Cassie Binegar

by Patricia MacLachlan

  “Cass,” she answered softly. “Cass.”

  13

  Eyeglasses

  THE DAYS OF LATE SUMMER grew shorter and the light changed beneath the tablecloth. It was more dark and confining to Cassie, and she rarely stayed there for long. She paid less attention to conversations, hearing only snatches of talk.

  “A storm’s coming,” she heard her father say. “We’d better keep watch on that.”

  “Why Cor, you look lovely. New dress? New perfume? New feathers?”

  “Fourteen and three/I’ll have more tea.”

  The writer never spoke about his writing. But from time to time he would stretch out a booted foot beneath the tablecloth and touch Cassie. She would smile and imagine him smiling above the table.

  Gran worked on her painting daily, sometimes behind the big dune, out of the wind, sometimes behind the house. Once Cassie came upon her on the path to the writer’s cottage, working intently.

  “No peeks. No looking,” she insisted. “It’s not ready for lookers yet. Soon.”

  Cassie was curious. What could she be painting?

  “Patience,” called the watching writer, sitting on the front steps of his porch.

  Cassie smiled. The writer had very little patience himself, and lately the most noticeable sound she heard from his cottage was the wrenching sound of paper being ripped from the typewriter. It was a sound that made Cassie wince.

  “Any answers yet?” asked the writer, smiling back at her. Cassie noticed that one of his front teeth was slightly crooked. Funny that she’d never noticed that before.

  “Only some,” Cassie answered. “Only some.”

  “Well, you can’t ask for more than that, can you?” he said.

  “Yes I can,” said Cassie stubbornly, making him laugh.

  “Growing up,” said the writer, sounding like a very old man, “is a rough business. I remember someone once saying that it was like pedaling furiously, but only going backward.”

  Cassie smiled. “Gran says growing up is putting on different eyeglasses to look at life.”

  “Ah.” The writer liked that. “Your Gran is wise.” He peered at Cassie. “You know, you’re very much like your Gran.”

  Like Gran? Cassie was astonished. He nodded. “And you’ll be more like her when you stop hiding,” he added. “I saw you up the tree again yesterday.”

  Cassie’s face grew hot. To get back at him, she decided to ask about his writing. She had seen his light burning late the night before, and noticed the dark circles under his eyes.

  “What are you writing?”

  He frowned. “A short story.”

  “That must be easier to write than a novel. Shorter. Smaller,” said Cassie.

  The writer looked at her.

  “Is it easier to be a child than an adult?” he asked. “Because you are shorter? Smaller?”

  “There you go again,” Cassie accused him. “Answering a question with another question!”

  “It makes you think,” said the writer calmly.

  “But I really want to know,” said Cassie. “Why do you like to write short stories?”

  The writer leaned back against a porch post, long legs stretched out in front of him. “Well, I think a short story is like a poem. A small piece of something, full circle, there for a time, then not there.”

  “Like catching snow,” said Cassie thoughtfully.

  “Catching snow?”

  Cassie nodded. “Gran says that life is filled with small perfect moments that are only there for a short time. And then gone. Like catching snow on your hand.”

  The writer smiled. “Catching snow,” he murmured.

  “What do you think?” asked Cassie.

  “I think,” said the writer, “that catching snow is wonderful.” He grinned at her. “Just wonderful.”

  “Well, at least you answered that question,” said Cassie, smiling back at him. She ran off to visit Uncle Hat, looking back only once to see the writer looking after her, still smiling.

  Uncle Hat sat out on the hill with his telescope, watching a flock of birds on the water. His orange hat looked fluorescent, and Cassie watched him for a while before climbing up to sit next to him.

  “What do you see?” she asked, shading her eyes, looking at the small dots bobbing on the water.

  Uncle Hat didn’t answer.

  Cassie looked sideways and smiled. All right, she’d play his game.

  “Four and three/What do you see?” she asked.

  “Cormorants,” said Hat promptly. “Out there. See, there’s one on the rock, standing with his wings out.” He moved so Cassie could look through the scope.

  “I’ve never seen those before!” exclaimed Cassie indignantly. She watched a long-necked dark bird stand, beak up, to air out its wings.

