Here Today

  Ellie slid out of the booth, pulling her coat after her. “You,” she said, pointing her finger at Doris and beginning to sob, “are supposed to be my mother.” Her voice rose high enough so that the people in the next booth turned to look at her as she ran through Ollie’s and thrust herself out the door and into the night.

  Ellie ran down the block toward Doris’s apartment. It wasn’t the first time she’d been outside in the city at night, but it was the first time she’d been in the New York night alone. Everything—doorways and stoops and barred windows—seemed to be crowded together and just inches away from Ellie as she hurried along, her chest heaving.

  She reached the stairs to Doris’s building, climbed them two at a time, and was about to open the door to the vestibule when she saw a figure slouched in the corner. It was a man, dressed in dark clothes, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette. When Ellie saw him she shrieked and drew her hand back as if the door handle had burned her fingers.

  The man laughed. Then he took a step toward Ellie and kicked the door open with a boot-clad foot. “Come on in,” he said.

  Ellie could feel the key to Doris’s apartment in her shoe. Even if she dared run by the man and up to the third floor, it would take her forever to get the key out of her sock, and what if he followed her? She looked at the man’s grinning face, noticing that he was missing a bottom front tooth, looked at his burning cigarette, ash falling to the floor, looked at his large boots and large hands—and turned around and ran back down the steps. She was sprinting along the sidewalk, listening for the sound of running feet behind her, when she realized she was headed not for Ollie’s, but away from it.

  Oh, well, she said to herself. If she turned right at the corner, and right at the next corner and then right at the next corner she would get to Ollie’s from the other direction. But at the very first corner she paused and looked over her shoulder and saw that the man was indeed following her. Panicked, Ellie realized that the stoplight was about to change. If she ran through it, he would be stuck waiting at the corner. So Ellie ran straight ahead, and then turned left because she could make that light, too. And when she looked over her shoulder again, there was the man darting through the cars and trucks against the first light.

  Ellie let out another small scream, reached the next corner, saw a stream of traffic before her, and turned right. She was on an unfamiliar block, one that seemed darker and quieter than Doris’s. It was so quiet, in fact, that the footsteps Ellie could hear behind her sounded like those of a giant crashing along. Ellie was breathing heavily now and her chest ached, but she increased her speed and pounded to the corner, turned right, and felt a surge of relief when she realized she was on a busy avenue, with cars and people and stores that were still open. She paused outside a greengrocer’s, trying to catch her breath, and as she looked in the store window, she saw herself in the reflection and nearly threw up when another figure appeared over her shoulder. The figure was dark, and Ellie could see the glow from the tip of a cigarette. Certain she was about to feel hands grab her shoulders, she darted off, ran to the corner, saw that once again she had reached a light that was about to change, and hurtled through the intersection. She was too terrified to look over her shoulder, so she kept running. She ran through lights, and turned right and left and right and left again until she had absolutely no idea where she was. The street signs told her she was at the corner of Broadway and 45th. So she was south of Doris’s apartment, but where was Broadway? She couldn’t remember.

  Ellie found herself in a crowd of people. Feeling safer, she glanced around. She couldn’t see the man. No one lurking and looming in dark clothes and big boots. Ellie stopped outside a small store that sold newspapers and magazines and cigarettes and candy. The name of the store was painted gaily on an awning over the front door: FUNNY CRY HAPPY. Ellie frowned. Then she glanced around once more and entered the store.

  “Excuse me,” she said to a man seated behind the counter. “Do you have a telephone I could use?”

  “Telephone? Telephone?” the man repeated shrilly. He spoke with a thick accent. “You want telephone? Use pay phone on street. You customer? You buy something? Even if you customer you use pay phone on street.”

  “But,” said Ellie, her voice catching, “you don’t understand. Someone’s after me. Someone’s been following me. A man. I can’t go back out there.”

  “What? What?”

  “I need to use the phone. It’s an emergency!” Ellie cried.

