Here Today

  Two weeks passed without incident.

  Then Doris came to school.

  She interrupted a morning spelling quiz. Mr. Pierce was standing behind his desk reading out words and sentences. “Restaurant. We are going to eat dinner in a restaurant tonight. Restaurant.” Before him, twenty-two heads were bowed over sheets of composition paper neatly numbered from one to twenty in two columns.

  Mr. Pierce paused. Then he said, “Enough. I hope there will be enough food at the restaurant. Enough.” He grinned, as if he had made a joke.

  Tammy and Nancy and Maggie and Donna were laughing politely when the door to the classroom was flung open and in walked Doris.

  Ellie dropped her pencil and turned to Holly in horror.

  Doris’s hair had been swept up to new heights. It towered above her head, adorned with glittery combs in the shape of butterflies. Perched on her nose was a pair of enormous sunglasses, the ones that slanted into the shape of cat’s eyes, and made the world nearly black, causing Ellie to wonder how Doris had navigated the dim school hallways. Worst of all, Doris was wearing a red shift so tight that even from the last row, Ellie could see the lines of her girdle through it. Also, she was wearing her high high heels, and lots of plastic jewelry, loud and sparkly to match the butterflies in her hair.

  Doris snapped her gum and waved to the kids, her wave taking in the entire room, as if she were a politician putting her audience at ease. But she didn’t see Ellie in the back, so after a glance over her shoulder at the number on the door, she said, “Are you Mr. Pierce?”

  “I am. And you are …”

  “Doris Day Dingman.” Doris inclined her head ever so slightly toward Mr. Pierce. “Eleanor’s mother,” she said in a husky voice.

  “Eleanor …”

  “Eleanor Dingman?”

  “She means Ellie,” spoke up Maggie, jerking her thumb over her shoulder in Ellie’s direction.

  Doris scanned the back of the room, spotted Ellie, and said, “Oh, hi, darling!”

  “Hi.” Ellie gave Doris a small wave.

  Doris’s gaze returned to Mr. Pierce, and she crossed the room to him, her hips swaying lightly. Ellie now saw that Doris was clutching a paper bag. She held it out to Mr. Pierce. “My Eleanor forgot her lunch,” she said.

  Ellie heard a muffled snort of laughter from somewhere nearby. She glanced around the room. Several students were covering their mouths or, heads bowed, were searching through their desks, shoulders shaking. In the front row, Maggie, Nancy, and Donna gaped at one another, Mr. Pierce momentarily forgotten. But Tammy was looking at Doris with an expression of awe, lips slightly parted, hands gripping the edge of her desk. She watched Doris, then turned around to look at Ellie, eyes wide.

  Mr. Pierce took the bag from Doris, smiling at her, and Ellie was gripped by the need to see the fourth finger on Mr. Pierce’s left hand. No ring.

  Doris faced the class again briefly, then turned back to Mr. Pierce. “Well,” she said in the husky voice that made Ellie think of wine and candles and darkened rooms, “’bye.”

  “Good-bye … Mrs. Dingman,” replied Mr. Pierce.

  Ellie, her face hot as a flush spread across her cheeks, stared down at her hands and did not look up when Doris called to her, “See you this afternoon, sweetie,” as she glided through the door and out into the hall.

  Eleanor Roosevelt Dingman, one of the best spellers in all of Washington Irving Elementary, missed the next two words on Mr. Pierce’s quiz because she couldn’t hear his voice. She thought she might faint, and only managed not to because she didn’t want to attract further attention to herself.

  Bzzzzzzz went a wood-handled steel saw in her ears. Black dots massed in front of her eyes, and her arm slipped across her desk. Then Holly’s hand was resting on Ellie’s wrist. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

  Ellie nodded. The buzzing faded, and her eyes cleared.

  “Number eleven,” Mr. Pierce was saying.

  Ellie glanced at her paper and saw the last word she had written, enough, printed neatly beside the numeral 8. What had happened to nine and ten?

  “Unexpected,” said Mr. Pierce. “We had an unexpected visit from Mrs. Dingman. Unexpected.”

