Summer of the War

by Gloria Whelan

  So the nursemaid who broke her arm and the strict housekeepers were a lot better than living with us. Of course Carrie shouldn’t have read her father’s letters, but hadn’t I done the same thing?

  I had tried all the dresses on and Carrie was paying more attention to the storm. I couldn’t believe that this was the same girl who claimed to like dangerous things and said she wouldn’t be afraid of the bombs in England. The rain battered the windows. Lightning lit the sky, followed seconds later by thunder, and Carrie was folding herself up on the bed again. I felt sorry for her in a way I hadn’t before.

  Just then Emily burst into the room, a comb in one hand, a mirror in the other.

  “Look, Carrie, the lemon juice must be working.” Before the storm had come, Emily had been sitting in the sun with lemon juice on her hair hoping she would turn blond. “I’m sure there’s the beginning of a lighter streak.” She looked at Carrie. “Are you sick?”

  Carrie sat up. “No, I’m fine.” She tried a thin smile. She had let me see how frightened she was, but she wouldn’t let Emily see. Emily’s admiration was important to her. Emily looked up to Carrie, and Carrie wasn’t going to let her down.

  Suddenly Carrie stood up. She walked quickly to the closet and, pushing aside the other dresses, pulled out the dress her father had bought for her at Galeries Lafayette. She looked at it for a minute and then quickly handed it to Emily.

  “Here—it’s too small for me. You can have it.”

  Emily stared at the organdy dress, unable to believe it was hers. “Look, Belle,” she said, “it’s got a French label. It’s from Paris!”

  Six

  For the next few days Carrie kept her distance from me. I think she was ashamed of having let me see how scared she had been of the storm. Emily shadowed her just like Polo trailed after Nancy. Emily, with her lemon juice and her pageboy and headband, her nail polish and her garbling of French words picked up from Carrie, was a smaller edition of Carrie.

  Nancy was too busy with her own project to pay much attention to Carrie. Nancy had discovered heart-shaped tracks along the beach. From time to time a deer would swim over to the island. Nancy was putting out apple peels and corn to keep the animal on the island. After exploring the beach each morning, she would run into the house to announce, “It’s still here!” She was so excited, you’d think it was a unicorn.

  Only Tommy said anything about Emily’s imitating Carrie. I heard him tell Emily, “You’re just like a mockingbird. They spend all their time sounding like some other bird, so you never get to hear their own song, and their own songs are nicer than the songs of the birds they imitate.”

  I thought that was a compliment, but it made Emily angry.

  “That’s how much you know. You just don’t appreciate elegance when it’s right in front of you.”

  Eventually Emily might have tired of copying Carrie and gone back to being herself, but it happened faster than any of us could have guessed. It was one of those summer mornings when everything looks like it was poured out of a milk bottle. The water was a pale whitish blue. The sky was full of curdled white clouds. The freakish weather made me restless, so I was relieved when Grandma handed me my weekly list of things to get in Birch Bay. Carrie quickly volunteered to go with me. She took a long time to get ready. I guessed she hoped to run into Ned. Ned had come by nearly every night to take Carrie sailing. “She’s terrific at crewing,” he told me one evening when I was fishing off the dock and he was waiting for Carrie to join him. “When she was little, she used to go sailing with her dad off the coast of France. The Germans are there now.” I had refused his invitations so many times, Ned no longer asked me if I wanted to go sailing with them.

  I suppose I was jealous, so that afternoon when we were heading for the mainland, I took pleasure in waiting until after Carrie had done all her primping to mention casually that since it was one of the days Mrs. Norkin wasn’t working for us, it would be Mrs. Norkin and not Ned who would be minding the vegetable and flower stand. “Ned probably will be off with his father guiding some fishermen.” Carrie just shrugged.

  As we anchored the boat, Carrie said, “I’ve got an errand in town. I’ll meet you at the Norkins’.”

