by Joyce Magnin
Mom shakes her head. “I will not put your meals in a basket. You’ll eat with the family.”
I let go of a breath. “Oh, all right, I’ll come down for meals.”
“And to use the bathroom, I hope,” Elaine says. “Don’t want you stinking up all the air up there.”
I stick my tongue out at her.
“Just please, Joyce Anne, be careful,” Mom says. She goes back to her dirty dishes. And her humming.
“You mean I get the room all to myself?” Elaine says. “For real?”
“Guess so.” Mom hums a little.
“Cool.” Elaine raises her eyebrows at me as though she’s just been given the keys to where they keep the Fabergé eggs.
“Now you can invite your little UFO friends inside for a tea party.” I slip Polly another piece of bacon. “If Martians drink tea.”
“Probably green tea,” Mom says.
I laugh. “Good one, Mom. Green tea for little green men.”
“Creep.”
“Pig nose.”
• • •
So that day, I make the big move. I pack a bunch of snacks I figure won’t go bad in the sun. Mom gives me a thermos of iced tea and pats my cheek. “Be careful,” she says.
My friend Linda Costello helps me get my stuff up there. I don’t think she’s too keen on the idea of climbing onto the roof. So she stays on the ground and loads my basket while I hoist it. I don’t have that much. A sleeping bag, a basket of books, my all-important World War II surplus binoculars, and, of course, the tent.
Linda doesn’t stick around long after we’re done because she has to go shoe shopping with her mom. After the last basket is up, I climb down to say good-bye.
Linda jumps on her bike. “Are you sure about this?” she asks, sounding just like Mom.
“Yeah, why not?” I say.
“I think you’re crazy.”
“No I’m not. It’s kind of like having my own room.”
Linda shakes her head. “I gotta go before my mom starts hollering for me. She hates it when she has to holler.”
Polly is sitting on her haunches near the ladder. I pat her head and then hug her neck. She looks a little sad. “Don’t worry, girl. I’ll be up and down all the time, and we’ll still go for runs and to the woods and stuff.”
The ladder is tilted against the wall next to our peach tree, and I have to push one of the smaller branches away.
Mom planted the tree when I was five. Dad thought she was squirrelly for keeping a peach pit resting on a paper towel on the kitchen windowsill for weeks. She kept it between two potted African violets as though that particular spot held some secret meaning, some magnetic pull that would make the seed have special growing powers. It’s possible she even said those very words.
My mother had been growing African violets ever since I can remember. She cares for them like each bloom is a Fabergé egg.
And that’s where she put the peach pit. Right under the African violet leaves. No one dared move it because Mom had something up her sleeve, some use for this now dried-out seed that might or might not possess magical powers.
One cold, cold February day, just after a snowfall, my mother took the seed out to the side yard. Elaine was at school. Polly and I watched Mom brush a small patch of snow away, exposing the hard, brown soil, and dig a small hole, not very deep, with a silver tablespoon. She placed the peach pit in the hole and covered it with dirt. She didn’t pack it down or water it. She put a little snow on top of the small mound, and then she set a large, glass peanut butter jar on top just as the sun broke through gray clouds.
“There,” she said, brushing her hands together. “In time, we will have peaches.” It was like an incantation.
And her prediction came true. Here it is, six years later, and the tips of the top branches reach the top windowsill of our house. As I climb the ladder, I can see the tree perfectly. It sure grew fast—tall and wide. By August, it will be heavy with peaches—the best peaches. The peaches Dad and I use to make homemade peach ice cream. Ice cream that Dad calls “an experience.”
Elaine sticks her head out our bedroom window and says, “Have fun, creep.” A small gust of wind blows her brown hair across her face.
“Oh, don’t you worry,” I say. “I’ll have fun and—” I gasp and point toward the backyard. “What’s that? Tiny, little people climbing out of a tiny spaceship? You better go greet them.”
“I hope you fall off.” She pulls the window closed.
“Space creatures.” I shake my head and step onto the roof and survey my tidy little camp in the middle of a black tar sea. It is a tiny island in a big universe.
