The Penderwicks in Spring

by Jeanne Birdsall

  “Anyway, I’m not going, Ben,” said Batty. “We can play Othello if you want.”

  “Othello.” Ben repeated it with bitterness. A board game couldn’t match up to Chinese food at a restaurant.

  “The children will put on a Shakespeare play this evening?” Jérôme asked Jane.

  “Othello isn’t a Shakespeare play, ce n’est pas un drame. I mean, c’est vrai, of course it is a Shakespeare play. But Othello est aussi un jeu.”

  “A game? About Shakespeare?”

  “Speak English, Jane,” said Artie. “You continue to confuse Jérôme.”

  “Oui!” said Lydia, exhilarated by all the French being spoken. She spun and dipped, bumping into Pearson and Katy, singing la-la-la-la, and losing a few dandelions in the process.

  Rosalind picked up the dandelions and took hold of Lydia as she waltzed by.

  “Let me put these back into your crown, honey.”

  “We should get her better flowers than dandelions.” Oliver reached out, not to help put dandelions back but to pluck those remaining from Lydia’s crown.

  Lydia would have none of that. She made awful faces at Oliver and, to be doubly safe, leaned away until she was almost in a backbend.

  “Non, Man, non, NON!” she said. “Princess Dandelion Fire.”

  “Nick gave her the dandelions, and she’s very fond of him,” said Iantha, apologizing for her daughter.

  “Of course,” said Oliver.

  “Nick!” said Rosalind. “I’ll go ask if he wants to come to dinner with us.”

  “Of course,” said Oliver again.

  Batty watched as Rosalind disengaged herself from Oliver—with a slight tussle—and ran out the front door. If Batty hadn’t felt so overwhelmed, she would have stopped Rosy by explaining about Nick’s date with the high school girlfriend. Never mind. It was a relief to see that she could still separate from Oliver, if only for a few moments. And now Oliver, outmaneuvered, was pulling Ben into the living room. Batty strained to see through the mass of people—it looked like Oliver and Ben were having a private conversation. She shuddered at the thought of having a private conversation with Oliver.

  Moments later, after Rosalind returned without Nick, the mob shuffled out of the house, loaded themselves into cars, and drove off for Chinese food, leaving behind a quiet house and, a grand treat for Batty, an intoxicatingly empty living room.

  She made splendid use of it, settling at the piano to play and play, both before and after dinner, and to softly sing, too, when she was sure no one but Lydia was listening. Lydia danced until she was borne away to bed, and Batty’s parents wandered in and out, telling her how wonderful she sounded. Eventually Ben was wandering in and out, too, not so much to praise Batty but because it had gotten too dark outside for rock-hunting and he’d decided he would be willing to play Othello after all.

  “Since you fell asleep in the middle of our last game,” he said, resting the game box on the lower end of the piano keyboard. Batty played around it, transposing to higher octaves when necessary.

  “Please,” said Ben.

  After his fourth or fifth “Please,” Batty gave in, and they set up the game on the floor. Soon the room was filled with the clicks of pieces being flipped from black to white and back again. Until their parents started up a conversation in the dining room, just loud enough for their words to drift across the hall and into the living room. It began with Mr. Penderwick.

  “Have I ever told you about that arrogant Neil Somebody who dated Claire for a while in college? The one who was always talking about García Lorca—quoting his poems and making it sound like he knew the guy? When I finally pointed out that Lorca had been dead for decades, he asked me what point I was trying to make. Iantha, what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “If I were to take a guess, Oliver reminds you of this Neil Somebody.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Then out with it.”

  Batty nudged Ben and put her finger on her lips for him to be quieter at clicking. This could be important information.

  “I mean, Mallarmé! Ha! And earlier, Oliver informed me that no one can appreciate films without a deep knowledge of Jean Renoir. He suggested we rent Grand Illusion and spend the weekend watching and discussing it.” Mr. Penderwick groaned. “Is he wooing our Rosalind, do you think?”

  “I’m not sure it’s gotten to the wooing stage, if anyone has even used that expression in the last hundred years. What’s gotten into you, Martin?”

