THE CLUBHOUSE
Ingrid was in the clubhouse all by herself. She'd come to get her socks and it was so nice and quiet - and cool, now - that she had stayed and was sitting on an old bench in front of the window that looked over Joshua's 'meadow', her head resting on her arms on the windowsill. It smelled warm and dusty and she felt tired and content.
The sound of someone climbing up the outside stairs to this room above the old garage startled her and she raised her head and then relaxed as Ellen pushed open the door and came in.
"I saw you come up here awhile ago and wondered what you were doing." Ellen answered Ingrid's look.
"Took my socks off 'cause it was so hot in the meeting and I forgot them," Ingrid explained in a languid voice. She hadn't slept well last night because some mosquitoes had gotten in her bedroom and the buzzing and biting kept waking her up.
Ellen sat in the chair Joshua usually sat in. They'd 'found' it in Sam's basement when they started the club and so far no adult had complained that it had gone missing. It had been an awful fuss to get it up the stairs and into this room. As had most of the 'finds'. The stairway was steep!
The girls were silent.
"I don't really..." they both started to say at once and then stopped but Ellen, surprised, went on, "I usually only do that with Lucy - " who, at this instant, bounded up the stairs and flew into the room.
"Hi!", she said, breathless. "So did you find out what Ingrid was doing up here?"
"Making people appear," Ingrid said. "Now, if Piya shows up we can have
an all girls clubhouse."
Lucy plopped down on a big old sofa cushion.
"I was going to say I don't really like the meetings," Ellen said.
"Hey, I was going to say the same thing!" Ingrid told them.
They stared at each other and Lucy looked at both of them but she clamped her lips shut. She felt she SHOULD like the meetings because they were a club and a club had to have meetings.
Suddenly they could hear voices down below in the meadow, the area beside Joshua's garage that was too hard to get to with the lawnmower so it was left to grow naturally. It was one of the gang's favourite spots.
Ingrid looked out the window then turned to Lucy and Ellen, put her finger to her lips and beckoned them over. They crept to beside Ingrid. Joshua and Bill and Piya were in the meadow. Bill and Joshua were talking about maybe making a soap box derby car and Piya was listening. The girls in the loft of the garage could hear what was being said because one of the top panes of glass was missing. Lucy wanted to mention this fact to Joshua's father but the rest of the gang talked her out of it and Piya hung a towel over the opening if it were raining or too drafty during meetings. They didn't want any adults interfering with their clubhouse. And since Joshua had 'borrowed' a few items from his father for the clubhouse he didn't think he wanted his father to come up there.
"Let's make faces," Lucy suggested and they all three pushed their faces up against the window glass and made a horrid expression and then Lucy knocked on the window.
The trio looked up. Piya yelped.
"The meeting was adjourned ages ago," Joshua called out. "What are you doing in the clubhouse?"
All three girls said something at once so Joshua shrugged and trooped around the corner of the old garage and up the stairs. Piya followed. Bill threw himself down on a clump of dandelions but then he got curious so he went up to the clubhouse as well.
"Well, we don't have to have meetings," Joshua was saying when Bill got there but he sounded upset.
"Meetings are important," Piya was saying because she couldn't stand to see Joshua out of sorts. "Clubs are supposed to have meetings," Lucy was saying. "Maybe it's just the heat - it was too hot today up here," Ellen, the peacemaker, was saying. "I didn't like them in the spring, either," Ingrid was telling everyone, "And you said you didn't like them either," she said to Ellen, her bottom lip stuck out in a frown. It was chaos.
Sam suddenly fell into the room because he tripped. He lay full length on the floor and everyone was startled to silence.
"Are you hurt?" Piya asked.
"Wind knocked out," he managed to say and it was so quiet for Sam that Lucy went over to him and stared down into his face. Sam stared back. Bill, who had nearly got knocked over himself by Sam's flying into the room, went over and hoisted the silent, staring Sam up under his armpits and propped him against the old rolled-up rug that was curled into a seating place.
"I heard you all yelling," Sam finally spoke and in a nearly normal voice so the gang turned their attention back to the meeting at hand.
