The Good, the Bad & the Beagle (22 page)

“Where?” Veronica asked.

“I’m afraid to tell you,” Mrs. Morgan said.

“No,” Veronica said with mock horror.
I’m afraid to tell you
was a Morgan family euphemism for the front closet.

“Yes,” her mother said. “Two words. Three, actually. The. Front. Closet. There is a box in there filled with birthday gifts you never wanted. I planned on giving them to a charity. But, as usual, I haven’t gotten around to it.”

Veronica gave her mother a hug and ran out of the kitchen, happy she had a scatterbrained mother who was too disorganized to do things like give a box to charity.

“Please be careful in there, honey!” her mother said. “I want to eat dinner and go to bed. I’m too tired tonight to take you to the emergency room.”

Veronica was sure this new part of their project, the human element, as Sylvie called it, combined with their scientific data about the plants and their drawings, would get them As. She opened the closet door slowly and pulled the string attached to the light bulb, expecting to flood the place with yellow light. But there was so much junk everywhere the light barely made a difference.

There was tall junk, short junk, junk on shelves, junk on the floor. She was surrounded by junk. Wrapping paper rolls, a set of skis (no one in her family had ever skied, as far as she knew), the lethal golf clubs. A fur coat startled her. There was an exercise machine folded up and Veronica had a vague memory of her father promising one year to get into shape (one of his particularly famous lies). There was a bunch of folding chairs they used for Passover, an ironing board, piles of board games, and on a shelf above her head bottles and bottles of wine and champagne. She pushed her way through the coats, eating a mouthful of fur in the process.

With the aid of a flashlight she found the box she was looking for. Inside was a set of dominoes, three Candy Land games—all unopened—a set of Boxcar Children books, and at the very bottom two Barbie dolls, still in their packages! She took hold of them and made her way back to civilization.

“Did you find them?” her mother shouted.

“Yes!”

“Well, good! I guess it was meant to be.”

Nature vs. Nurture

Veronica was so preoccupied with how she was going to make little Randolf uniforms for the Barbie dolls, she didn’t even notice at first they were eating vegetable lasagna. This was a Morgan family favorite, and a meal Veronica’s mother usually kept portions of in the freezer for emergencies.

“I thought we were having Hunan Delight,” Veronica said.

“I know, but as I was ordering I remembered we had it last night.”

“And the night before…”

“I guess that’s why I thought enough,” Mrs. Morgan said. “For a day or two anyway. Please pass me the salad.”

Veronica was still thinking about her science project. What would be the best way to display the Barbies? She hoisted herself and the enormous salad bowl down the table to her mother. No one except for Mr. Morgan could pass it to anyone without standing. The leaves of arugula in the salad gave her an idea.

“I am intrigued,” her father said. “Have you and this Sylvie person become friends?”

“Yes.” Veronica hadn’t seen friendship with Sylvie coming, but here she was acknowledging that yes, it had arrived.

Her parents looked at each other.

“What?” Veronica asked.

“Nothing,” her mother said.

“You obviously have some opinion,” Veronica said. “Some theory about child development and psychoneurotic something…”

“No. We’re just happy,” her mother said.

Both parents nodded.

“How is the work going?” her father asked. He clearly thought it was adorable that his eleven-year-old daughter had work.

“Pretty good,” Veronica said, chewing on a crunchy lasagna noodle, one from the top that was especially brown and crisp. The top and the sides of the lasagna were her favorite parts.

“We made a flipbook that is really cool,” she told her parents.

“What is so cool about it?” her mother asked.

“Well, we had to record our observations so Sylvie took our drawings, well, mostly my drawings, and she cut them out on separate little pieces of paper and stapled the top together and made it into a flipbook. You can watch the plant die or come back to life depending on which direction you go.”

“That sounds very creative,” her father said.

“Lovey, do you want some more?”

“No thank you, I’m full.”

“You are? Usually you eat so much of this.”

“I had coq au vin at Sylvie’s.”

“I beg your pardon?” her father said.

“She has really weird snacks at her house,” Veronica said.

“Does she have a caterer?” her father asked. “I will have more of your wonderful lasagna, Marion, thank you.”