  “Maybe you never looked before,” said Hat.

  Cassie looked quickly at him, but he was peering into the scope again, moving it slowly, scanning the sea.

  “Hat?”

  “Yo.”

  “What do you know about catching snow?”

  “Not too much,” said Hat, staring into the scope. “Mostly I know about counting birds. They’re there. Then they’re not there.”

  “But that’s like catching snow!” cried Cassie, grinning at him.

  “’S’at so,” commented Hat, not looking at her.

  There was a long silence.

  “Hat? How come you never showed me those birds before?”

  “Never asked,” said Hat. He turned his head to look at Cassie. “People who don’t ask questions usually think they got things all figured out. They think they know all the answers.”

  Cassie, stung a bit, moved down from the hill and stood up.

  “You’re not talking in rhymes,” she accused him.

  “Nope,” said Hat, smiling at Cassie. “Sometimes I don’t have to.”

  Cassie turned to leave, then heard his thin voice call after her.

  “Everyone has his own way of hiding, Cassie. Twelve and two/The same with you.”

  Margaret Mary had covered herself, all except her head, in sand.

  “Terribly glad you’re here, Cass,” she said, looking up at Cassie. “I’m about to depart this world, but before I do I wish to say good-bye to a good friend, Cassandra Binegar, and will her my favorite rosemary plant, named Hair Ball.”

  Cassie laughed. Margaret Mary named everything. She had once named a bandage she’d worn on her toe for a week. She probably even named her socks.

  “Any last words before I cover my face with sand?”

  Cassie sat down next to Margaret Mary’s sand body.

  “Margaret Mary, have you ever caught snow?”

  Margaret Mary squinted her eyes, looking thoughtful. “Never seen much snow, actually.” She moved her arms back and forth through the sand, making angels. “But in England we have lots of fog. Does fog count, Cass?” Margaret Mary stood up, the sand falling away from her like water, and they began walking up the dunes to Margaret Mary’s house.

  Cassie thought about fog. It came from somewhere, going nowhere. Like snow. Cassie stopped and turned around abruptly with a new thought. Like the sea!

  “I don’t know,” she said, gazing out over the dunes and the water. “But I am willing to bet, Margaret Mary, that fog counts.”

  Looking through the eyeglasses of others, thought Cassie. She thought of her father, running from a taxi through the crowds to buy violets. She thought of Uncle Hat, sometimes rhyming, sometimes not. Coralinda wearing feathers, but changing before her eyes, becoming beautiful.

  They reached Margaret Mary’s yard, Cassie trailing her fingers along the leaves of the privet hedge. She noticed that Margaret Mary’s mother had not yet won her battle with the wild honeysuckle, the shoots beginning to tangle around the bottom of the hedge. At the front door, Margaret Mary bent down to pull at some weeds around bright flowers.

  “Margaret Mary!” Cassie knelt, touching the flowers. “These flowers are real!”


  Margaret Mary grinned at Cassie.

  “Marigolds,” she said proudly. “I grew them from seeds.”

  “But why?” asked Cassie.

  Margaret Mary knelt beside her. She sat back on her heels and looked at her plants.

  “Well,” she began, “they grow, for one thing. They’ll grow and fill in all the spaces here. And they’ll change. New blooms. They won’t always look the same.”

  Cassie and Margaret Mary stared at each other for a moment, then Cassie smiled.

  “Splendid,” she announced, sounding just like Margaret Mary. “That’s splendid.”

  She left Margaret Mary, happily weeding, and went inside Margaret Mary’s house to wash her hands. The bathroom was dark and quiet and clean and perfect. Smiling at herself in the mirror, Cassie washed her hands, leaving a slight smudge of dirt on the white porcelain. She did not rinse it off. She opened the clothes hamper and draped the bottom half of a pair of men’s pajamas over the side.

  “It’s only the outside,” she whispered, echoing Margaret Mary’s words from a long time ago. Then she shut the door firmly and went outside to think about fog and snow and the sea.

