The Day the Mustache Took Over Read online

  With love to my sons, David and Nathan . . .

  a truly one-of-a-kind twosome!

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  “Boys, boys, boys, boys, boys!” Josephine screamed at twin brothers Nathan and David Wohlfardt as they jumped from here to there and back to here in their family living room.

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes?” David answered.

  “That’s one too many yeses,” Nathan told him. “Our nanny Josephine yelled ‘boys’ five times, and you said ‘yes’ six times.”

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no I didn’t,” David responded.

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes you did,” Nathan corrected.

  “I don’t think so,” David said.

  “I do think so,” Nathan said.

  “I beg to differ,” David said.

  “I dig to barfer,” Nathan said.

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” David said.

  “I fiff to darber,” Nathan said.

  “BOYS!” Josephine shouted, stopping the twins in their tracks (and that isn’t just an expression—Nathan and David were literally leaving muddy, cruddy tracks as they hopped, skipped, jumped, bumped, and ran themselves silly around the room).

  Josephine continued, “I have been a caretaker for children of all ages, in homes all across this fine nation, but I have never, never, never—”

  “That’s three ‘nevers’ so far,” David said.

  “The ugly twin is correct,” Nathan said. “For the first time ever, I might add.”

  “—never, never, never seen behavior so consistently improper. When it comes to disrespect, you boys take the cake!”

  “There’s cake?” David asked. “Yum.”

  “I’m not sure you’re right, Josephine,” Nathan told her as he pretended to grab a microphone and addressed a nonexistent camera.

  “This is Nathan Wohlfardt, reporting for the Wohlfardt News Network. I’m standing in the Wohlfardt home at 82727294 Flerch Street in Screamersville, Virginia, and I’m here to cover the election to find the two nicest, kindest, most well-behaved kids in America. Young lady, what is your name and who gets your vote?”

  “First of all,” David said into the fake microphone, “I am not a young lady. My name is David Wohlfardt, and I vote for David Wohlfardt.”

  “Have you considered the other very fine candidate, Nathan Wohlfardt?” Nathan asked.

  “Never heard of him,” David said.

  “Why, he’s the extraordinarily wonderful young man who lets you share his bedroom and bathroom,” Nathan told him.

  “Well, I don’t recognize the name, but the disgusting smell is familiar,” David said.

  “Nevertheless, let’s tally the ballots. One ridiculous vote has been cast for David Wohlfardt, and there’s one intelligent vote for Nathan Wohlfardt. It’s official: the brothers are the two nicest, kindest, most well-behaved boys in America! This is Nathan Wohlfardt for the Wohlfardt News Network, signing off.”

  The boys waved their arms in mock celebration.

  Nathan put down the fake microphone and said, “So you see, Josephine, when it comes to good behavior, we are . . .”

  Josephine was nowhere in sight.

  “Where’d she go?” Nathan wanted to know.

  “I think she signed off too,” David told him.

  Indeed, the front door was open. Josephine’s hat and coat were gone. And on the table near the door—right next to Nathan’s muddy soccer cleats—was a handwritten note:

  I quit for two reasons.

  1. David

  2. Nathan

  “Another alphabetical quitter,” David said as he put her resignation letter in the stack with the many, many, many others.

  “Mom and Dad will be so pleased,” Nathan added.

  “NOT,” they both said, agreeing for the first time since, well, since the nanny prior to Josephine had quit several weeks before.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  In so many ways, Josephine (wherever she went) was right. The truth is, you’d never use the words “well” and “behaved” in the same sentence to describe Nathan and David when they’re together. When his brother isn’t around, Nathan can be polite, friendly, cute, charming, clever, and smart. The same can be said about David—when his twin is somewhere else.

  But somehow they don’t blend as a duo. Just like mixing oil and water, cats and dogs, or laundry detergent and cranberry juice, when the boys are together, there’s disharmony. Friction. And trouble.

  For example, Nathan loves vegetables (the fresher and crunchier, the better). David, on the other hand, hates, hates, hates anything green that’s grown in the ground. Put some on his dinner plate and he’ll howl and yelp but never gulp. However . . .

  Put those same vegetables on his brother Nathan’s plate, and David’ll yell, “Hey, where’s mine?” then grab them off Nathan’s plate and gobble ’em down.

  Here’s another thing: David loves building things. Give him playing cards, blocks, shoe boxes, or pretty much anything he can stack, and within minutes, he’ll erect a whole miniature town. It’s pretty amazing.

  What’s also pretty amazing is Nathan’s supersonic radar that tells him when David’s finished building something. Without fail, that is exactly the moment Nathan shows up with an accidentally misthrown football to de-town the town.

  Need more proof? David sings. Nathan hates music and refuses to sing anything. Even “Happy Birthday.” Nathan swims. David’s a dry-land kind of kid. David can watch a whole movie on TV from start to finish without getting up once. Nathan’s never viewed anything for more than twenty-three seconds without clicking the remote 117 times.

