Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Part One
The Bosetti Beauty
Witch Tree Lane
The Bump in the Road
Sparrows on a Wire
Someone of Grand Importance
Don’t Look Now
Sunday
Harwell’s Fall Fashion Show
Circus Girl
Nan and Poppy
Good-Luck Charm
Leaving Baton
Part Two
Bad Things
Slamming
Friday, November 22
The Longest Weekend
Ghosts
Doris Needs a Vacation
Life Is Short
Part Three
Postcards
Lies
Gotham
55th Street
Nothing Like Her
Doris Has a Secret
What Doris Wants
Mouse Trap
Part Four
June
What Comes Your Way
The Gaze of the Witch Tree
About the Author
Copyright
In 1963, Ellie’s mother, Doris Day Dingman, was crowned the Bosetti Beauty at Mr. Bosetti’s supermarket. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the Dingmans began to fall apart. Most of this happened in the second part of the year—a year that had gotten off to a pretty good start, considering they were the Dingmans.
Ellie and Doris were downtown shopping with her mother when they first saw the contest sign in the window of Mr. Bosetti’s store.
“Eleanor! Will you look at that!” exclaimed Doris.
Doris was proud of the names she had given her children: Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, and Marie Curie. Most people called Albert and Marie Albert and Marie, but they shortened Eleanor to Ellie. Not Doris, though. Eleanor had been named after the wife of a president of the United States, and Doris did not want to take away from that.
It was a blistering hot day in the middle of August. Ellie, standing on the sidewalk in downtown Spectacle, felt waves of heat rise up out of the pavement and engulf her navy Keds and bare legs. She was scratching the back of her right calf with the toe of her left sneaker when Doris pointed a long, red-painted fingernail at a sign in Bosetti’s window. It read:
FREE FOOD!
ENTER OUR DRAWING
AND WIN
A 5-MINUTE SHOPPING SPREE!
DETAILS INSIDE
“Come on,” Doris said, grabbing Ellie’s hand and heading for the door. “I have got to enter that.”
“But Doris, we don’t shop here.” The Dingmans shopped at the A&P, which was much cheaper. “Aren’t you supposed to shop at Bosetti’s to be eligible to enter their contest?”
Doris smiled, pleased with the big word Ellie had used. But she replied, “The sign doesn’t say anything about shopping here. I have a right to enter the contest. And we could use that free food more than any of the people who do shop here.”
Doris swung open the door to Bosetti’s, pulling Ellie behind her, and swept inside. She liked to make entrances.
Ellie looked around at the shelves and displays. Bosetti’s carried items such as little wrinkly mushrooms, tinned oysters, and pomegranates. What the Dingmans needed were Kleenex and Wonder bread, but once Doris got an idea in her head, it was hard to shake it loose.
“Where do I sign up for the contest?” Doris asked a cashier.
“Right over there.” The woman indicated a fish bowl sitting on a wooden table. Next to the bowl was a stack of entry blanks and a ballpoint pen. “Just fill out a form.”
“Thanks,” said Doris. She scribbled her name and address on a blank and dropped it in the bowl.
“Okay. Great. Let’s go,” Ellie whispered, and rushed toward the door.
Doris didn’t pay any attention to her. She was filling out a second form.
“Doris, that’s cheating!” Ellie returned to Doris’s side, taking note of the other shoppers in Bosetti’s and feeling grateful that she didn’t recognize any of them.
“Hush.” Doris elbowed Ellie. “The sign didn’t say anything about how many to fill out, either.”
“No, but the lady did. She said fill out a form. A form.”
“Hush,” said Doris again. “That’s just a matter of speech, or whatever you call it. Now let me concentrate.”
“Jackie Kennedy wouldn’t cheat,” muttered Ellie, but Doris didn’t hear her.
Doris filled out exactly twenty-five blanks while Ellie squirmed and blushed and kept checking on the cashier to see if she was watching, but she wasn’t.
