Under the Watsons' Porch

by Susan Shreve

  “It's turning out that I don't like the Bowerses.”

  “Why?”

  “He's a wimp with a big voice and a bad temper, and I used to like her but she's too nervous,” he says. “The thing is, I really want to like living with them but it's looking sketchy.” He moves a beach chair so he's facing me, very close, almost face to face, and in the flickering light from the candles he looks eerie and wild-eyed and so much older than I am. I feel suddenly shy.

  “I was locked in my room because Clarissa was freaked out about the robbery,” he said.

  “What does that have to do with you?” I ask.

  “Nothing. That's what I mean. She's a hysteric.”

  His hand falls across the arm of my chair, close to my hand, and I'm conscious of it there, thinking he's going to hold my hand but he doesn't.

  “You've probably been wondering why I want to be with little kids,” he says. “Isn't that right?”

  “Kind of. Most kids our age don't.”

  “It's like this. When I sat all day today in my room on my bed with nothing to do, I started thinking about my life. That I've never really belonged to anybody. Not to Clarissa and not to the other mothers I've had, and somehow it makes sense to have these little kids belong to me even one day a week. Sort of be my kids.”

  I don't exactly know what he's saying but I nod and say I do, and he looks over at me with an expression on his face I haven't seen before. Maybe lonely or sad or unhappy.

  “I don't think you do know exactly,” he says in a nice way.

  “But I want to understand.” Which is true.

  He reaches over and takes my hand then, and in a breath of a second, he is leaning toward me and I know that he's going to try to kiss me.

  “Not yet,” I say, quickly pulling away, and I don't understand why I pull away except I'm probably afraid. Not of his bad reputation. I'm afraid because he's a boy who is going to kiss me and that's never happened to me before. Right now I think I will die if he does it and that's not because I don't want him to kiss me, because I do.

  “More wine?” he asks, picking up his lemonade and finishing it in a single gulp.

  “Yes, please,” I say. “The wine is excellent.”

  10. Zucchini Seeds

  It's Saturday morning, a week after my birthday, and I'm sitting on one of the striped beach chairs under the Watsons' porch. I'm watching Tommy, who is standing at the lattice door waiting for the kids in the neighborhood to arrive. It's almost ten o'clock and we've been here since eight-thirty.

  I was a little late because of the camp problem. Milo told me about the problem last night, coming into my bedroom after my lights were out and climbing into bed next to me, folding his little arms across his chest.

  He didn't wake me up. I was too excited about today to sleep.

  “Are you awake?” he asked me.

  “Yup,” I said. “Can't you sleep?”

  He shook his head, nuzzling into my side.

  “Pit bulls?” I asked.

  “Two of them. One is white with long teeth in the front of his mouth,” he said.

  “You can sleep with me since the pit bulls never come into my room and Mom and Dad have gone to bed.”

  “I know. I checked and they were already sleeping,” Milo said. “Did they tell you about camp?”

  “Nothing new,” I said.

  As far as I knew, the decision about camp was on hold. I had decided not to bring it up until after the first day of the Lollipop Garden, but I knew that my parents were still expecting me to go to Camp Farwell as planned since Mom came home on Friday afternoon with six pairs of new white socks and six new underpants with balloons and kittens and half moons on them, which look like the underpants of a five-year-old.

  I plan to buy bikinis with my allowance the next time I go to the shopping center with P.J. She's been wearing bikinis for over a year. But I know my mom isn't in favor of changing my style of underwear and that she hasn't changed her mind about camp either, because the duffle bag I take to camp is hanging in the shower airing out.

  “So this happened tonight at dinner while you were at the movies.” Milo was lying on his side, resting his head in his hand, talking. “The camp person, Mr. Farwell, called and Mom said she was not absolutely sure about our plans for you to go to camp because of complications at home, and Mom said she was sorry she hadn't sent the balance in and Dad said to let him talk to Mr. Farwell and so he did and told him the money would be in by Monday and he hated to be late but I can't remember what else, something about where the money got lost.”

