Here Today

  By five-thirty all the parents on the street were home except for Doris.

  “Where’s your mother?” Mr. Dingman asked Ellie as he stood dripping in the kitchen, wiping his head and face with a dish towel.

  It was a perfectly absolutely ordinary moment, and yet, Ellie realized later, it was that first bump in the road.

  Ellie was about to reply, “She went to Harwell’s,” when she felt someone staring at her from behind. Uneasy, she turned away from her father, turned toward the kitchen door, and there was Albert, a naked Barbie in his hand, still perched on the back of the couch, but now facing the other way, staring into the kitchen at Ellie and Mr. Dingman.

  “Yeah, where is she?” said Albert.

  “You know where she is. She went to Harwell’s,” Ellie replied.

  “She’s shopping at Harwell’s?” Mr. Dingman asked, his voice rising to a higher pitch.

  “No, no. She’s not shopping there,” Ellie said quickly, turning back to her father. “She just went for a meeting. About the fashion show.”

  Mr. Dingman folded the dish towel carefully and placed it on the table so that the edge of the cloth and the edge of the table were lined up exactly. “What fashion show?” he asked.

  “The one Doris is going to star in,” said Marie. She crawled behind the couch and attempted to pull Kiss out, but Kiss wouldn’t budge.

  Ellie’s father slid a chair out from under the kitchen table and very slowly sat down on it.

  “Dad, I think Doris told you about this,” said Ellie.

  Before Mr. Dingman could answer, Albert said, “She’s been gone for hours. Meetings don’t take that long.” He slid off of the couch and walked stiffly into the kitchen.

  “How do you know how long fashion show meetings take?” asked Marie.

  Albert ignored her. “She left at quarter after one,” he reported. He glanced at the clock in the kitchen. “Now it’s twenty to six.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Marie.

  “I’ll start dinner,” said Ellie.

  “Doris should start dinner,” said Albert. He stood in the middle of the room, feet apart, slamming his right fist into his left hand, over and over again.

  “Well, she can’t now, can she?” said Ellie sharply. “Besides, I make dinner all the time.”

  “That’s different. It’s different when you’re just helping her out.”

  “Kids.” Mr. Dingman rested his head in his hands. “Just … be quiet for a minute.”

  No one said anything.

  “Shouldn’t I start dinner?” Ellie finally asked.

  “I guess so,” said her father.

  “I’m really starving,” said Marie.

  “I just said I’ll start dinner,” snapped Ellie.

  “How long are we going to wait for Doris?” asked Albert, crossing his arms.

  Ellie removed two pots from the cabinet next to the sink and banged them onto the counter. She found a box of rice and banged it down next to the pots.

  Mr. Dingman sat silently, gazing out at the storm.

  “I said, ‘How long are we going to wait for Doris?’” Albert still stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed.

  “Everybody heard you,” said Ellie.

  “No one answered me.”

  “I want Doris,” said Marie, setting up to wail.

  “Well, she’s not here,” said Albert. “As usual.”

  Mr. Dingman spun around in his chair. “Albert, that’s enough.”

  “But—”

  “Enough!”

  “She’s supposed to be here,” persisted Albert, and his voice shook slightly. “All the other mothers came home. I saw them.”

  “I want Doris!” cried Marie.

  Ellie looked at her father. After what seemed like a very long time, he rose from his chair, examined the grit embedded in his fingertips, then flung his hands to his sides as if the dirt were a tough problem he’d have to address later. “Marie, help your sister,” he snapped. “Albert, come with me.”

  “No.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “No.”

  “Albert, come with me this instant.” Mr. Dingman’s voice was rising. “Right. Now.” He took a step toward Albert.

  “Daddy!” Marie wailed.

  “NO!” Albert ran from the kitchen and up the stairs to his room, where he slammed the door shut.

  Mr. Dingman strode out of the kitchen. Ellie heard him run up the stairs, heard him rap sharply on Albert’s door.

  “Set the table, Marie,” said Ellie, hating herself for sounding crabby.

  Sniffling, Marie headed for the cutlery drawer.

  “Wash your hands first.”

  “You’re not the boss of me.”

