The Penderwicks at Last

by Jeanne Birdsall

  “I didn’t think any of us did want to marry Jeffrey,” said Ben.

  “We don’t,” said Lydia. “Mrs. Tifton made it up.”

  “She’s good at making up stuff,” said Alice. “Ben, you ready to see the springhouse?”

  Lydia had no idea what a springhouse would be. Not, she figured, a house built on springs, though that would be fun, and she sprang into the air a few times, pretending to be the house, until Alice explained that the only springs involved were the kind with fresh cold water bubbling out of them. She was leading them deep into Bobolink Meadow Two, farther than, and in a different direction from, the secret place she’d shared with Lydia. Eventually, they came to a hollowed-out clearing shaped like a deep cereal bowl. And there was the springhouse: a teensy stone building with a front door, so low that Lydia would have to stoop to go through, and nothing else to see—the back of the house was built into the side of the hollow.

  “The spring is inside, and keeps it cool. In olden days, people used it for a refrigerator,” said Alice. “When I was little, Jack said he was going to lock me up in there until I froze to death or starved, whichever came first.”

  “That wasn’t very brotherly of him,” said Ben.

  “Are you kidding?” Lydia was indignant. “Remember when you threatened to bury me in the backyard and cover my grave with leaves so that no one would ever find me? Or the time you said you’d push me off—?”

  “I wouldn’t have really done those things. Calm down, Lyds.”

  “Those weren’t brotherly, either,” said Alice.

  “Thank you, Alice,” said Lydia. “And then there was the time he— Ben, what are you doing?”

  He’d made an impromptu camera viewfinder with his hands and was staring through it at the springhouse. There was only one reason for him to be doing that—he was thinking about using the springhouse as a film location. Which he definitely shouldn’t have been, at least not if he wanted her to be involved in the film. Lydia was not going to die at Arundel.

  “He asked me to help him scout film locations,” said Alice. “He wants a lair for a frightened alien, and I said maybe the springhouse.”

  Not just a film, but the alien film all over again! An alien with a plush giant isopod on her head!

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” said Lydia.

  “Lyds, wait,” said Ben. “I’ve had a few ideas on how to fix the script—”

  She refused to listen, covering her ears and humming as loudly as possible. “Jingle Bells” was the first song she could come up with—not appropriate to the season, but a good song to use for blocking out brothers. When his mouth stayed shut for ten seconds straight—she counted it out—Lydia stopped humming and opened her ears a little.

  “You promised me,” she said. “No more dying on film.”

  “I know, Lyds, but—”

  “Jingle bells, jingle bells, hum hum hum hum hum.” But wait, Alice wanted to say something. Lydia stopped humming again.

  “I’ll be the alien,” said Alice.

  Both Penderwicks looked at her, Ben through his viewfinder and Lydia through her fear that Ben would be bossy with Alice and ruin their time at Arundel.

  “Can you say ‘Qhajnao lo plikna’?” Ben asked.

  “Don’t say it, Alice,” begged Lydia. “You have no idea what you could be getting into.”

  “Trust me, Alice,” said Ben.

  “Qhajnao lo plikna,” repeated Alice.

  “He’ll make you die, Alice,” said Lydia.

  “I like dying. Wasn’t I good at it before?” Alice fell over and died again for them, this one a softer, sadder, more drawn-out death.

  “Say ‘Shigukna ladarnik,’ ” said Ben. “A little deeper this time.”

  “Shigukna ladarnik.” Alice used an impressively deep, raspy voice, then stood up and kicked out her right leg. “I can also do tae kwon do.”

  “Let me see you walk first.” He demonstrated what he wanted, dragging his legs like they were too heavy for him. “Earth’s gravity is greater than the gravity on your planet, so it’s hard for you to move. Pretend you have weights strapped to your legs and arms.”

  Alice lurched, fighting gravity. Lydia thought she did it too well—more encouragement for Ben. Desperate, Lydia clung to his arm, fighting for her friend’s happiness.

  “Ben, if Alice does this, you can’t boss her around like you do me.”