  Ellie dutifully wrote unexpected as light laughter drifted to the last row of desks. A few minutes later, when she had written the final word of the quiz and passed her paper forward, she allowed herself to escape to her private place.

  That day, Ellie and Holly had an argument in the cafeteria.

  “I just want to buy milk,” said Holly. “That’s all.”

  “But you’ll have to stand on line,” said Ellie, who was flattened against the back wall. “Come on, skip it.”

  “You don’t have milk, either.”

  “I don’t need milk!”

  “I’m thirsty. And I have a bologna sandwich and potato chips. They’re going to make me even thirstier.”

  “Get a drink from the water fountain.”

  “I don’t want water with bologna and potato chips. I want milk.”

  “Then I’m going to eat right now and go to the library without you,” said Ellie. She looked around the cafeteria, knowing that today of all days she and Holly should stay out of sight.

  “Fine,” said Holly. “Eat by yourself then.”

  “Fine. I will.”

  Holly marched off and Ellie had just decided that maybe she shouldn’t eat at all, should find a trash can, pitch her troublesome lunch, and get to the library as soon as possible, when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Ellie?”

  Ellie whirled around. Tammy was standing behind her, her lunch tray balanced on the palm of one hand. She was alone, thank God. The other sparrows were not in sight.

  “Yeah?”

  “I just—I just want to say,” Tammy began, and Ellie hugged herself, arms folded tightly across her chest, “I just want to say that … Did I see your mother’s picture in the paper a few weeks ago?”

  “What?” Ellie was caught off-guard; she had been waiting for an insult, or even a quick jab in the ribs, so fast that no teacher would notice.

  “I mean, well, we had just moved here,” Tammy continued. “It was at the end of the summer. And my mom bought the paper the first time we went to the grocery store. And there was a picture of this really pretty lady wearing a crown. And now I … Was that your mother?”

  Ellie nodded. “She won a contest.”

  “She was the Bosetti Beauty!” exclaimed Tammy. “That was your mother. Wow. She is really something. I never thought she was anybody’s mother.”

  When Ellie didn’t reply, only peered to the front of the cafeteria, searching for Holly, regretting their argument, Tammy said, “So is she a model or something?”

  “What?”

  “Your mother. Is she a model? Or an actress? She doesn’t look like anybody else in Spectacle.”

  “Well,” said Ellie, loosening her grip on the lunch bag, “she sort of is, I guess. She’s been in some plays. And soon she’s going to—”

  “On Broadway?” squeaked Tammy.

  “What?” said Ellie again.

  “Plays on Broadway? In New York City?”

  “Oh, no. Not like that. Plays here. In Spectacle. With the community theater group. And she’s going to be a model at Harwell’s.”

  “You’re kidding. I didn’t know there were models at Harwell’s.”

  “Doris is going to be the first.”

  “Wow,” said Tammy. “You call your mother Doris?”

  “She insists on it.” Ellie glanced over Tammy’s shoulder and now caught sight of Maggie, Donna, and Nancy sitting in a row before untouched lunch trays, their eyes fastened on Ellie and Tammy.

  “How does she get all those jobs?” Tammy wanted to know.

  Ellie squirmed. “She has a résumé. And sometimes she goes to auditions. And she takes classes.”

  “Does she sing and dance?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Because I want to be a m
odel one day, but I can’t really sing or dance, so I was wondering if you have to know how to do those things.”

  “Not for the modeling, I guess—”

  “How does she find out about auditions?”

  “She just watches the newspaper—”

  “Gosh, she’s beautiful. Doris. Does she make everyone call her Doris? I wish my mother looked like her.”

  “I—” Ellie searched the lunch line and saw that Holly was standing in front of the cashier, paying for her carton of milk. She was about to tell Tammy that she had to meet Holly, when Tammy took a step back from Ellie and looked her up and down.

  “You’re not a thing like Doris,” she said, and shrugged. “But you sure are lucky she’s your mother.” She waved to the others. “I’d better go. See you.”

  “See you,” Ellie said, and watched Tammy slide onto the bench across the table from Donna. “Holly!” Ellie called then. “Holly!”

  “What,” said Holly in a flat voice. “I thought you were mad at me.”

  “Tammy just talked to me!”

