Under the Watsons' Porch

by Susan Shreve

  “What did you think about when they left to go home to their real parents?” I ask him.

  “I didn't think about it,” he says.

  Tommy is sitting up now, his cigarette in his pocket, and he's leaning against the wall.

  “What does it mean, ‘Best Little Mom in Toledo’”? he asks. “How many people have this shirt?”

  “Probably a hundred,” I say. “We got two of them.”

  “So what does it mean if there're so many best moms?”

  “It's a joke,” I say. “It's just that everyone thinks his mom is the best, right?”

  “I don't believe everyone thinks that.” His arms are folded across his chest, his lips tight.

  I'm suddenly quiet.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  He shakes his head no and I'm planning to change the subject but he won't let me.

  “So what is a best mom?” he asks. “Do you know?”

  Most of my friends take their mothers for granted—mothers are mothers after all and they stick around most of the time, and by the time a kid gets to be my age, mothers drive us a little crazy.

  But I've almost never thought what it would be like not to have a mother. I don't want to think about it.

  “My mother's got all these rules and gets into my business all the time,” I say, “but she's sort of like the fence around our yard.”

  “Remember you told me you still love her even though she drives you crazy?”

  “I do.”

  “I don't think I've ever loved anyone except the mother I never knew, who's in my imagination.”

  I go silent, thinking I should say something but maybe Tommy just likes talking and doesn't need to hear anything back. Maybe he's never spoken about his true life before and he only wants me to listen, which I'm doing, my heart beating hard in my chest.

  “Maybe I love you,” he says, and I can't tell if it's a joke or truly what he's thinking. “And maybe not. Who knows?” he says with a coy smile. “Certainly not me.”

  The sunporch has filled with heat, blown in from somewhere underneath the porch, hotter than it's been all day although I can see the wind blowing the trees and it shouldn't be this hot, so high up in the trees. There's a sweet smell in the air, maybe the wind is lifting the scent of flowers from the garden through the screens to the sunporch. My skin feels shivery, almost transparent, too thin to contain my blood, to conceal my quivering muscles. My stomach is wild with the flapping tickly wings of butterflies. And I feel like Milo must when he goes on a sleepover, sick with excitement and fear and longing for what I don't know.

  Instinctively, I reach under my shirt and pull out the diamond necklace so it rests on top of the “mom” T-shirt.

  Tommy looks bored to death.

  “Very pretty diamonds, Eleanor Tremont.”

  “This necklace is the perfect present of my life,” I say.

  12. A Reality Bite

  It's Tuesday and I haven't seen Tommy since Saturday on the sunporch. I lie in bed at night and watch the Bowerses' house but no one seems to be at home. My friend Linsay called to say goodbye, she's off to the mountains with her parents and could I come over and spend the night. That was Monday. I said “No, I can't” and made up an excuse.

  The strangest thing has happened. I don't want to leave my house. I wouldn't go to the movies last night with my parents. I told Vera, a friend from Sunday school, that I was feeling a little sick when she asked me to go to the mall.

  This morning at breakfast, my mother sat at the table with me while I ate my cereal. I didn't look up but I knew she was watching me.

  “What's going on with you, Ellie?” she asked me finally.

  “Nothing much.”

  “Something is. Maybe not much but something,” she said.

  I got up from the table, dumped the bowl of half-finished cereal in the sink, and put it in the dishwasher.

  “I'm overtired,” I said.

  “Maybe it's your immune system.”

  Recently my mother has taken an interest in boosting the immune system of everyone she knows, something she's read about since it's the new subject of conversation with her friends.

  “I don't think so but thanks for your interest,” I said, heading upstairs to my bedroom. “My immune system is fine.”

  I don't know what has happened to Tommy and I don't want to ask my parents because I'm afraid to let them know I'm interested. He left my house on Saturday in the late afternoon and told me he was going to be busy on Sunday but would see me Monday, and then he was gone. I lay in the dark on the sunporch Sunday night waiting for the light in his bedroom to go on. But it never did. Monday I sat on the front porch after Milo left for day camp and my parents went to teach summer school, which they do for extra money in the mornings. I was drinking lemonade waiting for Tommy to run down the front steps of his house. But nothing happened all day long, and by Monday night when Linsay called me for a sleepover, I was feeling sick.

  “Blue?” my father asked me that night when he came in to tell me good night.

  “A little,” I said.

  “It's always depressing for a few days after school is out for summer vacation even though you thought you couldn't wait,” he said. “You'll be glad to be at camp.”

  “I don't think so,” I said. “I'm not planning to go.”

  “We'll talk about it,” he said. “There's a lot to take into account.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means the subject of camp isn't finished,” he said.

  “Maybe for you,” I said, “but it's finished for me.”

  He didn't argue but that doesn't mean anything. He doesn't argue very often.

  I'm lying on my bed looking at the ceiling thinking about Tommy when I hear my mother come up the steps, stop by my door, hesitate, and knock.

  “Yes?” I call.

  She opens the door but doesn't come in. Just leans against the entrance watching me change from my pajamas to shorts.

  “Do you have plans?” she asks.

  “I leave for Hawaii at noon,” I say without cracking a smile.