One week later, when Doris got a phone call saying she had won the contest at Bosetti’s, she screamed and jumped up and down like she had only filled out one form and had been lucky. But as she said to Ellie and Albert and Marie, “If you want to get anywhere in this world, you have to take matters into your own hands, and then be a little bit lucky.”
The contest was to be held on Monday, August 26. That morning, the Dingman children crowded into their parents’ bedroom to watch Doris get ready. They were allowed to watch her makeup and wardrobe process from the underwear point on. Doris would emerge from the bathroom wearing her bra and slip and stockings, and seat herself at the dressing table in the bedroom—the bedroom that was much more hers than Mr. Dingman’s.
Ellie, Albert, and Marie lay in a sweaty row across the bed, Ellie and Albert on the ends, Marie in the middle. They rested their chins in their hands and watched. Doris was the prettiest woman in Spectacle, New York. This wasn’t just what she believed. It was actually true. There was not another lady like her.
Which was how Doris had gotten to do things like be the Lehman’s Spam Spread Girl outside the A&P, and play all the princess roles in the community theater productions.
“For a proper beehive,” Doris was now saying as she teased her hair into a teetering heap on top of her head, “you need both VO5 and combs.”
Marie watched in fascination, mouth open, breathing heavily.
“What’s your color scheme going to be?” asked Albert.
There was always a color scheme, and it was always loud.
“Blue and orange,” Doris answered promptly. She indicated the dress hanging on the outside of the closet door. “Mr. Howard Johnson knew what he was doing, that’s for sure.”
Half an hour later, Doris was finished. She examined herself in the mirror: bright blue combs in the beehive, orange glasses (the ones with the rhinestones at the corners), electrifying blue dress with orange patent-leather belt cinched very tight at the waist, and blue sneakers, which she needed in order to turn tight corners and be as speedy as possible in Bosetti’s.
Marie gazed at her rapturously. “You look like a Popsicle!”
“Thanks, hon,” Doris replied vaguely. She smoothed the skirt of her dress as she stood up. “Well,” she said, “I wish your father could be here to see this.”
Mr. Dingman couldn’t take a morning off to watch Doris run around Bosetti’s. He was grateful for every bit of work he got. Construction jobs dried up in the winter, so he took advantage of the summer ones.
“All right, kids. Off we go,” said Doris.
“Holly’s coming with us, okay?” Ellie said as she ran downstairs.
“The more the merrier,” said Doris.
Ellie dashed across Witch Tree Lane and yelled to Holly from the Majors’ front stoop. Holly must have been waiting, because her front door flew open immediately. Moments later she and Ellie were in the backseat of the Dingmans’ Buick, and Doris was driving, at an alarming pace, toward downtown Spectacle.
“Look at all the back-to-school signs,” said Albert, groaning, when they reached King Street. “I don’t want to go bac
k to school.”
“You’re smart,” said Doris, who was searching for a parking space. “You have a good brain. Be thankful.”
“I am,” said Albert, “but I still don’t like school.”
Neither did Ellie. Or Holly or Marie. School was not a pleasant place for a Witch Tree Lane kid.
Albert crossed his arms and kicked his sneakers against the back of the front seat, leaving dusty scuff marks.
“Will you look at all these people!” exclaimed Doris. “I’ve never seen downtown so crowded.”
Ellie, her window wide open so the hot breeze could blow her damp hair out of her face, didn’t think Spectacle looked any more crowded than it usually did on a weekday at the end of summer. It wasn’t a large town like Utica. And it certainly wasn’t a city like Manhattan, which Doris longed to visit one day. But it wasn’t a tiny town, either. It was big enough to have a hospital and a library, two movie theaters, and four churches. It even had its own high school. Spectacle kids didn’t have to travel to Central High like the kids in the surrounding towns did. And on King Street, the main street, there were plenty of shops and businesses, six restaurants (including La Duchesse Anne, which was French and served snails and crepes), and two diners.