  “Directors need to be bossy. Think of James Cameron.”

  “If he’s a famous director, who cares—you’re not.”

  “Yet.”

  “And you don’t have an alien costume, anyway. Unless you brought that giant isopod with you, and that kept falling off and ruining the shots.”

  “Mom will make a costume,” said Alice.

  “Alice, no!”

  “But she likes doing it. She made me a porcupine costume for a school play, and she made Jack a cricket costume. That wasn’t for a play. He just wanted to be a cricket.”

  Lydia was temporarily distracted, trying to see the boy in those photographs dressed like a cricket. “Recently?”

  “No. When he was five,” said Alice.

  Ben took back the conversation. “How about this, Lyds? I’ll need a sound technician on the shoots. Do that, and you’ll be there to monitor my level of bossiness. Deal?”

  This gave Lydia pause. Ben had never before let her even touch the equipment, let alone use it on an actual shoot. She’d always thought that being behind the camera would be more fun than being in front.

  “Alice, are you absolutely, positively sure you want to do this?” she asked.

  As an expression of certainty, Alice kicked out her left leg, then died again, even more impressively than the last time. Lydia surrendered, and Ben took charge. He gave Alice a list of alien phrases for her to memorize, announced that the first shoot would be that very evening at dusk, and sent the girls away so that he could think great thoughts.

  * * *

  —

  Natalie made one last adjustment to the alien, then sat back on her haunches.

  “What do you think, Lyds? Good enough?” she asked.

  “Much, much better than good enough.” Lydia now considered Natalie to be an actual genius. “Ben is going to want you to do costumes for every one of his movies.”

  The alien wanted to witness for itself what the fuss was about. “Let me see, too, Mom, please.”

  Natalie circled the creature, taking photographs that showed every detail—the leotard and tights decorated with chicken feathers, the enormous woolly head with amber eyes on either side of its face, and the misshapen hands, which had been Lydia’s own creation. She’d started with a pair of Cagney’s work gloves, stuffed them with tissue paper to stiffen them, then painted them orange and purple, colors appropriate for aliens.

  “Here you go, Alice.” Natalie held the camera in front of the alien’s mouth—it had a camouflaged slit to let Alice see the outside world—and scrolled through the photos.

  “I’m magnificent.” Alice’s voice leaked, muffled, through a small hole in the neck. “I didn’t know I could be so magnificent.”

  “Honestly, sweetheart, I find you more magnificent in your natural guise, but I’m glad you like the costume.”

  “I love it. Thanks, Mom, and please send the best photo to Jack. No, don’t! Let’s wait and send him some of the movie. That will be much more impressive.”

  The costume had taken most of the day to put together, and Lydia had been with the Pelletiers throughout the process, even staying for dinner, eating while putting the final touches on the gloves. And now it was close to sunset, and Ben would soon be arriving with his film equipment. How pleased he would be with this costume! But first they had to get Alice out of Natalie’s studio and down the stairs, slowly and with great caution. Alice�
�s vision through the alien’s mouth was limited, and until she got used to the heavy head, it could easily tip her over. Natalie guided her from the front, while Lydia helped balance her from the back, and they were doing well until they came upon a chicken on the steps. It was Hatshepsut, again attempting to storm the second floor. Terrified by this sudden apparition, she started squawking and flapping her wings, making such a fuss that Cagney heard her from out back, where he’d been sawing wood for wedding-ceremony benches and tables, and came inside to see what was going on.

  “You’re being absurd,” he said to the chicken, and scooped up Hatshepsut, who buried her head under his chin, in the mistaken belief that what you can’t see doesn’t exist. “But, Alice, my dear, you are a star.”

  “I know.” Alice was inspired by his praise to try a tae kwon do kick, but her mother stopped her in time, and the rest of the journey down the steps was uneventful.

  Ben’s reaction, when he arrived, was all that could be hoped for. At first, too impressed to speak, he stared and stared at Alice through his viewfinder—a real one this time, in a real camera—until even she got tired of being gazed upon.