  “I mean before you leave for Hawaii,” she says.

  I like that about my mother. It comes of spending her entire grown-up life with kids my age.

  “I'm hanging out here.”

  “All day?”

  “Probably.”

  “It's interesting, you know,” she begins, and I can tell she's warming up to one of those long conversations she likes to have, a heart-to-heart with her daughter. “The little camp you ran on Saturday morning? I was talking to Maud O'Shaunessey at the market and she said her kids love the camp. They can hardly wait until next Saturday.”

  “Good.” I'm checking my dresser for T-shirts although I'm no longer interested in what I wear.

  “Ms. O'Shaunessey said you're having a magic camp. What does that mean?” Mom asks. “Learning magic tricks?”

  “Sort of,” I say.

  “Hannah's mom said that you've made a kind of clubhouse under the Watsons' porch.”

  I shrug. I don't know what to tell my mother but I can see she's preparing to slide into my life as usual.

  I'm wondering if she knows about Tommy or if she thinks I'm doing this magic camp alone. Milo is great about keeping secrets and he knows how our parents feel about Tommy Bowers, so he'd never get me into trouble on purpose.

  “Did you ask the Watson sisters if you could use the porch?” She has moved into my room, leaning now against the bookcase.

  “The camp is under the porch,” I say, and toss my sneakers back into the closet, planning to go barefoot even though it's cool today.

  “Nevertheless.”

  “The Watson sisters are deaf. You told me that yourself.”

  She's careful with me but she's making no effort to leave my room, which she knows I want her to do.

  “I did ask the Watson sister with the white hair if we could be under her porch on Saturday mornings,” I say, which is
n't exactly true. “She didn't hear me of course but she smiled, so I'm sure it's perfectly fine.”

  “Good for you.”

  She's moved over to my bed and is sitting on the end of it, her legs crossed, her hands folded. Other mothers would have bolted from the bedroom of a bad-tempered daughter by now. It's one of the difficulties of a mother who's a teacher. She's not afraid of me. P.J.'s mother is so afraid of P.J. that she hides in the laundry room pretending to do laundry until P.J. leaves for school. But I'm nothing compared to the juvenile delinquents in my mother's classes.

  “I don't want to talk about this,” I say, opening the door to the sunporch, checking the weather, which is cloudy, checking Tommy's room, which is dark.

  “You don't surprise me, Ellie. But I do want to talk about it. I want to know what you're doing with the children in the neighborhood. It's our neighborhood and I should know when people like Maud O'Shaunessey bring it up at the grocery store.”

  “Ask Milo,” I say, checking out Milo's loyalty to me.

  “Oh, darling, we both know Milo tells us nothing personal except his tummy hurts and the pit bulls are back again. He told me camp was great. I asked him what went on. He said nothing happened. So?”

  I smile in spite of myself. Good old Milo.

  “It's a lot of kids,” she says, and already I know what's coming. “Are you able to run this camp alone.”

  I don't reply. I gather some books from my bookcase as if I'm planning to spend the day reading. I take a drawing book from my desk drawer since I like to draw the insides of things, like animals and birds and even buildings—things like the heart and intestines and liver and stuff or the essential structure of a building. I don't know why. The insides of things have always interested me more than the outsides.

  “Hannah Joseph told her mother that a boy was helping you. She didn't remember his name.”

  I turn around, my arms full of books and a drawing pad and I grab a handful of pencils from the cup on my desk.

  “Everyone in the neighborhood knows his name, Mom. Especially you.”

  And I head downstairs, through the kitchen where Milo is having breakfast with my father, out the back door to the potting shed where I plan to spend the morning out of view.

  The potting shed has a heavy smell of dirt and damp, almost a feeling of living underground. I spread out a burlap bag against the wall and sit down with my drawing pad. It's a new one, only the first two pages are filled. I did these drawings—hearts, livers, kidneys, that sort of stuff—at my grandmother's house last Sunday when I was bored as usual.

  The third page has the beginning of the letter I started to Tommy.

  I want to tell the truth in this letter but I don't know how to say it. I don't even know whether I'll see him again. He seems to be the kind of person who disappears or his life disappears and he has to find a new one.

  Perhaps Clarissa and Mr. Bowers have decided Tommy is too much trouble. Or changed their minds and want a baby instead of a boy. His life with the Bowerses seems temporary. Nevertheless, I don't understand why, if he's left forever, he didn't bother to tell me goodbye.

  I hear the slapping of feet and Milo bursts into the potting shed.

  “There you are,” he says. “I thought you were lost.”

  “I'm hiding out from Mom.”

  “She said you hate her.”

  “I don't hate her,” I say. “I wish she'd leave me alone. She's always in my business.”

  “She wanted to know whether you were running the camp by yourself and so she asked me if anyone was helping and I said no one was helping you because you're helping Tommy, isn't that true?”

  “More or less. But thank you, Milo. You're a very great brother.”

  “But Mom said isn't it true that Tommy Bowers was there, too.”

  “And you said yes?” I know Milo and he's not like me. He tells the truth, and if he doesn't, if he tries to make up a story, he's a terrible liar, so he may as well tell the truth.

