Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I used to watch the show.
Rain rain rain rain. Four rains because it has rained four weekends in a row. It even rained last Saturday afternoon when we had our Hallowe'en party for everyone from the precinct. Hallowe'en was on Tuesday this year so we had our party early. Even though it was pouring it was still fun, especially Mom's costume. I hope you won't think that I'm conceited since it was my idea, but everybody liked it. She wore green leggings and a green turtleneck and a green pointy hat kind of like an elf's. On the front of her turtleneck in big white letters was P + P. She was dressed up as two peas in a pod! She was the pod and Thumby and Bumpy were the peas. That was the way she let everyone know that she is going to have two babies instead of one which was what they thought. Even though we didn't tell the names, the twins aren't a secret anymore! I'm glad because sometimes I was about to explode from not being able to tell.
I guess Aunt Lanie was about to explode sometimes too because I overheard her say to Mom in the kitchen, "No surprise to me, Kate. I figured it out ages ago. You're every bit as big as you were with Otis and Abby."
"Geez, Lane, thanks very much."
"Listen, I've never seen any pregnant woman as gorgeous as you are. Wouldn't matter if your waist was forty-eight inches."
"Yeah, well, mine might be by the time these two get here. I can't believe you didn't ask me."
"I was dying to. Just consider it a rare moment of self-control."
"Which has now passed and you'll ask me anything. Like since I'm in my second trimester, how incredible is the s–"
Mom stopped talking then for some reason and looked around and saw me. "Hi, sweet pea," she said. I saw Aunt Lanie wink at her. I think maybe she was going to say something grown-up that she didn't want me to hear.
Forty-eight inches is really big for a waist, though. That night I measured mine and it's 22 inches. Yikes.
Yesterday it was raining even harder than the last three Saturdays and in the morning Dad said, "I think everyone in this family is suffering from cabin fever."
"I don't think I have a fever," I said, but I put my hand on my forehead to make sure.
"It's an expression from frontier days when people lived in cabins. In the cold, snowy winters they'd be stuck inside for a long, long time and be restless and bored. So even though most of us don't live in cabins anymore and can go out almost anytime, we still say we have cabin fever when we're feeling cooped-up. You guys haven't been able to play outdoors on weekends for a month. What do you think we could do not to be bored?"
"I know!" Otis said. "Let's build a humongous cabin like in the old days only out of Legos."
"That's a great idea. How about it, Abby and Eliot?"
"Yeah," Abby said. "And we could make snow out of cotton balls and put it all around and on the roof." Then Otis said he was going to put his teddy bear outside looking in the window which would scare the people inside and they wouldn't want to leave the cabin anymore no matter how bored they were.
"You guys should do it," I said, because I had a different idea for myself. "It's a cool project. I'm going to see if Mom will help me with something else."
She was reading the paper and drinking her herbal tea which she has to do instead of coffee because if you're pregnant you aren't supposed to have too much. "Hey, Mom, could I ask you a question?"
"You may always ask me a question, but I can't always answer it. I hope this isn't about string theory."
"No, I think I don't have any more questions about that."
"Good. Fire away, then."
"I was wondering if you could teach me poker? I don't mean I'd come play in your and Dad's games, but I want to learn the rules and stuff and maybe when I'm older you'll let me. But for now we could play for fun. I wouldn't bet money or anything. Even though I've saved up nine dollars and seventy-three cents."
"I'd love to teach you. And yes, hang on to your money. You know, when Dad and I were first working together we once played for gummy bears."
"You did? Who won?"
"This should be our secret, since I don't think Dad likes to be reminded of it, but I did."
"I bet he ate most of the gummy bears, though, didn't he?"
"You're right."
"Could you give me a lesson now? Dad and the twins are making a cabin out of Legos but I'd rather play cards with you."
"Why don't you get a pack from the drawer and we'll have your first lesson at the kitchen counter."
So we did. First Mom explained what a hand is worth–not a human hand, but the cards you're holding, which is also called a hand. The worst is when nothing matches. Then there's one pair, which is when you have two cards that are the same, like two sixes or two jacks, but they're not related to anything else. The next best is two pairs, then three of a kind. Also the suit is sometimes important. For instance if you have five cards that are different values–like 2, 5, 8, 9, and king–but they're all the same suit, like diamonds or spades, that's a pretty great hand. It's called a flush. The tip-top hand is a royal flush, which is 10, jack, queen, king, ace of the same suit. When Mom told me the name I laughed and said a royal flush was what a king or queen did in the bathroom.
"You really are your father's son."
"You always say that. Did you ever get one, Mom?"
"Get one what?"
"A royal flush in poker."
"Never. It's almost impossible. It involves tremendous luck and at least some skill."
"Hold on a minute 'cause I want to figure something out." It took me a little bit and then I said, "The chances of it happening are almost six hundred fifty thousand to one."