  “Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni,” he answered. “That is, I’m feeling old.”

  “You’re not old, darling, either in English or Latin.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “So is Rosy wooing him?”

  “I don’t know, Martin. He is terribly attractive, though.”

  “Iantha!”

  “Well, he is. It’s just a fact. Something about his cheekbones, I suppose.”

  Mr. Penderwick groaned again, even louder this time. “Can’t we just have Tommy and his normal cheekbones back? I don’t like all this change.”

  “You’ll have to get used to change, my poor husband. Rosalind could have lots of boyfriends before settling on one, and then there are the rest of the children to get through.”

  “It will kill me. I’m not ready to think about potential sons-in-law.”

  “That’s good, because none of your daughters are ready to think about potential husbands. Martin, you really need to calm down.”

  “It’s just that this Oliver—”

  “Shh.” Iantha interrupted him. “He is our guest. Now, where can he sleep tonight? We could put him on the couch in our study, except that it’s covered with your botanical samples.”

  “That’s what my study is for, since I am a botanist. Oliver can sleep on the living room couch. Maybe that will discourage him.”

  Batty bent her head, hiding her smile from Ben. She felt less awful about Oliver, knowing that both her dad and Nick agreed with her about him.

  “So Oliver gets the living room couch,” said Iantha. “How about Jeffrey tomorrow night? He was supposed to sleep in Rosalind’s room, but with Rosalind home—I suppose we could move Batty into Lydia’s big-girl bed and let Jeffrey sleep in Batty’s room. I don’t think she would mind.”

  Batty definitely wouldn’t mind. She would have hated Oliver sleeping in there, but not Jeffrey.

  “Jeffrey, I like. I’d build a new room for him,” said Mr. Penderwick. “But if any other young men show up this weekend, tell them they have to sleep in the garage.”

  That must have been the end of her parents’ conversation, for Batty heard no more. She wasn’t sure whether Ben had bothered to listen, and when she looked back at the board, the number of white chips seemed to have mysteriously multiplied.

  “Did you cheat?” she asked, since the white chips were Ben’s.

  “Penderwicks don’t cheat.” He tipped over the board, spilling out the pieces. “Maybe a little. We can start over.”

  “Last game, though. I want to get back to the piano.”

  “Batty, what’s a son-in-law?” he asked.

  So he had been listening to their parents. “Whoever marries Rosalind, Skye, or Jane—or me, too, I guess—will be Dad and Mom’s son-in-law. Also your brother-in-law.”

  “What if I don’t like him?”

  “He will be anyway. Like when Uncle Turron married Aunt Claire, he became Daddy’s brother-in-law.”

  Ben couldn’t remember back before Uncle Turron and Aunt Claire were married. Uncle Turron was just Uncle Turron, big, beloved, and father to Marty and Enam. None of that seemed like a possible cause of trauma. Unlike—

  “Even Oliver could be a brother-in-law?”

  “I hope not. Though I know you like him—you were begging to go to dinner with him and talk about movies.”

  “I thought I liked him, but then he gave me this.” Ben pulled a five-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Before they left, he pulled me into the living room—�
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  Batty interrupted. “I saw that! What did he want?”

  “He asked me if I like Nick and I said everyone likes Nick. And he said, Rosalind likes him, too? And I said of course she does. Then he gave me that money and told me not to mention it to anyone.”

  Batty eyed the money with distaste. Penderwicks didn’t need to be bribed to keep secrets. “Then why are you telling me?”

  “I didn’t promise him I wouldn’t.”

  “But you took the money.”

  “I know.” He let it fall onto the Othello board. “I thought I’d use it for my movie studio, but now I don’t think I want it. You can have it to help with Skye’s birthday present from you, me, and Lydia.”

  Jane had helped them pick out the present, a Doctor Who sweatshirt with a picture on the front of Skye’s favorite Doctor, the tenth. Their parents would have paid for the whole thing, but Batty had proudly chipped in half the cost from her dog-walking money, and Ben had followed her lead, putting in a dollar from his rock-digging money. He thought it was an excellent present and had been dying to give it to Skye.

  “I don’t want Oliver’s money,” said Batty. Five dollars was a lot, but this was dishonorable money.