  Milo sometimes speaks in one long sentence without any periods and is out of breath before he stops speaking. But he has a very good memory for details and even remembers the exact vocabulary of what he hears, so I pay attention when he has something to say, because it's probably right.

  “So you see?” he said.

  “I do see,” I said, although I certainly didn't.

  “Maybe now you'll be home all summer with me and you can take me to Gymboree and soccer practice.”

  “That's true,” I said. “I can do that.”

  And sometime not long after that, we both fell asleep in my bed.

  * * *

  My mother was already up in the kitchen reading the paper when I got up at seven this morning hoping my parents were still sleeping so I could leave a note for them.

  But she was up and my father was watering the lawn, so I slipped into a chair across from her and tore the paper off the shredded wheat biscuit, put it in a bowl, and drowned it in milk.

  “We spoke to Mr. Farwell last night,” she said. I pretended to be surprised but not particularly interested.

  “We're late to send in the balance we owe and he called to say we have to decide by Monday and he'll still keep the deposit.”

  “What's a deposit?” I asked.

  “We sent in a check in order to hold your place in camp,” she said.

  My parents don't talk to me about money ever although I know we're not rich, because they're schoolteachers, and that we're not poor, because there's nothing that I need—which is different, of course, from nothing I want.

  “Mmmm,” I say, not wishing to “rock the boat.” That's Puss's term for causing unnecessary trouble.

  “So?” my mother said.

  I suppose the question was addressed to me but I decided not to answer although I knew exactly what I planned to do. I planned to say nothing about camp unless I was told point-blank that I would be going. Then I'd say, “Wrong. I won't be going.” And sometime about three days before camp, when Mom asks me to pack my duffle and get toothpaste and shampoo and stuff at the drugstore, I'll tell her that camp is kaput.

  I will not be going and there is no way I can be forced to go, even if she calls the police. The poor overworked police of Toledo will think she's ridiculous.

  I get up from the table and put my cereal bowl in the dishwasher.

  “See you later,” I say.

  “You're going to the camp now, right?”

  “My camp,” I say nicely enough.

  I'm sure Mom didn't see me go into her potting shed but my father did since he was watering the lawn, so I told him I'd left my barrette in the shed. I found a packet of zucchini seeds on the middle shelf, dropped it into the pocket of my yellow cargo shorts, and headed toward the gate.

  “See you later,” I call to him, but he has rounded the corner of the house and can't hear me.

  I'm sitting on the beach chair too nervous to look down Lincoln Road to see if anyone is coming.

  “They'll be here,” Tommy says.

  I don't question him. He's counting on the Brittle twins to tell most of the other kids in the neighborhood although Tommy did write a note on his father's computer to every family on the block with small kids:

  Come to the Lollipop Garden for Fun and Games

  Saturday, June 20, at 10 a.m.

  Under the Watsons' Porch

  Ellie Tremont

 
He wrote it like an invitation and he signed my name.

  “I signed your name because they don't know me,” he said.

  What I especially love about Tommy Bowers is that he's fearless. I like to think of myself as fearless but I'm not. I'm too much of a worrier. I like to be around trouble but I don't want to be in it myself. I didn't really know this until I met Tommy.

  Now he's walking just beyond the entrance to the porch and down the driveway, looking right at Lincoln, checking for children. I can see little triangles of him in the morning sun through the lattice.

  I'm heading out to join him when he runs back, ducking into the Lollipop Garden, an expression of pure happiness on his face.

  “They're coming!” he says.

  “How many?” I ask.

  “All of them are coming. That's what it looks like.”

  We stand aside and they file in.

  Billy Block walks in with Anthony Brittle, carrying a stuffed pig in one hand, his other hand in the pocket of his shorts. His sister Sarah comes in holding Hannah Joseph's hand. I can tell Hannah has been crying and reach down to ruffle her hair.

  “My mama says I can only stay five minutes,” she says to me. “And I told her I didn't know how long is five minutes and she said I better stay home then and so I cried.”

