Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! (3 page)

The other two residents of the house are Dumpling and Moe, the Smiths’ yellow singing canary birds. Their white cage hangs in the living room and they can be heard chirping away all through the broadcast. Neighbor Dorothy’s backyard is, as mentioned, like everybody else’s except for the radio tower, with lots of open space all the way back to the railroad tracks and behind that are the cornfields. There are no fences so you might say that the whole town just has one big backyard and one leads into the other. The only difference between Neighbor Dorothy’s house and the others is the clothesline that runs from her back door to her next-door neighbor’s back door. Beatrice Woods, the little blind songbird, lives next door and that’s how she gets back and forth to Neighbor Dorothy’s house, by
holding on to the clothesline. Apart from the fact that it has
WDOT
painted on the front window in gold and black letters, an organ in the living room, a radio tower in the backyard, and is a Greyhound bus stop and has a nursery school on the back porch and a dog living there that receives a personal Christmas card every year from the president of the United States, it is just an ordinary house.

And today is just another ordinary day. At exactly nine-thirty everybody hears what they have been hearing every weekday morning for the past ten years. A male announcer from the main station comes on and says, “And now … Golden Flake Flour and Pancake Mix … that always-light-as-a-feather flour in the red and white sack … takes you to that little white house just around the corner from wherever you are, as we join … your neighbor and mine, the lady with a smile in her voice, Neighbor Dorothy, with Mother Smith on the organ!”

The minute they get the on-air signal, Mother Smith hits the first strain of their theme song and starts the show off with a rousing rendition of “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” In a moment, Neighbor Dorothy greets her radio listeners as she always does, with a pleasant “Good morning, everybody … how are you today? Fine, I hope. It is a beautiful day over here in Elmwood Springs and I hope it’s just as pretty where you are. We’ve got so many exciting things lined up for you today … so just sit down, put your feet up, and have a cup of coffee with me, won’t you? Ooh … I wish all of you could see Mother Smith this morning … she’s all dressed up and looks so pretty. Where are you going today, Mother Smith? Oh, she says she’s going downtown to Miss Alma’s Tea Room for a retirement lunch. Well, that should be a lot of fun.… We all love Miss Alma, don’t we? Yes, we do.

“We have so many letters to read to you today, and we’ve got those two recipes that you all have been asking for—one is Lady Baltimore cake and one for a baby Baltimore cake—so be sure and have your pencils and pads ready and later on in the program, Beatrice, our little blind songbird, is going to be singing for us.… What’s your
song, honey? Oh … she says she’ll be singing ‘When It’s Lamp Lighting Time in the Valley.’ That sounds like a good one.

“Also, we have a winner in our How Did You Meet Your Husband contest … but before I do anything else this morning I want to start with some good news for all the gals that went to Norma’s bridal shower yesterday. They were all mighty worried when all the Lucky Dime cake had been eaten and nobody had gotten the piece with the dime in it, but Norma’s mother, Ida, called this morning and said they found the dime in the kitchen—she had forgotten to put it in—so all you gals can rest easy … none of you will have to be x-rayed after all … so I know that’s a relief. As you all know, Norma is our little June bride to be. She is marrying Macky Warren at twelve noon on June the twenty-eighth down at the Unity Church, so if you are in town, drop in at the reception at the VFW Hall afterwards. They say everybody is welcome. So all of you out there be sure to come on by and you don’t have to bring a thing. Ida says it’s all going to be catered by Nordstrom’s bakery and luncheonette, so you know it will be good.

“Speaking of brides … June is such a busy month, so many events—weddings, graduations—and if you’re wondering what to get the special lady, Bob Morgan of Morgan Brothers department store says wonder no more, because it’s pearls, pearls, and more pearls … pearls for the graduate, pearls for the June bride, pearls for the mother of the bride, the attendants … pearls for everyone. Remember, pearls are right for any occasion.… Bob says come on in today … he’ll be happy to see you.

“And let’s see, what else do I have this morning … Oh, I know … I got a call from Poor Tot and her cat has kittens again and she says they are all ugly but one, so come on over, first come, first served … and in a minute I’m going to tell you how to clean your feather pillows, but first let’s listen to Beatrice, our little blind songbird.…”

Twenty-five minutes later Neighbor Dorothy ends the show as she always does with “Well, I see by the old clock on the wall that it’s time to go … it’s always so pleasant to sit with you every morning and share a cup of coffee. You make our days so happy, so until we
see you again, you’ll be missed, so come back again tomorrow, won’t you? This is Neighbor Dorothy and Mother Smith from our house to yours saying … have a good day.…”

That evening, Neighbor Dorothy and her family were sitting on the porch all eating a bowl of homemade peach ice cream that Doc had made on the back porch earlier. Including Princess Mary Margaret, who had her own bowl with her name on it.