"What don't you like about meetings?" Joshua asked Ingrid who suddenly felt picked upon; after all, Ellen had said she didn't like them either and Lucy had put on her stubborn look which Ingrid knew meant she agreed but wouldn't admit to it. She was about to complain that she was not the only one who didn't like the meetings when Sam suddenly shouted, "Too much like church!"
Everyone looked at him in astonishment.
"Church?" asked Bill, blankly. Club meetings weren't anything like church to him.
"Too serious," Sam explained loudly. "We never have any fun."
Joshua looked defensive and thoughtful.
"Maybe we could have a little bit less business," Ellen said and hoped Joshua wouldn't take offence. He was a bit of a stickler for what he called an agenda and making sure the minutes were kept. Piya did her best to record everything that happened because that is what it meant to "keep the minutes" but she was always having to ask people to repeat what they said or slow down or explain because she could only write so fast. And then often at the next meeting she couldn't read what she had written the time before when she had to report the minutes and they often got into an argument about this.
"I see," said Joshua, twiddling his glasses around and around his fingers.
There was a long silence. "Let's discuss it at the next meeting," he finally said. This was a whole week away so everyone gladly agreed.
"We could have refreshments and entertainment," Lucy suddenly suggested. She answered six pairs of inquiring eyes. "My Mom has a bridge club and they have things to eat and once one of the ladies performed a skit for them, it was one she was going to do on stage for her drama group and she was rehearsing it but they all loved it."
"But they play cards," Joshua objected. "That's not our kind of club."
"We could play cards", Sam shouted. He liked to play rummy with his sister. The gang ignored him and John was suddenly in their midst. He seemed to be able to come and go without any fanfare at all.
"I think we should bring to the next meeting exactly what each of us thinks will improve the meetings," he said as if he had been there all along.
"What do you mean exactly?" asked Lucy who liked things exact.
John shrugged. "I don't know. I just thought up the suggestion. And I know what I am going to bring."
The gang waited for John to give them some hint of his offering but he didn't give anything away with even the hint of a motion - he knew just how much his actions could express.
The gang sprawled around in the clubhouse in a thoughtful quiet.
For the next week they all seemed a little preoccupied and when the twin's parents planned an outing for the day of the meeting Ellen and Lucy made such an outburst that they changed their plans. "We can't change the meeting day," they wailed.
"Women!" their father said.
"Daughters!" their mother said.
On the day of the meeting at just on two o'clock the gang converged on the clubhouse. John was already there seated on the top step and when the gang came up the steps he silently pointed to what he had brought, a wooden sign on which he had painted, OUR CLUBHOUSE, and under this he had neatly printed all their names. He had hung the sign on the door but everyone insisted it had to come inside the clubhouse and it was then hung by its rope on a nail over the window where everyone could see and admire it.
"I don't think it will ever be just the clubhouse again," John said quietly. "Now it's OUR CLUBHOUSE."
And everyone knew what he meant.
"How come my name is at the very bottom?" Sam shouted. John was about to tell him he had listed their names by age but Ellen said, "That's because you keep the rest of us from falling off the sign onto the floor." This made everyone grin, even Sam, and he added a loud, "Idiot numbskull."
When they had all taken their usual places Joshua put a plaque on the wooden box in front of his chair. The box served him as a desk. The plaque said, "President At Large" and had a picture of a smiling lion on it.
Everyone looked at the plaque and then at Joshua. He was polishing his glasses.
"I thought you would think meetings were more fun with this here," he explained.
The gang digested this.
"Where did you get it?" Ellen wanted to know.
Joshua paused for a few moments. "Someone gave it to my Dad."
Joshua's Dad was president of a large company.
"Oh," said Piya but no one else said anything.
Then they all noticed that Sam had put a paper bag over his head with eyes and nose and mouth cut out.
Lucy gave it a playful thump.
"Idiot numbskull," Sam told her.
"How come the mask?" Bill inquired.
"Because then you don't know how I am and I don't have to worry about how to be and I wish I could wear this in church."
Everyone hooted and Sam laughed also. But he kept the bag over his head.
