The Penderwicks in Spring (9 page)

“Tommy doesn’t even talk to us anymore, Ben. Not since he and Rosalind split up.”

“Skye figures they’ll get back together.”

“I hope so.” The whole family hoped so, except perhaps Rosalind. No one knew what she hoped. “But still, I need jobs that don’t involve Geigers.”

“You could dig up rocks,” he said, then graciously added, “I could show you how.”

“No one pays to have their rocks dug up.”

“Batty, you said you wanted my ideas, so write down ‘Digging Up Rocks.’ And if anyone wants it done, I’ll do it.”

“But this is
my
business!”

“Write it down. Please.”

Without enthusiasm, Batty wrote
Digging Up Rocks.

Encouraged by his success, Ben had another idea. “How about home security? I can watch Gardam Street out my window with those binoculars Skye gave me. They have night vision and everything.”

“You’re asleep at night. And what about when you’re at school? Robbers can come during the day.”

“Write it down anyway.”

“No.” Digging up rocks was silly enough.

Ben scowled at his rocks, thinking. “You could teach piano.”

“I already rejected that. Anyone who would pay a fifth grader to teach them would be awful, and awful music hurts my brain. I thought of babysitting, but what if the Yees asked?”

Batty and Ben both shivered at the idea of babysitting for the rambunctious Yee children, who lived on the cul-de-sac.

“How about pet-sitting?” Ben suggested. “The DiGintas have fish.”

Batty was pretty sure fish were even harder to keep alive than dogs. Keiko had kept fish for a while, including one she’d named Ryan, after that movie star
she liked, but one of the other fish ate Ryan, then died itself, and Keiko had cried for a whole day.

“No pet-sitting,” said Batty.

“Washing windows?” Once last summer Ben had helped his mother wash the windows with the hose, and he hadn’t forgotten how much fun it had been to get wet and soapy.

“I guess so.” Batty wrote down
Washing Windows.
“As long as they’re on the first floor, because we’re probably not allowed to climb high ladders.”

They struggled on, but after another half hour had added only
Companionship
and
Taking Out Trash.
It was a decent first step, though, and Batty hoped that neighbors would come up with their own ideas for chores she could manage. But now she had to figure out how to tell her parents about PWTW. Since she’d run back from Quigley Woods, she’d focused only on how to make money. She hadn’t taken even a moment to wonder whether her parents would approve.

“How do I get Dad and Mom to let me do this?” she asked Ben.

“I don’t know.” His requests to their parents were usually less complicated, like asking if Rafael could spend the night.

“I should ask them one at a time. Divide and conquer, like Dad says, except he says it in Latin. Who do I ask first?”

Another long discussion ensued, during which they analyzed each parent’s soft spots, but in the end
they could agree only to toss a coin. Batty went back into the kitchen to borrow a nickel from the sparechange jar by the phone.

“Heads for asking Mom first, tails for Dad,” she said, tossing the coin high into the air.

It was heads.

Their parents arrived home in the late afternoon, bearing photographs of the car they’d bought after a long and arduous search. It was a blindingly bright turquoise minivan with a peculiar orange racing stripe across the hood, plus at least a dozen bumper stickers that no Penderwick agreed with.

“It’s awful,” said Skye, looking at the pictures.

“We know,” said Iantha. “But we got them to knock five hundred off for the racing stripe.”

“And another hundred off for the bumper stickers,” said Mr. Penderwick. “And we can bring it home this week.”

“It’s flashy,” said Ben admiringly. He liked the orange racing stripe.

“
Flashy
is just the right word,” said Jane. “I hereby dub it Flashvan, and we can scrape off the bumper stickers.”

“And Lydia’s big-girl bed will be delivered on Thursday,” said Iantha. “She helped pick it out, didn’t you, sweetheart?”

Lydia put on her I-can’t-hear-you face and showed Asimov the balloon she’d been given by the car saleswoman. Under the impression that every floating
thing was a bird, he gave it an irate swipe. The balloon popped, and Lydia crumpled into loud misery.