  “And then her mama said she could come,” Sarah says.

  Alexander is carrying a Wiffle ball and bat, bopping Anthony over the head from time to time.

  “Everybody except Jonathan Bellman, who has a cold,” Alexander says.

  “He has strep,” Sarah says. “Is this a camp?”

  “It's a camp,” Tommy says.

  “Do you have horses?” Hannah asks.

  “Not yet,” Tommy says.

  “But they will,” Miranda Salon says. “I heard from Alexander that soon you'll have horses for us to ride.”

  “Possibly,” Tommy says.

  Lisa Bellman is in her nightgown. At least it looks very much like a nightgown, with a long yellow cotton skirt and a strappy top and she isn't wearing shoes.

  “There're rats under here,” Sarah says to her. “You should've worn shoes.”

  “There're no rats under here,” I say to her. “We don't allow them to come.”

  “How can you be sure?” Lisa asks. “It's very dark and shadowy.”

  “I have a lot of experience with rats and they don't like this kind of place,” Tommy says. “Too musty, too much dirt. Not a rat kind of place at all.”

  Ian and Sean and Cara O'Shaunessey come together, sleepy-eyed from watching cartoons on television, blackberry jam from breakfast painted on their lips.

  “Is this the place where we're invited?” Cara asks, peering inside.

  “Yeah,” Alexander says. “Can't you tell?”

  I hear one more set of footsteps on the driveway and Milo walks in with his baseball cap on backward and his shorts, too, so the fly is in the back.

  “So this is the clubhouse where you'll be coming on Saturday mornings.” Tommy is standing at the entrance, his arms folded across his chest, his hair flopping across one eye. “Amazing things will happen.”

  “Like what?” Sarah Block asks, keeping close to the entrance.

  “Like this,” Tommy says. He pulls the door to the Lollipop Garden closed and kneels down beside the small plot of dirt in which he has dug four narrow furrows.

  “See these lines in the dirt?” He speaks very softly. “Last week Ellie and I planted some seeds here that we had heard would grow into lollipops. We didn't believe it was possible but we planted them anyway.” He reaches over, digs deep in the dirt, and pulls out a lavender lollipop covered in cellophane.

  “And the next time we came back, this is what we discovered. Lots of them, enough to last a week. So…” He stands up with a funny expression on his face—“devilish” is what Puss would call it—as if it is the most normal thing in the world to be under the Watsons' porch with all the neighborhood kids growing lollipops. “So Ellie and I asked you to come to this secret place because the earth under the Watson house is magic for children. Things happen here that can't happen anyplace else in the world.”

  I didn't know he'd hidden a lollipop under the dirt this morning. He didn't tell me. Even for me who knows this place, this clubhouse, this garden of lollipops, there's a shiver of something like magic in the damp air.

  “See?”

  Alexander speaks up. “What did I tell you guys?” “Alexander told us about the lollipops,” Hannah says, “but we didn't believe him.”

  “I did,” Lisa says.

  “Not me,” Billy says, looking askance at Tommy.

  “You shouldn't believe it until you see it with your very own eyes.”

  I pick up a cup belonging to Clarissa that I've filled with the zucchini seeds.

  “So, guys, do you want to plant your own seeds?”

  “I do,” Milo says, and takes one from the cup.

  “Me too,” Sarah says.

  Lisa and Hannah gather around me.

  “How many seeds do we get?” Sean O'Shaunessey asks.

  “Twenty,” Ian laughs.

  “Six each,” Tommy says.

  “I thought we'd get seven,” Billy says. “One for every day of the week.”

  “Seven is fine,” Tommy says. “Seven is the exact right number.”

  Miranda holds her tiny hands palm up and I count out seven seeds. And then I count out seven for Milo and Sarah and Lisa and Hannah and Alexander and Cara and Anthony and Billy and Ian and Sean.

  “What about Jonathan?” Lisa asks.

  “Jonathan can plants his seeds when he's here,” Tommy says.