“No, Daddy. There isn’t a caterer. There is no one, actually.”

“Did you order out?” her mother asked.

“No! Sylvie’s just a really good cook. Her mother died when she was little and it’s how she entertains herself.”

There was a charge in the air that meant Veronica’s parents had simultaneously arrived at a number of theories about Sylvie Samuels based on the fact that her mother had died and all the case studies they’d read. It wasn’t fair. They didn’t even know Sylvie. But they were alive and she tried to be grateful for that.

Final Touches

On Saturday morning, Veronica was dying to call Sylvie, but she knew it was too early. She distracted herself by working on the doll uniforms. She took her blouse from Cadbury’s shiva and a jumper from her closet and examined them inside and out. The jumper only had three pieces: a front and two back pieces with a zipper in the middle. She could make the doll jumpers without the zipper and use just two pieces. There were no sleeves, so that was easy. The blouse was a lot more complicated. The collar, the sleeves, the buttonholes—she wished Mary was here. Mary was a much better sewer. She put the Barbie down on a piece of loose-leaf paper and outlined it to make a pattern. Next she would cut her actual uniform and use the fabric. There was probably some Randolf rule about defacing your school uniform and a punishment to fit the crime. But too bad.

At nine o’clock, she couldn’t stand it anymore and called Sylvie.

“I had an idea about how to show the Barbies,” Veronica said. “Let’s plant them. Do you think you can get some more pots? And more dirt?”

“That is so genius,” Sylvie said. “Did you find a Barbie?”

“I did! I’m already sewing.”

Veronica holed up in her room all day to make the tiny outfits. Mary would have done a much better job—but having real Randolf uniform fabric to work with helped a lot. Halfway through the first blouse she gave up on the needle and thread and used glue. It was much easier that way. She also didn’t have tiny buttons so she used actual Randolf ones, but only one for each blouse.

On Sunday morning, Sylvie called. “I got the extra pots,” she said. “How is the sewing going?”

“Good-ish,” Veronica said. “I think we should use the same data we did for the plants, but substitute unfriendliness for chemicals, and basically copy the plant’s deterioration for the Barbies.”

“Is your hypothesis that the lack of nourishment, clean water, and sunlight killed the doll, or unkindness? Because I agree, we should make the Barbie part of our report as official-looking as possible so Mr. Bower will take it seriously. But I wonder if you think the dolls reflect the effect of emotions or of being fed toxic chemicals.”

“Hmm, good question,” Veronica said. “I guess both. Physical and mental.”

“I agree.”

“This is becoming very psychological. My parents will be so proud. We could leave an arm that fell off lying in the pot, like the leaves that fell off the plant,” Veronica said.

“Yes!” Sylvie said. “Maybe I can try to make the whole Barbie kind of yellow and brown at the edges.”

Veronica was so excited she didn’t know how she would get through the rest of the day.

The Big Blastoff

Sylvie spent the night Sunday and they stayed up till midnight working. Veronica had never worked so hard on anything in her life. They called their project Nature vs. Nurture: A Tale of Two Dolls, Two Plants, and the Lives They Lived. Veronica laughed so hard when she came up with the title because Nature vs. Nurture was an expression her parents used a lot. Since she could remember, they told her all her problems were the result of genetics, not of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan’s parenting. Ha. Those were the kind of jokes you got from parents who were both psychiatrists.

Mrs. Morgan sent both girls out the door on Monday morning with freshly toasted bagels. She had Charlie put them in a taxi because it was raining and they were bleary-eyed from staying up so late and they had so much to carry. There were so many bags and boxes being carried into Randolf that morning it felt like the sixth graders were celebrating Christmas, not presenting science projects. Darcy Brown and Liv O’Malley were wrestling the giant ant farm they’d built up the stairs.

Maggie Fogel pressed herself against the wall in a state of total terror.

“They’re just ants, Maggie,” Becky said.

“I know! But there are so many of them!” Maggie screamed.

“They aren’t alligators, you know? Even if they get out they’re not going to bite you,” Liv said. She and Darcy staggered down the hall with their unwieldy ant farm.

Athena and Sarah-Lisa were very helpful during all this and pretended to bite Maggie. Veronica wondered where their project was. They weren’t carrying anything.

