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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Kids
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Personal Growth / Achievement
- Published: 10/03/2011
Pretty Pictures
Born 1931, F, from Albany CA, United States.jpg)
Pretty Pictures
A Short Story
By
Barbara Mullen
As long as she could remember nine year old Molly had heard stories about the rich folks who had moved to Winatoba from New York City and Philadelphia during the 1850’s. This year her fifth grade teacher had explained their local history to the class this way: “Now students, this is what happened. These strangers arrived uninvited. They bought out the only bank in town to purchase miles of earth rich with iron ore and copper. Then they dug into our mountains with immense machinery. Then they built long red iron docks out into our crystal clear waters of Lake Superior. They hired iron ore boats to ship tons and tons of ore to big steel making plants six or seven hundred miles south on Lake Michigan and Lake Eire. In the end they turned our quiet northland fishing village into a bustling mining town and our tree covered rolling hills into mounds of gutted rock.”
But were any of these stories really true, Molly had always wondered. Today, more than a hundred years later, with nothing much to do on a warm August day, Molly had suddenly had an urge to find out more about these people who had stormed into town and then left forever. By ten a.m. she’d already meandered across town and into the back yard of a mansion said to have belonged to the most powerful of all these Eastern families. Everyone in town knew about the splendid homes these invaders, as folks now called them, had built along the wooded lakefront and later abandoned. As the story goes, they tired of severe northland winters and small town life and slipped out of town and back to New York City and Philadelphia even wealthier than when they’d arrived. Molly however was mostly interested in learning more about the private lives of these mysterious people.
This morning, Molly stared in awe through the window of an old stone carriage house door at the sight of an actual horse drawn carriage fit for young Queen Elizabeth herself. I guess some of the rumors were true, she decided. Oh, my God, she thought, I swear I would wash all the dinner dishes for my mom for a year to sit down my fanny on those velvet cushions for one minute. What harm could there be in that? she asked as she started to wiggle and shake a long brass handle on the carriage house door. More determined, she kicked the rickety old door hard three or four times until it squeaked open just a crack, barely enough for her skinny body to slide through the space.
Once inside, she ran over to the carriage, smacked away cobwebs clinging to its ornately carved door and crawled inside. She sunk down onto its dusty plush cushion seat and raised her hand and waved to imaginary commoners standing on pretend streets. Then glimpsing another door at the far side of this carriage house, she scrambled quickly out of the carriage and floated, or so it felt, over to have a look.
With one good push the door swung open and she found herself in an immense kitchen, larger than any she’d ever seen -- even in a movie. Grasping onto the handle of a massive wood stove to steady herself, she examined the rest of the room, a vast working table at its center, an ice box big enough to hold enough meat and milk and eggs for a family for a year. She let go of the stove handle and crept across a wide expanse of hardwood floor toward double wooden doors with windows at the far end of the kitchen.
The doors surprised her by swinging easily open plummeting her into a dining room so grand she had to suck in her breath in order not to faint. Though vacant, surprisingly the home was still furnished. There was a banquet table, maybe twelve feet long, dusty now, but surely fit for royalty. Patches of heavy red velvet adorned the room’s otherwise dark wood walls and a teardrop chandelier sparkling from the window sunlight dangled above the table. Molly pulled out one of the dining chairs, sat down and curled her saddle shoes around its carved feet. She let out a long shrill whistle. Whew, I would never have believed I’d ever see anything like this in all the years of my life.
Her gaze wandered around the rest of the dining room before landing on a carved wooden archway. Bolting up from the chair, she ran through it into an area the size of a grand ballroom. Scattered about in separate groups were sofas, overstuffed chairs, lamps with stain glassed shades on side tables and marble tea tables. Each chair and sofa, upholstered in lavender, strawberry or blue velvet, had carved wooden arms and legs.
Molly envisioned a butler in front of the half open drapes hanging from a dozen floor to ceiling windows, perhaps drawing them to protect those inside from the prying eyes of ordinary folks outside such as herself. Next, she imagined the room filled with stylish women in long satin dresses and men wearing stiff white collared shirts and suits with vests. There would be musicians in a corner of the room playing dreamy dance music, Molly decided, and she swung round and round across the floor until she got dizzy.