  “Emergency? What is emergency?”

  “I just told you. Someone’s after me. I have to call my—” Ellie suddenly realized she couldn’t call Doris. Doris didn’t have a phone. “I—I have—I have—” Ellie burst into tears.

  “You wait. You in trouble? You wait here,” said the man. “I get Marta. Marta talks to you. Okay? You wait I get Marta.”

  “Don’t leave me!” called Ellie, but the man had already rushed out from behind the counter and disappeared through a door at the back of the store.

  “Marta?” Ellie could hear him call. This was followed by an explosion of foreign words, and then a woman about Doris’s age hurried through the door and along an aisle until she reached Ellie.

  “Hello?” she said. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Yes,” said Ellie, and she tried to explain about the man, but her words came out so fast and were so blurred by her sobs that the woman finally placed her hands on Ellie’s shoulders, guided her to a stool behind the counter, and sat her on it.

  “Hang on just a minute, okay?” said Marta. She disappeared through the door at the back of the store, then returned with a glass of water, which she handed to Ellie.

  Ellie gulped it, then blurted out, “I’m being followed!”

  “You’re being followed? Who’s following you?”

  “A man.”

  Marta’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I was being followed.” Ellie’s pounding heart began to slow down. She glanced outside.

  Marta glanced outside, too, then looked at her watch. “Maybe I’ll just close up the store,” she said. She flipped over a sign hanging on the front door so that the OPEN side was facing in, then cupped her hands and peered through the window. “No one’s out there now,” she said.

  Ellie slumped on the stool. “I’ve been running for a long time. I guess I lost him somewhere.”

  “Who was this man?” asked Marta.

  Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know.” She told Marta what had happened, leaving out her fight with Doris.

  “Well, let’s call your mom,” said Marta.

  Ellie looked down at the countertop. “I can’t. She doesn’t have a phone.”

  “Well, then, I think,” Marta said gently, “that we ought to call the police.”

  “The police?” Ellie squeaked. “No, no. I’ll just call my dad, okay? Um, how do you make a long-distance telephone call?”

  Marta, looking suspicious, pulled a phone out from under the counter, and dialed it for Ellie. “Here you go,” she said, handing her the receiver.

  “Hello?” Ellie heard her father say.

  “Dad, it’s me.” Ellie burst into tears.

  It took a long time for Ellie to tell Mr. Dingman what had happened. He listened quietly, and when she was finished, he said, “I’ll be right there.”

  “Right here?” said Ellie. “You mean New York City? You’re coming to New York City?”

  “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  “But what about Albert and Marie?”

  “I’ll figure something out,” said Mr. Dingman. “Don’t worry. Now can I talk to—What’s the name of that woman who’s there in the store with you?”

  “Marta,” said Ellie. “Okay, here she is.” Ellie gave the phone back to Marta, slid off the stool, and walked down one of the aisles in the store. She had the feeling that something unstoppable had just been set in motion. She was the marble in Holly’s game of Mouse Trap, and someone (her father or
Doris or the man in the vestibule) had turned the little crank, and now Ellie the marble had no choice but to roll along the chutes until she was trapped under the plastic mouse cage.

  Ellie heard Marta hang up the phone. “Ellie?” she said. “I’m going to call the police now. Your father won’t be here for several hours, and we need to get you home.”

  “Couldn’t you just walk me home?” Ellie asked feebly.

  “Honey, the police need to know what happened. You can tell them your story, and they’ll take you home.”

  Ellie nodded.

  An hour later, Ellie was sitting on the convertible sofa bed in Doris’s apartment. Doris and two policemen were talking at the door.

  “I can assure you she’s quite safe now,” Doris was saying, her hands fluttering by her chest. “I’m sorry you had to bring her home.” She flashed a smile at the officers.

  The officers did not return the smile. “A child her age shouldn’t be out alone,” said one.

  “Really, it won’t happen again,” said Doris. “She’s only visiting here, anyway.”