Three
Row houses are all the same. Boring, redbrick houses lined up one after the other, like Monopoly houses. Each one has the same three bedrooms and one bathroom. The houses are attached in neat rows of twelve with a wide, grassy break or a street between each row. Pretty boring.
The houses are linked by flat roofs covered with layers of sin-black tar. All the roofs have TV antennas on them. Who knows? Maybe the dishes call the aliens Elaine sees. Ha! Now that’s a weird thought.
The houses that are sandwiched between the ends have a skylight in the bathroom operated by chains to allow light and air to come in. We live in an end house, which means we have a window in our bathroom, and we have an extra side yard. I think having a bathroom window and a side yard makes our house captain of the row—or at least our half of the row.
I stand near the beach umbrella and survey my camp, which isn’t much. There’s the wooden beach chair, which has a tan canvas back and a ratty, old canvas cushion that is kind of lumpy, like mice are living inside. The umbrella is also canvas but has turned the most disgusting shade of yellow and has stains that no one can identify. A red Wawa Dairy milk crate holds books and comic books, a deck of cards, my diary, and my binoculars.
My small cooler is stuffed with Tastykakes—especially Jelly Krimpets—brownies, Herr’s potato chips, and the thermos of iced tea Mom made. All in all, not bad for my first day of roof living, except it is really hot. I feel the heat from the tar through my sneakers, but the shade from the umbrella makes it bearable.
I use my binoculars to scope out the wider universe. I look as far as I can, across our alley and into the Wilburs’ backyard to their bomb shelter, a big, ugly gray building made from cinder blocks. Everyone believes it is lined with lead and stocked chockful with canned ham, baked beans, and toilet paper. The Wilburs built it a few years earlier when everyone was afraid the commies were all riled up and ready to drop the A-bomb on us. I asked my brother once what we should do if the commies did haul off and drop the bomb.
“Just kiss your ass good-bye,” he said.
I spy down Palmer Mill Drive and over Scullion Field, where the baseball diamond is sprinkled with kids in shorts and caps. Most of the caps are red. That’s because Westbrook Park Elementary’s school colors are red and white. I can hear the players’ voices on the slight breeze. I look farther into the woods that begin just where Scullion Field ends, separated by a tall chain-link fence that keeps the occasional foul ball from flying into the trees.
A robin is perched in an evergreen, and an orange cat slinks along the green bleachers at the park. Flowers burst into view, yellow with black centers, wild black-eyed Susans poking their faces through the fence.
I see eight or nine round, plastic swimming pools—all in a row behind the houses. I see people moving about from house to car, garage to house. Mrs. Fulmer is lugging grocery bags while her spoiled son, Clarence, watches from the door. Sheesh. There goes Joey Patrillo on his bike. Denna DeLuca is sitting on a beach chair in her front yard catching some sun. Then I hear a garage door slam shut.
Row-house garages are part of the house—they’re neatly tucked underneath. The large doors have a sound I’d recognize anywhere. They make a ra
ttling whoosh-bang sound when they go up and a rattling whoosh-bang-click sound when they go down. Sometimes, they jump their track and derail like a train.
You can get into the garage through the basement. Dad uses our garage to store his plumber tools and stuff. He has a large band saw he uses to cut wood. It is also where he hangs his fishing rods and keeps his waders in neat rows like soldiers. Some people actually park their cars inside the garage, but my father parks his work truck in our short driveway and the car out front on the street. He always looks for a spot not too far from the house and gets angry when someone else parks right in front. Mom doesn’t care so much if she parks up the street or down. Unless she has groceries.
They never park in the garage because Dad thinks that is unsafe.
“Carbon monoxide,” he says. “Carbon monoxide.”
After he first said that, I had an image of our whole family waking up dead one morning due to a buildup of the deadly gas. But now I think he only says it so he can keep the garage all to himself. Lately, Dad has been holed up in the garage after watching the evening news. He won’t tell anyone what he is doing in there, and he keeps the doors locked during the day. He hung two big Keep out! signs: one on the outside garage door and one on the door that opens to the basement.