“She needs a nap,” said Iantha, gathering her up and heading toward the steps.

Ben poked Batty. “Follow them,” he whispered.

She shook her head. No one could be receptive to daughter-run businesses with Lydia wailing in their ear. But when Iantha came back downstairs, she was never alone long enough for Batty to tackle her with PWTW. It wasn’t until dinner was over, when her mom went into the basement to do laundry, that Batty got her chance. She followed Iantha down the creaky wooden steps, nervously clutching her list of odd jobs, now a neatly typed and official-looking flyer.

Batty had always been fascinated by the basement, with its hulking, humming furnace, the maze of overhead pipes, dim corners full of shadows, plus the hoarded treasures of years past—dusty vases, broken chairs, battered Frisbees, ancient clocks with their hands all set to different times, discarded doors and windows from earlier versions of the house, and one mysterious and solitary wooden shutter that seemed never to have belonged anywhere.

Tonight wasn’t the time to linger and look about, though. The washer and dryer were along the back wall, and that’s where Batty found Iantha. She was leaning over the washer, pulling out wet laundry one piece at a time, each sparkling where it had never sparkled before. “Glitter. Glitter. More glitter.”

“Where did it all come from?” asked Batty.

“Aha!” Iantha pulled a small plastic tube from the pocket of a tiny pair of flowered jeans. The tube was labeled
GLITTER
, it had no cap, and it was empty. “Lydia must be bringing home art supplies from Goldie’s again.”

This wasn’t the first Lydia-versus-laundry mishap. The last time it had been a purple crayon that melted all over Ben’s shirts. He was going to hate glitter even more.

“Maybe she shouldn’t be allowed to have pockets.”

“Too late.” Iantha pulled out Skye’s favorite soccer jersey, all asparkle. “I’ll have to wash this load again.”

“Mom.” Batty readied her PWTW flyer. “I want to start a business.”

“Glitter removal, I hope.”

“Mom!”

Iantha let drop a twinkling sock and turned to Batty. “You’re serious?”

“I want to make some money.”

“Honey, what could you want that you think we can’t buy for you? Do you need new clothes?”

“No, I thought I’d use it for music stuff.” She held her breath, hoping that
stuff
would work for her mom as well as it had for Ben.

It didn’t. “What kind of stuff?” Iantha asked.

“Like records and sheet music and maybe I’ll want more music lessons someday,” she burbled, hoping that the definition of
someday
really actually meant this coming week. Then she had an inspiration. “You know, like how Jeffrey plays both the piano and the clarinet.”

“You want to take clarinet lessons? That’s exciting. Let’s talk to your dad about it.”

“No, thank you, not now, anyway.” Batty had no interest in playing the clarinet. “Here, look.”

She handed over the flyer and watched anxiously as Iantha read it.

“Digging up rocks?”

“Don’t pay attention to that one. Ben made me write it down, but it’s my business, not his. I know he’s much too young to have a job.”

“And you’re not?”

“No! I don’t want to buy a tire for the new car or anything. Promise.”

“Good, because Flashvan already has four tires.” Iantha smiled. “PWTW. That’s clever. Did you think that up?”

“Yes.” Being called clever was a good sign.

“I’m awfully proud of you for taking responsibility, but, Batty, between school and piano, you already work so hard. I want you to have fun while you’re a child.”

“I don’t work that hard at school,” said Batty, thinking of those unwritten book reports.

“Still, how could”—Iantha scanned the flyer again—“
dusting
be fun for you?”

Batty couldn’t lie and pretend that dusting would be fun. “Please, Mom.”

“Have you asked your father yet? No? Go tell him about PWTW, and then we’ll talk.”

Much encouraged that she hadn’t gotten a definite refusal, Batty took the PWTW flyer back upstairs to
where her father was emptying the dishwasher. Before she could begin her spiel, there was a knock at the front door. Mr. Penderwick left to answer it, and came back grumbling.

“Boys for Jane. I asked them their names and they both said Donovan, thinking they could fool me. So I didn’t offer them any pretzels.”