  “We understand the father is on the way,” said the other officer.

  “Oh, really?” Doris glanced at Ellie.

  Ellie couldn’t speak. The marble was just rolling along.

  One of the officers crossed the room and sat next to Ellie. “You did talk to your father, didn’t you?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s on his way?”

  Ellie nodded.

  “When do you think he’ll be getting here?” Doris asked sharply from the doorway.

  “I don’t know,” said Ellie. “As soon as he can. I guess maybe in a few hours.”

  The officer looked thoughtful. He reached into his pocket, withdrew a pencil and a small pad, and scribbled something on the top sheet of paper. “Here,” he said to Ellie, tearing off the paper. “This is my phone number. You can call me at any time.”

  Doris gave a small laugh. “We don’t have a phone, remember? That’s how all this trouble got started.”

  “Ma’am, you are treading on very thin ice,” was all the officer replied. He rested his hand on Ellie’s arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes,” said Ellie.

  “All right.” The officers took one last look around the apartment and left.

  “Eleanor,” said Doris, “hon—”

  “Shut up,” replied Ellie. “I’m not talking to you. You are not my mother.”

  Mr. Dingman arrived shortly after 3:00 that morning. Doris opened the door for him, and for a moment he simply glared at her. Then he crossed the room and enveloped Ellie in a huge hug.

  Ellie, who had fallen asleep on the sofa bed, burrowed against his shirt and willed herself not to start crying again. “How did you get here?” she whispered.

  “I drove.”

  “You drove? In the truck?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Dingman said wearily.

  “Where are Albert and Marie?”

  “At home. The ladies came over. They’ll stay with them until we get back.”

  Ellie nodded.

  Mr. Dingman turned to Doris.

  “Don’t start,” Doris said, before Mr. Dingman had said a word.

  “‘Don’t start’?! Our daughter is chased through the streets by some maniac and can’t even call you—”

  “I said don’t start.”

  “Doris, for God’s sake—All right, Ellie, get your things together. We’re going home.”

  “Now?” cried Ellie. “Dad, you just drove all night. You can’t turn around and leave now. We should leave in the morning. When it’s light. And after you’ve slept for a little while.”

  Mr. Dingman turned and looked at Doris. “Can we talk for just a moment. Please?”

  The conversation was quick and quiet. It took place in the bathroom. When it was over, Doris sat on the sofa bed and said to Ellie, “You and your dad are going to stay here tonight, but I think it’s better if I don’t stay with you. You have a key, so you can let yourselves out in the morning. Just leave the key under the doormat outside 3A, okay?”

  “But Doris, where are you going?” asked Ellie. The marble was approaching the mouse trap.

  “I’ll go stay with Jo or someone. Don’t worry.” Doris smoothed Ellie’s hair back from her face. “I’m sorry your trip had to end this way,” she said. “Eleanor, you know I—”

  Ellie sat up. “Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. Just leave.”

  Doris stood up and walked out of the apartment.

  And the mouse trap fell down around Ellie.

  On a warm afternoon in June, Eleanor Roosevelt Dingman sat on her front stoop, Kiss beside her, and let her gaze wander up Witch Tree Lane. She looked for a long time, and she was satisfied.

  “It’s good, Kiss,” she said. “Everything’s good.”

  Kiss bounded down the steps, no longer tethered by a leash. She was probably going to visit the ladies, Ellie thought. Lately, now that the weather had turned warm, Miss Woods and Miss Nelson had begun taking their late afternoon tea on the front porch. If Kiss showed up for this, she was bound to be served a cookie or part of a sardine sandwich.

  Ellie’s gaze traveled across the street to the Majors’ house. Sitting up very straight on the stoop was Smudge, the black-and-white cat Holly had adopted from the animal shelter in April. Ellie watched Smudge give himself a bath, wetting his front paws and rubbing them over and over his ears and face. When he was done bathing, he squatted on his haunches and regarded Ellie gravely.

