Here Today

  Doris didn’t even open her menu. “My!” she exclaimed. “That sounds delectious.” Ellie felt Albert nudge her under the table. “And what a bargain!” She glanced around at the rest of the Dingmans. “I think we’ll have five specials. Right?”

  “But I don’t want consommé,” said Marie.

  “Is consommé sticky?” asked Albert.

  Doris laughed nervously. “Now, now. Let’s remember our manners. We’re in a restaurant. If you don’t want something, just say you don’t care for it.”

  “I don’t care for consommé,” parroted Marie and Albert.

  Lorna made some notes on her pad, returned the pad to her pocket, on which was pinned the sparkly turkey, and left the Dingmans, saying, “I’ll be right back with water and your free rolls.”

  “Now,” said Doris, looking around the diner, “I know this isn’t, what do you call it, a traditional Thanksgiving, but it’s very nice, isn’t it? We get a complete dinner with all the trimmings.”

  Ellie was watching her father. She saw him determinedly put a smile on his face, and realized that he wanted to save the holiday, to take Doris’s lemons and make lemonade. He loosened his grip on the edge of the table and smiled around at his family. “You know what? You’re right. This is a treat,” he said.

  “It’s so sad, though,” said Doris.

  Mr. Dingman let out an enormous sigh and stopped just short of rolling his eyes.

  “What is?” asked Ellie, as Albert said, “The Starlight?”

  “I can’t help wondering what Jackie is doing today. Her first Thanksgiving without her husband. This isn’t what she planned.” Doris paused. “Whoosh.”

  “What?” said Marie.

  “Whoosh,” Doris repeated. “In one instant … Jackie’s entire life … changed.” Doris’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t stop picturing John-John saluting his father’s casket,” she went on. “Every time I close my eyes I see that. And Jackie, so brave. And of course, the president. His life cut short. A true tragedy.”

  Ordinarily, Ellie would have listened to such talk with half an ear, but now she glanced up sharply. Something in Doris’s voice made her uneasy. She looked at her father and saw that he, too, was watching Doris.

  All during the Dingmans’ dinner—during the consommé and the side salads and the turkey and the slices of pumpkin pie—Ellie considered Doris. She remembered Doris on the phone the day before, and Doris watching the president’s funeral, and then for some reason the memory of Doris’s face when she lost the part of the Circus Girl. And by the time the meal was over and the stuffed Dingmans were thanking Lorna and filing out the door, Ellie knew that something was very, very wrong. She just didn’t know what it was.

  On Friday morning, Mr. Dingman left early to go to work, thankful to have a cold-weather job transforming the basement of someone’s house into a rumpus room. And the Dingman children, even Ellie, slept late. Eventually, Ellie was wakened by the sound of their front door closing, and was shocked to see that the hands on her clock pointed to nine-fifteen. She scrambled out of bed, and when she heard a car engine kick to life, she rushed to the window. There was Doris backing the Buick down the driveway in a big hurry.

  Shopping? wondered Ellie. Groceries? Definitely groceries, she decided, remembering what was in the refrigerator.

  Ellie stumbled downstairs and set three places for breakfast.

  It was after Ellie and Albert and Marie had eaten both breakfast and lunch that day and were beginning to think about dinner that Albert said, “Where is Doris, anyway?”

  “I’m not sure,” replied Ellie. “She left this morning just as I was getting up. I thought she was going to the grocery store.”

  “What time did you get up?”

  “Nine-fifteen.”

  Albert looked at the clock. “That was seven hours ago.”

  “Maybe she had an audition,” said Marie. She was sitting on the kitchen counter licking peanut butter off of a Ritz cracker. “Or a lesson or something.”

  The Dingman children were used to being at home alone, but usually they knew where Doris was.

  “Maybe you should call Dad,” said Albert.

  “I don’t think Doris left his phone number,” said Ellie. “And I don’t know where he’s working today. Anyway, he’ll be home soon. In an hour or so. I have an idea. Let’s surprise him with a nice dinner.”