  “Just do it. Please.”

  Marie washed her hands, then set the kitchen table. Four places.

  Twenty minutes later, Ellie’s dinner of rice and hot dogs and Green Giant canned peas was ready. Albert and Mr. Dingman came back downstairs, and the Dingmans ate silently.

  It was after nine o’clock that night when the front door banged open. Marie was already upstairs asleep, but Ellie, Albert, and Mr. Dingman were watching TV. Albert kept his eyes glued to the set.

  “Yoo-hoo!” called Doris as she walked unsteadily into the living room.

  “Doris,” said Mr. Dingman. “You’re—for heaven’s sake, the children.”

  “Oh, now, don’t start. Don’t ruin it for me. Just let me be excited about this.”

  “But—”

  “Well, I had to go out and celebrate. Didn’t I? I think they’re going to say yes.”

  Albert slid off the couch and edged toward the steps. Ellie followed him. Upstairs she tiptoed into her room, careful not to waken Marie. She lay in her bed and listened. Across the room Marie sighed in her sleep. From downstairs came the sound of angry voices raised, then lowered, raised, then lowered again, like the pulsating flame on a burner. Ellie strained to hear shreds of her parents’ conversation.

  “… were you thinking?” That was her father’s voice, and it was punctuated by the sound of something being crashed down on a table, making china rattle.

  “They’re my new friends, okay?” replied Doris.

  Ellie couldn’t catch the next bits of the argument, but a few moments later she heard Doris say quite loudly, “I do, too, have friends!”

  “Who? Who are your friends?”

  “It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point anyway, is it? This is really about my success—”

  “It’s really about you staying out until all hours,” Mr. Dingman interrupted Doris. “And about you doing what ever you damn well please. You always get your way, don’t you? That’s some example to set for the children.”

  His voice trailed away, into the kitchen, and Ellie could no longer make out the harsh words. She turned on her side and concentrated on the moonlight, on the way it fell in slanted shafts across Marie’s bed. She lay very, very still until the arguing had stopped, and all she could hear was the muted sounds of her parents closing up the house for the night—her father letting Kiss out, then calling her back inside, locks being turned, windows being lowered. Eventually she heard soft foot falls on the stairs and the voices of her parents in their bedroom. Ten minutes later the house was absolutely silent. When Kiss appeared in her doorway, Ellie whispered her name and patted the end of her bed. Kiss would spend part of the night with her, part of the night across the room with Marie, then move to Albert’s room, dividing her affection equally among the Dingman children.

  On the night before the first day of school in 1963, the night before Ellie’s first day of sixth grade, Holly phoned Ellie three times and Ellie phoned Holly two times. Five discussions about what to wear the next day, and by morning, Ellie still did not have a clear idea for a safe outfit. The problem with dressing like a chameleon was that it could backfire. Sometimes boring called as much attention to itself as flashy or weird or wrong.

  “How about our sleeveless dresses?
” suggested Holly in their third conversation. “With saddle shoes.”

  “I don’t think they’re wearing saddle shoes anymore,” said Ellie.

  “Who aren’t?”

  “Maggie and Nancy and Donna.”

  Holly let out a prolonged sigh. “Wear that new dress Doris just bought you.”

  “No, it’s pink.”

  “Well, I’m going to wear my sleeveless dress.”

  “Okay, I will, too.”

  But when Ellie stood in front of the bathroom mirror the next morning, stood there naked except for her old summer dress, she knew it was all wrong. For one thing it was far too short. Ellie had grown two inches over the summer and now she stared at her skinny legs with their bony knees and almost nonexistent calves and wondered how long it would take for her body to look like Doris’s. Doris’s legs were firm and muscled and shapely, and her breasts (Doris called them her cleavage) were full and round and pressed tightly against whatever she was wearing on top. Her waist was narrow, her hips just wide enough so that they undulated when she walked. Ellie was skinny and straight from top to bottom, like a column. Furthermore, her lank hair was brown, her eyes were hazel, and after a summer outside on Witch Tree Lane, her skin had darkened to the color of a walnut, so that she was all one color. She was a skinny, monochromatic pole.

