Chapter Forty Lillian
Chapter Forty
Lillian
A little more than a week later, Lillian Landry sat on her front porch, binoculars clutched in her hand. Major events were happening next door.
“Walter. I think they’ve started a commune.”
That was the only explanation she could think of. The running of the minivans had ended. Instead of revving engines and yelling mothers, she now heard screams of laughter coming from the cul-de-sac at all hours of the day and long past dusk.
They all seemed to be gathering at the home of those new people from Minnesota, the ones with all those boys.
Reggie, the retired drill instructor down the street, appeared to be involved too.
Every afternoon he led the kids to the end of the cul-de-sac, where they did jumping jacks and calisthenics, and some complicated game involving running, ducking, and dodging that brought broad smiles to the kids’ faces.
She squinted through her binoculars and saw a small gang of children emerging from the Cleaver house, heading down the sidewalk.
A little herd of neighbor kids, including those cute little Mondello girls, and the Cleaver boys and Rosamund Hensler’s girl, the one who always wore a cape for some reason.
Lillian’s eyes widened, and she almost dropped the binoculars as they approached her front gate and fiddled with the latch.
Good gracious. They were coming to see her, like a little band of underage Mormon missionaries.
She stowed the binoculars under the quilt that covered her lap.
The oldest Cleaver boy knocked on her porch post. “Hello, Mrs. Landry,” he said politely.
“Are you selling Boy Scout popcorn?” she asked, squinting down at him from her chair on the porch.
“No ma’am.”
She craned her neck and peered at the little group of children behind him. “Girl Scout Cookies?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?” she asked, sounding more unfriendly than she’d intended.
“We want to interview you,” one of the little kids said.
“Me?” The words came out in a surprised squeak. In all her eighty-seven years, no one had ever interviewed her before. There was truly a first time for everything.
“We’re working on a project for school,” the Hensler girl said. She had blue hair, in addition to her cape. She looked like a forest elf.
“But not real school. It’s home school,” one of the kids said.
“I see.” Lillian nodded gravely. “Well, sit down and tell me about it.”
The kids sprawled across the floor or took seats on the porch swing. Her son had installed it two years ago, but she never sat in it. The motion made her seasick. This might be the first time anyone had actually swung on her porch swing.
The youngest Mondello girl gazed up at her from the floor. “You look like you’re a hundred years old.”
“Almost.” Lillian smiled. “I’m eighty-seven. How old are you?”
“I’m seven.” They all giggled.
“What do you want to interview me about?” Lillian asked.
“The olden days,” the littlest boy from Minnesota said.
“The neighborhood,” his older brother clarified.
“We’re doing historical research,” the Hensler girl added importantly.
“I see.” Lillian settled back in her rocking chair. “Well, I’ve lived here for fifty-eight years, so I’ve seen a lot of changes. What do you want to know?”
It had been a long time since anyone had asked what she thought, or recognized that she had something valuable to offer. Sometimes, if you weren’t on TikBook or Facegram, society kind of left you behind.
More and more lately, her family seemed to think of her as a project to be managed, not someone whose company could be enjoyed.
“Where should I begin?” she asked.
“At the beginning,” one of the little kids said, and they giggled again.
“All right, then. I’ll start at the beginning.”
She described her first day on Beaverbrook Lane as a mother of six in 1967.
She told them about the kids who lived on the street back then, including her own children, and what they did for fun.
Kick the can and baseball and tag, how they rode their bikes to school and to visit friends, how she and the other mothers would stand on their front porches at sunset with a cowbell to ring the kids home for supper.
Their eyes went wide as she described the freedom her own children had, almost sixty years earlier.
“Enjoying a nice visit with your grandkids?” An adult voice brought her back to the present with a jolt. It was the lady who lived across the street with her sister. She’d moved here from some country overseas.
But what was her name again? Valerie? Veronica?
She couldn’t remember now, but she made very good banana bread.
She’d brought a loaf over, after she first moved in.
And now she was recently retired. She’d seen more of this lady lately, walking her little Yorkie and planting bulbs in the front flower bed.
“We’re not her grandkids,” the oldest Mondello girl said. “We’re her neighbors.”
“Shouldn’t you be in school at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon?” the woman asked.
Oh dear. Lillian clutched the binoculars hidden beneath the blanket on her lap. She seemed to remember that this woman had headed the local teachers’ union, until she retired last spring.
“We go to the Beaverbrook Academy for Inquiring Minds,” one of the girls said.
The woman narrowed her eyes. “The what?”
“Our moms are homeschooling us,” the youngest Cleaver boy said.
“Homeschooling?” The lady looked aghast.
“We were all kind of stressed out,” the oldest Mondello girl explained.
“Yeah,” her sister added. “So we’re dropping out. For a year. Just to see how things go.”
“I see.” She exchanged a glance with Lillian, who gave a shrug that said Don’t blame me—I’m just the living history lesson.
“Are you a teacher?” one of the boys asked shrewdly.
“I am now a recently retired teacher,” the woman said in accented English. “How did you know this?”
“You have that look,” he said.
“And you look suspiciously like a third grader.” She raised an eyebrow. “I can spot them in the wild.”
“I am a third grader!” The little boy grinned with delight, as though the woman had just performed a magic trick.
Then he rose, jumped off the porch, and took the woman’s hand.
“You should come talk to my mom,” he said, pulling her down the sidewalk.
“Why?” The woman looked bemused, allowing the boy to tug her toward his house.
“Because our moms are pretty good,” the boy said. “But we need a real teacher.”