Here Today

  Across the street from the Lauchaires and next door to the Dingmans was the Levins’ house. The Levins were not foreign, but they were from Brooklyn, which was part of New York City—and they were bohemian. Also, they were Jewish. They went to temple twelve miles away in Sharonville, which was where the nearest synagogue was. And the Levin children—David, who was eleven like Ellie and Holly, Rachel, who was eight and friends with Domi Lauchaire and Marie, and Allan, who was six and the youngest kid on the street—went to Hebrew school in addition to Washington Irving Elementary. Mr. and Mrs. Levin had left Brooklyn because they didn’t want to raise their kids in the city, and had moved to Spectacle and settled into their small house with teaching jobs at the same community college where Monsieur Lauchaire mopped the floors and weeded the gardens. The three Levin kids went barefoot all summer, Mr. Levin had let his hair grow long, and Mrs. Levin wore embroidered peasant blouses without a bra.

  The fifth house on Witch Tree Lane was the oldest. It was situated at the very end of the cul-de-sac, so that from the front porch you could look straight past the four other houses to the intersection of the lane with Route 27. Two elderly ladies lived in this house—two ladies who had lived together for years and were not related. Miss Nelson and Miss Woods. Ellie and the eight other children on Witch Tree Lane thought of them as their grandmothers. The ladies were usually at home, unlike the children’s parents, all of whom worked at least part-time (except for Doris, but she was rarely home, anyway). Miss Nelson and Miss Woods were good at tending things. They pottered around in their gardens, and gladly stirred up batches of lemonade for the children, bandaged scraped elbows, and occasionally helped out with tough homework assignments.

  Also, they took care of the Witch Tree for which the street had been named. It was an oak at the edge of their property, near the Levins’ yard, and was huge and ancient and misunderstood. A large knothole several feet above the ground was shaped vaguely like the profile of an old woman with a very long nose and a very pointy chin, and even the suggestion of an eye. Spectaculars were afraid of the tree, and believed it possessed supernatural powers. Which only added to their long list of suspicions about Witch Tree Lane and the people who lived there.

  None of this was fair, Ellie thought, including the fact that a face with a long nose and a pointy chin should be considered witchy. Plenty of nonwitches had long noses and pointy chins. And real witches could probably look like anything. After all, Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz was young and beautiful, with a short nose and a little round chin. But the Witch Tree was the Witch Tree and that was that. It was as much a Spectacular outcast as the people who lived on the street.

  As Doris wheeled the Buick and its cargo of children and fine foods off of Route 27, Ellie greeted the sight of Witch Tree Lane with her mixed pangs of love and shame.

  “Home again, home again,” said Doris.

  After a brief silence, Marie said sullenly, “Jiggity-jig.” She was still mad about not having been allowed inside Bosetti’s with Doris.

  Albert hopped out of the car. “Going to Etienne’s,” he said as he slammed the door.

  “I’m going with you,” said Marie.

  Kiss, the Dingmans’ dog, jumped up from a spot of shade by the garage, licked Ellie exuberantly, then ran after Albert and Marie.

  “Eleanor, Holly, help me with the food,” said Doris, who then hurried inside, leaving the food-putting-away to the girls.

  “Look at her. She just disappears,” said Ellie crossly.

  “Oh, well,” replied Holly, which she said all the time, and which Ellie found comforting.

  Doris reappeared in time for lunch, still wearing the tiara and her Bosetti’s outfit. “Come on, we can have a cocktail party,” she said. “Finger foods and hors d’oeuvres and all. I bet this is what Jackie Kennedy serves when she and the president give a White House party for state heads and royal people.”

  Holly stayed for lunch and she and Doris and Ellie ate tiny wieners and sesame crackers and slices of avocado. They sampled spicy mustard and a jar of something called Snappies.

  “Marzipan for dessert?” asked Ellie.

  But Holly said she ought to go home. “I promised Mom I’d practice piano this afternoon. And clean the bathroom. Come over later, though, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Ellie. She would be there in time for a Mickey Mouse Club rerun. Although she and Holly claimed to be too old for the show, they secretly enjoyed it, in the same way they sometimes secretly talked to their old Barbies, so they were relieved that Marie and Rachel always wanted to watch. Also, Ellie and Holly had crushes on Jimmie Dodd, the very cute host of the show. Holly spent hours imagining that he was her boyfriend.