  The camera was only the beginning of the equipment Ben had brought with him. There was also a wireless microphone with a transmitter and receiver, a bunch of wires, a tripod for the camera, and a headset, which he put onto Lydia’s head, making her feel professional. He also assigned her tripod-carrying duties, which made her feel less professional and more like she was stuck with a heavy hunk of metal that dug into her arms, but she wasn’t going to complain. Not when Alice was so pleased to be the dying alien—almost as pleased as Lydia was not to be.

  The sun was low in the sky, stretching and distorting the film crew’s shadows as they set out toward their first shooting location. Alice’s shadow was the most peculiar—a long, skinny body topped by a gargantuan sheep’s head—and was made even more so when she bumped into a bush and dislodged the head.

  “Careful, Alice,” said Ben, readjusting it.

  “Sorry. Qankla.”

  “What?” Lydia thought Alice might be speaking Alien, but when you can’t hear because you’re wearing headphones, Alien and English sound a lot alike, especially when it’s coming out of a small hole in the throat of a giant fake head.

  “Qankla,” said Ben. “It’s the alien apology.”

  “Nikaj,” said Alice.

  “What?” asked Lydia again.

  “Let’s take off the headset, Lyds.” Ben did it for her, since she hadn’t heard him. “Just wear it around your neck until you need it.”

  “How am I going to die?” asked Alice. “I can’t drown—that would mess up the head. The wool would come off. I could eat something that poisons me because it’s Earth food.”

  “The death scene isn’t tonight. It will be the last scene we shoot, so don’t worry about it now,” said Ben. “Okay, everybody stop.”

  “Say please,” said Lydia.

  “Directors don’t say please to their crew!”

  “You said I could make sure you’re not too bossy.”

  Ben sighed. “Alice and Lydia, please stop right here.”

  They’d reached the cottage side of the hedge tunnel. As Ben clipped on Alice’s microphone equipment, he explained what would happen next. He and Lydia would leave Alice there alone, and set up the shot from the other side of the hedge. When they were ready, they’d yell for her to begin, and she would come through the hedge tunnel and see Zeus.

  “You’re scared and confused and looking for a friendly native, except you don’t know what the natives look like, so for all you know, this big white thing could be one of them. You’ll say hello to him.”

  “Quch ladare, Zeus,” said Alice.

  “Good, but you don’t know his name; and act more scared. Remember, you’re light-years away from home.”

  “Quch ladare,” repeated Alice more softly. “Scared like in ET, except ET ended up coming back to life. Maybe I can come back to life after I die?”

  Ben made sure her microphone was securely attached. “We’re not doing ET. My movie is noir, and full of despair, a metaphor for adolescence. ET was a hopeful movie about a boy finding a friend, with ET basically standing in for a magic pixie dream girl.”

  “That’s a female character who’s in a story just to help the male character get better or happier,” Lydia told Alice. “Jane explained it to me. She’s against them.”

  Even hidden inside her alien head, Alice managed to look confused. “Wasn’t ET a boy?”

  “Forget ET,” said Ben.

  Lydia cut in. “Say please to her.”

  “Please, Alice, forget ET.” Ben dumped a coil of wires on top of Lydia’s tripod to pay her back. “And now we’re off. Alice, stay here until I give you the signal. And when you do go through the hedge tunnel, be careful of your head. Please.”

  Ben led Lydia through the tunnel, past Zeus—who had never before been in a movie and wasn’t sure he liked the idea—and about a hundred feet farther, where they set up the equipment. When his camera was in its place on the tripod, Ben handed Lydia the wireless receiver—“hold it up high for the best reception,” he told her—and put her headset back on. Suddenly there was an alien breathing right into Lydia’s ear. Grinning, she gave Ben the thumbs-up. This sound-technician thing was going to be fun.

  He nodded, then shouted, “Mic check, Alice! Say something!”

  “Testing, one, two, three,” Lydia heard through the headset. “Quch ladare, Lydia. Tell Ben I’m ready.”

