Penelope Crumb Never Forgets by Shawn Stout

Author:Shawn Stout [Stout, Shawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA
Published: 2012-12-18T07:00:00+00:00

This is becoming a real museum, I say to myself. Now I won’t ever forget.

13.

What do you think of this one?” asks Grandpa Felix, sliding a photograph to me across his kitchen table.

He got the pictures made from the wedding, and he’s checking over his work before handing them in. In this picture, the bride and groom are standing under an archway holding hands.

“Good,” I say.

“What’s good about it?”

I study the picture. “Well, for one thing, they are both smiling.”

“That’s the best you can do?” He raps his finger on the picture.

“Okay.” I try again. “They don’t have red eyes or anything. And you didn’t get your thumb in the way, which is what usually happens when Mom takes pictures.” I slide the photograph back to him. “Like I said, good.”

Grandpa Felix shakes his head. Then he grumbles something about wedding photography and puts that picture in a pile with others.

“Don’t you like weddings?”

“Not particularly.”

“Me neither,” I say. “I mean, I’ve only been to one, Aunt Renn’s. But Mom made me wear pantyhose and shoes that pinched my feet, and after it was over, they ran out of yellow cheese before I could get any.”

“Sounds hideous.” Then he pauses and says, “That means really terrible and awful.”

“It was,” I say. “Hideous. But taking pictures at weddings isn’t so bad.”

Grandpa Felix scratches his whiskers and says, “If you say so.” He slides his chair back from the table. “You can never go back.”

I’m not sure where he wants to go back to, but before I have a chance to ask, he says, “Coffee?” Then he smiles at me, and the creases in his face get deeper.

“Grandpa Felix.”

“Oh, right, I forgot. You’re trying to cut back. Wise girl.”

As he takes a mug from the cupboard, I weave through the piles of pictures stacked knee-high on the floor. There are so many that, no matter how many times I visit, I always find new ones. Well, ones that are new to me, I mean. This time I find one of a hummingbird, so close up, you can see green feathers on its belly.

“Botanical gardens, on assignment for Life,” he says when I show him the picture. “I had to hold still for more than an hour to snap that one. I can remember I was suffering from allergies awful that day, so it took a lot out of me not to sneeze.”

That hummingbird’s got a surprised look on his face like he is supposed to be on a diet but got caught with two scoops of butter pecan ice cream. I tell Grandpa Felix this, and it makes him laugh. “Butter pecan?”

I look at the hummingbird again and nod. “It’s his favorite.”

Grandpa shakes his head at me and smiles. “Ah, Penelope.”

Getting Grandpa Felix to smile isn’t easy, but it’s something I like to try to do. Because when he smiles, sometimes I can see my dad in his face. “When I found out that you weren’t Graveyard Dead, I thought you might be a world adventurer, catching rare butterflies or something.

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