  He nods.

  “That's okay, Milo. You had to tell her.”

  “You're not mad?”

  “Not at all,” I say, and I'm not. “If she wants to go ballistic about Tommy Bowers, that's her problem. He's my friend.”

  “Me too,” Milo says happily. “He's my friend, too.”

  And he dashes out the door and up the back steps, on his way to day camp with my father.

  What I like best about you… I begin a list of the things I like about Tommy.

  You make magical things happen.

  You make me happy and sunny.

  You think about other people instead of yourself.

  You are almost always in a good mood.

  You don't complain.

  You are blamed for things you didn't do. But I don't know this for certain.

  You like me a lot.

  Mom is heading out here. I can hear her coming down the back steps although I can't see anything from the window since I'm sitting down. So I close the notebook and pick up Sounder, which I've already read.

  She opens the door to the shed and comes in.

  “I'm on my way to school for tryouts for The Sound of Music. Want to come with me?”

  Every summer she puts on a musical with the high school students and they practice all summer and then have performances in early August and usually I go to all of them after I get back from camp.

  “No, thank you,” I say coolly.

  She's picking up her little cardboard pots, which have dropped on the floor, lining them up on one of the shelves, pretending to be interested in her pots although I know she's about to say something important.

  She's facing me now, one foot on a stool, her hands in her jeans pockets, her curly hair frizzy in the dampness. Looking up at her from the floor, she's very tall and skinny and I look more like my father, who's her height, maybe a little shorter.

  “It's too bad Tommy Bowers had to go to New York,” she says, “out of the blue,” as Puss would say.

  I draw my knees up under my chin, a sense of relief rushing through me.

  “I didn't know he'd gone to New York.”

  New York. And all the time she knew and maybe even my father knew and no one thought to tell me.

  “His grandfather died last Sunday,” Mom says. “Clarissa's father.”

  “So he's gone all week?” I ask.

  “Probably until Friday.” She shoves the stool against the wall and heads out the door. “No television, El. On your honor.”

  I don't answer.

  I've been “on my honor” since I can remember and always wonder what being on my honor really means. It doesn't mean I won't watch television at all while she's gone. I can't imagine she believes that. It's strange the way parents ask their kids not to do something, all the time knowing that they will. It drives me crazy.

  But sitting here in the potting shed, it occurs to me, like a light flash in my brain, that since I do watch TV when my parents are gone and they probably know there's no way to stop me if they're not here, I can also refuse to go to camp. They can't exactly make me.

  “Mom,” I call as I jump up from the floor and rush to the door. She's halfway across the yard and turns around, her expression sour.

  “Impudent” is her word to describe the way I sometimes speak to her. It's been the same since I was little and I've never looked up “impudent” in the dictionary or asked her what she means by it. But I can guess.

  She has one hand on the railing of our back porch.

  “Why didn't you tell me where Tommy was?”

  She shrugs and turns to go up the steps. “Because you didn't ask,” she says.

  My face goes suddenly hot and I can feel my temper boiling over and I can't help myself.

  “Should there be any confusion,” I say, using the same words my mother has used with me a million times when she's angry, “I will not be going to Camp Farwell in Wells River, Vermont, this summer at all.”

  13. Unexpected Trouble


  It's nearly three on Friday afternoon when Tommy gets back from New York, a light rain falling, soft summer air blowing across the city. I'm sitting on the front porch writing him the same letter I was writing him a few days ago when a yellow cab pulls up to the curb in front of the Bowerses' house and Tommy hops out first.

  I reposition myself on the porch railing so he'll be able to see me if he looks in my direction—balancing with my feet against the railings, pretending to read over the letter I'm writing to him.

  “Ellie!” He's shouting now and I look up as if I'm surprised by his sudden reappearance and there he is, already running toward my house waving his arms.

  “I couldn't call you,” he says, stopping short of falling into my arms, the way it happens in the old-time movies. “I didn't know your telephone number and Clarissa kept crying about her father and so I didn't want to ask her if she knew it.” He hops up on the railing across from me.

  “I thought you'd disappeared,” I say.

  “I was sure you'd think that.” He takes a green-striped candy stick out of his pocket and hands it to me. “I got it for you at the airport.”

  “I'm sorry about your grandfather,” I say.

  “It's okay. It was only the second time I'd seen him.” He slips out of his shoes. “I mean I didn't see him, of course, because he'd already been cremated.”

  “I went to my grandfather's funeral when I was eight and there was only music and praying. I don't remember any speeches.”

  “I thought it would be creepy but funerals aren't so bad.” He takes another candy stick from his pocket and tears off the cellophane. “I would have have liked to see a body since I never have but there was a big party afterward and I had a red wine and met a lot of relatives I didn't know I had.”

  He checks his watch, jumps off the railing, and hurries down my front steps.

  “We've got to hurry,” he says. “It's after three and we need to get the lollipops for tomorrow.”

  The shopping center is on Pageant Street about four blocks from our house. There's a grocery store and a five-and-ten and a hamburger and pasta restaurant and a drugstore and Wake Up Little Suzie and a dress store for large-size women but nothing for normal-size ones. We hurry up the hill.