“Welcome,” Mr. Bower said at the beginning of their double science period.
He must live for this day,
Veronica thought. He oohed and ahhed each team as they walked their projects in. Mr. Bower loved science the way her parents loved psychiatry. The way extremely religious people love God.

“Welcome,” Mr. Bower said again and again. He kept smoothing his hair down, what little of it there was. Each team went to its assigned place and began unpacking. “You have about fifteen minutes to set up,” Mr. Bower said. “Melody will hand out grading forms, because as you know, in addition to a grade from me, you will also be grading one another.”

Hearing her name spoken out loud by her beloved Mr. Bower, in front of all the other girls, was almost too much for Melody. She fluttered from table to table handing out grading forms. Veronica worried she might just start rubbing up against Mr. Bower like the lonely orange cat in the boiler room.

“Please do not grade on anything other than the integrity of the idea and the workmanship behind its execution,” Mr. Bower said. “Please grade your peers on interest, accuracy, and accessibility. Who can define accessibility?”

“Like, is the project showing off,” Coco Weitzner said. She and Maggie were busy pouring distilled water into the chamber of a humidifier. Their project was cloud formation.

“Yes!” Mr. Bower exclaimed. “Does the project let you in or is it so interested in getting an A that it’s more about fancy terminology or gadgetry or how much parents helped than it is about the subject? I want science for the people by the people.”

Melody handed Veronica one of the peer grading forms. Last night, when she put the finishing touches on the uniforms, she was pretty sure her peers would think she was a genius. She thought she was a genius. But looking at the real Randolf uniforms next to her cockeyed, handmade ones, she wasn’t so sure. Not to mention how dinky their pathetic plants looked next to the other projects: rubber-band-powered airplanes, cloud machines, and Lego robotic sustainable structures. Ugh. By comparison, Veronica and Sylvie’s hard work seemed awfully low tech. But before she had time to think about it too much a crowd gathered around her and Sylvie, wanting to know what the Barbies were about. Thank God Randolf was an all-girls school. The Barbies were a hit.

“Are they part of your exhibit?” Selma Wong, who had never acknowledged Veronica before, asked. Veronica was honored because Selma and Auden had built the flying machine Mr. Bower was so excited about. At the end of the class they would launch it.

Sylvie also had a crowd around the flipbook. Veronica tried to see what her classmates were seeing: the flipbook, the dolls, the actual plants, and she had to admit there were so many aspects of their data and they had documented all of it. Their hard work had paid off.

Without warning, a uniformed man burst into the lab carrying a wrapped parcel. He brought it over to Athena and Sarah-Lisa’s table. Everyone left the flipbook and gathered around the mysterious man. He and Sarah-Lisa exchanged words and then, very dramatically, like he was unveiling the actual
Mona Lisa
, he exposed what was underneath the paper. Sarah-Lisa jumped up and down.

“It looks so good!” she said.

The whole class clamored around Sarah-Lisa and Athena’s project, which was an enormous dollhouse, complete with windows that opened and doors on hinges, an outdoor shower with running water, solar panels on the roof, and a swimming pool that apparently heated itself from the sun. Each room was filled with tiny furniture. It was the most expensive dollhouse in the world and Athena and Sarah-Lisa had had the audacity to glue small rectangles of cardboard to the outside, thinking this would make it look like they had built the whole thing by themselves.

Mr. Bower clapped his hands three times. “For the love of science! Please! Settle down! Go back to your tables.”

Selma Wong cried, “I will not get an
A
anymore. Look how unprofessional my project looks now, compared to Athena and Sarah-Lisa’s!”

One by one everyone’s hopes collapsed. Becky and Tillie Allen’s solar-powered Lego schoolhouse looked ridiculous next to the country estate of Sarah-Lisa and Athena.

Sylvie caught Veronica’s eye. Who could compete with the architectural details of Sarah-Lisa and Athena’s project? There were even pots on the miniature Viking stove in the kitchen.

Mr. Bower clapped his hands again, still trying to get everyone’s attention. “All right, now that all projects are on display, begin your rotations. Remember the rules and grade fairly. This isn’t a popularity contest.”