Compared to her own modest home decorated with a few family photographs and containing little more than the necessities for living, a place to cook and beds enough for eight people, her parents and five brothers and sisters, Molly might as well have been transported to another planet. She fell into a soft lavender chair and glanced more thoroughly about the amazing room until her attention was captured abruptly by the sight of a dozen paintings hanging on a wall directly across from her. She walked over to the scenes of faraway places and portraits of serious looking people in best suits and fancy dresses. Were they family members, Molly questioned before examining the rest of the paintings of people gathered alongside a pond, others lying in a grassy field, still more talking at sidewalk tables on European streets, maybe in Paris or Rome. Still others were of flower gardens and bowls of fruit or flowers in vases with no people in them at all.
Then she bent over and started to flip through a stack of paintings leaning against the wall at her feet. Smaller than those on the wall, one was of a girl about Molly’s age in a fluffy organdy dress with a wide satin sash at her waist wearing ballet shoes. The girl in the picture smiled only a little because she had to be on the stage in about a minute and was nervous, Molly supposed. Another was of a group of ladies in gauzy looking dresses that puffed out around their ankles like billowing white clouds who were gathered at the foot of a lovely blossom covered tree.
Molly imagined herself entering the world of the paintings and moving in and out of them, drinking lemonade at a table on a Paris street, next joining the ladies lounging at the foot of the lovely tree, and, oh, yes, becoming the girl in ballet shoes. Molly would have stayed in this magic world forever had her concentration not been broken by a fantastic idea that suddenly streaked through her brain forcing her to turn away from the wall.
She ran out to the carriage house again and then into the street and raced all the way back home. Making a dash into her backyard, she whisked her brother Denny’s red wagon from their old barn, snuck it out of the garage and dragged it the ten blocks back to her secret palace. She parked the wagon next to the carriage house door and then traced her steps back to the grand parlor. At last, with as many paintings as she could possibly carry stacked carefully one on top of the other in the wagon, Molly sat down on the step outside the carriage house. Since this was as far as her brilliant idea had taken her, she wiped her hand across her forehead. Okay, what now? she asked herself when out of nowhere, a voice in her head shrieked: Get the heck out of here, dummy, and then decide what now.
By the time Molly reached home with her loaded wagon she knew what to do with her treasures. She would put them in her own hideaway place in the barn loft. Where they will always be mine to do with as I please, she noted with a smile.
After carrying the paintings one by one up the unsteady ladder she stashed them behind a pile of packed boxes at the far end of the loft. Pleased, but bone tired, she stretched out on the rough wood floor for a nap but was too worked up to sleep. Oh, how Mom would love to pour tea from that silver serving set I saw on the buffet, she thought. Nobody’s using it; it just sits there waiting to be loved by someone. The rest of the beautiful things could make a lot of other people happy too. I’m pretty sure the people who left their possessions behind have as many, or maybe more, gorgeous belongings in their New York and Philadelphia homes. I bet they don’t even remember what they left in Winatoba, or ever think about the castles they deserted. I wish I had twenty trucks instead of one little wagon. I know just what I would do.
Molly leaped to her feet, shimmied down the ladder and grabbed the wagon handle again. Looking first in each direction, she dashed from the barn and the yard, luckily without notice. What an amazing and special day this is, Molly declared while whistling and humming and dragging the wagon across town again. Once again in front of the carriage house, she was anxious to lay claim to another load of riches. Her hand was already on the carriage house door when she heard the police siren. Very strange, because it was a sound she’d only heard at the most three or four times before in their town.
Only a minute passed between the siren going silent and Molly hearing pounding feet on the stone path. When she turned around, the sheriff, tall in his gray uniform, his gun drawn, had already bolted into the yard. A deputy sheriff with his hand on his own gun followed close behind the sheriff. Both men stopped short at the sight of Molly and were speechless until the sheriff sputtered, “What the hell! What do you think you’re doing, girl?”
“I’m getting presents for my mom,” Molly answered. “You should see all the terrific things there are in this house!”
“Holy Mother of God,” the sheriff shouted. “We got a call from a neighbor saying she’d seen a prowler roaming around the Kaufman Estate. That wouldn’t be you, would it, young lady?”
Molly started to giggle. “It wasn’t a prowler. It was only me.”
“Now, I’ve seen everything,” the sheriff muttered. “Absolutely everything! I can retire tomorrow.”