  By now the sun had burned off the clouds. It was July-hot out. Even walking the short distance down the main road to the Norkins’ farm, I felt my damp shirt clinging to my back. In the winter when the city was all gray skies and wet slushy snow, I would dream of July days like this. The fields were gold with yellow mustard and the roadside blue with chicory. In the distance I could make out the Norkins’ white farmhouse and red barn. The martins were swooping in and out of the holes in Mr. Norkin’s purple martin house. When I got a little closer, I could see Mrs. Norkin fussing over her produce. She was particular about how the vegetables and flowers were displayed. There were freshly picked bouquets of cornflowers, marigolds, and sweet peas. Even the piles of beans and peas and lettuce were like paintings.

  The minute she saw me, she called out. “Belle, I just baked some peanut butter cookies. They’re your favorite.”

  I stood munching my second cookie while Mrs. Norkin filled one of the used grocery store bags she saved with lettuce and radishes and three jars of her strawberry jam that was Grandpa’s favorite.

  “Where’s your cousin today?” she asked.

  “She’ll be along. She stopped in town.”

  “That girl is a pretty enough thing, but she thinks we’re all hicks.”

  It was like Mrs. Norkin to say what was on her mind. I felt I had to stick up for Carrie. She was family. “Oh, no,” I said. “I think everything’s just different for her.”

  Mrs. Norkin raised an eyebrow and, giving me one of the ironic looks she was famous for, said, “I hear she goes out sailing with Ned. I guess she’s not above a little slumming if he wears a pair of pants.”

  So that was what made her critical of Carrie. She didn’t like Carrie seeing Ned. Well, that was two of us.

  Carrie appeared down the road making her way toward us from town. When you see someone suddenly, you look at them differently because you haven’t gotten all your usual ideas together. Seen from a distance, Carrie’d lost her air of sophistication; she just looked like any girl. She was wearing a pair of my shorts and a shirt. For a minute I was confused. She looked like the cousin whom I had been expecting, the one I was going to be best friends with.

  Mrs. Norkin must have seen what I did. “I guess she’s just a kid,” Mrs. Norkin said. “If she spends enough time with your family, she’ll probably outgrow that fancy attitude.”

  I wasn’t so sure. It was our attitudes, not Carrie’s, that seemed to be changing.

  I saw Carrie had a package, but I didn’t think anything of it, guessing it would be lipstick or nail polish. She was on her best behavior, greeting Mrs. Norkin in a friendly way. She admired the bouquets on display, and I saw Mrs. Norkin unbend a little.

  “I’ve never seen such bluets,” Carrie said.

  “Those are cornflowers,” Mrs. Norkin corrected Carrie.

  “In France we call them bluets.”

  Mrs. Norkin’s back was up. “Well, this is America, so they’re cornflowers.”

  I felt a little sorry for Carrie. When we were settled in the runabout, I said, “I think bluets is a prettier name. I don’t know why Mrs. Norkin didn’t like it.”

  Carrie shrugged. “Like all the people around here, she’s une provinciale.”

  A fancy French word for hick. Mrs. Norkin was right about Carrie. I didn’t protest because I had let Carrie think I didn’t know French. When she had asked me if I spoke it, I shook my head, afraid of her laughing at the way I garbled French words.

  Carrie was in a good mood. Usually when I asked her about France, she shrugged and changed the subject, so I had lost any hope of discovering what it was like. I thought that wasn’t fair. Carrie had seen so much of the world, I didn’t see why she wouldn’t share it with me. This day she seemed eager to talk about France. It b
egan with Mrs. Norkin.

  “That woman,” Carrie said, “thinks her little market is so special. Maurice, the chef at the American embassy, would take me with him to Les Halles early in the morning while it was still dark. There were blocks and blocks of vegetable and fruit markets, the tiniest beans like green threads, truffles worth their weight in gold, and fraises de bois, wild strawberries, no larger than my little fingernail. Or we’d go to the fish market and buy eels and sole flat as a pancake and piles of mussels and oysters.”

  Eels and mussels and oysters sounded disgusting to me, but I wanted Carrie to keep talking about Paris, so I tried to look like nothing would make me happier than swallowing a squirming eel followed by a slimy oyster.

