Billie Standish Was Here (17 page)

“MEOW!” I called at their backs. It was a reflex and I immediately felt stupid for doing it. But by the time they whirled around Harlan was bent double laughing.

“What?” I wasn't sure which of them said it. They were blocking our path, hands on their hips. Tweedledum and Tweedledee Get Indignant. Their makeup looked clownish in the sunlight.

Harlan straightened up and sputtered, “She said ‘meow'!” and then convulsed again.

“Meow!” I said to him. It came out like I was thanking him for reminding me. I started laughing myself and then turned to face them. “I said ‘meow'! Meow, meow, meow!”

Then I couldn't say it anymore because Harlan and I were both choking and had tears rolling down our cheeks. I was holding my stomach, but I knew he wasn't taking notes now.

“Sounds like you and Harlan have got off on the start of a fun friendship,” Miss Lydia commented that evening.

“He is NOT my friend!” I did not understand how any one person could be so bullheaded on a topic. “I study Constitution with him because I have to, and I play baseball with all of them because they want me to and he just happened to think my joke was funny, that's all. . . .” I heard my voice trailing away. The point I was trying to make was no longer clear even to me.

A
   few days later I flew into Miss Lydia's kitchen like usual, splashed a big pile of her mail across the counter, and chattered nonstop for five minutes before I stopped to get my breath and she had a chance to speak.

“How's your mother?” was the first thing she said.

“Huh?”

“Your mother? The woman who lives at your house?” she prodded.

“I don't know. Why?”

“She being nicer to you these days?”

I shrugged. I had been giving Mama about the same amount of attention she gave me—not much more than it took to keep from stepping on her feet. “I guess. My cooking is a lot better these days, thanks to you.” I showed her my most wicked grin. “She likes that. Why?”

“Oh well, now, summer's gone and you've got school to tend to. You're even making a friend there, though you won't admit it yet.” It was like she was reading me a list she'd made up that day. “Seems to me now that you've gotten the all clear on . . . your health, you know, you won't be needing me for anything anymore.”

I couldn't imagine where she might have gotten that idea—it hadn't even crossed my mind. She was at the sink and had turned her back to me. I couldn't see her face. “Miss Lydia. You
are
kidding, aren't you?”

She turned toward me then and I saw she was smiling. But just as I opened my mouth I saw the tiniest speck of uncertainty in her eyes as well. It knocked me back on my heels and I was too stunned to speak for the longest time.

Then I remembered I had worn the ruby heart pin to school that day for the first time just because I woke up so happy. I unpinned it, walked over, and pried her hand open. I laid the pin on her palm and folded her fingers closed around it.

She tried to hand it back. “No, honey! I meant for you to keep that. It's yours.”

I put my hands behind me. “How about if it's ours?” I said. “What if whoever needs it most gets to hang onto it for a while?”

She studied me the way a mother memorizes her baby's face. “I do love you, child,” she said.

“I love you, too, Miss Lydia. And there's no expiration date on that. You just remember that.”

I was home a couple of hours before Mama and Daddy dragged in and I spent that time thinking how Miss Lydia was slowing down. No doubt about it. Walking cost her more effort all the time. Even changing positions in her chair had become a battle. She and I had started out a woman and a little girl, and we were on our way to trading places just as sure as if we'd bought a ticket.

All I had ever thought about before was how much I needed her.

H
  arlan and I got so halfway comfortable studying together by mid-October we didn't crawl into opposite corners anymore. One Friday afternoon along about then we were in our usual spot on the stage. I asked him about some Constitution mumbo jumbo, something like which votes require a two-thirds consensus.

He answered me chapter and verse without looking it up and I must have looked surprised. He was miffed.

He said, “Why'd you ask, if you didn't think I knew?”

I said, “It's not that, it's just—” But I didn't know what it was.

“You just don't think I'm very smart.” It wasn't a question.

“Oh, Harlan.” Truth be told, I had never thought much about him at all. “What do we know about each other, really?” It seemed nicer to flick it off into a generalization and I thought that sounded ever so worldly and grown-up besides.

He huffed, “I know a lot about you.”

“Like what?” I said. Name me one person who isn't their own favorite topic of conversation.

He gave me a look. “More than you know about yourself, probably.”

Before I could ask him who thought
who
wasn't very smart he looked past me and yelled, “Holy shit!” Then he ran out of the room.

I looked around for what had caused his uproar. I moved to his chair and then it was staring at me. One of those big school wall clocks, reading 4:05.

I found him standing on the front sidewalk looking forlorn. The bus had been gone a good twenty minutes.

He said, “I can't believe nobody came after us.”

I said, “Like who?” I mean, neither of us had a best friend to look out for us. And Miss Wilson barely knew where she was most of the time.