The deputy leaned down and asked Molly. “How the devil old are you anyway and what’s your name?”
“I’m Molly Callahan and I’m nine,” she answered. “I guess you came all the way over here for nothing.”
“Not exactly,” the sheriff said. “Were you really going to take something from this place to give to your mama?”
“Well, yes. Nobody’s using any of it and my mom doesn’t have any terrific stuff like this. None at all. Well, I guess for a fact nobody in town does.”
“You’re certainly right about that, Molly. But you can’t just come in and take what you want from a house you don’t own. Don’t you know that?”
“I didn’t think anybody would care. I guess nobody’s used any of these things in about a million years. And that’s not right when they could be making plenty of people smile now… this very minute.”
The sheriff shook his head. “You gotta point there, but it’s still against the law.”
Molly looked down and shuffled her feet. “Dumb law, then.”
“Okay, no harm done. At least we got you before you broke the dumb law.”
When Molly didn’t look up and didn’t speak, the sheriff said. “That’s true, isn’t it, Molly?”
Molly hesitated, then in a whisper said. “I took some of the pretty pictures about an hour ago.”
The sheriff frowned, his smile fading. “Okay then, how about we take you down to the police station and have your mom or dad meet us there?”
Bursting through the front door of the Main Street Police Station, Molly’s mother howled. “What do you mean you have my daughter? Is she all right? What happened to her?”
“She’s unharmed,” the sheriff said while ushering Mrs. Callahan into his office where Molly sat stiff backed in a straight chair next to the sheriff’s desk. Her mother ran to her and threw her arms around her daughter’s shoulders. “Are you okay, honey?”
“She’s unharmed, but I can’t say the same for her reputation. Molly now has a record, it seems. Which is some kind of feat for a nine year old, don’t you think, Mrs. Callahan?”
“A record!” Molly’s mom moaned before collapsing into the nearest chair.
The sheriff told her he had waited for her to be present before asking Molly anything more. Within minutes of the sheriff’s questioning, Molly admitted that everything the sheriff asked her was true all right, but then said, “I still don’t think it’s right for people to lock up such stupendous stuff and not let anyone touch it. Even if it is legal for them to do it.”
“Oh, for Lord’s sake, Molly apologize. Tell them you’re sorry,” her mother demanded.
“But what if I’m not sorry?” Molly asked.
The sheriff stood up seeming taller than ever to Molly as he locked eyes with her. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “My deputy will come to your house tomorrow to pick up the paintings you took and he’ll return them to the mansion. But I am giving you a warning, girl. If you ever so much as steal a package of bubble gum from Woolworths any time in the future, I will not be this easy on you. Do you understand me?”
“Thank you, Sheriff. I do understand. For sure I won’t steal bubblegum. I hate bubblegum.” The sheriff frowned and Molly added quickly, “Or, anything else, sir.”
At home at last, Molly’s mother wrung her hands while telling Molly how horrified she was with her behavior. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, girl, what makes you do such things? I’m beside myself. And what am I going to tell your father about this?” she asked.
Molly guessed her mother didn’t want an answer to that question figuring her mom would most likely persuade her dad that the emergency was over since the pictures would be returned in the morning. And then her dad would shake his head and mutter something like what’s next with that girl and plop down at the dining table to read his evening newspaper.
Molly wanted only to escape to her room before her sisters and brothers blasted through the front door for dinner and started in with their "we always told you she was a crackpot, Mom. Maybe you’ll believe us now nasty remarks." But just then, without warning, Molly’s mother started to pace back and forth across the living room floor, then swung around and said, “Molly, how would you like to calm down with a cup of tea?”
Baffled, Molly slid quietly into a chair at the kitchen table and waited for her mother to start the conversation. With both cups filled, her mother sat down. “Now, tell me all about it,” she said, “starting with the carriage house and then the kitchen and the parlor and don’t leave out a single detail. Was it as magnificent as people have always imagined?”
“More so,” Molly said, catching on to her mother’s train of thought at once. “You wouldn’t believe the kitchen. Big enough to cook a Christmas banquet for the whole town.”
“Oh my God,” her mother sputtered. “Keep going. Don’t leave out anything.”