  Albert whipped the refrigerator door open, then closed it with a bang. “A nice dinner of cheese and grape jelly?”

  “Oh, come on, Albert. Be creative.” Ellie removed a can of hash from the cabinet. “See what’s in the freezer, Marie,” she said.

  “Dad, where’s Doris?” Albert asked the moment Mr. Dingman returned.

  Mr. Dingman walked into the kitchen, brushing sawdust out of his hair, and looked at the table set for four, a candle burning in a china holder. A smile crept across his face. “What’s all this?” he asked.

  “Dad, where’s Doris?” repeated Albert.

  “What?”

  “She’s been gone all day. We don’t know where she is.”

  “And we didn’t know how to call you,” added Marie.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Mr. Dingman said, pulling Marie into his lap. “I gave the number to your mother.”

  “Well, from now on, maybe you should give Ellie your numbers,” said Albert.

  Doris hadn’t returned by the time Ellie went to bed that night. Nervous, knowing that her father was nervous, too, Ellie lay awake until nearly midnight, listening for the sound of the Buick in the driveway. She remembered years ago, when she was younger than Marie, lying awake on Christmas Eve, listening for the sound of Santa on the roof—of sleigh bells jingling, of reindeer hoofs pawing the snow.

  Ellie turned over and listened instead to Kiss snoring lightly at the foot of her bed, and to Marie’s gentle breathing.

  Doris had not returned when Ellie awoke the next morning. And her father had not gone to bed. Ellie found him in the kitchen, stirring up a cup of Sanka, wearing the clothes he’d had on the day before. His shirt was untucked, his hair was uncombed, and his face was unshaved.

  “Shouldn’t we call the police, Dad?” Albert asked later as the Dingmans stood around the kitchen sink eating Cap’n Crunch.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just … don’t think it’s necessary.”

  “When will it be necessary?”

  “Don’t push me, Albert.”

  The Buick returned at 3:22 that afternoon. Albert waited by the front door and pounced on Doris before she could even set down her pocketbook.

  “Where were you?” he demanded.

  Doris unbuttoned her coat very slowly and very carefully. As she hung it in the closet, she said, “I had to get out of the house.”

  “That’s it? You had to get out of the house?”

  “I’m in no mood, Albert. Leave me alone.”

  Everyone left Doris alone. Ellie knew Doris had something to say, and she didn’t want to hear it.

  Doris spent most of Saturday evening in her room, the door closed. The rest of the Dingmans watched television in silence. Once, Mr. Dingman left the living room, went upstairs, and knocked on the bedroom door.

  “Hon?” he called. Ellie couldn’t make out Doris’s reply, but it was very short, and then Mr. Dingman said, “Okay,” and returned to the TV.

  Ellie was surprised to awaken on Sunday morning to a chipper Doris bustling around the kitchen, the table set for five, a plate of doughnuts in the middle.

  “Wow!” said Ellie. “Where did these come from?”

  “I went to the bakery,” replied Doris. “Now go on and wake up your brother and sister. Let’s have breakfast together.”

  Ten minutes later, the five Dingmans, some of them groggy, were seated at their kitchen table. Doris wore an apron and walked around the table, serving doughnuts as if she were Lorna the waitress.

  “Isn’t this nice?” she said.

&n
bsp; Ellie looked out the kitchen window at the dreary day. A fine drizzle was falling, and a mist had set in. She peered at the thermometer outside the window. Forty-two degrees. And she shivered. But she had to agree that sitting around the kitchen table with her family, a plate of doughnuts, and Kiss leaning against her legs, was very nice indeed.

  “It’s great,” said Marie, her mouth full of chocolate doughnut. “Can we have doughnuts every morning?”

  “Well, hon, I don’t know about that. I guess it will be up to your father.”

  “Up to Daddy? Why?” asked Marie.

  “Yeah, why?” echoed Albert.

