Chapter Twenty-Three
Two Months Later
October 2, 1971
Kermit skimmed through the shelves of the children’s section of the new bookstore that had finally opened. There hadn’t been anything here for a while. The building had been up for sale for a long time. It had been a record store before, and a diner before that. He pushed the thought away.
That’s it! He triumphantly pulled a book off the shelf and flipped through it. He stopped and grinned at a page. Then he snapped the book shut, checked the price, and carried it up to the register.
The red-haired girl behind the register smiled prettily at him. “Will this be everything for you today?” she asked.
“Yup, that’s everything!” he said cheerfully.
“All right,” she said. She smiled at the book and glanced at the price. “So who is this for?”
“It’s for my little nephew,” Kermit said.
“Oh how sweet,” she gushed. “Is it his birthday?” She punched some buttons on the cash register.
“Nope, he’s just coming to visit,” Kermit said.
“Well that’s nice,” the girl said. “Are you two close?” She leaned unnecessarily forward and held her hand out. “That’ll be five twenty-five please,” she said in a playfully secretive way.
He grinned at her and handed her a ten-dollar bill, leaning in slightly. “We’re very close,” he said.
She smiled at him, straightened up, made change and leaned forward to hand it to him. “You must take good care of him,” she said.
“Well, I try to take very good care of the people I’m close to,” he said as he unhesitantly dumped his change into the tip jar on the counter without breaking his gaze from hers.
“Oh really?” she batted her eyes at him. “So do you read to your nephew often?”
“Oh… whenever I have time,” he said a little too casually to be casual.
“Have you read anything else by that author to him?” she asked, tapping the book between them.
“Well no I haven’t,” he said. “Do you
suggest anything by him?”
“Yes I do,” she said. “And if your nephew likes that book, you better hop on back here and pick up a book about a little bear named Winnie-the-Pooh.”
“I’ll be sure to do that,” Kermit smiled at her.
“Great.” She reached forward and ran her finger down the side of his cheek. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around then, Mr. Wonderful.”
He gulped. “My name’s Kermit,” he said.
“Kermit,” she said. “My name is Penny.”
“Well, it’s a
pleasure to meet you, Penny,” Kermit said.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Penny said. She drew her hand away from him. “I wish
I had an uncle like you,” she said. “You know at first I thought this book might’ve been for your son.”
“No, I-“ He caught his breath suddenly. “I don’t have a son.” He picked the book up off the counter.
“Did you want me to gift-wrap that for you?” Penny asked sweetly.
“No thank you, that won’t be necessary,” Kermit said.
I have to get out of here.
“All right then, I’ll see you around, Kermit,” she said.
“Right.” He went to the door quickly. “Bye Penny.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
He held his temper until he was safely inside his house. Then someone opened Pandora’s box.
“WHAT WAS I THINKING? WHY WAS I FLIRTING WITH HER?” He angrily dropped the book on the sofa and started pacing back and forth. “
Why would I
do that?” He stopped, looked up, and held his hands out in partial supplication. “I’m sorry, Melinda!” he said. “I’m sorry…” He dropped his hands and then his head, and sighed. “What am I doing…” He sulked over to a new comfy chair and sat down. After a moment, he glanced at the clock and quickly hopped to his feet. “Yipes! I forgot! The whole reason I
went to the bookstore!”
He grabbed the book off the sofa and quickly flipped through to the page he had smiled at earlier, and marked it with a bookmark he had lying out on an end table. Then he walked to the foot of the stairs, counted the steps in his head, walked partway up, and set the book down. “There,” he said. “It’ll be waiting for him here.
Halfway. And I have a train to catch.” He bolted up the stairs and into his room, and grabbed his banjo before hopping back down the stairs and out the door.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Three Days Later
October 5, 1971
“So you live
here now, Uncle Kermit?” Robin asked as he hopped across the front porch.
“Yup. All moved in!” Kermit said, following close behind. “And I got all new furniture, too.”
“Furniture?”
“Yeah, all the stuff inside. You know, like- the tables, the chairs, the sofa, the bookcase- it’s all new stuff now.”
“Oh, boy!”
Kermit unlocked and opened the door. “Why don’t you take a look around, make yourself comfortable?”
“Okay!” Robin shot inside and immediately hopped onto and across the sofa.
Kermit chuckled as he closed the door and leaned his banjo against the wall. Robin hopped from the sofa to the floor, from the floor to the red comfy chair, and from the comfy chair to the floor again.
“I like it!” he proclaimed.