  14

  The Lavender Dress

  THE SKY WAS STARLESS when Cassie went to bed, and during the night the wind rose. A shutter banged against the house, waking Cassie, and she lay in bed, eyes open, listening to the roar of the waves beyond the inlet. At last she slept, and when she woke she could see morning light around the edges of the window shade. She heard the noises of her family downstairs and she got up, pulling her old blue corduroy robe around her, and went down to the kitchen.

  “Cassie!” Her father reached out for her and pulled her close, pushing her nose into his flannel shirt. “Why up so early? It’s no good of a day.”

  Cassie untangled herself from her father’s arms and the smells of his pipe and the hall closet.

  “Are you fishing today?” Cassie peered out the window anxiously. “It’s too stormy.”

  James looked up from a tangle of lines and smiled at her.

  “It’s nice,” he answered. “Just right.”

  Cassie sighed and sat down as John Thomas rumpled her hair. She watched her mother pour coffee into her father’s thermos. She wore her husband’s nightshirt and she looked like a colt, mostly long tan legs and unbrushed hair like a mane.

  “Is your lunch packed?” Cassie’s mother smiled at Cassie’s father. In answer, he pulled her close and they kissed. Cassie used to frown when they kissed, or count how long each kiss lasted, but suddenly she caught James’s eye and they smiled at each other across the table.

  “You know, Cass, I almost forgot,” said James, searching through his bait box. “I have something for you. From down under.”

  Cassie smiled. Down under. How many times had James found treasures from the sea. Down under, he called it. Once a brass buckle, green from the sea. Another time an old black pointed shoe from long ago, so soft that the leather fell away from the shoe when it was touched.

  “Look. Here it is,” James called softly, his hand held out. “It’s for you. Good luck.”

  Cassie moved closer to James and looked at what he held in his hand. It was a small gold ring, the carving on the sides worn smooth by the water. Cassie turned it over in her hand, and the light from the lamp caught the gold.

  “Guess how it came up?” whispered James.

  “How?”

  “In some seaweed tangled in a lobster pot,” said James, smiling. “Do you suppose the lobster was married?”

  Cassie turned the ring over, pausing for a moment, as always, to mourn for the lobster who would be someone’s dinner. She sighed, and put the ring on her smallest finger. It fit perfectly.

  “A good luck sign from the sea for Cassie Binegar,” said James, looking pleased. “From down under.”

  Cassie frowned. “But what about you? Maybe it was a sign for you, James?” She looked up to see James shaking his head.

  “No, Cass. The ring fits you. It’s yours. I’ll find something else for good luck.”

  Cassie knew almost all fishermen had good luck pieces. John Thomas carried an old coin in his pocket. Cassie’s father carried a leather pouch with a lock of his wife’s hair. One old fisherman had always taken his small dog fishing. When the dog had died, peacefully, of old age and many hours at sea, the fisherman had never fished again.

  “Come,” Cassie’s father called to her brothers. “It’s getting late.”

  James picked up the metal box; John Thomas carried extra line. Cassie looked down at the ring on her finger. Then she looked out at the sea, the gray now curling with white caps.

  “Wait!” Her brothers and her father turned at the door. “Don’t go.”

  Her father smiled. “Hey, Cass. We’ve been out in worse.”

  The wind came in a rush with the rain, and they turned to run to the truck.

  “Wait.” Cassie’s hand found the old doll, the girl doll, in her pocket. She took it out and handed it to James.

  “Good luck sign. For you,” she said.

  James smiled, turning it over in his hand, then putting it in his pocket. “Cassie Binegar goes to sea,” he said, reaching out to hug her. She didn’t pull away.

  They left then, the door closing with a sudden rush of the wind, leaving Cassie and her mother in the kitchen. Cassie’s mother went to the window and watched as the truck started up and wound its way down the hill. Cassie leaned against the kitchen door and watched her mother, noticing for the first time the small lines on her forehead, on the sides of her mouth. She worries too, thought Cassie suddenly. Her mother stood on tiptoes, following the truck with her eyes.

  She waved, a short quick movement, then turned and smiled self-consciously when she saw Cassie.

  “They never see me wave,” she explained. “But I do it every day anyway.”

  Cassie nodded. “I didn’t know you worried. It doesn’t show.”