  “But he can't be here today because he has strep.”

  “Part of the magic is that you have to plant your own seeds in order for them to grow. Ellie puts the seeds in your hand and they get to know you, lying in your hand like that, and then you plant them in the ground and they're your seeds, your very own, no one else's.”

  “So they grow for us especially?” Cara asks.

  “That's right,” Tommy says.

  “Seeds aren't alive,” Anthony says, looking at the little dark specks the size of fleas in his hands.

  “Of course they're alive,” Tommy says. “Everything, even you, starts as a seed.”

  “I didn't,” Billy said.

  “I was a dinosaur,” Ian says.

  “A dinosaur started as a seed,” I say.

  “No way,” Billy says, but he's down on his knees now with the other kids, punching his seeds into the ground the way Tommy has told them to.

  Hannah looks up.

  “What if you drop your seeds?” she asks.

  “Did you?” I ask her.

  She's on her knees beside the line of furrows, her hand out, counting the number of seeds there.

  “Be very careful, guys,” Tommy says. “Seven seeds each but that's all you get. No more if you drop one.”

  Miranda looks up with a pout.

  “And no crying,” Tommy says. “You have a special job here and you need to rise to the occasion.”

  “What does that mean?” Anthony asks.

  “Don't lose your seeds,” Sarah replies.

  The sun is sliding up the lattice toward noon and the garden is planted. We've already played Pirates and Forget-Me-Not and gone around the circle so everyone got to tell one dream and Hannah falls asleep on Sarah's shoulder.

  “Next week,” Tommy says. “Same time, same place.”

  And one by one, they duck under the porch, through the lattice door, and out into the sunshine, slipping by Tommy and me.

  Miranda is the last to leave. As she passes Tommy, she takes her thumb out of her mouth and looks up at him with her wide-set olive-colored eyes.

  “Are you a magician?” she asks.

  “If you think so,” Tommy says.

  She nods. “I think you are.”

  11. The Sunporch

  Tommy and I are on the sunporch, each lying on a cot, me on my s
tomach, Tommy on his back using his arm for a pillow, smoking his usual unlit cigarette. Outside it's raining, just a whisper of rain brushing the trees, soundless on the roof above us.

  It's late afternoon and my parents are playing softball in their summer league at the playground, Milo is at Sean's house spending the night. Or pretending to spend the night. By midnight, he'll throw up and Ms. O'Shaunessey will call Mom and Mom will pad barefoot down Lincoln Road in her bathrobe and pick him up. I don't know why my parents keep saying yes when Milo wants to spend the night or why Milo even asks. It's always the same story.

  I'm wearing my yellow cargo shorts, which are smudged from sitting in the dirt under the Watsons' house, and a T-shirt of my mom's that I gave her for Mother's Day this year with “BEST LITTLE MOM IN TOLEDO” written on the back in primary colors. When Mom washed the T-shirt, the primary colors ran into a rainbow of reds and blues and greens all over the white cotton, so I took the one I gave her and Dad bought her another.

  I don't know why it makes me laugh to have a T-shirt with “BEST LITTLE MOM” on it since I'm the most unmom-like twelve-year-old in the world and don't even babysit except in an emergency. And I certainly wouldn't be doing this lollipop camp if Tommy hadn't come along with his ideas.

  “Really amazing,” I say.

  I don't need to listen to what he says because he keeps saying the same thing. Maybe forty times, he's said it, each time ending with a question so I'll have to respond.

  He's right of course. It was amazing that every single younger kid on the block came except Jonathan. That they believed us.

  “Did you notice that they actually believed us?” Tommy asks.

  “Of course they believed us. You were so good at persuading them.”

  “I was, wasn't I?”

  “You were.”

  I don't feel the same way as Tommy does about the Lollipop Garden but I'm beginning to understand him. This morning after all the kids left and we were walking down the hill to our houses, he told me that last night trying to get to sleep he'd made believe the kids were orphans like he is and he and I had adopted them and for those two hours under the Watsons' porch, they were our kids.