  “After we finished our shopping,” Carrie said, “Maurice would take me with him to a little café to have onion soup with all the other chefs. You wouldn’t believe who all would come and do their own shopping. The chef from the Ritz was actually there. Papa once took me to the Ritz for lunch. We ate in the garden room: cold lobster salad, and for dessert little chocolate soufflés. I’ve even had escargots, snails. Maurice said before you can eat the snails, you have to keep them inside the house and starve them for a couple of days, because they could have eaten something that wouldn’t poison them but might poison you.” When she saw the expression on my face, she laughed. “It isn’t really the snails that are so good, it’s the garlic and butter sauce they come with.” Her mouth turned down and her eyes got watery. “Of course with the war, that’s all gone. The Boche are in Paris now, and all the French are starving.”

  Carrie turned quiet. I couldn’t get her to tell me more about Paris. When I asked her if she would like to go back there to live after the war, she only shook her head. “I don’t know. It will all be so different. But of course if Papa goes, I must go, too.”

  I guided the runabout into its berth beside the dock. Before I could make the boat fast, Carrie scrambled onto the dock and ran up to the cottage. I saw Emily on the porch waiting for her. The screen door slammed shut, and the two of them disappeared up the stairway, giggling.

  They stayed upstairs for the rest of the morning. Tommy and Nancy had made up a game. They had to walk around the living room on the furniture without touching the floor. Polo was trying to follow them. I rescued the vases as they toppled off the tables.

  When Grandma called us for lunch, Carrie came down the stairs by herself, looking like I had never seen her look before, timid and defensive. She settled down on her chair keeping her head down.

  “Where is Emily?” Grandpa asked. “She knows it’s lunchtime.” Grandpa called up the stairway, “Young lady, we’re waiting for you.”

  Several minutes went by while we all looked hungrily at the sandwiches Grandma had made with lots of mayonnaise and thick slices of Mrs. Norkin’s bread and her watermelon pickles on the side. It was Grandpa’s rule that no one touched a bite until everyone was at the table.

  Finally Emily slipped into her chair. Her eyes were red and she was wearing a cotton sun hat with her hair tucked up into the hat.

  “Whatever is the matter, dear?” Grandma asked.

  Emily shook her head. Nothing we said could get her to say a word. She tore her sandwich into bits and nibbled on a pickle. We pretended everything was all right and talked with one another, but neither Emily nor Carrie said a word.

  As soon as lunch was over, Emily shot a furious glance at Carrie and ran outdoors. Carrie went up to our bedroom and shut the door. It was our time for reading. I took my book and set off after Emily. I knew her favorite place just as she knew mine. I headed for a grove of cedars not far from the cottage. For some reason the cedars had formed a kind of circle. Nancy called it a fairy ring and always checked it on the night of a full moon to see if there were any signs of fairies dancing. Inside the ring of trees was a small circle of grass where Emily liked to curl up and read, pleased to be so close to everyone but still invisible.

  I found her sobbing.

  “Em, what is it?” As I put my arms around her, her sun hat fell off. “Oh! Em!” Her hair was the brassy orange-yellow of an egg yolk. “What happened to you!”

  She was sobbing harder than ever. I could just make out her words. “She did it. I wanted blond hair like hers, and she said she would bleach it.”

  I knew now what Carrie had bought in Birch Bay. Bleach for Emily’s hair. “It will grow out,” I promised Emily.

  She wiped her eyes and snuffled. “It’ll take forever. It was awful when I looked in the mirror. It’s not me anymore. She’s taken me away. I hate her for doing that to me.”

  “Carrie didn’t mean it to turn out like that. She feels as bad as you do.”

  It was late afternoon before I could calm Emily down enough to get her into the cottage and up to her bedroom. When I brought Grandma up to see Emily, she was horrified.

  “That was a thoughtless thing for Carrie to do,” Grandma said. “She’s older than Emily and should have known better.” It was the first criticism of Carrie I had heard Grandma make.

  She tried to comfort Emily. “We’ll have it cut short, dear, and by the time the summer is over, it’ll be mostly grown out.”

  Emily refused to go into Birch Bay to the barbershop. Instead she let Grandpa cut it.