Mom squinted her eyes but not like when she's mad. Instead she had a big grin and then she laughed. "I'm pretty sure you won't need a second lesson before you'll be able to beat the pants off me."
That reminded me of the first time I heard that expression and I thought it meant a really, really, really bad spanking! I was only three and I had a very literal mind. That's what Gram said.
"Could we do some practice games?"
We played a bunch of them and when we finished Mom said, "I have something for you." She opened one of the cabinet doors and reached up to a high shelf and took something out. She hid it until she got back to the counter and then she gave it to me. "You earned this," she said and gave me–. Can you guess what it was? A package of gummy bears!
"Thanks, Mom. You know what? I just got an idea for next Hallowe'en. We five kids could go as a poker hand. Abby and Otis would be a pair, Thumby and Bumpy would be a pair, and I'd be an ace because I'm the oldest. The oldest of the kids, I mean. And you and Dad could be the King and Queen of Hearts. What do you think?"
"I think you're the best joker in any deck, Eliot Beckett-Castle." She kissed me on the nose. "I'm glad you're not too grown-up to let me do that."
"I'll never be too old for that, Mom."
We went and inspected the Lego cabin and it was pretty great. Otis put his teddy bear's arms up right against the window so I told him it looked ferocious, which it did, at least from the back.
We got to have rainy-day pizza for lunch. While I was eating mine I was thinking about kings and queens because of my poker lesson so I decided I would memorize all the kings and queens of England in order, which I did before I went to bed.
This morning I woke up when I heard some noise in the kitchen, so Scrapple and I looked over the railing and saw Mom standing down there having a glass of milk and an Oreo. Wow! Mom never eats a cookie at 6:30 a.m.
"Scrapple, let's go investigate this weird behavior."
"Nothing weird about it, Eliot. Who wouldn't like to have a cookie before breakfast?"
"Mom, that's who. She always eats healthy stuff."
"I bet I know who put her up to it."
"I bet you're right. I bet there are two guilty parties."
"Twin miscreants, heh heh."
"Good word, Scrap."
"Learned it from you, Eliot."
"Morning, Mom," I said when we got to the bottom of the stairs.
"Morning, boys."
"You must be hungry."
"Ravenous. I had a craving for some Oreos. Funny, isn't it?"
"I know why."
"You do, huh?"
"I remember the first time I made you eat something before I was born. It was that ice cream with macadamia nuts. You hate macadamia nuts but you had tasted Dad's ice cream and I loved it so I made you have some. I did that a lot when I was inside your belly. I would tell you something I wanted to eat and you didn't realize it but then you'd eat it. Last summer Dad explained to me about something called the power of suggestion and that was kind of what I was doing even though I didn't know it had a name."
"I'd forgotten all about that, you little macadamia monster. And to think I wrote off those things as prenatal urges."
"Nope, they were pre-Eliot urges. Bumpy and Thumby told me the other day that they love Oreos, especially Bumpy, and wish that you'd eat them again, so they must have been giving you a hint just now."
She looked down at her belly which I have to tell you is beginning to get pretty round and then patted it with her hand. "Listen up, you two. I'm on to you now. I'm putting the cookies away and I'm going to eat some plain yogurt instead. Very, very, very plain yogurt."
"You know what, Mom? I think you're a tough cookie!"
"Good one, Eliot."
"Thanks, Scrap."
"Would you like something to eat, sweet pea?"
"No, I'll wait for everybody else. Can I tell you what I did last night before bedtime?"
"Of course."
"Playing poker with you must have been the power of suggestion because it got me thinking about kings and queens so I memorized all the ones from England. Would you like to hear them?"
She said yes so I recited them beginning with Egbert in 827 and going right up to Queen Elizabeth the second who is 97 years old. She is Gram's heroine. She says the queen must have gloves in every color ever invented.
"Do you have a favorite king or queen?"
"No, but I have a favorite name."
"What's that?"
"Ethelred. He was called Ethelred the Unready. It sounds like somebody made it up but he was a real king."
"Who was a real king?"
"Oh, hi, Dad. Ethelred the Unready."
I love it when Dad has just gotten out of bed because his hair is always sticking straight up like in a cartoon.
"Eliot decided to learn the names of all the kings and queens of England and Ethelred's name appeals to him."
"I can see why. Although you always seem ready to me, Eliot. For instance, are you ready to help me make popovers?"
"Yes but somebody has to go out first."
"Somebody with four feet?"
"Yup."
"Castle," Mom said and kissed him, only right smack on the mouth not on the nose. "I'll go out with Eliot and Scrapple and you stay here."
It was still pouring outside but I didn't even have to get dressed. I just put my slicker on over my PJs and pulled on my boots. The doorman always puts down a long black rubber matt in the lobby if the weather is bad so no one will slip on the floor. If Scrapple sees the matt when the elevator door opens he knows what's going on and refuses to get out. He's very smart but sometimes he's really stubborn. He knew it was raining because I'd put his slicker on him, too, but I picked him up just before the door opened and carried him out the front door.
