Under the Watsons' Porch

by Susan Shreve

  And I could be spending my summer planting lollipops with Tommy Bowers.

  Our blue Toyota has just turned the corner and I can see from the porch railing that only my father is in the car. Which must mean that my mother is at my grandmother's house with Milo. Not a bad time for me to bring up the problem with camp. Luckily I haven't had a chance to think about what I'm going to say to my father before I say it.

  My father is easier on me than my mother is. He doesn't understand me as well as she does and so he believes exactly what I say, never imagining that I could be making anything up. My mom knows better.

  When I say to him that I'm worried about money, especially since I'll eventually be going to college, and am thinking of getting a summer job, he believes me.

  “What about camp?” he asks. “You can't do both.”

  “I love camp, Dad,” I say in a sweet, singsongy voice, not too sweet but appealing, the way a daughter can be appealing to an innocent father like mine. “But I'm twelve and in six more years I'll be going to college and you and Mom will have to save up a lot of money in order to pay for four years of college, so I've been thinking that maybe it would be a good idea for me to start helping out. It would make me feel…” I give some thought to how I should phrase this, pause to consider so my father will know I'm sincere. “I think earning money for the future would make me feel grown-up.”

  “You're very young for a summer job, El.”

  “Not so young,” I say. “Lots of the kids in the sixth grade have jobs.”

  “At twelve?”

  “You know, babysitting or working at day camp or on the playground helping out the recreational program. And Darcelle Martin is even selling vegetables and fruit at her mother's stand downtown.”

  “That's a very responsible idea, Eleanor,” my father says, and I can tell he is thinking about it, wondering whether he should support me in my plan. “Maybe we should bring it up with your mother.”

  “But later. Not when we're at Puss's house,” I say.

  My grandmother—we call her Puss—usually limits conversation to talk about her arthritis and her stomach problems and her new teeth, but she is also very quick to help us out. If my father were to say, “Ellie is thinking of getting a job to help out with the money,” my grandmother would say, “No problem,” and give us the money so I wouldn't have to sacrifice my opportunity to go to camp.

  So this situation with camp is very delicate. I need to control the conversation as well as I can. So far I'm doing very well with my father. I can tell he's impressed that I want a summer job, which I certainly don't, and that he'll make an effort to persuade my mother and Puss that this plan is better than going to camp, more enriching. He likes that word “enriching.”

  “I don't know how your mother will feel, however,” he says as we pull into my grandmother's driveway.

  “She'll probably like the idea,” I say, nonchalant, but I know better. My mother loves camp. She thinks it's good for me especially to be out of the way of boys and shopping malls because it was good for her and it was good for me but not forever.

  I open the car door, but before I get out and we go into the house, I ask my father to be discreet.

  “I hope Mom'll like the idea but I don't want Puss involved in any of my decisions because she gets so involved.”

  My father doesn't disagree. Puss drives him a little crazy, too.

  When my grandfather was alive, I used to like coming to Sunday dinner, not only because he was funny but mainly because Puss was so busy taking care of him, worrying over his eating and drinking and spilling and coughing, that she forgot to run our lives. Especially mine. She feels she has a right to interfere because on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the school year, when my parents are taking refresher courses at the university at night, she takes care of Milo and me and sometimes we even spend the night. And now that it's just Puss living by herself, she has too much time to develop opinions about how we should run our lives.

  At my grandmother's, we usually hang around the kitchen and sometimes play cards and Puss asks about our weekend and tells us about any developments with stomach problems and my mother does her nails. She always does her nails on Sundays in my grandmother's kitchen. And this Sunday, she decides to do mine, too, so by the time lunch is ready, I have Lavender Delight on my short, stubby nails, which I bite. It's cozy, my mother painting my nails and blah, blah, blahing with Puss about work and her dance class and my good report card and Milo's poison ivy. I'm guessing that she'll be glad to have me around all summer, agreeable about my ditching camp this year, maybe even happy about it.