  “I guess, Cass, that’s because you can’t see what goes on inside my head.” She put her arm around Cassie. “It’s private.”

  Private. Something stirred inside Cassie. Something to remember. To take note of. Cassie walked upstairs to dress. Private. Inside my head. Cassie walked into the bathroom and read the writing on the sheet.

  Each of us has a space of his own. We carry it around as close as skin, as private as our dreams. What makes you think you don’t have your own, too?

  Cassie grinned suddenly. She picked up the pencil and wrote.

  I do have my own space.

  Then underneath Cassie drew a small picture, rather rough but still recognizable. She leaned back and smiled at it as if it were a masterpiece. It was a pair of eyeglasses.

  “Gran.”

  Cassie had gone to the attic to look for the kaleidoscope. And there was Gran, going through a trunk of clothes, her hair in a tumbled cloud around her head.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Cassie, settling by Gran.

  Gran sat back. “A dress. A lavender dress. I need it for my painting. Want to help?”

  “What kind of dress?” asked Cassie. The rain blew in a sudden burst against the attic roof, the sound loud and menacing. Gran and Cassie looked at each other.

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “Gone to check for roof leaks on the cottages,” said Cassie. “What kind of dress?” she repeated.

  “Special,” said Gran, smiling mysteriously. “Look, here’s your kaleidoscope.” She handed it to Cassie. “Ah, here it is.” Gran bent down and picked up a large box. Slowly, she took off the cover and parted the yellowed tissue paper inside. She stared at it for so long that Cassie finally leaned over and looked in.

  “Lavender,” said Cassie softly. Lavender, the same color as the doll in Cassie’s dollhouse.

  “My wedding dress,” said Gran. “And your mother’s. Two weddings this dress has seen.” She looked at Cassie. “So far.” She took it out of the box and stood up, slowly unfolding the dress. S
he walked over to the long mirror propped in the corner and held it in front of her. It was the soft color of old glass, with a high neck and long sleeves with ivory lace edgings that fell away in folds. It reached Gran’s feet.

  There was a sound behind Gran and Cassie, and they turned to see Cassie’s mother, her hair streaming, her face wet with rain. She smiled.

  “You found it. Good.” She climbed up the stairs and sat, rolling the long hanks of hair between her hands, trying to dry them. “No leaks, thank goodness.”

  Gran turned from the mirror. “Do a favor for an old woman,” she said to Cassie’s mother. “Try it on.”

  Cassie’s mother laughed. “Me? Now, like this?”

  “Go on,” said Cassie. “Do it. Try it on.”

  Her mother shrugged and got up, stripping off her rain gear and her wet sweater and jeans. Shivering a bit in the attic cold, she stood, while Gran settled the dress over her head, zipping up the back.

  “There,” said Gran. “Now, turn around.” She shouldn’t have looked so beautiful, thought Cassie, with only the bare light overhead and her hair still wet and beginning to curl. But she did. She looked like a mermaid, come from the sea to try on a human dress. Whose eyeglasses am I looking through now? thought Cassie, as the three of them—Gran, Cassie’s mother, and Cassie—stood as if enchanted by a long lavender dress.

  15

  The Storm

  DOWN FROM THE ATTIC, Cassie looked out the windows, watching Gran carry the carefully plastic-wrapped dress to her cottage. Cassie had thought the sky couldn’t grow darker, but it had. The sand blew and there were no birds flying.

  “Where are the birds?” Cassie whispered to Hat. He stood at the kitchen window in his foul-weather gear, jacket and pants, a blue knitted hat under his rain hood.

  “Taken cover,” he said, looking through the binoculars. “When the wind is this bad the birds find somewhere safe.”

  “Do you see any boats?” asked Cassie, straining to see.

  “No boats,” answered Hat. Then he looked down at her. “Cass, are you worried? About your brothers and your father?”

  “No,” said Cassie. “Yes,” she said softly. She was worried. The memory of Papa in the bed, calling to her, had intruded all day. Why was it here now? She had, at last, done the right thing. She had given the doll to James for good luck. To keep him safe. To keep things from changing. Even though she had not told Papa she was sorry about yelling, she had given James the doll. Didn’t that make up for it at all?