"The faster you pee the faster we can go back inside."
"Easy for you to say. Your stomach isn't two inches off the sidewalk and getting all wet."
Scrapple was dawdling because he has to sniff everything, even in the rain. So while he was doing that I said, "Hey, Mom? Even though I really love the name Ethelred the Unready I don't think we should name one of the new twins Ethelred if it's a boy. I think he might get teased to death."
"No Ethelred, then. I won't even put it on the list."
"Elizabeth is a nice name, though. For a girl. You could leave off the Queen part."
"Definitely."
When we came back in Dad had the ingredients for popovers on the counter so we could make the batter. It's funny that we always wake up way before the twins. They sleep like they've been hit in the head with a hammer.
I'm going to have stop calling Otis and Abby the twins pretty soon because we'll have more twins here and it will be confusing.
"Hey, Dad, you know what today is?"
"I'd say Sunday, but I have a feeling that's not the answer you're wanting."
"It's November fifth."
"So it is. Time to start thinking about Thanksgiving?"
"Well, yeah, but before that is today. November fifth is Guy Fawkes Day. When I was looking up the kings and queens I read about that. If we lived in England this would be a holiday."
"True, but we get Thanksgiving for a holiday in a couple of weeks and they don't." He handed me an egg to crack into the big bowl. We needed a whole lot of eggs because we were making a double batch since Docky was coming over, too.
"Mom said it's going to rain all day again so I have an idea for something fun to do indoors. Besides making popovers, which I love. We could celebrate Guy Fawkes Day."
He handed me another egg. "Okay. Did you have something in mind? We can't have a bonfire."
"Or blow up Parliament like Guy Fawkes tried to do. But maybe we could blow something else up."
"Like what?" Dad started to whisk the eggs. I love to watch him do that. It practically hypnotizes me even though his arm is going so fast. If Dad weren't a writer he could be a chef.
"Maybe we could do something in the downstairs apartment where the workmen have been tearing stuff down. It's already a mess so if we made it a little messier it wouldn't matter, right?"
"I'll have to think about that."
"Did you ever blow anything up?"
He stopped whisking and chuckled. I like it when he chuckles. "Yes, but not on purpose."
"What was it?"
"Baked potatoes. Alexis was about three and that was almost the only thing she would eat for a while. One time I was exhausted because I'd been writing nonstop all day and I forgot to spear the potatoes with a fork before I baked them."
"And they blew up?"
"Oh, yeah, all over the inside of the oven. In about a million pieces. Alexis thought it was hilarious until she discovered she couldn't have a baked potato for supper that night. And I had to wait for the oven to cool off before I could clean it, by which time all those million pieces had stuck to the oven walls like cement. Took me about two days to get them all off." He started whisking again and he was still chuckling.
"It's a good thing popovers don't explode, Dad. That would be a huge mess. They always look like they're kind of exploded, though, don't they?"
"That's one of the things that makes them so good." And then Otis and Abby came running into the kitchen so that was the end of our exploding conversation for a while.
After breakfast Mom wondered if we should all go to the Natural History Museum or the Children's Museum but Dad said because of the awful weather they would be packed so we decided to stay home. The already-born twins are learning how to play Sorry! and Mom and Docky said they'd play with them because I said I had a secret adventure for everyone for later and I was working it out with Dad. He looked at me with his eyebrows raised like he was saying, really, what adventure is that? And I mouthed the words GUY FAWKES to him so he understood.
"Right, we're going to work on it in–"
"Dad's office!" I said that since I figured he didn't know where we should be.
As soon as we got in there I whispered, "So, here's my plan for our adventure."
"I'm probably open to any of your ideas except actual explosions, from Guy's gunpowder to my own baked potatoes."
"It's okay, nothing will blow up, I promise. Do you still have some of those safe fireworks left over, you know sparklers and snakes? Especially snakes."
"Sure. They're in our storage room in the basement."
And then I told him my idea about them and he said, "This is the best!"
"But one more thing. I think we should have a snack to go with it, like tea and crumpets."
"Not English muffins, then?"
"They're American, Dad! They were invented in New York City. We have to have English food. Besides crumpets have all those holes that are like tunnels for butter."
"Ah, butter. A boy after my own heart. I know where we can buy crumpets and I bet you do, too."
"The English grocery store on Hudson Street?"
"That's it. It's too far to walk, especially in the rain, so let's make a secret trip down to the garage and drive over there. And we can get the fireworks out of the basement at the same time."