  “What?”

  Ellie, tugging Holly toward the doors of the cafeteria and talking in a loud whisper, told her about the conversation with Tammy. “What do you think it means?”

  Holly paused and turned around. “Don’t look now, but they’re all staring at us. Tammy and Donna and Nancy and Maggie.”

  Ellie immediately turned around.

  “I said, ‘Don’t look now’!”

  “I couldn’t help it. I wanted to see.”

  “I don’t think this is good,” said Holly.

  “It must be a joke. Right?” said Ellie.

  “Definitely. Hurry.”

  Ellie and Holly escaped from the cafeteria.

  From time to time on Witch Tree Lane something scary would happen at night, something scary and often not noticed until the light of day. Marie called these things simply the Bad Things. And this term was reserved only for the nighttime incidents. Sometimes she would say that something was bad (riding on the bus was bad, not being in Domi’s class was bad, Albert’s bursts of temper were bad). But a Bad Thing was all the mailboxes on the street being sprayed with a can of pink paint. Or finding the word QUEER scrawled on Miss Woods and Miss Nelson’s driveway. Or a rock being thrown through the front window of the Levins’ house.

  Nobody on Witch Tree Lane ever saw anyone doing the Bad Things. And the police didn’t take much interest in them. But the people on Witch Tree Lane had to live with them, and they were scary.

  On a Sunday afternoon at the end of September another Bad Thing was discovered. It made Ellie’s knees weak, and destroyed what had been a perfectly nice day, one that had started with the Witch Tree Lane kids roaming their street in a pack. They had met up shortly after lunch. As Doris had pulled out of the Dingmans’ driveway in the Buick on her way to something (Ellie had forgotten what), David, Rachel, Allan, Domi, Etienne, and Holly had swarmed out of the Levins’ yard, David calling, “Hey! Hey, Ellie! What are you guys doing?”

  “Nothing,” said Ellie.

  “Is anyone home at your house?” (David meant any parents.)

  “No.” Mr. Dingman was on the other side of Spectacle, finishing up an addition on a house.

  “What’s in your refrigerator?” asked Etienne.

  “Nothing.”

  “Popsicles in the freezer,” said Albert.

  The nine children crowded into the Dingmans’ kitchen, finished off one box of ice pops, and started another. Then they went to the Lauchaires’, who had a refrigerator in their garage, and helped themselves to sodas.

  “Now let’s jump on our trampoline!” said Allan.

  “After Popsicles and soda?” asked Ellie. “No way.”

  “What should we do then?” asked Rachel.

  “Hey, there’s Miss Nelson,” said Holly.

  Ellie looked across the Lauchaires’ yard to the house at the end of the street. She could see a figure in a loose brown dress covered by a roomy apron with big kangaroo pockets on the front. The figure was kneeling in the garden, her toes sunk into the earth behind her so that her sandals flopped off of her heels. “Come on!” said Ellie.

  And the Witch Tree Lane kids ran through the yards to Miss Nelson.

  “Good lord in heaven!” exclaimed Miss Nelson as she heard them approach.

  “Do we sound to you like a herd of elephants?” asked Domi.

  “At least,” replied Miss Nelson.

  “What are you doing?” Rachel wanted to know.

  “She’s gardening,” said Albert.

  Rachel stuck her tongue out at him, then said, “If you know so much, tell me exactly what she’s doing.”

  When Albert shrugged, Miss Nelson said, “I’m getting the flower beds ready for winter. Would you like to know what’s in the garden now?”

  Rachel nodded, and Ellie could hear Miss Nelson say, “These golden flowers are chrysanthemums….” Her eyes drifted from Rachel and Miss Nelson to the Witch Tree, where Allan was peering at the knothole. He had grown enough lately so that he now had to lean over slightly in order to look at it.

  Allan must have been thinking the same thing, because he exclaimed, “Ellie, do you see? I don’t have to stand on tiptoe anymore!” He traced the profile of the witch with his forefinger. “Tell me again about the tree,” he said.

  “Well, it’s really just an old oak,” Ellie replied. “People call it the Witch Tree because of the face—”

  “And because of its evil powers,” said David in a low voice.