  And the dress looked hideous on her. If she wanted camouflage, it was not the way to go.

  Back in her room, Ellie tried on and discarded skirts and dresses until Marie called up the stairs, “Ellie! Doris says you’re going to miss the bus and she’s not driving you!”

  “Okay!” Now Ellie was wearing a yellow dress that Doris had found on the reduced rack at Korvette’s. It had ruffles around the bottom and lace at the neck. Doris hadn’t been able to resist it because it was so cheap. Since it was the longest dress Ellie owned, she left it on, even though it was far from camouflage, and flew down the stairs to the kitchen.

  Fifteen minutes later she was standing at the end of Witch Tree Lane with Albert, Marie, Holly, the Levins, and the Lauchaires. Kiss and Pumpkin, on opposite sides of the street, watched the kids from their front porches.

  “Excuse me, I might throw up,” said Domi.

  “Don’t,” said David.

  Domi didn’t, but Ellie knew how she felt. Her own heart was pounding. Albert kept craning his neck down Route 27, in search of the bus. Holly twisted her hands. They were all waiting for the torture to begin.

  The Witch Tree Lane stop was the last one on the route. By the time bus #5 rolled to the corner, everyone else on the route would have been picked up. And as many of them as possible would have crowded to the windows for their first glance at the knot of outcasts. They would want to see Selena Major’s daughter, the girl who didn’t know who her father was. They would want to see what weird, stained, grubby clothing the Frenchies were wearing. They would want to see those Jew kids, see if the boys had on their yarmulkes, the black hats that looked like tiny pot holders. And they would want to take a peek at Doris Day Dingman’s children, since her run through Bosetti’s was still fresh in their minds.

  Ellie knew all this and took a tiny step back, a step away so she could see the Witch Tree Lane kids as the kids on the bus would see them. It was true that the Lauchaires were wearing clothes that appeared to have been plucked out of the hamper before they’d found their way into the washing machine. And that on the back of Domi’s head was a big rat’s nest of slept-on hair. And that both children wore sneakers without socks, their chubby legs smudged with dirt and grass stains from the previous evening’s games of Tag and Statue.

  And it was true that Selena’s daughter and Doris’s older daughter were wearing clothes that, Ellie now realized, looked more appropriate for church than school. (Holly had decided to dress up her outfit with ankle socks, black patent-leather flats, and a stack of her mother’s bangle bracelets.)

  But the rest of the kids looked all right. And David and Allan were not wearing their yarmulkes.

  “Allan,” Rachel said suddenly, “remember, no matter what the kids say, you do not have cooties.”

  “What?” said Allan. Today would be his first time riding the bus to Washington Irving. The year before, when he was in kindergarten, Mr. Levin had driven him to and from school. But now he was old enough for the bus.

  “Cooties,” Rachel repeated, and was about to launch into an explanation when Ellie put out her hand and shook her head at Rachel.

  “But—” Rachel started to say.

  “There it is,” Albert said suddenly in a flat voice. “The bus.”

  The kids, except for Allan, grew rigid.

  The bus was groaning along Route 27, and now it wheezed to a halt at the corner. Sure enough the windows on the Witch Tree Lane side were crowded with faces. Allan looked at them, looked at the arms hanging out—even though this was not allowed—at the noses pressed to the glass, then up at Ellie, back to the faces, back to Ellie, and finally said, “Are we famous?”

  “Yes,” Ellie replied.

  The bus door scraped open, and Ellie could hear the sounds of the kids scrambling to reclaim their seats. She and Holly glanced at each other. Then Ellie took Allan’s hand and helped him up the first high step.

  “Where do we sit?” asked Allan, bewildered, as he and Ellie reached the aisle and stood before the rows of faces.

  “In a seat, idiot,” said a boy.

  “But not in mine,” said another.

  “And not mine. I didn’t have my cootie shot.”

  “I didn’t have my Hebe shot.”

  Ellie surveyed the bus. The kids were spread out so that the Witch Tree Lane children couldn’t stick together unless they sat in the very last rows.

  Allan turned his face up to Ellie’s. “I want to sit with you,” he whispered.