  And so on and so forth. As Nathan once said, “When it comes to the Wohlfardt boys, every day is opposite day.” Naturally, David disagreed.

  It’s understandable, of course, that one of the boys (Nathan) is always on time and the other (David) is always late. Though they both do manage to get to school before the bell rings, which isn’t really that hard because they live right next door to the school. They can stay in bed until 7:56 and still be in their classrooms by 8:00. Unless it’s the day they both take showers. Then they have to get up at 7:55 instead.

  And when it comes to neatness . . . well, don’t ask. With all the junk in their room, it’s hard to tell if there’s a carpet on the floor. In fact, it’s hard to tell if there is a floor. And forget about finding a trash can. In fact, the last thing Nathan threw away was . . . David.

  Schoolwork? Let’s put it this way: Last week, David finished all his first-grade math assignments in one afternoon. Which would be pretty good if he weren’t already in third grade!

  And, like most brothers, the boys fight. They argue. And they bicker.

  In fact, they fight, argue, and bicker about everything.
Recently they fought about whether they were arguing or bickering. This time it was over the schedule their parents made for them so they wouldn’t fight about their chores.

  Then what did they fight about?

  “I get to look at the schedule first.”

  “No, I do!”

  “No, I do!”

  “No, I do!”

  “No, you’re after me!”

  “No, you’re after me!”

  “I forgot what we’re fighting about.”

  That’s life with the Wohlfardt brothers. Some people have a talent for chasing butterflies. Some are great at chasing away the blues. Nathan and David, however, are world-class experts at chasing away . . .

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  “NANNIES!” Mr. Wohlfardt bellowed. “Au pairs, live-in childcare givers, executive home-life leadership engineers—call them what you will they all mean ‘babysitter,’ ” he continued. “And that’s something we just can’t seem to keep in this house!”

  “Boys,” their mom added, “you know that your dad and I work long hours and travel for our jobs, so we need someone to watch you.”

  Their dad picked it up from her as if they’d been rehearsing this speech. (They had.)

  “But no matter whom we’ve hired, it always turns out the same. The caregivers always end up leaving our house and our lives too soon and just the way they found it—in chaos.”

  “According to the Nanny-o-Meter™ that I built for the science fair, we’ve only had seven hundred and thirty-four nannies,” David insisted.

  “That dumb thing never worked,” Nathan told him. “I think it’s actually three hundred and forty-seven.” “Either way, it’s many too many,” their dad told the boys.

  “Many too many too many,” their mother echoed, though technically that was a little confusing to everyone else in the room.

  “I just can’t understand why you guys seem to drive away every nanny we hire,” their dad challenged them. “Can either of you give me a good reason why no one stays?”

  “Dad, that’s like asking why L is the twelfth letter of the alphabet,” Nathan told him.

  “Yeah, and it’s like asking why all the World Series games are on TV too late to watch,” David said.

  Then Nathan and David took turns defending themselves.

  Nathan: “Dad, not all of them left because of David and me. Don’t you remember that Margo left because she won the lottery?”

  David: “Betty left because she didn’t win the lottery.”

  Nathan: “Nina left because she only wanted to clean the house at four in the morning. She said, ‘It’s better to vacuum when the dust is asleep.’ ”

  David: “Vicki left because she had a dream that she should be an Olympic bobsledder, even though she hated bobsleds and snow and claimed she’d been born in twenty-three different countries.”

  All of what the boys said was true. But the sad fact was that many of the nannies had said good-bye because of Nathan.

  Many left because of David.

  And many, many, many, many (many!) left because of Nathan and David.

  Of course, each time a nanny departed, the house became just a bit emptier. Because in truth, each one had brought something special to the Wohlfardt household.

  Crystal made great meatballs.

  Marina threw perfect curveballs.

  Ibi served juicy, round melon balls.

  Donna threw perfect bowling balls.

  Lulu packed the hardest snowballs. And Maria (the fourteenth Maria—they’d known quite a few) could pronounce any word backward without even thinking about it—a skill you’d have to agree is GNIZAMA.

  And then there was the nanny they called Ms. Lauderdale; she left the family to move to Fort Jackson. Or maybe it was Ms. Jackson who left to move to Fort Lauderdale?

  At any rate, Josephine had gone, and once again, again, again, the Wohlfardt family was without a nanny.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  “Perhaps you could do less traveling,” Mrs. Wohlfardt gently suggested to her husband one nanny-less evening.

  “That would be hard, dear,” he replied. “After all, I am an airline pilot. And the last time I checked, the airline insisted that I do my work while on the plane.”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Wohlfardt.

  “Maybe you could work fewer hours,” Mr. Wohlfardt said to his wife.

  “I’d love to, Bob,” she answered. “But things are always so busy at Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, and Glerk. And my hard work has really paid off; this year I’ve gotten two promotions, three raises, and a new desk chair.”