But first we had lunch. Docky brought his famous Just What the Doctor Ordered Lasagne which he invented and is the best lasagne in the universe. I haven't been to any other planet, but there's no way Mars or Jupiter or someplace even way farther out in space could have anything that's better than his. Even Abby loves it and she is a terrible food fuss which means she doesn't like most things. Even though Docky made lunch he cleaned up everything. Mom put on a movie for the twins and she and the not-here-yet twins went to lie down for a while. I waited for Mom to go into her room before I snuck her Union Jack pillow off the chair so we could have something for a decoration.
On the way to the store we plotted out our adventure. We got a ton of crumpets and then Dad said we should get some English cookies and I voted for Penguins because penguins are my favorite bird plus one of my favorite animals. Don't worry, the cookies aren't made out of actual penguins! I don't even know why they're called that since they don't look like penguins, either. They're covered in chocolate and the cookie also has chocolate cream inside so you can tell why else I voted for them, not just for the name.
Back at Broome Street we got the sparklers and snakes and took them and the snacks to the Halversons'. Well, it's not theirs anymore since Mom and Dad bought it, but I still call it the Halversons' until it's joined to our loft. It's very echoey in there because there's no furniture. Some of the apartment will stay the same but some won't, especially the kitchen which won't be there anymore because we have a kitchen upstairs. It will be turned into a bedroom and another bathroom. So the floor in there has been torn up and it's just concrete right now which is why we could do what we plotted. Mom and Dad have left the fridge there for now for the workmen to use, so we put the crumpets, butter, jam, milk and Penguins in it. It's a good place for penguins because it's cold!
We went upstairs and I watched the end of Lady and the Tramp with Otis and Abby so they wouldn't notice that Dad was putting mugs and plates and knives and spoons and napkins and a tin of hot chocolate and some tea in a big basket and taking them back down to the Halversons'. I didn't mind being the diversion because I love Lady and the Tramp. When I sat down on the sofa Scrapple put his head in my lap.
"I think this movie would be even better if Lady was a dachshund," I said.
"You have better taste than the people in Hollywood."
"Thank you. Hey, we're all going down to the Halversons' for our adventure. You're going to come, aren't you? Even though there's no place to sit but the floor."
Who's going to be there?"
"Mom, Dad, Docky, Otis, Abby, and me."
"Don't forget Thumby and Bumpy. Mom can't go anywhere without them." Scrapple really cracks me up. "Will there be food in this adventure?"
"Crumpets. And dog biscuits."
"Count me in, then, even though there's no furniture. What about rugs?"
"No rugs, either."
"Well, crumpets will make up for that. I know you'll give me a bite."
The movie was ending and I could see Mom and Docky talking in the office when I heard Dad come in the door. "Okay, troops! Who's ready to be dazzled by a history lesson?"
"It's not a school day, Dad," Otis said. "I don't want to have a lesson." Sometime he's a whiner.
"Believe me, you'll like this one."
When we got downstairs I was amazed. Dad had brought down some folding chairs and the toaster oven and the electric kettle which I hadn't thought of which was pretty dumb of me because how would we make the crumpets or the tea? Duh! He also put up a card table that had the plates and mugs and the cookies and the butter and jam. Mom's big Union Jack pillow was on the middle chair.
"What's the occasion?" Docky asked.
"Our master of ceremonies, Eliot, will explain," Dad said. "Why don't you all sit down."
I stood up where I think the stove used to be and gave a speech about Guy Fawkes trying to blow up Parliament in 1605 and how he got caught and how every year on the anniversary everyone celebrates that his plot was foiled. "A lot of our ancestors were from England. If they hadn't come here we would be living in England and having a bonfire and fireworks today, but we aren't so we're going to have a party right here. We can't have a bonfire but guess what we have." Then I pointed to Dad who was holding a box and I said, "Ta da! Sparklers and snakes! And since the floor is concrete and the new floors haven't been put on top of it yet we get to light the snakes right on the floor and all that ash will kind of look like what happens after something is blown up. And when we're done we're going to have an English tea party with special English treats."
Dad lit Abby's sparkler, Mom lit Otis's, Docky lit mine, and they each lit their own. Dad turned off the lights so everything was extra sparkly. It wasn't dark outside yet but it was such a gloomy day that it almost was.
Dad made tea for the grownups and in the microwave that's still there made hot chocolate for the twins and me. We were still eating when you won't believe what happened. Sun came in the window! We all clapped and then something really amazing happened. Mom was looking out the window on the other side of the apartment and she said, "Come look! Come look!" And there it was in the sky, a rainbow. But it wasn't a regular rainbow, it was a double one.
"Wow," I said. "I never saw that before, did you?"
Nobody else had either.
"It's rainbow twins, Mom."
That was definitely magic, wasn't it? I can't wait to tell Thumby and Bumpy.
TBC
A/N Thank you so much for your support of this growing family. Special thanks to reviewer JAG'ed Bones in the Casckett for calling the kids "2 pairs and an ace," which gave me the poker idea.