  Holly left, and Ellie and Doris sat in the Dingmans’ humid, dimly lit kitchen. Albert and Marie hadn’t reappeared. Ellie wasn’t used to having Doris at home and all to herself. “Doris?” she said. “What are you going to do this afternoon?”

  Doris spent most of her free time at classes—voice and tap dance and elocution and comportment. “It’s important to build up your résumé,” she told Ellie. Ellie had heard a lot about Doris’s résumé, but had never seen it. All she knew was that every time there was an opportunity for Doris to sing or dance or act in Spectacle, off she rushed, bragging about her résumé. “I’ve got more talent in my little finger than anyone in Spectacle,” she would tell Ellie.

  There weren’t many such opportunities, though, so during all the lulls, Doris created opportunities for herself. For instance, it was Doris who had talked the A&P people into letting her be the Lehman’s Spam Spread Girl. “In this world, Eleanor, you have to make things happen. You can’t just sit around waiting.”

  This was, in fact, the reason Doris, who had been born with the perfectly good name of Darlene Larsen (which had become Darlene Dingman when she married Ellie’s father), had changed her name to Doris Day.

  “I had to jump-start my show business career,” she told Ellie.

  “But why did you choose Doris Day? That name’s already taken.”

  “Well, of course it is. That’s the point. I need the name to call attention to myself. Once I get a big movie role, I’ll change my name again. Doris Day isn’t Doris Day’s real name, after all. This is part of show business, Eleanor.”

  Doris looked at Ellie now over the kitchen table, which was littered with wrappers and peels and seeds. “I think I’ll work on my suntan,” she said. She cocked her head. “Do you think Jackie goes sunbathing behind the White House? God, she’s lucky. Young and beautiful and always in the magazines. Of course, I don’t know that she’s particularly talented. But look where looks and glamour have gotten her.” She paused. “Do you?”

  “Do I what?” said Ellie.

  “Do you think she goes sunbathing?”

  “Jackie Kennedy? Gosh, Doris, I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not at the White House, though. People would see her. I don’t think it’s very private there. Maybe she sunbathes when they go to their beach.”

  “Oh, of course,” said Doris dreamily. “All right, hon. I’m going to put on my bathing suit. Keep me company?”

  The Dingmans’ backyard was tiny. And while it was more private than the White House, it was still bordered by Route 27 on one side and the Levins’ house on the other. This didn’t prevent Doris from lathering herself with a mixture of baby oil and iodine and lying on a lounge chair in her two-piece suit. Truckers on Route 27 blasted their horns at her as they whirred by, and once in a while a car full of boys would slow down and the boys would lean out the windows and whistle. Doris waved gaily to the truckers and the boys while Ellie huddled in a deck chair. She refused to wear a bathing suit, had even changed from her shorts into pants, although she was now boiling. When you were a Witch Tree Lane kid, you called as little attention to yourself as possible. Ellie, who was intrigued by the notion of camouflage, had read and reread an entire book on chameleons. She and Kiss now sat on a blue deck chair, Ellie wearing a blue T-shirt, bl
ue dungarees, and a blue sun hat. She had pulled the deck chair up to the back wall of the house so that she had to yell to talk with Doris.

  “Doris? Do you want a book or something?” she called. Ellie was getting bored. She couldn’t understand how her mother could just lie in the yard for hours on end.

  “No thanks. Come talk to me, Eleanor.”

  “I’m good over here.”

  “But I want to talk to you.”

  Ellie heaved a sigh. “Okay.” She dragged her chair closer to Doris, but not so close that she could be easily noticed from the road. Kiss followed her.

  “So, hon, school’s about to start again,” said Doris to the sky. She lay rigidly on her back, determined to get an even tan.

  “Yup,” replied Ellie.

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Don’t you remember what we talked about? How this is going to be your year?”

  Ellie heaved another sigh. Doris had talked about this. Ellie had only listened to her, and she had not agreed to anything.