Doris nosed the Buick around a corner and pulled into the parking lot behind the dry cleaner’s. Ellie and Holly glanced at each other, relieved. Doris was a horrible parallel parker, jerking the car forward and back, slamming on the brakes, waving other drivers around her with frantic gestures, and occasionally swearing. Ellie privately thought that Doris liked the small audience she attracted, and was grateful each time Doris opted to park in a lot.
“All right, kids,” said Doris as they climbed out of the car and walked back to King Street. “I don’t know if you’re allowed in the store with me during the contest. It’s not very big in there and I’ll need room to maneuver the cart. So just stay together outside.”
“Okay,” said Ellie and Albert and Holly.
“Can’t I come with you, Doris?” asked Marie. “Please?”
“What did I just say, Marie? You stick with Eleanor.” Doris tried to pat Marie’s head, but Marie ducked out of her reach. “Oh, my God!” exclaimed Doris as they neared Bosetti’s. “That’s a bigger crowd than I expected. Mr. Bosetti must have done some advanced publicity.”
“Advance,” said Ellie under her breath.
“I’m so nervous,” said Doris, who didn’t look nervous at all.
Ellie considered the crowd. It was bigger than she had expected, too. She didn’t really see what was so interesting about watching someone careen through a store with a shopping cart. On the other hand, it was Doris who would be careening through the store with the cart, and Spectaculars, as Ellie thought of the citizens of Spectacle, nearly always turned out to watch Doris.
“All right. Off I go!” Doris ran ahead, made her way to the entrance to Bosetti’s, waved to the crowd, and hurried inside.
Holly and the Dingman children stood at the edge of the crowd.
“We have to get to the front,” said Albert. “We’ll never be able to see from back here.”
“I don’t want to go to the front,” Holly whispered to Ellie. “Everyone will stare at us.”
“I don’t want to go, either,” Ellie replied, “but Doris will be really disappointed if she finds out we didn’t see her. It’s bad enough that Dad isn’t here. Come on.”
Ellie took Marie’s hand and began to edge through the crowd. Albert and Holly followed. They ducked under elbows and squeezed by shopping bags. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” said Ellie over and over again.
When they reached Bosetti’s window, Marie stood on her tiptoes. “I can’t see,” she said automatically.
“Yes, you can. It’s a great view,” Ellie told her. “Just look inside.” The window was large, and Mr. Bosetti had taken down all the signs for marzipan and olives and imported cheeses that were usually posted in it. “See? There’s Doris.”
On the other side of the window Doris was poised with an empty shopping cart. Even though Mr. Bosetti was still talking to her, giving her last-minute instructions, Doris had assumed a runner’s stance, balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to take off.
From behind her Ellie heard snickering and soft laughter.
Albert whirled around.
“Don’t,” said Ellie. “Forget them.” She faced Albert forward. “Anyway, not everyone is laughing.”
Mr. Bosetti left Doris with her cart and appeared in the door to his store. “Let’s have a countdown,” he said to Doris’s audience. He raised one hand in the air, then lowered it. “Ten!” he cried. He raised his hand again, and the crowd began to count with him. “Nine! Eight! Seven, six, five, four, three, two … ONE!”
Doris shoved the cart forward and flew down the nearest aisle, grabbing items off the shelves as she went.
“She’s not even looking,” said Albert. “What do we want with anchovies?”
“How much time does she have?” asked Holly.
“Five minutes,” said Ellie.
Doris sailed to the end of the aisle and swung the cart around so fast that it nearly tipped over.
“Oh, my,” a woman said, and let out a snort of laughter. She turned to the woman standing next to her and whispered something. Ellie watched them, their heads bent together, hair swinging, their bare arms linked. They were Doris’s age, Ellie guessed. They were thirty-one, at least, but when Ellie looked at them she saw Maggie Paxton and Nancy Becker from last year, from fifth grade.
“Hush,” said the second woman as she tried to stifle her laughter.
“I can’t help it,” said the first one. “She’s just so … so cheap.”