  I'm thinking about my chances of getting a job as we sit down to lunch, Puss at the end of the table, my mother bringing the plates in from the kitchen, Milo making faces at his reflection in the mirror. All very formal and stiff.

  My mother is fair and warmhearted and usually she listens, especially to kids. But of course it's her job to listen to kids. And even though she's fair about most things, she has a way of seeing through me, so she knows what I'm thinking before I even think it.

  And she always knows if I'm lying, which is very inconvenient.

  All during lunch, which is the same every Sunday—roast lamb and green beans and mashed potatoes and gravy and salad and ice cream cake, usually chocolate—I sit quietly eating and think about jobs.

  I can't just stay home all summer and hang out with Tommy although that would be my first choice. Hanging out, according to my mother, is a waste of my valuable time. She mentions “valuable time” a lot, almost as often as my father uses “enriching .”

  But I'm thinking if I had a job, not babysitting but something like junior day camp counselor, my mother might decide a good job, like that, will lead to something in the future for me. She's very interested in my future. I'm only in the sixth grade and she's always saying, “That will look good on your record” or “Playing sports will help you get into college” or even more amusing, she will say, “This might help in case you decide to be a doctor or a lawyer or a professor.” Everything leads to something else in my mother's world. I love her but she just can't help herself.

  My father waits until we're in the car on the way home from my grandmother's house to bring up the subject of camp. Milo is sleeping in the backseat and I've pressed myself between my parents' bucket seats hoping to take charge of the conversation before my mother has anything negative to say.

  “I've been talking to Ellie,” my father begins with a kind of quiet formality, “and she has told me that she might want to get a job this summer.”

  My mother is silent.

  “She's been thinking that it might be a good idea for her to begin earning her own money. Right, Ellie?”

  “She's twelve.”

  My mother folds her arms across her chest and looks at me, speaking as if I'm not in the car.

  “Eleanor is going to camp,” she says.

  Eleanor is my name but my mother only calls me that when she's unhappy with me, so I can tell that the nail polish moment in Puss's kitchen isn't going to last.

  “We've made a down payment,” she says.

  “That, of course, is true.” My father is trying but he's not very successful at persuasion, particularly with my mother.

  “Is this your idea, Eleanor?” My mother turns so she's half over the backseat, facing me.

  I've sunk into the seat next to Milo, as far away from my parents as I can get since the conclusion of this conversation is already clear.

  “Well,” I say, drawing my knees under my chin, my arms wrapped around my legs, “I was thinking I could begin earning some money for college and help you guys out with tuition, and anyway, even though I love camp and stuff, this would be my third year and I've already done everything there is to do at Farwell three times over.”

  I know, even before I finish this long sentence, that I've failed. My mother, as usual, has seen straight through my brain to the truth.

  “What you really want to do,
Eleanor, is spend the summer with Tommy Bowers. Child labor has nothing to do with your decision.” She rolls down the window so the air blows my hair up.

  “And that is something you won't be doing,” she adds.

  “Meg.” My father is always saying “Meg,” which is my mother's name, as if “Meg” translates in his mind to “no” or “please” or “hush.”

  “Ellie was twelve yesterday.”

  “Exactly,” my mother says. “Too young to make her own plans.”

  When we turn the corner at the Watsons' house and pull up in front of our house, a police car with its lights flashing is parked in front of the Bowerses' but no one is in the car.

  “Oh great,” my mother says. “Do you see them?”

  “Hard to miss them,” my father says.

  I say nothing.

  If my mom makes up her mind about something, like she has done about Tommy, there's nothing anyone can do to change it.

  “I can feel trouble,” she says, opening the car door, taking Milo's hand, heading up our front steps.

  “Don't leap too quickly to a conclusion, Meg,” my father says, stopping to check out the scene on the Bowerses' front porch.