  “We could give it to Dad to help with groceries,” said Ben.

  “He definitely wouldn’t want it.”

  They discussed several other options, including sending it to the president to help him run the government. But they didn’t think he would want money meant for a bribe, either. In the end, they snuck upstairs to the bathroom, where they ripped up the five-dollar bill and flushed the pieces down the toilet, laughing so hard they almost woke up Lydia.

  Soon after that, their parents made Ben go to bed, and Batty went to her room to listen to music. And to wait for Rosalind to come home, hoping still to get in their talk. For hours Batty waited, cuddling on her bed with Funty and Gibson, the stuffed animals, until finally she turned off the music and went sadly to sleep.

  WHEN BEN WOKE UP on the morning of Skye’s birthday, he decided that she should be given her present immediately, a Doctor Who sweatshirt being too special to mix in with all the other presents at her party. But he couldn’t do it by himself, since the sweatshirt was also from Batty. And Lydia, but she wouldn’t know the difference.

  He went across the hall to see if Batty was awake, and yes, she already had music on her record player—one of those musicals she liked so much. He gave the secret knock and went in. Not only was Batty awake, Lydia was there, too, dancing to the music.

  “Did she escape again?” he asked Batty.

  “She showed up two hours ago and wanted to sleep in here with me.”

  “Lydia doesn’t like the big-girl bed,” said Lydia.

  “But you weren’t even in it,” Ben told her. “You were in your crib. Besides, Batty’s bed is even bigger than your big-girl bed.”

  Lydia put on her you’re-missing-the-point face and went on dancing.

  “Maybe she’ll like the new bed more after I sleep in it tonight,” said Batty. “We’re having a sleepover, right, Lydia?”

  “La-la-la-la-la-LAAAAA,” sang Lydia too loudly.

  Batty turned off the record player, and Ben stopped feeling the need to cover his ears.

  “Let’s give Skye her present now,” he said.

  “You know she’s probably still asleep. They were out really late. Besides, the present is downstairs in the piano bench.” The piano bench was near the couch where Oliver was sleeping.

  “I’ll go get it anyway. It’s my house.”

  Batty was glad when Ben returned safely with the sweatshirt. Not that she thought Oliver would hurt Ben, but a man willing to bribe children could be capable of who knows what.

  “He snores,” said Ben.

  “Figures.”

  Since a present is no good without being wrapped, they let Lydia scribble across several pieces of paper, taped them together, and wrapped the sweatshirt in the untidy-but-personalized result. Then they quietly marched to Skye and Jane’s room and peeked inside. Both older sisters were dead asleep in their beds.

  “We should just leave it for her,” whispered Batty. Waking up Skye was not for the timid.

  Ben was shaking his head no—he wanted to see Skye’s face when she opened her gift—when the decision was taken away from them. Lydia, on her own, had gone boldly into the room and was now touching Skye’s nose. Ben followed, and then Batty. At least, she thought, this might give her a chance to find out when Jeffrey was arriving. If Skye weren’t too annoyed to share information.

  “Nariz,” said Lydia, again touching Skye’s nose.

  Skye opened her eyes. “And where is my boca?”

  Lydia touched Skye’s mouth, then her own. “Boca.”

  “We’re sorry we woke you up,” said Batty.

  “We brought your birthday present, though,” said Ben.

  Skye looked at the clock and groaned. “Give it to me, you little monsters.”

  Yawning, she carefully took off the wrapping, making a fuss about each of Lydia’s squiggles, and when she got to the sweatshirt, she loved it as much as Ben had known she would. She put it on over her pajamas and flopped back down onto her pillow.

  “So, happy birthday,” said Ben.

  “Thank you, I love it, now leave.”

  “Ojos,” said Lydia, pointing to Skye’s eyes.

  “Sí, ojos. I mean it, get out of here. You, too, Batty.”

  “Umm—”

  “What?”

  “Do you know what time Jeffrey is coming?”

  “One-thirty,” said Skye, and put the pillow over her head.