  “I think it’s your year, Doris,” said Ellie. “You got to do your recitation in the talent show and now you’re the Bosetti Beauty.” She leaned down to scratch Kiss’s ears.

  “I have lots more plans, too,” said Doris, brightening. “First off, I’m going to approach Harwell’s about a fashion show.”

  “Harwell’s? The department store?” The Dingmans couldn’t afford to shop at Harwell’s, with its tiny, tasteful boutiques (Misses, Juniors, Little Girls, Matrons—which meant large women—The Gentleman’s Corner, Cruise Wear) and its discreet dressing rooms. Ellie’s clothes came from the bulging racks at Korvette’s, which didn’t even have dressing rooms.

  “I’ve seen the new fall fashions,” said Doris, “and what Harwell’s needs is someone to model them.”

  “But you’ve never been a model,” said Ellie.

  “Well, I have to start somewhere. And I’ve taken all those classes. I know how to do my own makeup and walk gracefully and comport myself. Put me in the right outfit and I’ll look just like—like—”

  “Jackie Kennedy?” suggested Ellie. “Doris Day? Grace Kelly?”

  “Yes! Any one of them. Harwell’s will jump at the chance.” Doris studied Ellie. “So? What about you? What are you going to do this year? Why don’t you try out for something?”

  “Well,” said Ellie, “maybe.”

  “I know you. ‘Maybe’ means ‘no.’”

  Ellie shrugged.

  “Take up an instrument for the school band. You’ve got to do something to stand out.”

  “I think I’m going to have a lot of homework,” said Ellie vaguely. She stretched. “Doris, I have to go. It’s almost time for The Mickey Mouse Club. I’ll see you later.”

  Ellie and Holly watched the show, joined by Albert, Marie, Rachel, Kiss, and Pumpkin, Holly’s orange tabby cat. Marie, Rachel, and Kiss wore caps with Mickey Mouse ears on them. When the show was over—when the Mouseketeers had sung the sad song about saying good-bye to their company—the sun was in the west, and the shadows on Witch Tree Lane were lengthening. Ellie looked out the Majors’ front window and saw her father’s truck in their driveway.

  “Come on,” she said to Albert and Marie. “Dad’s home.”

  Ellie found her father rummaging around in the refrigerator. He was sweaty and sawdusty, his fingers grimy, his clothes smelling faintly of turpentine.

  “Hi, sweetie,” said Mr. Dingman, kissing the top of Ellie’s head. “Where’s your mother?”

  Ellie pointed out the window to the yard where Doris was soaking up the last rays of the afternoon sun. Then she looked at Marie leaning against the kitchen counter, still wearing her Mickey Mouse ears. “Go tell Doris that Dad’s here,” she said to her. “I guess I’ll start supper,” she added.

  In 1964, after the Dingmans had fallen apart, Ellie thought she should be able to look back at 1963 and see when things had started to go wrong. She knew that falling apart had been a long, slow process, one that in truth had started before she’d been born; probably even before her father and Doris had met each other. Still, she thought that it was sometime after the morning at Bosetti’s that her family encountered the first real bump in the road.

  Ellie’s mind settled on the day Doris had driven downtown to her meeting with the Harwell’s people. It was a day that had dawned sticky and hot and threatened rain. All morning long the people in Spectacle had waited for the rain. By early afternoon Miss Nelson and Miss Woods sat on their front porch cooling themselves with fans they had made by folding pages from magazines back and forth, back and forth, into accordions.

  “Hotter than the hinges of Hades,” commented Miss Nelson.

  “Can I make a fan, too?” asked Domi Lauchaire.

  “And me?” asked Marie.

  Six of the Witch Tree Lane kids—Domi, Marie, Ellie, Holly, Rachel, and Allan—were crowded onto the ladies’ front porch, along with Kiss and Pumpkin. Etienne, Albert, and David were at the Lauchaires’ building a G.I. Joe fort. All of their parents were at work, except for Doris, who was at Harwell’s.

  Miss Nelson disappeared inside the little house and returned with a copy of Good Housekeeping and a stapler. “Now here,” she said. “Come watch. I’ll show you what to do.” She demonstrated selecting an appealing page from the magazine (preferably one with flowers or an animal on it), carefully tearing it out, then folding the accordion pleats, and finally stapling them together at one end.