  “I’m very proud of you,” Mr. Wohlfardt said.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Wohlfardt replied. She appreciated the compliment (and really enjoyed the desk chair), but she was not happy at that moment.

  In fact, poor Mrs. Wohlfardt was at her wit’s end. Every reliable nanny agency in town was fresh out of nannies. She’d even called the Unreliable Nanny Agency, but the nanny they’d offered her had recently changed her name from Margaret Watson to “Hey, You—Get Away from Me, I’ve Got a Highly Contagious Rash!” And that didn’t sound promising.

  “Who will take care of my children and my home?” Mrs. Wohlfardt moaned as she ironed David’s grilled cheese sandwich. (She was the first to admit that housework wasn’t her best talent.) Mrs. Wohlfardt continued to think. She thought and she thought. And while she thought, she also ironed Nathan’s backpack filled with books, Mr. Wohlfardt’s spare guitar strings, and the remote control from their new HDTV.

  “What to do? What to do?” Mrs. Wohlfardt softly sang to herself. She needed someone new to help care for Nathan and David, even though she knew she would probably soon be in search of someone else. Someone more patient. Someone smarter. Someone nicer. Or less bobsleddy.

  Mrs. Wohlfardt was so troubled that she called everyone in her phone book.

  She called friends.

  She called friends of friends.

  She called relatives of friends of friends.

  She called friends of relatives of friends, friends of relatives, and relatives of friends of relatives.

  And as she planned to start calling relatives of relatives of some strangers and enemies, the boys began to think back to all the nannies who’d come before.

  “Remember Maria, and Vanessa, and Anita, and Lara, and the second Maria, and the third Maria, and the second Vanessa, and the first Maria when she came back after the second Vanessa?” Nathan said as he stared at the ceiling, because he’d once seen a movie in which people looked up when they were remembering the past.

  “And Susan?” David added.

  Nathan looked at his brother quizzically. “Wait, we had a Susan?”

  “Remember between Anita and Lara, there was that red-haired lady who chewed tons of gum?”

  “That was Susan? I thought she said her name was Blerblemowcha,” said Nathan.

  “It was Susan,” said David. “It only sounded like Blerblemowcha because of the giant wad of gum in her mouth. She stayed here, like, two days. Then she spit out the gum, cleared her throat, and said she was leaving.”

  “Yup,” said Nathan. “She just spit and quit.”

  As the boys rolled on the floor laughing at the joke, the phone rang. Mrs. Wohlfardt answered it and immediately breathed a giant sigh of relief. When she hung up, she spoke the eight words that said, Oh no, here we go again in the minds of her twin boys.

  “The new nanny will be here in the morning!”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  It was a dark and stormy start to what would be a dark and stormy Saturday. Thunder rattled the dishes on the breakfast table.

  “Are you sure the Martin Healey Discount Childcare Agency is sending someone trustworthy?” Mr. Wohlfardt asked his wife.

  “Of course, dear,” she answered. “After all, their slogan is ‘When it comes to your kids, we don’t kid around.’ And the man on the phone sounded so sincere.”

&nbs
p; David gulped nervously. “I have a brilliant idea! You could just pay me to watch Nathan,” he said.

  “No! You could pay me to watch David,” Nathan said. “Of course, I’d have to charge a lot more, because he’s a brat. . . .”

  “I am not!”

  “You am too!”

  “Hey!”

  “Hey!”

  “Stop that this instant,” Mrs. Wohlfardt insisted. “You boys must stop fighting all the time!”

  “But we can’t stop fighting unless we start fighting first, right, Mom?” Nathan asked her.

  The thought made sense to David, but it also kind of gave him a headache.

  “Men, guys, boys,” their dad continued. “You simply have to put an end to your truly unruly behavior.”

  “Truly unruly,” Mrs. Wohlfardt repeated. “That’s so poetic, my dear, and quite an excellent description.”

  Mr. Wohlfardt smiled at his wife; he was grateful that she noticed what a terrific rhymer he was. He made a mental note to start including rhymes in his announcements to passengers when he was piloting. He was thinking about rhyming pairs such as “flight-night” and “airline-hairline” when David brought him back to the conversation at hand.

  “Tell me one thing we do wrong,” David said.

  “You fight. You’re messy. You don’t do your schoolwork on time and you leave things until the last minute,” Mrs. Wohlfardt said.

  “I asked you to tell me one thing,” David said.

  “Listen, you’re not babies anymore,” their dad offered. “You need to treat each other better, and you need to pay more attention to your responsibilities, at school and also at home. The way you both act, I don’t blame our past nannies for wanting to work anywhere but here.”

  “And listen, boys,” Mrs. Wohlfardt continued. “If either of you gives our new nanny reason to leave, this year’s annual family ski trip will be canceled. Do you hear me? Canceled!”

  “You can’t cancel the annual family ski trip!” David insisted (a little louder than he’d meant to).