  At one-twenty, Batty guided Lydia through the basketball game spilling out of the Geigers’ driveway and onto Gardam Street. All the other Penderwick siblings were involved, including Ben, who was delighted to be playing not only with his sisters, but Nick, Artie, Pearson, Katy, Molly, both Donovans, and even Jérôme, who had no idea what he was doing but was doing it gallantly. Oliver was playing, too. Batty thought that he’d be a better player if he paid more attention to the ball and less to Nick’s every move.

  “Lydia wants to play,” said Lydia.

  “No, you don’t.” Batty kept a firm grip on her little sister, who could get smashed in a basketball game that energetic. “We’re going to the corner to wait for Jeffrey, remember?”

  “Little Bunny Foo Foo.”

  “Yes, exactly, good remembering. Jeffrey who sings ‘Little Bunny Foo Foo.’ ” He had a special version just for Lydia, done as bad Italian opera, with the facial expressions and hand gestures to match.

  The morning had been a disappointment for Batty, spent lurking around the house just in case Rosalind found time for her. But Oliver seemed always to be in the way, making private talk impossible. Batty almost wished Rosalind hadn’t come home this weekend, and she tried to cheer herself up by reverting to her original countdown. Only seven days now until her favorite sister came home from college for the summer—without Oliver and his cheekbones. Not long at all.

  “Flower,” said Lydia, pointing to a dandelion brightening up a lawn. Her own dandelions were now sadly wilted, turning her crown into a flower graveyard, but she continued to resist any attempts to replace them. “Lydia loves Nick.”

  The disappointing morning had made Batty yearn even more for Jeffrey’s arrival. Not that she had false hopes about how much attention she’d get from him. Her plan was to catch him just as he arrived on Gardam Street and before he was swept into the excitement and crowd. Not to sing for him right away—that was impractical, especially with basketball taking up the street—but to reserve a time for later. She hoped for Sunday morning. If she could get him away from the house and everyone in it for just an hour, they could talk and she could demonstrate the miraculous thing that had happened with her voice, and then they would plan her Grand Eleventh Birthday Concert, and life would be perfect.

  She and Lydia waved as they passed the Ayvazians’ house, in case Duchess was lookin
g out the window, then rounded the corner. Another hundred feet and they’d reached their goal, a glass-enclosed bus stop with its own bench, the best spot for watching for a certain battered little car.

  “It’s black, with white stripes on the hood,” Batty told Lydia. “We’ll shout and jump up and down when we see it, okay?”

  Over the years, Batty had spent lots of time at this bus stop. When she was small, Rosalind had sometimes brought her down to watch and cheer on the big buses that rumbled by every fifteen minutes. On some glorious occasions, they’d climbed aboard one of the buses heading to Wooton, the next town over, where they’d eaten ice cream at Herrell’s or visited Broadside Bookshop, with its entire wall of books for children. And once—the adventure of it was crystal clear in Batty’s memory—when they got to Wooton, they boarded another bus that took them all the way into Boston for a day’s visit with Jeffrey. Skye and Jane had come along, too (but not Ben, who was deemed too young, or Lydia, who didn’t yet exist), and they’d had lunch at a spaghetti restaurant and taken subways here and there, and Jeffrey had treated them to a Swan Boat ride in the Boston Public Garden.

  “Black car,” said Lydia.

  “What? Oh! Jump and yell! Jump and yell!”

  They jumped and yelled as the black car zipped toward them, slowing down at the last minute, and there was Jeffrey rolling down his window and waving like a maniac.

  “Follow me!” he cried, then putted along as they ran beside him.

  But Lydia’s legs couldn’t go fast enough, and Batty hoisted her up on the run. They caught Jeffrey just as he turned onto Gardam Street, pulled over to the side, and opened his door. Batty tossed Lydia to him for the usual welcoming tummy raspberries, which always made Lydia shriek and giggle. Too old for raspberries, Batty decorously climbed in on the passenger’s side and carefully inspected Jeffrey, with his freckles and his smile and his hair with the place that would never lie down, even now, all these years later. This falling-in-love-with-Skye nonsense hadn’t changed how he looked.

  “I don’t think I could have stood it if you hadn’t come this time,” she said.