Harlan shrugged.

I said, “Well, come on with me, I guess.”

He looked at me like I had shot at him. “NO!” He started backing away.

I shook my head. “Harlan, I'm not asking you to run off with me. You're gonna need a phone, aren't you?” I tried the front door of the school. Sure enough, it had locked behind us.

“I can't go home with you!” he protested.

I was a little nervous myself. Then came inspiration. “You don't have to,” I said. “I generally take Lydia Jenkins her mail and visit with her for a while. You can come on with me there.”

When we got to Miss Lydia's, he looked like he was wound up so tight you could shove a lump of coal up his butt and make a diamond. But if she was surprised to see him it didn't show. “Come in! Come in!” she said. “Good thing I baked cookies today!” Her kitchen smelled like chocolate chip heaven.

I chattered between bites while Harlan shoved whole cookies into his mouth. Miss Lydia stood staring into her sink like she was reading tea leaves. I hadn't noticed the plumber's friend out until she picked it up and started plunging with all her puny might.

Harlan and I both jumped up, but his glare was so fierce I sat back down. Let him have his pride. Boys. After a few grunts he ran some water and shook his head. “Miss Jenkins, you got a crescent wrench?” he said.

“Down in the cellar in an old toolbox,” she nodded, “but I won't turn the light on for you unless you call me Miss Lydia.”

It took him a minute to realize she was teasing. He grinned and mumbled, “Okay,” while his face turned Easter-egg pink.

He thundered back up with the toolbox and asked for a bucket. I said, “I'll get it.” Next I was playing operating room nurse, handing him things and following orders. He had the gooseneck apart, cleaned out, and put back together in less than five minutes.

Miss Lydia sat at the table humming and smiling. When we were done, she told Harlan how nice it was to have somebody come in and take care of a problem like that. He confided that he was quite handy and would be happy to make any number of repairs around the house if she wanted.

My teeth started to ache. My jaw, too. It was killing me to watch them get so chummy in no time flat. I was acting about like a three-year-old forced to share her toys with a visiting cousin, but knowing that didn't change how I felt. I guess I still wasn't sure enough of myself to be sure of Miss Lydia's friendship.

Harlan finally got his mother on the phone and she was there in five minutes flat. Miss Lydia had me get her purse and she started to lay two dollars on him.

I told him not to argue, that he wouldn't win. Then, showing him I was the expert on All Things Lydia I said, “But when she feeds me I make her take a dollar back.” So that's what he did.

I moped around in the doorway after he left and said, “I guess I'll go on too.” Miss Lydia pressed something into my hand. Small and hard. I knew without looking it was the ruby heart pin. Her Cheshire cat grin made me crack up.

She said, “I know you pretty well, child.”

H
  arlan missed the bus twice the following week and after that he didn't even pretend. His mother finally sat him down and told him she'd rather swing by Cumberland on her way home than worry till he called and then have to make a special trip after him.

She worked for a bookkeeper in Milton and Harlan's youngest older sister had left for junior college that fall. So there was something in this new deal for everybody. Harlan didn't have to rattle around an empty house after school waiting for his mother. She didn't have to worry about him. And Miss Lydia's house got spiffed up better than it had been since Mr. Jenkins died.

As for me, I worked pretty darned hard at deciding Miss Lydia had so much to give there was plenty to share.

So life continued as I had come to know it, with some adjustment. I still went to Miss Lydia's after school, but at least three days a week Harlan was there, too. She treated us both just the same and was so easy to be around. Harlan started calling me Billie Marie, too, and since it came only from the two of them it fell on my ear like an endearment. Harlan and I stopped being a boy and a girl even at school. We were just two friends.

It was funny. Some of the other kids started acting like we were the cool kids in our class. They'd save us seats at lunch, pick us first for baseball, come show us when they got something new like they were looking for approval. A few, like Karen and Debbie, still thought it was weird for us to hang out together and made sure I knew so, but I didn't care. Maybe that's all “cool” is—not giving a rip what anybody thinks of you.

I hoped Miss Lydia had forgotten about her threat to educate me, but of course she hadn't. Sitting at her kitchen table over brownies and milk late one afternoon, she addressed Harlan. “So. Along about Labor Day, Missy here was already sick of school before it even started . . . and it's no wonder. She says they don't teach you much of anything about the world going on around you. I never heard the like! So I told her I was going to see to it she got a proper education if I had to take the bull by the horns myself.” She nodded at me with self-satisfaction and I slid into a glum slouch in my chair. “How about you, Harlan?” she went on. “You have any interest in learning more than who wrote the Monroe Doctrine and who's buried in Grant's Tomb?”