Mr. Fitzbottom. “But my company will be happy to take on that job now.” He gave Max a big, toothy smile.
“I’d rather stick with Moose, if that’s okay,” said Max. “And we’re having an important meeting here right now. So could you come back again tomorrow to talk about this with Moose and me?”
“Shouldn’t we...er...ah...um discuss this and settle the matter now?” said Mr. Fitzbottom, winking at Moose. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Smith?”
Mr. Smith, otherwise Moose, looked at Max, and shrugged.
“Well, Mr. Smith and I have some decisions to make so we’d rather meet with you about them tomorrow,” said Max. “Would ten a.m. be okay?”
“Fine with me,” said Moose, swallowing a grin.
“Yes...yes...yes, of course! Ten tomorrow morning it is,” said Mr. Fitzbottom.
So the once rotten spoiled obnoxious Maximilian took a deep breath and calmly, coolly held out his hand to take the nervous, sweaty, pudgy hand extended to him.
“Thank you, Mr. Fitzbottom,” he said.
Chapter XXV
In which Max learns that there actually are such things as happily-ever-after endings, even when it’s not in just a fairy tale.
M r. Fitzbottom had no sooner bowed himself out the front door, when Max handed Moose the document that Mr. Fitzbottom had left with him.
Moose took a swift look at it.
“Whoo!” he whistled. “If this is for real, and I have every reason to believe that it is, I don’t even know what to say.”
“Well, you’re going to have to say something, Moose,” said Max. “You’re still my guardian, and you’re a grown-up, and I’m still just eleven.”
Now, all this time the Mother Goose-ites, Mitzi and Mrs. Fiddle, Snitch, and even Moxie and Mojo, had been more or less breathlessly watching the scene at the front door. But the door had no sooner closed behind Mr. Fitzbottom, and they had heard the conversation between Moose and Max, then they all came to life. Mrs. Dumpty was the one who finally spoke up.
“Max is quite right, Moose,” she said briskly, “you are the grown up, and have to help this poor boy make a decision of some kind, or so it seems. But are we going to be allowed to know what this is all about?”
“Hear! Hear!” said Commander King Cole.
The rest of the Mother Goose-ites all clapped their approval of this idea.
“Okay with you if I tell everyone?” Moose asked Max.
“I want you to,” said Max. “Everyone here knows what happened to me and why I’m here. So I think they should know about this as well.”
“All right then,” said Moose, as soon as he and Max returned to their original places before Mr. Fitzbottom appeared. “It seems that Max has not been left a penniless orphan after all. Well, he’s still an orphan, but due to some kind of crazy, unbelievable mix-up, he’s now no longer penniless. In fact he’s rich as Croesus, if you must know.”
There was a collective, excepting Moxie and Mojo, deep breath taken around the room.
“Wow!” said Mitzi.
“Wow, indeed!” said Commander King Cole.
“So what are you thinking about all this, darlin’?” asked Mrs. Dumpty.
“Well...well...well excuse me for interrupting Moose,” said Max, “But when I asked Mr. Fitzbottom about buying a building, I sort of had something in mind.”
“And what was that, kid?” asked Moose.
“The building I was talking about was Measley Manor,” replied Max.
“Why can’t I buy it just as well as anyone else?”
“You could,” said Moose, “But why would you want to? It wasn’t too many days ago that, if I’m not mistaken, you arrived here with your feet dragging. And I had the distinct feeling that you even had plans to run away. So why would you now want to own a home for…um...old wrinkled people who once gave you the creeps?”
“People can change their minds, can’t they?” said Max stiffly.
“They can,” said Moose.
“Well, I’ve changed mine, and this is what I want to do, and who’s going go stop me?” said Max.
“As your guardian, I could,” said Moose.
“Are you going to?” asked Max.
Moose hesitated a moment, and then grinned. “No,” he said.
The stunned silence in the room was suddenly broken with cheers and applause.
“Good for you, darlin’!” said Mrs. Dumpty.
“This is wonderful, Max,” said Moose, “But who do you think is going to run this place?’
“You,” said Max promptly.
“Nice of you to decide my life,” said Moose. “But you may have forgotten, I’m a lawyer, not a manager of retirement homes.”
“You learned to be a seaman and a handyman, didn’t you?” said Max.
“Guess I did,” said Moose.
“So you could learn to do this, couldn’t you?” said Max.
“Guess I could,” said Moose.
“Besides, if I stay here, you have to stay here, too, because you’re my guardian, and who knows what kind of stuff I might get into if you’re not around to stop me,” said Max.
“You’re right about that,” said Moose.