“And the chandeliers in the dining room and parlor… like huge glittering diamonds shining down from heaven …and soft velvet upholstery on carved wooden chairs…velvet also on the walls… and windows from the floor clear to the ceiling … a parlor big enough for a grand ball for kings and queens and princes and princesses… and a double winged banister staircase to the upstairs made for women in spectacular gowns to trip down."
Her mother grabbed Molly’s hand. “No, don’t stop. Was there china?”
“Of course, white with tiny rosebuds…………and also the most lovely silver tea set you could ever lay eyes on even in Buckingham Palace.” Her mother’s eyes begged for more and Molly was glad she’d saved the best for last. “You would probably pass out on the spot if you saw the most glorious sight of all. There were more pretty pictures on that parlor wall than anybody could ever gaze at in a Chicago art museum.”
“Tell me about them. All those you can remember.”
Molly described them one after the other until her mother finally interrupted her. “You’re right, Molly. It’s not fair. Keeping beautiful items locked up so none of us can touch them or even look at them. Selfish is what it is.” She patted Molly’s hand. “I’m glad you got to see them, dear.”
That night Molly set her princess alarm clock for 6:00 am. She got up and went straight out to the barn and brought the paintings into the house one at a time. Her mother studied them as they waited for the sheriff’s deputy to arrive. When the deputy’s car was finally out of sight, Molly went back out to the barn, climbed the stairs to the loft and ducked behind the packed boxes.
Everything had happened so fast she wondered if maybe she had just imagined the whole thing. But there they were – both of her favorites, the lovely ladies in their flowing cloud dresses lounging beside the tree bursting with yellow blossoms and the beautiful young ballerina waiting anxiously to glide onto a stage.
Contented, Molly lowered herself to the rough wooden floor, and, one hand clasped to the frame of her ballet girl painting, fell asleep to dream of the beautiful new world she’d just discovered.
Pretty Pictures(Barbara Mullen)
Pretty Pictures
A Short Story
By
Barbara Mullen
As long as she could remember nine year old Molly had heard stories about the rich folks who had moved to Winatoba from New York City and Philadelphia during the 1850’s. This year her fifth grade teacher had explained their local history to the class this way: “Now students, this is what happened. These strangers arrived uninvited. They bought out the only bank in town to purchase miles of earth rich with iron ore and copper. Then they dug into our mountains with immense machinery. Then they built long red iron docks out into our crystal clear waters of Lake Superior. They hired iron ore boats to ship tons and tons of ore to big steel making plants six or seven hundred miles south on Lake Michigan and Lake Eire. In the end they turned our quiet northland fishing village into a bustling mining town and our tree covered rolling hills into mounds of gutted rock.”
But were any of these stories really true, Molly had always wondered. Today, more than a hundred years later, with nothing much to do on a warm August day, Molly had suddenly had an urge to find out more about these people who had stormed into town and then left forever. By ten a.m. she’d already meandered across town and into the back yard of a mansion said to have belonged to the most powerful of all these Eastern families. Everyone in town knew about the splendid homes these invaders, as folks now called them, had built along the wooded lakefront and later abandoned. As the story goes, they tired of severe northland winters and small town life and slipped out of town and back to New York City and Philadelphia even wealthier than when they’d arrived. Molly however was mostly interested in learning more about the private lives of these mysterious people.
This morning, Molly stared in awe through the window of an old stone carriage house door at the sight of an actual horse drawn carriage fit for young Queen Elizabeth herself. I guess some of the rumors were true, she decided. Oh, my God, she thought, I swear I would wash all the dinner dishes for my mom for a year to sit down my fanny on those velvet cushions for one minute. What harm could there be in that? she asked as she started to wiggle and shake a long brass handle on the carriage house door. More determined, she kicked the rickety old door hard three or four times until it squeaked open just a crack, barely enough for her skinny body to slide through the space.
Once inside, she ran over to the carriage, smacked away cobwebs clinging to its ornately carved door and crawled inside. She sunk down onto its dusty plush cushion seat and raised her hand and waved to imaginary commoners standing on pretend streets. Then glimpsing another door at the far side of this carriage house, she scrambled quickly out of the carriage and floated, or so it felt, over to have a look.
With one good push the door swung open and she found herself in an immense kitchen, larger than any she’d ever seen -- even in a movie. Grasping onto the handle of a massive wood stove to steady herself, she examined the rest of the room, a vast working table at its center, an ice box big enough to hold enough meat and milk and eggs for a family for a year. She let go of the stove handle and crept across a wide expanse of hardwood floor toward double wooden doors with windows at the far end of the kitchen.