  Before Doris answered, before any words left her mouth, Ellie felt her own mouth go dry. She set her half-eaten doughnut down on her plate and looked all around the kitchen—at the cupboards with the chipped green paint, at the plate shaped like a fish that had been hanging over the doorway for as long as she could remember, at the section of counter between the oven and the refrigerator that the Dingmans called the Messy Corner—but she couldn’t look at Doris. Ellie let her eyes drop to her plate again, to the remains of the doughnut, and waited for Doris’s answer.

  “Why?” repeated Doris. “Well … because—because of my exciting news!” Doris pushed her chair away from the table. She stood up and began to speak. As she spoke, she moved around the table, standing behind each of the Dingmans in turn, her hands on their shoulders. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Doris said. “That’s where I’ve been the last couple of days. I needed to think.”

  “I can think in our house,” said Albert.

  Doris removed her hands from Albert’s shoulders and leaned around to look into his eyes. “Well, I couldn’t,” she said. “Not about this.”

  She moved on to Marie. “It’s hard to know where to begin.”

  “Begin at the beginning,” said Marie, tipping her head back and smiling at Doris.

  And Ellie thought, She doesn’t know. Marie doesn’t know that this is bad news.

  “It’s even hard to know where the beginning is,” said Doris. “I think the beginning was a long time ago. Maybe before you were born. But the thing is … what I’ve been thinking about …” Doris drew in a deep breath and moved on to Ellie. “The thing is … life is short.”

  Ellie, ignoring Doris’s hands on her shoulders, glanced across the table and saw Albert roll his eyes.

  “Life is short,” Doris said again. “That’s what I realized when President Kennedy was killed.”

  Ellie now glanced at her father and thought his eyes looked brighter than usual.

  “The president’s life was cut short and Jackie’s was changed forever,” Doris continued. “There were probably lots of things both of them wanted to do that they won’t be able to do now—all their plans and dreams. And so I realized that you never really know how long you have. Which reminded me that if you want your dreams to come true, you have to make them come true. You can’t just sit around and wait for things to happen.

  “That’s why,” Doris continued, “I have decided to go to New York City to pursue my dream of becoming a star.”

  “What?” cried Albert.

  “Can I go with you?” asked Marie.

  “No, dummy,” said Albert. “She doesn’t mean she’s taking a trip. She means she’s leaving us. Don’t you, Doris?”

  “You’re deserting us,” Ellie whispered.

  “I am not deserting you,” said Doris. “I’m paving the way for your future.”

  Ellie glanced at her father again. He had not said a word since Doris began speaking. And now Ellie saw that, as Doris stood behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders, he crossed his arms and rested his hands on hers, his face rigid except for trembling lips.

  “I don’t understand,” said Marie.

  “Me neither,” said Albert.

  “Well, try,” said Doris, exasperated. “Look. This is what I’ve been thinking. There are lots of things I can do in Spectacle, like modeling at Harwell’s and acting in community theater. But I’m not going to get my big break here, and if I have to go somewhere else to get my break, then I better go now, while I’m young.”

  “How long will you be away?” said Marie in a small voice.

  “I don’t know, hon. Probably for a while. This is going to take some time. I’ll have to find an apartment and get an agent. And then I’ll take on whatever acting jobs I can find. I’ll be prepared to do anything—commercials, more modeling, bit parts, anything. Now’s my chance to get on The Ed Sullivan Show. Or maybe one day I’ll be in a soap opera. Just think if I could get a part in a soap! That could pay really well. But I need to get established.”

  “And then what?” asked Ellie. “What happens after you’re … established?”

  “Then I send for you!” said Doris triumphantly.

  “All of us?” asked Marie.

  “Of course all of you.”

  “You mean we’ll move to New York City?” asked Albert.

  Doris grinned. “Just think of the life we could lead, living in the big city. We’d have a great huge, deluxe apartment. Maybe we’d have a view of the Empire State Building out our windows. Each of you would have your own bedroom. No more sharing. And you kids would go to one of those fancy schools where you wear a uniform. And we’d have a maid and a cook.”

  “Right,” said Albert.