“The only thing is,” said Max, “I’d like it if we can do better than me living in the cellar and you in the garage. We could maybe build us a little house.”
“Guess we could do that,” said Moose.
“So is it agreed that this is what we’re going to tell Mr. Fitzbottom when we meet with him tomorrow?” asked Max.
Moose shrugged and finally grinned. “Okay, kid, if you say so,” he said.
“And did anyone ever tell you you’d make quite a salesman?”
With this, the room shook with applause.
When this had died down, Max said, “Oh, and there’s a couple of other things. When Delilah returns, I want her to have the title of Head of Housekeeping.”
Then Max looked over at Snitch and his bruised face, looking very downcast.
“And,” Max continued, “I also want Snitch to be...to be...Chairman In Charge of Cleaning.”
“You mean you ain’t goin’ to fire me?” said Snitch.
“No, why would I?” asked Max.
“Because of the way I been treatin’ you, makin’ you call me Mr. Snitch and all that,” said Snitch. “And because I took this. I only borrowed it. I meant to return it. Honest I did! But I shouldn’t o’ taken it without askin’.”
With that, Snitch crossed the room and handed Max the gold medal from his parents for rescuing the kitten.
“I figured you had it,” said Max.
“But you never said nothin’,” said Snitch.
Max just shrugged. There was no use now in saying anything, especially seeing Snitch’s bruised face and knowing the reason for it.
“An’ you still want me to stay and be Chairman in Charge o’ Cleanin’?” said Snitch.
“I do,” said Max firmly. “Who knows more about cleaning than you do, Snitch? I could never find anybody better anywhere in the world!”
Snitch beamed. “Wow! Chairman in Charge o’ Cleanin’! My pa was never Chairman o’ Nothin’. Wait ‘til he sees what I ‘mounted to. But if I got to be keepin’ an eye on things here, and you probably ain’t goin’ to be remainin’ in your room, could I move into it?”
“Are you sure you want to?” asked Max.
“Oh, yes!” said Snitch, beaming. “I’d put me down a bit o’ carpet. Make it real nice. Clean up the washroom, too. Paint it up a bit.”
“Oh, but one more thing, Snitch,” said Max. “You have to finish high school, too.”
“Guess I can work that in,” said Snitch. “Wow! Chairman in Charge o’ Cleanin’!”
So that final point settled, Max still had something else on his mind.
“I don’t want this place to be called Measley Manor any longer. I’m not sure I even want it to be called Dolly Manor. Does anyone have any good ideas about it?”
No one did at the moment. Finally, Max himself broke the silence. “Okay, I have an idea, but I have to consult with someone first.”
“Moxie and Mojo, what do you think about this?” he whispered to them.
“Perfect!” said Moxie.
“If you’d searched the whole world over, you couldn’t have come up with a better name,” said Mojo.
So that’s how Maximilian Pettigrew Westmorington Bassford Thorndike Finstersill Smith the Fifth, came to be living with Marmaduke Aloisius Smith (otherwise Moose), a girl named Mitzi (with whom he rode to school on a bus because his guardian said going to school - just as with the new Chairman in Charge of Cleaning - was not negotiable), a couple of great mongrels named Moxie and Mojo, and a bunch of very smart people (who just happened to have somehow grown old), in a place called THE MANOR AT RAINBOW’S END.
Of course, it was usually only referred to as THE MANOR, but everyone knew the story behind it...and knew how things don’t always have to gang agley, how skimmed milk can somehow turn to cream, but most importantly, that some stories, bad as they may begin, can somehow turn out to have happily-ever-after fairy tale endings after all!
Barbara Brooks Wallace is an award-winning American children's writer, who was born and spent her childhood in China. She is the winner of two Edgar Allan Poe Awards from the Mystery Writers of America for The Twin in the Tavern (1994) and Sparrows in the Scullery (1998). Cousins in the Castle (1997) and Ghosts in the Gallery (2001) were also nominated for the Edgar Award. She received and the William Allen White Children's Book Award for Peppermints in the Parlor (1983). The trilogy series, Miss Switch, enjoyed a popular run on the successful TV program, The ABC Weekend Specials, garnering the highest Nielsen ratings of all the episodes. Wallace's Hawkins books (which were notable offerings from the elite Scholastic Book Club) were also featured as live action films on The ABC Weekend Specials.
Other Books by
Barbara Brooks Wallace
The Trouble with Miss Switch
Miss Switch to the Rescue
Miss Switch Online
Miss Switch and the Vile Villains
Miss Switch’s Bathsheba and the Cat Caper
Dragon for Hire
Diary of a Little Devil
Small Footsteps in the Land of the Dragon
Barbara Wallace, All About Max