The doors surprised her by swinging easily open plummeting her into a dining room so grand she had to suck in her breath in order not to faint. Though vacant, surprisingly the home was still furnished. There was a banquet table, maybe twelve feet long, dusty now, but surely fit for royalty. Patches of heavy red velvet adorned the room’s otherwise dark wood walls and a teardrop chandelier sparkling from the window sunlight dangled above the table. Molly pulled out one of the dining chairs, sat down and curled her saddle shoes around its carved feet. She let out a long shrill whistle. Whew, I would never have believed I’d ever see anything like this in all the years of my life.
Her gaze wandered around the rest of the dining room before landing on a carved wooden archway. Bolting up from the chair, she ran through it into an area the size of a grand ballroom. Scattered about in separate groups were sofas, overstuffed chairs, lamps with stain glassed shades on side tables and marble tea tables. Each chair and sofa, upholstered in lavender, strawberry or blue velvet, had carved wooden arms and legs.
Molly envisioned a butler in front of the half open drapes hanging from a dozen floor to ceiling windows, perhaps drawing them to protect those inside from the prying eyes of ordinary folks outside such as herself. Next, she imagined the room filled with stylish women in long satin dresses and men wearing stiff white collared shirts and suits with vests. There would be musicians in a corner of the room playing dreamy dance music, Molly decided, and she swung round and round across the floor until she got dizzy.
Compared to her own modest home decorated with a few family photographs and containing little more than the necessities for living, a place to cook and beds enough for eight people, her parents and five brothers and sisters, Molly might as well have been transported to another planet. She fell into a soft lavender chair and glanced more thoroughly about the amazing room until her attention was captured abruptly by the sight of a dozen paintings hanging on a wall directly across from her. She walked over to the scenes of faraway places and portraits of serious looking people in best suits and fancy dresses. Were they family members, Molly questioned before examining the rest of the paintings of people gathered alongside a pond, others lying in a grassy field, still more talking at sidewalk tables on European streets, maybe in Paris or Rome. Still others were of flower gardens and bowls of fruit or flowers in vases with no people in them at all.
Then she bent over and started to flip through a stack of paintings leaning against the wall at her feet. Smaller than those on the wall, one was of a girl about Molly’s age in a fluffy organdy dress with a wide satin sash at her waist wearing ballet shoes. The girl in the picture smiled only a little because she had to be on the stage in about a minute and was nervous, Molly supposed. Another was of a group of ladies in gauzy looking dresses that puffed out around their ankles like billowing white clouds who were gathered at the foot of a lovely blossom covered tree.
Molly imagined herself entering the world of the paintings and moving in and out of them, drinking lemonade at a table on a Paris street, next joining the ladies lounging at the foot of the lovely tree, and, oh, yes, becoming the girl in ballet shoes. Molly would have stayed in this magic world forever had her concentration not been broken by a fantastic idea that suddenly streaked through her brain forcing her to turn away from the wall.
She ran out to the carriage house again and then into the street and raced all the way back home. Making a dash into her backyard, she whisked her brother Denny’s red wagon from their old barn, snuck it out of the garage and dragged it the ten blocks back to her secret palace. She parked the wagon next to the carriage house door and then traced her steps back to the grand parlor. At last, with as many paintings as she could possibly carry stacked carefully one on top of the other in the wagon, Molly sat down on the step outside the carriage house. Since this was as far as her brilliant idea had taken her, she wiped her hand across her forehead. Okay, what now? she asked herself when out of nowhere, a voice in her head shrieked: Get the heck out of here, dummy, and then decide what now.
By the time Molly reached home with her loaded wagon she knew what to do with her treasures. She would put them in her own hideaway place in the barn loft. Where they will always be mine to do with as I please, she noted with a smile.
After carrying the paintings one by one up the unsteady ladder she stashed them behind a pile of packed boxes at the far end of the loft. Pleased, but bone tired, she stretched out on the rough wood floor for a nap but was too worked up to sleep. Oh, how Mom would love to pour tea from that silver serving set I saw on the buffet, she thought. Nobody’s using it; it just sits there waiting to be loved by someone. The rest of the beautiful things could make a lot of other people happy too. I’m pretty sure the people who left their possessions behind have as many, or maybe more, gorgeous belongings in their New York and Philadelphia homes. I bet they don’t even remember what they left in Winatoba, or ever think about the castles they deserted. I wish I had twenty trucks instead of one little wagon. I know just what I would do.