Still looking through the glasses—that’s Dad’s word for binoculars—I find the garage door I heard. Nothing interesting. Just Mr. DePalma pulling out his lawnmower. I turn south and peer over more and more rooftops until I see something that nearly knocks me off my feet. In fact, I stumble backward a little because I can’t believe my eyes. It’s another set of binoculars looking at me!
My first thought is that I should drop my pair and run. But I take a breath and focus in for a tighter view. It’s a boy. A boy wearing a green shirt—the kind my Dad wears to work—and blue jeans with rolled-up cuffs. The pants look two sizes too big. He has hardly any hair. A buzz cut like they gave Bud when he first joined the army. The boy just stands there looking through his lenses, looking at me looking at him.
I think about waving, but I’m not sure if I should wave to a stranger. He looks a little older than me, and for a second, I consider the possibility that he is one of the lunatics my dad is always telling Elaine and me to be on the lookout for. He definitely does not go to Westbrook Park Elementary School. I would have seen him.
The boy stays peeled on me in kind of a Mexican-binocular-roof standoff. And then, slowly, he raises his hand with his palm facing me and waves but just at the wrist. My heart speeds as I hold the lenses in my right hand and raise my left. Palm out, I slowly, cautiously wave back. I’m still not sure I should wave, but I do because I don’t want him to think I am rude. Or a spy.
I calculate he is standing on a roof of a house about midway down Crestwood Drive.
He lowers his hand. I lower mine. And then he lets his binocu-lars drop like something scared him. They bounce against his chest once, and then he is gone.
For a second, I wonder if I really saw him. Maybe he is an alien from one of Elaine’s flying saucers. Or maybe he is a ghost. But, nah, not in broad daylight. No, it was a boy—absolutely for sure. A boy with binoculars who now knows I am here on the roof.
I go back to watching the neighborhood. I look toward the second row on our street. Mrs. Duthart is in her side yard raking under her overgrown azalea bushes. Her fat, little beagle, Peaches, is running around barking to beat the band.
Mrs. Duthart lives in the house on the other side of the break. Our side yards butt against each other but are separated by a chain-link fence. From up on the roof, I can see there are lots of fences in Westbrook Park. Dad says that good fences make for good neighbors. Mrs. Duthart doesn’t get that. She hates my guts. I don’t know why. She pretty much hates everybody’s guts. David Hazel calls her Mrs. Dufart and laughs like mad every time he says it, like he is Red Skelton.
The Hazels live in the house attached to ours. David Hazel’s claim to neighborhood fame is that he got hit by a car and broke his leg. It was a pretty big deal for a while because nothing like that usually happens in Westbrook Park. But it did for him. He got all kinds of neat gifts and comic books. My mother even baked him a batch of cookies. It was like he got famous for getting clobbered by a Buick.
Elaine and I went to visit him a couple of times and even helped him scratch inside the big, white cast with a coat hanger we stretched out. Mrs. Hazel caught us and yelled.
“You’ll give him an infection!” she squawked like a big, fat chicken. Mrs. Hazel hates my guts too.
I look back, hoping my mysterious Binocular Boy is there again. He isn’t. So I drop the glasses to my chest and sit in the beach chair. This is the life. No Elaine, no Jelly Bean, no sad Dad or Mom, just me on top of the world. Me and the moon and the stars that will come out soon.
After a while, I hear Polly barking. She is in the front yard sitting on one of the brown spots where grass refuses to grow. There are lots of spots like that on our lawn. Lots of smallish brown spots with tufts of grass or weeds growing out of them. From up here, they look like a congregation of balding heads.
Polly has different barks for different situations. This one is her Dad’s-home bark. Polly can hear Dad’s truck with her super-duper dog ears when it is two blocks away.