  I stop, too. Clarissa Bowers is talking with two policemen. She's wearing white jeans and a red shirt and her hair is in a long braid, so she looks much younger than forty-nine, which is how old she's supposed to be. Mr. Bowers—I don't know his first name—is there, too, his arm resting on Tommy's shoulder. They are almost the same height, with the same color hair and long legs and thin hands. They look like they could actually be father and son.

  When Tommy sees me walk up the steps to my house, he gives me a thumbs-up, which my mother notices, narrowing her eyes at me. She's never spanked me or raised her voice but she often narrows her eyes at me and she used to give me hard little pinches, which I hated. Her eyes remind me of those pinches.

  “I'm beginning to feel so sorry for Tommy Bowers because of the way you treat him, and if it keeps up, I'll pack my clothes and move into the Bowerses' house.”

  This is what I say to my mother even before our front door shuts.

  “You'd really move next door?” Milo asks.

  “Of course I would,” I say, heading for the kitchen.

  “I don't want you to move, Ellie,” Milo says sadly, slipping into a chair at the kitchen table, putting his head down in his arms.

  I sit down beside him and whisper in his ear.

  “Oh, Milo,” I say, wiping the warm tears away from his eyes. “I'd never move away from you without your permission.”

  Mom walks into the kitchen, puts the bag with leftover Sunday dinner on the table, and before she answers the ringing telephone, she announces a family meeting. She has what Puss would call “a bee in her bonnet,” but the way she's rushing around making tea while she talks to my grandmother on the telephone, putting cookies on a plate, and telling Milo to go in the study and turn on the television, which we're never allowed to watch in the afternoon, the bee is more like a bee hive.

  So Milo goes off to the study and I sit at the kitchen table as instructed and take a few cookies and rest my chin in my hand, waiting for disaster.

  My father is reading the morning paper, keeping the paper up so it covers his face, removing himself from the conversation. But this won't last long.

  I know without waiting for my mother to sit down to begin the family meeting that the subject will be Tommy and me. I'm conscious of assuming an expression of absolute boredom so I won't react with panic or fury or tears or whatever might burst out of me by accident when my mother speaks.

  “Ellie.” My mother's voice is soft but determined, a practiced softness not to upset me, not to turn me against the conversation. I've heard this voice before, many times. She reaches over and brushes the newspaper so my father will put it down. Which he does, reluctantly, still reading the sports page.

  “Today after we let you out at Sunday school and before church, we stopped by Lillian's Coffee Shop for croissants and there were the Links. Remember the Links?”

  I say nothing, closing my eyes just slightly so I can see less of my mother than is sitting across from me. I do remember the Links. They used to live next door on the other side and Mrs. Link wouldn't let us come into her house without taking off our shoes, so I'm not interested in what the Links have to say.

  “I remember them very well. Mrs. Link is a freak and Mr. Link is a wuss and I never want to see them again in my life,” I say, pleased with myself.

  “There's no reason for you to see the Links, but your father and I were very upset to learn from them about Tommy Bowers's reputation before he moved to this neighborhood.”

  “Three days ago,” I say quietly. “He moved here Thursday.”

  “But the Links live in Cherry Hills now, where the Bowerses used to live, and they—the Links—knew Tommy and said in Cherry Hills he was in trouble with the police.”

  My mother gives me a significant look.

  “He was in trouble once, Meg,” my father says. “They didn't make him out to be a criminal.”

  “The Links didn't say once. They said in trouble. It could have been several times but that's not the point.”

  When my mother is on a tear, she seems to listen very carefully to everyone but to hear nothing except her own voice. For the longest time, I used to think that she was the perfect mother, better than any mother I know. And I do still think she's better than any mother. But she does drive me crazy. Almost every day lately, she says something to me that makes me want to move to Paris for good. Recently all of the girls I know well enough to have confessions with say that their mothers are suddenly driving them crazy, too. So it must be an epidemic.