  “Nothing to it,” he said. “I used to help shear the sheep on the farm when I was a boy.” He tried to make a joke out of it, but I could see he was angry with Carrie.

  “You were very foolish, Carrie,” he told her.

  This time Carrie didn’t answer back. She stood there rigid and silent, as if at the least movement she would break apart. Later I found her in our room looking miserable. “No matter what I do,” she said, “it’s the wrong thing. Emily begged me to bleach her hair. I thought I was doing her a favor. She was the only one of you who liked me, and now she hates me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you—she’s just disappointed. She’ll get over it. And as for her being the only one of us who likes you, that’s not true. We all like you. Just give us a chance.” I took a deep breath. “I like you. Honest.”

  Carrie gave me a searching look. I have to admit I’m not too good at hiding my feelings, but at that moment, if I didn’t exactly like Carrie, I felt sorry for her. I guess that was enough for her, because she gave me a weak smile.

  Emily kept to herself, curled up on the porch swing with a book or hidden away in the birch circle. We all tried not to look at her hair, pretending we had just met one another and were showing off how polite we were.

  Tommy couldn’t stand the gloom that had settled over everyone. The second day in the middle of lunch he said in a loud voice, “I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. Goldfinches are bright yellow all summer, and then in the fall they turn a brownish green.”

  We all stared at him. Only Tommy would compare Emily to a goldfinch. I couldn’t keep a straight face. Grandma and Grandpa started to laugh.

  Emily glowered at Tommy. “I’m not a goldfinch,” she said. A minute later she was smiling. Suddenly all the tension was gone. We knew one day this would just be the summer Carrie bleached Emily’s hair and it would be a family joke, something to make us all laugh. We were back together again, and even Carrie smiled.

  Seven

  July smothered us. It was hot every day, and at night the bedroom curtains never stirred. Emily, Nancy, and Polo spent nights in the upstairs sleeping porch. Tommy slept in the porch downstairs. Carrie tossed restlessly in her bed.

  Our days were back to normal: early-morning dips in the lake, rebuilding the log cribs, reading in the afternoon, going along with Nancy’s schemes. As she usually did every summer after the first excitement of planting some flowers, Emily forgot about the garden. Without saying a word to anyone, Carrie took over. We all saw she was trying to make up for the damage she had done with the bleach. She was in the garden every afternoon on her knees, doing Emily’s job for her, pulling out weeds around the marigolds and lavender plants. The lavender plants were thriving in th
e poor soil, spreading out into a small hedge.

  Carrie never went swimming or helped with the stones. If she wasn’t sitting on the dock, her arms around her knees, staring out at the water, she kept to her room, reading her magazines, writing letters, lounging on her bed complaining about the heat. She might as well have been in some apartment in the middle of a city instead of on an island.

  At first I hadn’t paid any attention to the letters to her father. She wrote them in French and left them lying on the dresser. I was sure that when I had said I didn’t speak French, she had understood that to mean that I didn’t know French. My curiosity got the better of me. I didn’t exactly read the letters. I walked by the dresser as if the letters weren’t someone I planned to meet, but just ran into. Certain phrases caught my eye. “Je suis une prisonniere,” I’m a prisoner. “La cuisine est piteuse,” the food is pitiful. That wasn’t a big shock. Carrie had let us know how she felt about being with us and eating our pitiful food. Of course I looked to see what she thought of everyone. Grandfather was l’ancien, the old one. Nancy was l’amusette, a toy. Ned was très agréable, very agreeable. I was une solitaire, a hermit, a recluse, or it could mean a lonely person, which wasn’t far off the mark. I had lost Ned, and Carrie didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me.

  Some things in the letters were sad. Carrie begged her father to let her come to London. She wrote that she would take care of him and would keep him from le péril, danger, and les bombes, the bombs. Grandmère, she said, had told her she was like her mother. “Est-ce que c’est vrai?” she asked her father. Is it true? My conscience got the better of me and I stopped reading the letters. Carrie’s letters to her father were the only way she could have a private conversation with him. I knew I would hate to have her listening in to what I said to my father in confidence. Anyhow, I didn’t see what I could do about what I discovered.