Ingrid had been carrying a basket with a towel over it and now she took off the towel and lifted out a pretty jam jar with a bunch of wildflowers and grasses and leaves and a swirly twig. She put it on the windowsill under John's sign.
"This is so we can be sort of outdoors when we have our meetings." she said. She had once called a meeting "stuffy" and gone home halfway through but later told them she'd had a headache and was getting a cold and apologized. Now Lucy wondered if maybe Ingrid just felt 'stuffy' indoors, headache or not.
All the rest admired the lovely bouquet. Joshua decided to open the clubhouse door and leave it open as soon as he could do so without causing comment.
Ellen and Lucy looked at each other and smiled secretly and then opened the cardboard box they had brought. Lucy lifted out a tray carefully covered in plastic wrap and Ellen took out a handful of stiff cardboard paper on popsicle sticks. "Fans," she said proudly, passing them out. "I made them. For when it gets too hot."
Everyone took one and looked at it and tried it out. "Ohhhh - so breezy," said Ingrid.
Snap! Sam had waved his so energetically the popsicle stick broke where it was attached to the fan. Everyone went silent and everyone, except Piya who kept her head down, stared at the paper bag mask that was Sam. Joshua could see into the mask because Sam was closest to him and he could see the tears so he quickly got up and said, "Whoops, too much electricity. I'll fix it in a jiff." He took the fan from Sam and disappeared out the door, leaving the door open.
Bill was annoyed at Sam - why wasn't he more careful and as his mother often asked him, what did he expect to happen if he did that.
They all listened as Joshua skipped down the stairs and went across the yard and into his house calling, "Mom."
Sniffly sounds came from Piya's bowed head. Sam reached up under his mask and brushed at his tears.
"Try these, our Mom made them," Lucy said, whipping the plastic off the tray of fancy sandwiches. She offered them to Sam first and he took one with pink and white filling like a checkerboard.
"Yum," he managed to say around tears and a full mouth.
The rest were trying out the pretty sandwiches when Joshua came back, the fan all fixed, and gave it to Sam. Then he also took some sandwiches. They were awfully piddly, he thought, but they did look nice.
"What did you bring, Piya?" asked Ingrid.
"Oh, I forgot." She was all cheerful again. She reached in the pocket of her skirt and brought out a small blue book. "Shorthand. I'm learning. So I can keep the minutes faster."
Everyone stared at her. Joshua stared so hard he forgot to blink.
"We don't have to have minutes..." he began.
"But I like to keep the minutes," Piya explained. "I just need to write faster. And I'm not going to try to write all our names all the time - I've made up abrif, aberif - "
"Abbreviations?"
"Yes. Like Js for Joshua and Jn for John and Ig for Ingrid. And I don't have to write every word. And lines and things mean words. I can do 'dear' and 'the' already. My aunt told me all about it."
"You have an aunt who's a secretary too?" Bill wanted to know.
"No, this is my aunt the doctor. She learned it for when she is writing up patients' notes."
Sam gave a huge hiccup and everyone laughed. "I'm not going to even try to record that!" said Piya, giggling.
Bill brought out an item from the crumbled paper bag he was holding. It was a stick about a foot long with a sort of knob on one end and some natural markings along the side. It was smooth and highly polished. "I found this and I made it all shiny. It's a talking stick. My Mom told me all about them."
"It TALKS?" Sam shouted. "How?"
"No, it's not like that. When someone is talking they hold this and it means no one can interrupt until the person who is speaking is finished. I thought our meetings would be better if we didn't always try to talk at once or argue over whose turn it is to talk or have to have Joshua bang on his gravel so much."
"Gavel," said Lucy, under her breath. "Will he ever get it right."
"Or threaten to pound us," Sam shouted.
"That's a great idea," Ellen was saying.
"Your Mom knows everything about everything," Ingrid was saying.
Joshua reached out and took the talking stick from Bill. He held it up in front of him until everyone noticed and stopped talking.
"I declare the new, revised meeting of Joshua and his Gang officially opened," he said and tossed the stick back to Bill who caught it with a "Whoooopdeeedoooo!" as they both reached for another sandwich.
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