Ellie took a step backward. She decided to concentrate on the clock inside Bosetti’s.
“How many more minutes?” asked Marie when Doris reached the produce aisle.
“Two,” Ellie said, and pulled herself up stiffly as she heard a male voice say, “Got quite a wiggle, don’t she?”
Face burning, Ellie trained her eyes on the window, but shut out Doris, Mr. Bosetti, the store, the laughter, Marie tugging at her hand. She willed herself to her private place, the one she could summon when she needed an escape—and was only jerked away from it when she heard Holly draw her breath in sharply.
Ellie refocused her eyes in time to see Doris try to balance an enormous canned ham on top of the pile in her cart, then lunge forward as the ham teetered and slid toward the floor.
“Time!” shouted Mr. Bosetti as the ham crashed to the linoleum.
Doris looked at her cart, at Mr. Bosetti, at the ham on the floor. “Can I keep it?” she asked sheepishly.
“Sure, why not?” Mr. Bosetti was leading Doris to ward the front door. “After all, you, Doris Day Dingman, have just become … our first Bosetti Beauty!”
“Their first what?” Holly said to Ellie, her voice raised so Ellie could hear her over the noise of the crowd.
“Your Bosetti Beauty?” repeated Doris.
Grinning, Mr. Bosetti reached for a rhinestone-studded tiara and pressed it into Doris’s beehive. “Ladies and gentlemen, inspired by the lovely Doris Dingman, I have decided to crown a Bosetti Beauty every year. But we will always remember Doris as our first. Congratulations!”
Doris turned a beaming face to the crowd. “Thank you, thank you!” she said. “And I want to thank my husband and children. My husband couldn’t be here today, but my children—”
Mr. Bosetti stepped in front of Doris. “Please think of Bosetti’s when you think of fine food,” he said to the crowd. “Our store will reopen in fifteen minutes. Don’t go far!” He steered Doris back inside.
Twenty minutes later, Holly and the Dingmans were driving home with the overflowing bags from Bosetti’s. Doris’s tiara was in place.
“This has been a morning to remember,” she said breathlessly.
To get to Witch Tree Lane, which was actually a cul-de-sac, you had to drive almost out of Spectacle and take t
he last turnoff from Route 27 before Pious, six miles to the west. Every time Ellie neared her street she was struck by two opposing feelings, and wasn’t sure how her heart had room for both of them. She felt a tugging fondness for her small house and the four other houses on the street. And she felt a pang of embarrassment at being one of the people who lived on Witch Tree Lane. For the truth was, although Ellie loved her family and her neighbors dearly, there wasn’t a single normal person on Witch Tree Lane, at least in the eyes of Spectaculars.
There were the Majors, Holly and her mother. Holly called her mother Mom, but most people in Spectacle called her Selena because they weren’t certain what else to call her. They couldn’t call her Mrs. Major since she wasn’t married (Major was Selena’s last name, not Holly’s father’s). And “Miss Major” sounded like the name on the envelope for an invitation to a child’s birthday party. So people settled on Selena. Selena had become a mother when she was sixteen years old, which was a full four years earlier than Doris had first become a mother. And she had never shown any interest in providing Holly with a father. Most people, including Holly, didn’t even know who her father was.
Next door to the Majors lived the Lauchaires. The Lauchaires were foreign, or at least partly so. They had moved to Spectacle from Belgium, and everybody spoke French. But Mrs. Lauchaire, who worked as a temporary secretary, was originally from Pious. And Etienne, who was nine years old and Albert’s best friend, and Dominique, who was seven and one of Marie’s best friends, spoke English unless they were at home. At home they had to speak French because their father, Monsieur Lauchaire, had never learned how to speak English, which explained why he had found his silent, solitary job with the maintenance crew at the community college. As if all this weren’t enough, the Lauchaires were messy. Their house was a mess, the kids were a mess, their yard was a mess. Ellie thought they were wonderful.