Dad is coming down the street—home from work. This is good and bad. Good because I am hungry as a bear fresh from hibernation. Mom usually makes meat loaf on Wednesday, and I could eat half the loaf and ten pounds of mashed potatoes today. My mom makes the best mashed potatoes and meat loaf on the planet.
But Dad coming home is also bad because he doesn’t know I moved to the roof. So instead of dashing down for supper, I figure it might be a good idea to wait. Maybe Mom will tell him about me being on the roof, and he’ll get all his yelling done before I show my face. I’m pretty sure he will yell. So I wait, hoping Mom will give him the news and work some of her Mom magic on him. While I wait, I look through the glasses again, and sure enough, Binocular Boy is back. My heart speeds as I wave. He waves back and holds up a large piece of cardboard: My name is Brian.
Brian. Wow. I look around, but I don’t see anything to write my name on except my diary. I tear out a page, find my pen, and write Joyce as big as I can on the small piece of blue-lined paper. I hold it up.
He zeros in on the page. He drops his glasses and like ten seconds later holds up another sign: Hi, Joyce.
My heart pounds. It is possible I am getting myself into trouble, but the allure of the whole thing is too hard to ignore. Allure. It is one of my new favorite words. I got it from Elaine’s Vogue I was reading a few days ago.
I turn my page over and write: Hi, Brian.
I hold it up and wait, but he doesn’t make another sign. Instead, I just see him smile.
My heart beats so hard, I think I might get sick, so I drop my binoculars into the milk crate and scoot down the ladder.
• • •
When I walk into the house, I am hoping for three things:
1. Dad isn’t angry I am living on the roof.
2. Elaine isn’t blabbing to him about it and telling him how I don’t believe in her space creatures and how I complain about Jelly Bean.
3. Mom put plenty of butter on the mashed potatoes.
I head straight to the steps and listen. Dad is in the shower, and I am glad for that. Next, I head to the kitchen. Elaine is setting the table.
“Hey, creep,” she says. “How ’bout helping?”
“Not my turn,” I say. I hate that she calls me creep so much. Mom says to ignore it. Which isn’t always easy.
“Did you tell him, Mom?”
Mom looks at me. “Tell him what?”
“You know. About me moving to the roof.”
“Not yet, dear.” She goes back to the stove.
I start to take my seat at the table, but Mom stops me. The eyes in the back o
f her head see me. “What do you think you’re doing, little girl? You get washed up first.”
“Oh, sorry,” I say and head for the kitchen sink.
“Not there. Upstairs. And use soap.”
“Dad’s taking his shower.”
“So wait,” Elaine says. “Sheesh, you’re such a dummy.”
I look at my mother, hoping she will say something to Elaine about calling me names. But she doesn’t. As usual. Well, as usual since Bud went missing. It’s like adding any more upset-ness into the air could ignite the whole house on fire, so Mom just ignores things. “Just wait until he’s done. In the meantime, go sit in the living room with those filthy hands.”
I hold my hands up. They are pretty filthy.
I hear a door close upstairs, so I run up to get washed. Which I do quickly and run back downstairs. Just as I’m showing Mom my hands, Dad comes to the table. He is a big man with broad shoulders and large hands. He has a wide smile that shows off his missing left incisor. He has bright-blue eyes and is going bald on the top of his head.
The table is set with the food in bowls of different colors and sizes, including one large green bowl that holds my favorite: mashed potatoes. Elaine and I sit across from each other, which makes it easy for me to kick her and flick the occasional pea in her direction. Polly sneaks under the table. Dad always shoos her into the living room, or at least he tries to. She always sneaks back.
Dad still doesn’t know about me moving to the roof, and it’s hard to keep my monkey nerves under control. My legs keep bouncing. Maybe Mom will wait until after supper to tell him. Some news goes best on a full stomach.
’Course that hadn’t helped much the night we got the news about Bud. We were just finishing up our fruit dessert, sliced pears, when the doorbell rang.
I answered it. Two army officers were standing there with grim faces. They each removed their hats and held them tucked in their armpits when I opened the door. The soldier on the left held a small, yellowish envelope.