“There
are
two Donovans,” said Batty.

“Really? Well, I still won’t offer them any pretzels.
Locustae,
swarming the house and devouring all the snacks.”

“Daddy—” Then Batty said all over again what she’d said to Iantha. At the end, her father was shaking his head.

“Isn’t it enough that Skye’s tutoring half the high school and Jane plans to turn herself into a clothing factory? Now my ten-year-old wants to go into business for herself?”

“Almost eleven. Please, Daddy. I know what I’m doing.”

Jane flew into the kitchen, looking for the pretzels. “Know what you’re doing about what, Batty?”

“She wants to start a neighborhood odd-jobs business,” said their father. “And I think she’s too young.”

“Didn’t you and Aunt Claire have some vaguely shady business when you were Batty’s age?” asked Jane.

“There was nothing shady about it,” he said with dignity. “We helped neighbors clean out their garages, then sold what they gave us at tag sales.”

“To the other neighbors.” Jane took not only the pretzels from the cabinet, but also a giant bag of tortilla chips.

“And I was twelve, which is older than almost eleven,” he added.

“So Aunt Claire was only nine!” said Batty eagerly.

Her father frowned, and tried to change the subject. “Jane, leave some food for the family!”

“I’ll pay you back for all of it when I publish my first book, I promise. Do we have any cookies?”

“It’s not the money, it’s the innumerable trips to the grocery store,” he said.

“Yes, Daddy.” Jane kissed him on the cheek, found a bag of cookies to add to her loot, grabbed several bottles of drinks from the refrigerator, and left.

“No one listens to me,” he said.

“I do,” said Batty.

He went back to the PWTW flyer, studying it carefully. “I must say this is impressive. My daughter, an entrepreneur. But if we let you do this, there must be rules.”

“Yes! Rules!” She could handle any rules, as long as she was getting closer to singing lessons.

“We will wait, however, until Iantha comes back upstairs. No more of this
divide et impera.
”

There it was—the Latin for “divide and conquer.” “Okay, Daddy.”

When Iantha came back upstairs, the three of them retreated to the cozy book-filled study the
Penderwick parents shared, though unequally. With the exception of Iantha’s neat desk, from which she could research her way into the heavens, the room overflowed with Mr. Penderwick’s botanical samples, all in different stages of preservation, some still drying between sheets of newspaper, some pressed flat in glass frames, and on his desk, a few in the last stage, carefully pasted onto sheets of white paper, turning them into pieces of art with delicate smears of dried color. Batty snuggled into an open space on the couch between two of these—one with a touch of rusty orange and the other a smoky blue—hoping their beauty would bestow luck.

Batty and her parents worked on the rules until they were all satisfied, finally agreeing on three. She couldn’t accept a job without first checking back with them. Her schoolwork couldn’t suffer. And to begin, she would limit her business to Gardam Street, where her parents already knew and trusted the neighbors.

“And for heaven’s sake,” added her father when they were finished, “make sure you mention your age on this flyer. People might think Iantha and I are offering to do their light dusting!”

O
N
S
UNDAY MORNING
Batty headed downstairs. She had with her the PWTW flyers, neatly typed and printed out from Iantha’s computer (with the added note
I am almost eleven years old and reliable for my age
). After breakfast she would distribute them to the houses on Gardam Street. Despite her unwavering determination to make money, she was feeling shy and hoped that Ben would go with her.

In the kitchen, her father was pouring batter into the waffle iron, Lydia was in her high chair, wearing her favorite bib, the one with lambs on it, and Ben was in a chair far away from Lydia.

“Good morning.” Batty kissed her dad’s cheek while sniffing greedily at the sizzling waffle.

“Don’t go near Lydia,” said Ben. “She’s grotesquely sticky.”

“Lydia is beautiful,” Lydia said, offended.

“That’s true, Lydia,” said her father, “although in this family we concentrate on brains, not beauty. But you are also very sticky. Have you been eating your waffle or bonding with it?”