  My father has folded his arms and is leaning on the table with a sense of purpose.

  My mother has a tendency to push my father around, to take over the conversation, to run the house and me and Milo and even my father. But he has his own winning recipe for being a father. If he really disagrees with her, if he thinks she has gone too far or been too strict or too particular, he folds his arms across his chest and says, “Meg.” And she invariably backs off.

  So I'm hoping he's going to help me out if my mother has decided that Tommy Bowers is a juvenile delinquent, because already, in only thirty-six hours, Tommy's becoming my best friend.

  “So what are you trying to tell Ellie?” my father asks nicely, no hostile aggression in his voice.

  “I want Eleanor to be careful,” my mother says. “I think Tommy may be more than she can handle.”

  “I will be careful,” I say with great seriousness. It seems the right thing to say although I have no idea why I need to be careful.

  “And what about camp?” my father asks.

  My mother turns her head away, looking out the picture window in the dining room, which overlooks her beautiful garden.

  “Camp.” She shakes her head. “We'll think about camp, Eleanor. Later.” She starts to get up from her chair, looks at me for a moment as if she's assessing my development from eleven to twelve, and then she says, “What kind of job do you have in mind for the summer?”

  “I'll think about it,” I say, following her lead, stuffing the two remaining cookies in my pocket. “Are we finished with the family meeting?”

  My mother nods and my father is back reading the sports page and I run up the steps to my bedroom, shut the door, head to the sunporch and get there just as Tommy has opened the window in his bedroom.

  “What happened with the police?” I call in a throaty voice.

  “Nothing much,” Tommy says, and he seems to have no interest in the police. “So what about tomorrow? Are you free?”

  “All day,” I say, deciding not to tell him about camp, hoping that by tomorrow camp will be ancient history.

  6. Diamonds Are Forever

  I'm sitting with P.J. on my bed trying to decide whether to show her the diamond necklace, which I've slid under my bedsheets so Milo won't see it. She's com
e over to tell me goodbye before she goes to camp. Mainly she's been telling me about Rosie's disaster of a birthday party, but since I don't know what to tell her about Tommy Bowers and the lollipop garden and the diamond necklace, I'm having trouble concentrating on what she's saying. Something about Rosie and a 36B-cup bra.

  “36B!” I say.

  “36B.” P.J. nods. “So, for Rosie's birthday, Lulu gave her a bra covered with daisies and matching bikini underwear and it was too small. She tried them on for us, showing off, and I thought it was totally disgusting.”

  We both giggle, sitting barefoot to barefoot talking.

  P.J. is tall and skinny with wild black curls and pitch-black eyes and owl glasses that make her look smart, and she is. Everybody likes her. She has this amazing ability to melt into people's lives, which is something I just can't do.

  “I'm a people person,” P.J. says. “And you've just got attitude, Ellie, and don't want to get lost in the group. That's what I like about you.”

  I don't know if she's right or not. Usually I think I'm just unpopular by nature, but I'm glad that P.J. thinks it's that I don't want to be popular.

  What I like about P.J. is that she's very smart about kids, especially girls, and doesn't make judgments except about Rosie. You'd have to be a god not to make judgments about Rosie O'Leary. I make a lot of judgments. Sometimes I even think of kids as either good or bad. Same goes for grown-ups. I line them up that way in one column or the other in my mind.

  “The real problem is you get your feelings hurt and I don't.”

  “I know,” I say. “I wish I didn't.”

  I hear my mom calling upstairs to us, “Five more minutes,” before P.J.'s mom comes to pick her up.

  “I hate that I have to go home,” P.J. says. “It seems like next year before I'll see you again and on top of that I don't even want to go to camp this year.”

  “Me neither,” I say. “It's gotten boring, don't you think? First period swimming, second period crafts, third period tennis, blah blah blah.”

  “Besides there're no boys for twenty miles. All girls all summer. We're too old for that.”