  “Alice is ready,” she told Ben.

  He flicked switches on the recording equipment. “Alice, we’re rolling! Please begin your scene!”

  On the other side of the hedge, Alice launched into a sad little whimper, interspersed with bits and pieces of alien-speak. Lydia could hear it all, every ragged breath, and it was done so well she almost forgot that it was Alice she was listening to, and not a terrified being trying to survive on this outlandish new planet.

  When Lydia heard the shriek—just a little shriek, as if the alien had been startled—Lydia’s first thought was that Alice was improvising. Maybe the alien had spotted a bird. Okay. A bird could startle an alien who had just arrived on Earth. But surely that was enough improvising. Alice should now be going back to the script. It was time for her to come through the hedge tunnel.

  Instead, she was shushing someone. That wasn’t in the script, either, and it made no sense in terms of improvisation. And now there was a kind of thump. Had Alice just covered the microphone, trying to keep Lydia from hearing her? Lydia put her whole self into listening, even shutting her eyes to help her concentrate on sound. She heard a man laughing. Who was that? If it was Cagney, why would Alice be turning it into a secret?

  There was the man’s laugh again, and although it definitely wasn’t a Cagney laugh, it did sound familiar. Oh! Could it be?

  Lydia took off her headphones. “Alice has gone off script, and I think she’s talking to Jeffrey.”

  Ben kept on shooting. “She couldn’t be, because he’s not coming home until next week. Go back to your job.”

  Lydia felt like making him say please, but she was too interested in what was happening at the hedge, because here, finally, came the alien emerging from the tunnel, big head first. Would someone else come through? Yes, and it was a man. He was still too far away for positive identification, but if Lydia had just been handed a million dollars, she’d have bet it all on the man being Jeffrey Tifton.

  “It’s him. I know it.” Lydia disentangled herself from the equipment and sprinted toward the traveler come home to Arundel.

  LYDIA HUGGED JEFFREY FEROCIOUSLY, as a thank-you for arriving a week early, and to express her passionate love for Arundel, which she couldn’t do in words because Alice was talking on and on, her giant head wobbling and swaying.

 
“As soon as he heard his mom was here yelling at Batty, he changed his plane ticket, he even had to get a guy to substitute for him in his band, and flew all through the night like a superhero—better even than Ben busting up that clay pot—”

  Jeffrey tried to stem the flow. “Don’t exaggerate, Alice. Hi, Lyds.”

  Lydia had to content herself with another hug, because Alice was still talking.

  “—was on his way to say hi to Mom and Dad when he spotted me at the tunnel and thought, What the heck is that, and do I need to protect my friends from it—”

  “I didn’t say that, either. Be quiet for a minute, Alice. Here’s Ben!” Jeffrey greeted the latest arrival. “Great to see you!”

  “It really is you. Wow.” Ben elbowed Lydia out of the way so that he could hug Jeffrey next. Lydia was too happy to care.

  Alice rattled on. “—but of course it was only me, and I asked him about his girlfriends—”

  “Stop,” said Jeffrey. “Alice, I mean it, stop. You have to let me speak for myself.”

  “Okay, but—”

  Jeffrey lunged at her, trying to figure out how to put his hand over her mouth.

  “Right there,” said Ben, pointing to the hole in the alien’s neck.

  “Thanks.” He blocked the hole. “Can she still breathe?”

  “Through the eyes, probably.”

  “Good.” He grinned happily at Ben and Lydia. “Hi, again. Good to see you—and, Lydia, you’ve made quite the impression with my mother.”

  “She doesn’t really think I’m not as difficult as my sisters, does she?”

  “I’m afraid so, Lyds.”

  “Tell her I am, please.”

  “I’ll try, but she doesn’t always listen to me.” Jeffrey cautiously uncovered the alien’s neck hole. “Have you calmed down yet, Alice?”

  “I was calm before,” she said. “And you said there are no current girlfriends, because Sigrid—”

  Jeffrey grabbed the alien head. “Can I get this off her? I have a small hope that seeing her will make her easier to control.”