  “Well, it could happen,” said Doris.

  In the movies, thought Ellie.

  “Anyway, it’s what I want for us.” Doris sat down again and reached for a doughnut.

  Mr. Dingman cleared his throat, but nobody said anything.

  “Well?” Doris put on her perkiest face. “What do you think?”

  Ellie tried to imagine living in a New York City apartment. She thought of apartments she had seen on television. There was the Ricardos’ apartment on I Love Lucy, but it wasn’t very fancy. In fact, it was smaller than the Dingmans’ house. She had seen some pretty fancy apartments in the movies, though. Apartments with doormen, and butlers who walked rich ladies’ dogs, and … an image of Ann Miller’s lavish apartment in a movie called Easter Parade sprang to Ellie’s mind. Then Ellie pictured the sparrows perched in the first row of desks in her classroom, and recalled being slammed into lockers and marked absent in the attendance book. And then she pictured the school bus pulling up at the corner of her street, her hopping off the bus with the other kids, tea parties with Miss Woods and Miss Nelson, sharing secrets with Holly, and looking into the face on the Witch Tree.

  Maybe Doris knew what she wanted, but Ellie didn’t.

  “Doesn’t anybody think anything?” said Doris.

  “When are you going to leave?” Marie asked finally.

  “Pretty soon, I guess. Why waste time?”

  “Since life is so short,” said Albert. He placed his elbow on the table, rested his chin in his cupped hand, and stared at Doris until she looked away from him.

  Ellie could think of about a thousand questions. Everything from Are you taking the Buick? to Where are you going to get the money to live in New York City? But two questions rang loudest in her head, over and over, like the bonging of great church bells: Why don’t you want to be our mother anymore? and How will Dad take care of us when you’re gone?

  She hoped her father would ask these questions, though, and, head lowered, she slid her eyes over to him. But Mr. Dingman was staring down at his plate. Ellie wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Say something! she wanted to shout. Do something!

  “Isn’t anyone excited about living in New York City?” asked Doris.

  Please don’t do this to us, thought Ellie.

  “Can we play in that big park?” asked Marie.

  “Central Park? Sure, every day!” replied Doris.

  “Can we at least finish school here this year?” asked Albert. “I don’t want to be the new kid somewhere in the middle of the year.”

  Ellie once again looked to her father. Her head was buzzing, and for a moment she
was sitting at her desk in Mr. Pierce’s room and Doris was walking through the door to her class, interrupting the spelling quiz. Ellie willed herself back to the present. She waited for her father to lose his patience with Doris, to push away from the table in a rush and say, “You can’t leave this family. I forbid you to go.” But he was silent, and his face was as flat and as unexpressive as the knothole on the Witch Tree.

  “Of course you can finish school here,” said Doris. “I think it will take me a while to get established. That’s why I want to leave right away.”

  Doris flew around the house like a tornado that day. She cleaned. She organized a closet. She made notes and lists of things for Mr. Dingman and the Dingman children to do after she was gone.

  “Doris?” said Ellie that afternoon.

  Doris was pulling pot covers and dish cloths out of the Messy Corner. “What, hon?”

  “Can I help?”

  “With this? No, I think it’s a one-person job.”

  “But I could help around the house more, you know. Maybe you really do just need a vacation. I talked to Albert and Marie and we decided we could do all the cooking. We already make our lunches for school, and we could make breakfast and dinner, too.”

  “Hon, that isn’t the point.”

  “Plus, we could do the cleaning. I know you get stuck with most of that. And the laundry. I could learn to do those things. Then, see, if you had more free time, maybe you could just take little trips to New York sometimes. Instead of moving there.”

  “That’s a very nice offer, Eleanor,” Doris said as she reached into the farthest recess of the Messy Corner with a damp sponge, “but I won’t get as much accomplished if I do that. I need a protected period of time in New York.”

  Ellie glared at her mother, “Protracted,” she said, once again feeling rage gather inside her, in some deep and secret place. She stalked out of the kitchen.