On summer nights almost every family in Elmwood Springs goes out to sit on their front porches after dinner, and wave to people as they walk on the sidewalk in front of the house, on their way to downtown to window-shop or coming home from the movies. All up and down the street you can hear people talking softly and see in the dark the little orange glow of cigarettes or the pipes being smoked by men.

Bobby, happy and sunburned, with the smell of chlorine still strong in his nostrils and his eyes all red from swimming underwater all day up at the pool, was so tired that he fell sound asleep in the swing while the grown-ups talked. Dorothy said to Doc, “You should have seen him when he finally came dragging in this afternoon; he’d been in the water so long he’d gone all pruney.”

Doc laughed. Anna Lee said, “Mother, I don’t think you should let him go up there anymore. He does nothing but swim around underwater all day pinching people.” Mother Smith spoke up: “Oh, let the boy have his childhood; he’ll grow up soon enough.”

Just then Macky Warren and his fiancée, Norma, passed in front of the house. Norma had her little four-year-old cousin by the hand.

Dorothy called out to them and waved. “Hey, how’re you tonight?”

They waved back. “Fine. We’ve just been up to the picture show.”

“What did you see?”

Norma called out, “
The Egg and I
with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. It was a good one.”

“How long is it playing?”

“One or two more days, be sure to see it.”

“We will,” Neighbor Dorothy said.

Macky called up to the porch, “How are you doing, Doc?”

“Just fine,” he said. He nodded at the little blond girl and said to Macky, “I see she’s got you baby-sitting tonight. Well, you might as well get used to it, you’ll be having some of your own soon.”

Macky smiled and nodded. “Yes, sir, good night.”

“Good night.”

After they had gone on, Dorothy sat back, looked over at Anna Lee, and sighed. “It seems like only yesterday when both my children were babies. Time … how fast it passes.… Next thing I know Anna Lee will be married.”

“No, I won’t,” said Anna Lee.

“Yes, you will, then you’ll be gone and Bobby will be a grown man before we know it.”

They sat for a while and waved and spoke to a few more people walking by, and then Dorothy said, “Don’t you wish you could just stop time? Keep it from moving forward, just stop it in its tracks?”

“Mother,” Anna Lee asked, “if you could stop time, when would you stop it?”

Dorothy thought. “Oh, honey … I guess if I could, I’d stop it right now, while I have all my family around me, on this very night.” She looked over at her husband. “What about you, Doc? When would you stop it?”

He took a puff of his pipe. “Now would be a good time. No wars. Everybody’s healthy.” He looked at Dorothy and smiled. “And before Momma loses her pretty figure.”

Dorothy laughed. “It’s too late for that, Doc. What about you, Anna Lee?”

Anna Lee sighed. A recent high school graduate, she had suddenly become very wise. “Oh, if I had only known then what I know now, I would have stopped it last year when I was still young.”

Dorothy smiled at her daughter, then asked, “When would you stop time, Mother Smith?”

Mother Smith mused. “Well, I don’t think I would. I think I’d just let it go on like it has been.”

“You would?”

Mother Smith had been taken to the great World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1904 when she was a small child and had looked forward to the future ever since. “Oh, yes. I’d hate to take a chance on missing something good that might be coming up, just around the corner, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess you’re right, Mother Smith,” Dorothy said, “we just have no idea of what the future holds, do we?”

“No, we don’t. Why, just imagine what life will be like twenty-five years from now.”

Anna Lee made a face. “I’ll be an old woman with gray hair.”

Mother Smith laughed. “Maybe so, but I’ll be long gone by then. At least you’ll be around to see what’s going on!”

Norma Warren was a nervous wreck, waiting for Macky to come home and have his breakfast. She was about to burst with the news. He had only gone two blocks to take Aunt Elner a bag of birdseed. Aunt Elner had called at the crack of dawn and said her blue jays were practically knocking the house down because she had run out of seed. She loved poor old Aunt Elner; after all, she was deaf as a post. But why, of all mornings, did she have to pick this one to run out? Norma knew that Macky would get waylaid, stopping to yaya with everybody and their brother up and down the street. Usually she didn’t mind but she did today. God knows where Macky could be at this point. Knowing him, he could be halfway across the county by now or up on somebody’s roof or he could have gotten in a car with a perfect stranger, jabbering away about anything and everything. She sat there for a few more minutes and then gave up, put his breakfast in the stove to keep warm, and got the broom out and went onto the front porch and started sweeping, all the time looking for him and thinking how, later, she was going down to get one of those new beeper things and stick it on Macky.