  Behind them, the rest of the Witch Tree Lane kids were standing uncertainly.

  “Find seats, please,” said the driver. “I don’t have all day.”

  “Okay,” whispered Ellie to Holly. They had thought this might happen, had discussed it with the rest of the kids the day before. They had a battle plan, and they were prepared.

  Ellie sat down heavily in the nearest seat, pulling Allan into her lap.

  “Cooties! Cooties!” cried the girl next to them. She edged away until she was smashed up against the side of the bus.

  Behind Ellie, Holly sat down. Two rows back, Etienne sat next to a girl, one of his classmates. She slid away from him, holding her nose.

  It was when Ellie heard someone tell Marie that the seat next to her was saved that Ellie stood up and said quietly, “This is the last stop, Lorraine. Either let Marie sit there, or go sit somewhere else.” She raised her voice. “We are not sitting in the back anymore,” she added, recalling the times when Marie and Rachel had gotten carsick.

  “The dingbat speaks,” said the boy across the aisle from Ellie.

  “Are we ready back there?” asked the driver wearily.

  Heaving great sighs, several of the kids stood up and rearranged themselves so that the Witch Tree Lane kids could sit together. The driver watched this in the rearview mirror, his arms folded across the steering wheel. At last he straightened up, put the bus in gear, and headed back to Spectacle.

  School would be so much easier, Ellie thought, if she and the other Witch Tree Lane kids didn’t have to take the bus. Waiting at their bus stop prevented them from being the slightest bit anonymous. Of course, most Spectaculars knew who Doris Day Dingman was, and what Selena Major had done. And it was hard to miss the Lauchaire kids in their unkempt clothing, or the fact that David, Rachel, and Allan were absent from school on the Jewish holidays. But not starting off each day as the kids at the Witch Tree Lane bus stop would have been a step in the right direction.

  Washington Irving Elementary, one of two small elementary schools in Spectacle, was a long, low brick building five blocks from Bosetti’s that housed thirteen classrooms, a gymnasium that was also the auditorium, a library, a
music and art room, a cafeteria that Ellie hated and tried to avoid, a nurse’s office, and the principal’s office. Outside were two playgrounds—a smaller one for the younger children and a larger one for the older children.

  When the bus drew up in front of the school, Ellie and the Witch Tree Lane kids remained in their seats until the other kids had rushed past them and scattered across the playgrounds.

  “Holly and I are going to take Allan to his classroom,” Ellie said to Marie. “Can you find yours by yourself?”

  “I’m not a baby,” she replied, kicking at gravel, and stomped away, leaving Domi and Rachel to run after her. Albert had already disappeared.

  Because Allan at first didn’t want to be left in his new classroom, Ellie and Holly reached their own classroom just as someone (was this their teacher?) was about to close the door. Ellie came to a dead halt at the sight of the person, and Holly ran into her from behind.

  The person, whoever he was, looked almost exactly like Jimmie Dodd from The Mickey Mouse Club.

  Ellie peered around him at the number on the classroom door. Twelve. That was their room number, all right. But this couldn’t possibly be Mr. Pierce. Ellie had found out just recently that she and Holly were to have a new teacher instead of old Mrs. Fox who, over the summer, had decided to retire. And Ellie had spent many hours in the last few days wondering about Mr. Pierce. She had decided he was old, like Mrs. Fox, and had pictured him with a gray crew cut and round eyeglasses. Furthermore, she had decided he was strict and stern and unsmiling. And that he had a fascination with the Revolutionary War, and would ask his students to write many compositions about it.

  And now here was Jimmie Dodd holding the door open for them, grinning, not knowing where they lived or who they were or anything about their mothers.

  Maybe he was a teacher’s aide.

  “Girls?” he said. “Are you in this class?”

  Ellie hesitated. “I guess so. Are you Mr. Pierce?”

  “Yup. Come on in.”

  Ellie glanced over her shoulder at Holly and could tell just by Holly’s raised eyebrows that she, too, thought Mr. Pierce looked like Jimmie Dodd. For the first time in her life, Eleanor Roosevelt Dingman stepped into a new classroom feeling pleased and hopeful.