Edward Is Only a Fish (2 page)

Rinnng! Rinnng!

“Pardon me. My phone is ringing.”

Edward darted over to pick it up. Maybe it was the mayor of Boston, home of the Boston Cooler, calling to congratulate him on his vacation.

“Edward?” said Mr. Billingsly. “Is that you, Edward?”

His voice sounded funny, as if he were trying to gargle and talk at the same time. “Stay calm, Edward. Don't panic! Go into the bathroom and pull out the plug. Pull out the plug in the bathtub.”

Mr. B was right. The important thing was to stay calm. On his way over to the refrigerator to fix himself a bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate coconut sprinkles and half a teaspoon of butterscotch topping, Edward thought about the tub.

“Edward? Do you hear me, Edward?”

On his way back from the refrigerator Edward thought about the tub, and the water in the tub, and the silent rubber plug at the bottom of the tub. A fresh red strawberry drifted across the room and into his mouth. And drifting right behind it? A bite-sized piece of strawberry shortcake. Maybe it would not be such a good idea to pull out such a calm, calm plug. Maybe it would be better, calmer and better, for the plug to stay where it belonged.

“Edward! Edward!”

That is, if it were even possible for a fish to pull out a plug.

Three

FOURTEEN NEW FRIENDS

Edward glided over to Mr. Billingsly's easy chair and settled in to enjoy his lunch. It was Edward who was in charge now. It was Edward's turn to be the boss of the house. On the floor in front of him lay Mr. B's green and gold and purple crayons. On the wall behind him stood a long white patch of wallpaper, blank white wallpaper. The crayons seemed to be pointing up at the wall. The wall seemed to be leaning down toward the crayons. Edward seemed to be … well, there would be plenty of time for all that. The best thing about vacation was all the—

“Eeeedwaaaard.… Oh, Eeeedwaaaard.…”

It was the fourteen cats in Mr. B's hat rack.

“Do you think…,” said the fat cats on top.

“… that it would be possible…,” said the medium-sized cats in the middle.

“… for you to give us a little hand?” said the skinny cats on the bottom with their tails dragging in the water. “We do not know how to swim.”

“Swimming is simple,” said Edward. “You just waggle your tail.”

“But Edward,” said the fattest of the fat cats, “I do not want the water to ruin my chocolate and vanilla and butterscotch tail. Come give me a ride on your back.”

“But if I come too close, you are going to eat me.”

“Absolutely not, Edward,” said all the cats at once. “We love you, Edward. We are your friends. We would never eat you.”

“But what about the paw prints on the rim of my fishbowl? What about the claw prints on my tiny yellow lawn chair? And my umbrella—the tip of my umbrella has been nibbled away. You are
always
trying to eat me.”

The water rose up to pluck the hats from the hat rack and, one by one, carry them away. The cats climbed higher.

“We just wanted to wash the honey off our claws, sweet Edward, to wash them off in the fresh clean bowl,” said the skinny cats. They smiled and blinked their eyes.

“We just wanted to cool our paws, dear Edward, to cool them off in the clean cool water,” said the medium-sized cats. They licked their lips and purred a little tune.

“We just wanted to dip our tongues, kind Edward, to dip our tongues in the bright blue water,” said the fat cats as they stepped up onto the heads of the skinny cats, as they climbed still higher to the ceiling. “It was the water that we wanted, Edward, it was the water.”

“So you want to be friends with me? With a fish?”

“Especially with you, Edward,” said the cats as they polished their teeth with the backs of their paws. “We like fish very much. We have always liked fish.”

“And I am the boss of the house?”

“Absolutely. You are the boss of the house.”

“Very well, then.”

Edward gathered up all the hats that were still afloat and put them in a line. Then, very gently so that they would not tip over, he tied them together with the drawstring from Mr. B's red leather Stetson.

The water bubbled higher. The cats squeezed together at the top of the rack like a stack of flapjacks stuck together at the end of a fork.

“All aboard!” cried Edward as he pulled his line of hat boats, his line of flat boats, his fancy line of cat boats into place alongside the rack.

The cats scratched and pushed and clawed their way into the bowlers and the boaters and the trenchers, the fedoras and the derbies and the yellow-tasseled fezzes, the busbies and the toppers and the braided-silk sombreros. As he settled down into his very comfortable houndstooth hunting cap with the felt brim and the ostrich feather on the crown, the fattest of the fat cats leaned over and whispered into Edward's ear, “Take us over to the window, Edward, open up the window and let us go free.”

Edward whispered back: “
Shhh.
You seem to forget that I am a fish. Fish do not know how to open the window.”

Instead—and very slowly because he was so little and the cats were so big—Edward clenched down on the drawstring and towed them all out the door,

down the hall,

    through the kitchen,

     and directly into Mr. B's gigantic redbrick oven.

Edward listened to the voices echoing out the oven door. They sounded like a box of rusty violins.

“Help! He's going to cook us in the oven!”

“Help! Help! He's going to serve us up for dinner!”

“Help! Help! Help! We are going to be eaten by a fish!”

Four

ONE HUG IS TOO MANY

“Shh!”
said Edward. “Stop your caterwauling and listen. Listen to the sound of the water.”

The cats stopped. They crouched in their hat boats and cocked their ears and whimpered and cried in the dark.

Gurgling and burping, the water climbed the walls of the oven, brick by brick. Slowly it lifted the cats up higher, up into the chimney and—
gurgle-burp, gurgle-burp
—out onto the roof.

“We did it! We did it!” they sang as they tumbled out into the light. “Brave we are, brave are we, we have saved ourselves from the water tree!”

Thirteen of the cats—black with soot and dragging their hats behind them—skittered across the shingles and down the drainpipe and out across the lawn, but the fat cat, the fattest of the fat cats, tiptoed back over to the chimney.

“Edward! Oh, Edward!”

“Yes?”

“You were so good to us, handsome Edward,” she purred as she reached down into the water with her paw, “that I would just like to give you a little hug.”

She was squinting down into the water now, her whiskers twitching left and right. “Come closer, brave Edward, so that I can hug you.”

“But you are already waving to me,” said Edward as he watched the glint of her claws in the sunlight, “and I think that is plenty enough.”

The claw swept down into the water again, this time a bit deeper.

“Oh no, Edward, that is not enough, a wave is not nearly enough.”

“Then you can blow me a kiss.”

“No, not enough. A kiss is not enough.”

“You can sing me a little song, then. A thank-you song.”

No-not, no-not, no-not enough,

And don't try to put them together.

A wave and a kiss and a song is a treat,

But a hug would be even better.

“Well, then,” said Edward as he darted back down the chimney and into the safety of the house, “if a wave is not enough, and a kiss is not enough, and a song is not enough”—the cat's sharp claws screeched and scratched against the bricks of the chimney—

Then maybe you should pen me,

Maybe you should lend me,

Maybe you should send me

A let, a let, a letter.

Five

THE COW IN THE BOTTLE, THE HORSE IN THE MAIL

The water grew calmer now. The covered-wagon kite rattled to a halt. The furniture stopped its dancing. Clouds of sweet tea came rolling out of the kitchen cupboards—mint medley, vanilla almond, blackberry currant—and covered the floor in a faint purple haze.