  “Hi, Smudgie,” Ellie called. She smiled. Noticeably absent from the Majors’ driveway was Mick’s car. It hadn’t been parked there in over a month. Ellie didn’t like the way Mick had left, but she was glad he was gone.

  Ellie watched Kiss’s progress down Witch Tree Lane. She passed the Levins’ and the Lauchaires’ houses. In the Levins’ garage, Ellie knew, was a wood frame containing a large pane of glass. “We might as well be prepared for the next broken window,” Mr. Levin had said. But no windows had been broken since February. At the end of the Lauchaires’ driveway was a brand-new mailbox, painted white with a vine of jaunty strawberries—a present from Monsieur Lauchaire to his wife, not because their old mailbox had been damaged, but just because. Ellie was considering painting the Dingmans’ mailbox herself.

  Kiss arrived at the ladies’ house as their front door opened and Miss Nelson emerged carrying the tray of tea things. Ellie waved to her. From all the way down the street she could see Kiss’s tail pick up speed as she sniffed the air, catching the scents of sardines and raisins and other tasty tea fare. (Not that Kiss would turn down much of anything. Ellie had watched her find and eat a dead moth the day before.)

  As far as Ellie was concerned the most satisfying sight on the entire street was the ladies’ unobstructed front lawn—no FOR SALE sign. They had taken it down in April, shortly after Holly had brought Smudge home.

  “We never really wanted to leave, anyway,” Miss Woods had said.

  And now there didn’t seem to be a reason to leave. No Bad Things for four months. Around the Witch Tree, which showed only the faintest traces of purple paint, Miss Nelson had created a garden. Impatiens were blooming among spindly pachysandra plants. “I’ll put some bulbs in this fall,” she had told Ellie. “Tulips and daffodils and narcissus. Things that will grow taller than the pachysandra.” Ellie had mostly been glad that the ladies still expected to be living in their house in the fall—next spring, too, if they wanted to see the new flowers.

  Ellie was just wondering if it would be all right to invite herself to tea with the ladies when, across the street, the Majors’ front door opened and Holly stepped outside. She bent down to pat Smudge, then saw Ellie, waved to her, and called, “Come over!”

  The Majors’ front stoop was as tidy as the inside of their house, neatly swept, the old braided mat placed squarely in front of the door.

  “Where are Albert and Marie?” Holly asked as Ellie sat down, Smudge betwe
en them.

  “Mrs. Lauchaire took them into town with Domi and Etienne. They’re all getting new sneakers. Dad gave Albert money this morning.”

  “I wish I could get new sneakers,” Holly said glumly. She regarded her faded Keds.

  “They don’t look so bad,” said Ellie.

  “No. It’s the—what do you call it? The principle of the thing?”

  “Because of Mick?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ellie shook her head. “Is your mother still mad?”

  “Are you kidding? She’ll be mad for months. Maybe years. He got a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars! Do you know how long Mom had been saving to get that much? All year, practically.”

  “Well, at least he’s gone.”

  Mick had left in the middle of the night, after an argument of epic proportions. (Ellie could hear him and Holly’s mother all the way across the street, right through her closed window.) On his way out he had swiped Selena’s stash of emergency money, which was more for treats and extras than actual emergencies, but still …

  “I know. But … I wouldn’t mind new sneakers. These are getting pinchy. My toe is about to break through.” Holly wiggled her left big toe. “Oh, well,” she said.

  Ellie patted Smudge absentmindedly. She closed her eyes and tilted her face upward, feeling the sun on it. She could almost fall asleep, she thought, sitting there in the afternoon warmth, patting Smudge’s head, hypnotized.

  “So do you think it will last?” asked Holly.

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  Ellie sighed. The sparrows. Not much had changed. Ever since Ellie had returned from New York City, bitterly regretting what she had said to Tammy before she’d left, the sparrows had continued to ignore her and Holly. But that was it. No slamming. No more incidents in the locker room. She and Holly had simply resumed their Casper-like existence.