“Oh, good,” Kermit said.
Robin looked at the stairs and smiled. “Race you to half-way!” He charged.
Kermit laughed as he bolted. Even with Robin having the advantage of half the length of the room, Kermit won the race, although not by much. “You’re getting faster,” he observed.
“What’s this?” Robin picked up the book.
“This is a book,” Kermit said. “It’s a gift from me to you.”
“Oh, thanks, Uncle Kermit!” Robin looked at the cover. “What’s it say?”
“It says,
When We Were Very Young, and here it says
A. A. Milne. That’s the name of the guy who wrote it. See?”
Robin looked sad. “Well, I can’t read it,” he said glumly.
“Oh that’s okay. I can teach you to read,” Kermit said.
Robin looked up excitedly. “You can?”
“Well sure!” Kermit said. “We can start right here- I want to show you this page.” He opened the book to the page he had marked. “Let’s take a look at this…”
Robin crawled into his lap and eagerly examined the page.
“Do you know the ABCs?” Kermit asked.
“I think so,” Robin said hesitantly. “A, B, C, D… um…”
“You want me to sing the song with you?” Kermit offered.
Robin nodded, and they sang together. “
A-B-C-D-E-F-G, H-“
“Stop!” Kermit pointed to the first letter on the page. “That’s the letter H,” he said. “It makes the ‘huh’ sound.”
“Huh,” Robin said.
“Mm-hm, and that letter next to it is the letter A. It makes a few sounds, but in this case it makes the ‘ah’ sound.”
“Ah.”
“Good, now if we put those two letters together…”
They continued slowly, examining each letter and the sound it made. It was difficult, explaining every rule of pronunciation as they came to it, and Kermit knew that, realistically, Robin would be lucky to remember any of it an hour later. He decided to teach him properly, bit by bit, some other time, and perhaps have him watch some episodes of
Sesame Street while he was here. But in the mean time, it was extremely gratifying to both of them when, after ten minutes, Robin slowly sounded out the first line. “Half…wuh-ay… duh-ow-nuh… the… stuh-airs…” He slowly smiled a huge, excited smile. “Half-way-down-the-stairs!”
“That’s right! VERY good, Robin!” Kermit hugged him ecstatically and kissed the top of his head. “That was terrific!”
“Half-way-down-the-stairs!” Robin repeated. “I DID it, Uncle Kermit!”
“Yes you did!” Kermit beamed. “You wanna try some more?”
“YEAH!”
“Great! Me too!” He pointed to the next line. “That’s the letter I. It makes a few sounds, too, but this time it says ‘ih’.”
“Ih.”
“Good! Now what letter is that next to it?”
“Um-“
“We saw that up here, remember?”
“It’s… the letter… S!”
“Right! And what sound does S make?”
“Sssss…”
“
Very good, Robin…”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Two Weeks and Three Days Later
October 22, 1971
Kermit sat by himself on the middle step of his stairs with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, listening to the deafening silence. He had just returned from taking Robin back to the swamp, and he couldn’t get over how empty the house seemed without his little nephew. This was exactly the feeling that getting a house was supposed to remedy.
It didn’t work.
He sighed. Tomorrow would be an early morning, so he might as well make this an early evening. But there was one thing he had to do before he called it a night. He stood up, trudged down the stairs, went outside, got on his bicycle, and pedaled away.
Ten minutes later, he was at a flower shop. They were getting ready to close, but he quickly and carefully picked out a dozen sunflowers and six lilies, and brought them up to the cashier. She wrapped them in pretty blue paper. “Will this be everything tonight?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s all,” he said sadly.
She raised an eyebrow at his mood as she rang up the price. “Something wrong?”
He shrugged. “I’d rather not talk about it,” he mumbled.
She nodded understandingly. “Well, I hope everything works out for you.” She gestured to his purchase. “Maybe the flowers will help. That’ll be five dollars, please.”
He frowned. “That doesn’t seem right,” he said.
“They’re on sale,” she assured him.
He shrugged. “Okay…” He paid and took the flowers. “Have a lovely evening,” he said.
“You too, sir.” She watched as he put the flowers in the basket on his bicycle and rode away, and then she quietly slid some money out of her own pocket and into the register.
A man watched her suspiciously from across the store. “You keep doing that, Jessie, and you’ll use up your pay check quicker’n you can count to ten,” he said.
“I know, Papa, but he just looked so sad,” she said.
“They all look sad, Jessie,” he said. “That’s why they come here.”
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