  “Ahh,” said Miss Nelson, fanning her face and neck.

  The younger children pounced on the magazine.

  “Roses!” exclaimed Rachel triumphantly, holding up an ad for room deodorizer.

  “Let me see!” cried Marie. “I want to look for a picture of a dog like Kiss.”

  “Well, let Rachel tear out her page first,” said Miss Woods. Then she glanced at Kiss, a black-and-brown mutt who wasn’t bad looking, she thought, except for her unfortunate underbite, and added, “I’m not sure, Marie, that you’ll be able to find a picture of a dog exactly like Kiss.”

  “Yes, I will. Yes, I will,” said Marie, who, lately, had become more and more stubborn.

  The kids pored over the magazine and fumbled with their folding and stapling. Miss Woods made a pitcher of lemonade, and the early part of the afternoon passed slowly.

  Still, the rain didn’t come.

  Miss Nelson announced that she needed to go to the grocery store, and drove off in Millie, the ladies’ blue truck.

  Next door, Albert, Etienne, and David exited the Lauchaires’ carrying a large cardboard box.

  “What’s that?” cried Allan. He had been sitting on the edge of the porch, bare legs hanging over the side. Now he jumped to his feet.

  “It’s our fort,” replied Etienne. He set the box down in the grass, and the children on the porch ran to it and peeked inside.

  “Here’s the army headquarters,” explained Albert.

  “And that’s where they hide tanks and bombs,” added David.

  “Neat,” said Allan, but since everything in the box was imaginary, except for two G.I. Joes, the children soon lost interest and drifted away.

  “I’m bored, Ellie,” said Domi.

  “Me, too,” said Marie.

  They looked at Ellie expectantly.

  “Well,” she said after a moment.

  “Make up a game! Make up a game!” chanted Rachel.

  The Witch Tree Lane kids crowded around Ellie, waiting. In the past, on hot, slow days such as this one, Ellie had been responsible for inventing Pig Tag, Who’s the Strangest?, Ambulance Rescue, and Naughty, Naughty Baby.

  “How about Ambulance Rescue?” suggested Ellie.

  “No, no, it has to be a new one!” said Etienne.

  “All right,” said Ellie slowly. “How about, let me see … how about Naked Barbie Football?”

  The boys hooted, the girls giggled, and Domi fell to the ground. “I faint with excitement,” she exclaimed.

  ?
??How do you play Naked Barbie Football?” asked Holly.

  “Well, first everyone has to go get their Barbies,” said Ellie. “We need as many as possible. And when you find them, take off their clothes. We only want naked Barbies.”

  “Should we bring Kens, too?” asked Marie. “Or just Barbies?”

  “Barbies only,” said Ellie decisively. “Okay, everyone. Go to your houses, find the Barbies, undress them, and bring them back here.”

  “Do you need footballs for this game?” asked David.

  “Um, no,” replied Ellie, who, so far, had no idea how the game would be played.

  Ten minutes later the Witch Tree Lane kids gathered again in the Lauchaires’ yard. And once again they looked expectantly at Ellie.

  “First,” said Ellie, “count the Barbies. Do we have enough for a football team?”

  The children had just laid the Barbies on the grass to count them when two things happened at once. Domi shrieked, “Mommy’s home!” as a car turned into the Lauchaires’ driveway. And the first drops of rain started to fall. Ellie heard the rumble of thunder.

  “Domi! Etienne!” called Mrs. Lauchaire. “Come on inside.”

  Lightning flashed, and the kids scattered to their homes, Holly scooping up Pumpkin as she ran. By the time Ellie, Albert, Marie, and Kiss reached their front door, they were damp. And Kiss was trembling at the sound of the thunder, her tail between her legs. She squeezed past the kids as Ellie opened the door, flew into the living room, and tunneled behind the couch.

  Albert and Marie sat on the back of the couch, which was under the picture window, and watched the storm on their street. They watched as the rain blew against the panes of glass; as Miss Nelson returned in Millie, wipers going at a furious speed; as the wind picked up a newspaper and sent it sailing down the lane where it wrapped itself wetly around the Witch Tree; and as one by one the parents came home from work.