Molly leaped to her feet, shimmied down the ladder and grabbed the wagon handle again. Looking first in each direction, she dashed from the barn and the yard, luckily without notice. What an amazing and special day this is, Molly declared while whistling and humming and dragging the wagon across town again. Once again in front of the carriage house, she was anxious to lay claim to another load of riches. Her hand was already on the carriage house door when she heard the police siren. Very strange, because it was a sound she’d only heard at the most three or four times before in their town.
Only a minute passed between the siren going silent and Molly hearing pounding feet on the stone path. When she turned around, the sheriff, tall in his gray uniform, his gun drawn, had already bolted into the yard. A deputy sheriff with his hand on his own gun followed close behind the sheriff. Both men stopped short at the sight of Molly and were speechless until the sheriff sputtered, “What the hell! What do you think you’re doing, girl?”
“I’m getting presents for my mom,” Molly answered. “You should see all the terrific things there are in this house!”
“Holy Mother of God,” the sheriff shouted. “We got a call from a neighbor saying she’d seen a prowler roaming around the Kaufman Estate. That wouldn’t be you, would it, young lady?”
Molly started to giggle. “It wasn’t a prowler. It was only me.”
“Now, I’ve seen everything,” the sheriff muttered. “Absolutely everything! I can retire tomorrow.”
The deputy leaned down and asked Molly. “How the devil old are you anyway and what’s your name?”
“I’m Molly Callahan and I’m nine,” she answered. “I guess you came all the way over here for nothing.”
“Not exactly,” the sheriff said. “Were you really going to take something from this place to give to your mama?”
“Well, yes. Nobody’s using any of it and my mom doesn’t have any terrific stuff like this. None at all. Well, I guess for a fact nobody in town does.”
“You’re certainly right about that, Molly. But you can’t just come in and take what you want from a house you don’t own. Don’t you know that?”
“I didn’t think anybody would care. I guess nobody’s used any of these things in about a million years. And that’s not right when they could be making plenty of people smile now… this very minute.”
The sheriff shook his head. “You gotta point there, but it’s still against the law.”
Molly looked down and shuffled her feet. “Dumb law, then.”
“Okay, no harm done. At least we got you before you broke the dumb law.”
When Molly didn’t look up and didn’t speak, the sheriff said. “That’s true, isn’t it, Molly?”
Molly hesitated, then in a whisper said. “I took some of the pretty pictures about an hour ago.”
The sheriff frowned, his smile fading. “Okay then, how about we take you down to the police station and have your mom or dad meet us there?”
Bursting through the front door of the Main Street Police Station, Molly’s mother howled. “What do you mean you have my daughter? Is she all right? What happened to her?”
“She’s unharmed,” the sheriff said while ushering Mrs. Callahan into his office where Molly sat stiff backed in a straight chair next to the sheriff’s desk. Her mother ran to her and threw her arms around her daughter’s shoulders. “Are you okay, honey?”
“She’s unharmed, but I can’t say the same for her reputation. Molly now has a record, it seems. Which is some kind of feat for a nine year old, don’t you think, Mrs. Callahan?”
“A record!” Molly’s mom moaned before collapsing into the nearest chair.
The sheriff told her he had waited for her to be present before asking Molly anything more. Within minutes of the sheriff’s questioning, Molly admitted that everything the sheriff asked her was true all right, but then said, “I still don’t think it’s right for people to lock up such stupendous stuff and not let anyone touch it. Even if it is legal for them to do it.”
“Oh, for Lord’s sake, Molly apologize. Tell them you’re sorry,” her mother demanded.
“But what if I’m not sorry?” Molly asked.
The sheriff stood up seeming taller than ever to Molly as he locked eyes with her. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “My deputy will come to your house tomorrow to pick up the paintings you took and he’ll return them to the mansion. But I am giving you a warning, girl. If you ever so much as steal a package of bubble gum from Woolworths any time in the future, I will not be this easy on you. Do you understand me?”