  “Oh, it does not have evil powers,” said Ellie. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Allan.”

  Miss Nelson stood slowly, clutching her knees. She straightened up, put her hands against her back, stretched, then brushed dirt from her apron. “I wish people understood,” she said

  “Understood what?” asked Holly.

  “The Witch Tree.” Miss Nelson walked stiffly across the yard and rested one hand affectionately on the gnarled bark.

  “You mean,” said Albert, “how that witch face materializes into a real live witch at night that floats out of the tree and over our street—”

  “Noo!” howled Marie.

  “I was thinking,” said Miss Nelson, “of what this tree has seen. It’s been standing here for more than two hundred years. It was here before the Civil War, it was here before cars and TVs and radios. It was here before there was a Witch Tree Lane or any of our houses, and even before Spectacular became a town. When it first stood here it was part of a forest.”

  “Is it a boy or a girl?” asked Domi.

  “It’s a tree,” said Etienne.

  “It’s been here since before I was born,” said Allan.

  “Since before a lot of people were born,” agreed Miss Nelson.

  “Since before Marie Curie and Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt were born,” said Marie solemnly.

  “It’s seen more than I’ll ever see,” said Miss Nelson.

  “Do you think it has eyes?” Marie asked, touching the knothole. “Do you think it really sees things? Maybe it sees who does the Bad Things at night.”

  “I think it keeps watch over us,” said Miss Nelson. Then she added, “A shame. A beautiful old tree like this, watching over us, and people say it’s evil. It’s just a shame.”

  The front door to the ladies’ house opened then, and Miss Woods stepped onto the porch. “Hi!” she called to the children, waving a batch of letters in the air.

  Ellie watched her tromp down the porch steps and make her way along the cracked tar of the driveway to the mailbox. She tugged at the door of the box, then tugged harder. “What on earth—” said Miss Woods, puffing as she pulled again. She stuck the letters in her mouth, planted her feet firmly on the street in front of the mailbox, and tugged at the door with both hands. The box remained shut.

  “What’s the matter, dear?” called Miss Nelson.

  “Damn box won’t open.” Miss Woods gave another terrific yank and Ellie saw the po
st pitch forward. But the door wouldn’t budge.

  “Well, don’t … don’t strain yourself.” Miss Nelson left the children and hurried to the end of the driveway. “Be careful.”

  Miss Woods paid no attention. She flung the letters to the ground and, after one final pull, leaned forward to examine the box. “It’s—it’s been—someone glued the damn thing shut.”

  “Dear, please stop swearing.” Miss Nelson inclined her head toward Ellie and the others, who were still standing by the Witch Tree, fascinated by this turn of events.

  “I’ll swear all I want.” She paused, her breath coming in large raspy gasps. “I’m going to call the police.”

  “Is it a Bad Thing?” asked Marie, standing on tiptoe to whisper in Ellie’s ear.

  “Maybe,” replied Ellie. “I mean, it must be. The box was okay yesterday.”

  Miss Nelson stooped to gather the letters. Then she put her arm around Miss Woods. “Come on in side now.”

  Ellie watched the ladies as they walked arm in arm back to their porch. Then she found herself turning to look down the street. Her eyes took in the other houses, one by one—the Lauchaires’, the Levins’, Holly’s, her own. She scanned windows, walls, mailboxes. Nothing looked broken or defiled or out of place. And she knew that her own mailbox was in working order.

  The children drifted away from the tree, Marie and Rachel and Domi deciding to play indoors, the boys heading for the Levins’ trampoline.

  Holly eyed the mailbox. “Maybe we can get it open,” she said.

  But they couldn’t.

  After pulling so hard they were afraid they might uproot the post, they wound up in Holly’s bedroom.

  “Where’s your mom?” asked Ellie, lying on Holly’s pristine bedspread. Everything about Holly’s room was pristine, from the ruffled curtains at the windows to the neat rows of books and stuffed animals and china horses on the shelves. Holly’s mother had seen a picture of a girl’s bedroom in a magazine when Holly was six, and had copied it for her daughter. She insisted that Holly’s room remain in immaculate condition. Nobody could say that Selena Major didn’t keep a perfect house.