“Thank you, Sheriff. I do understand. For sure I won’t steal bubblegum. I hate bubblegum.” The sheriff frowned and Molly added quickly, “Or, anything else, sir.”
At home at last, Molly’s mother wrung her hands while telling Molly how horrified she was with her behavior. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, girl, what makes you do such things? I’m beside myself. And what am I going to tell your father about this?” she asked.
Molly guessed her mother didn’t want an answer to that question figuring her mom would most likely persuade her dad that the emergency was over since the pictures would be returned in the morning. And then her dad would shake his head and mutter something like what’s next with that girl and plop down at the dining table to read his evening newspaper.
Molly wanted only to escape to her room before her sisters and brothers blasted through the front door for dinner and started in with their "we always told you she was a crackpot, Mom. Maybe you’ll believe us now nasty remarks." But just then, without warning, Molly’s mother started to pace back and forth across the living room floor, then swung around and said, “Molly, how would you like to calm down with a cup of tea?”
Baffled, Molly slid quietly into a chair at the kitchen table and waited for her mother to start the conversation. With both cups filled, her mother sat down. “Now, tell me all about it,” she said, “starting with the carriage house and then the kitchen and the parlor and don’t leave out a single detail. Was it as magnificent as people have always imagined?”
“More so,” Molly said, catching on to her mother’s train of thought at once. “You wouldn’t believe the kitchen. Big enough to cook a Christmas banquet for the whole town.”
“Oh my God,” her mother sputtered. “Keep going. Don’t leave out anything.”
“And the chandeliers in the dining room and parlor… like huge glittering diamonds shining down from heaven …and soft velvet upholstery on carved wooden chairs…velvet also on the walls… and windows from the floor clear to the ceiling … a parlor big enough for a grand ball for kings and queens and princes and princesses… and a double winged banister staircase to the upstairs made for women in spectacular gowns to trip down."
Her mother grabbed Molly’s hand. “No, don’t stop. Was there china?”
“Of course, white with tiny rosebuds…………and also the most lovely silver tea set you could ever lay eyes on even in Buckingham Palace.” Her mother’s eyes begged for more and Molly was glad she’d saved the best for last. “You would probably pass out on the spot if you saw the most glorious sight of all. There were more pretty pictures on that parlor wall than anybody could ever gaze at in a Chicago art museum.”
“Tell me about them. All those you can remember.”
Molly described them one after the other until her mother finally interrupted her. “You’re right, Molly. It’s not fair. Keeping beautiful items locked up so none of us can touch them or even look at them. Selfish is what it is.” She patted Molly’s hand. “I’m glad you got to see them, dear.”
That night Molly set her princess alarm clock for 6:00 am. She got up and went straight out to the barn and brought the paintings into the house one at a time. Her mother studied them as they waited for the sheriff’s deputy to arrive. When the deputy’s car was finally out of sight, Molly went back out to the barn, climbed the stairs to the loft and ducked behind the packed boxes.
Everything had happened so fast she wondered if maybe she had just imagined the whole thing. But there they were – both of her favorites, the lovely ladies in their flowing cloud dresses lounging beside the tree bursting with yellow blossoms and the beautiful young ballerina waiting anxiously to glide onto a stage.
Contented, Molly lowered herself to the rough wooden floor, and, one hand clasped to the frame of her ballet girl painting, fell asleep to dream of the beautiful new world she’d just discovered.
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Kevin Hughes
11/06/2018Oh My Gosh, I loved this story. I had a similar experience to this little girl, but it was while working for a Temporary Labor Company. We had to help empty an old mansion that hadn't been lived in for more than fifty years. They even ended up selling the hand made stairs that were made from some kind of wood from Vietnam or Thailand. We even had to help the carpenters take out the stain glassed windows - and inside the mansion all of the French doors leading to rooms had stained glass windows on them too!
In the Attic were hundreds of pictures just covered with old blankets and sheets. This was way back in the seventies. When we got to the Attic, they made us stop working. They called the Art Museum to send over a scholar to look at all the paintings. I felt much like the little girl in your story.
Sometimes it is nice to be rich. Until you realize what it cost to keep those things running! LOL
Smiles, Kevin
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JD
11/06/2018What an intriguing job that must have been, Kevin! I would have loved to see all the paintings hiding under those blankets! What fun it must have been for whichever art scholar got the job of uncovering what surely must have been some true treasures! : )
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