I didn’t want to leave Carrie alone, so I had stopped going to the storm side of the island. Instead, on the hot August afternoons we would settle down on the dock and silently watch the gulls taking off and landing on Gull Rock. Sometimes we would walk the circle that was the island. We didn’t even walk side by side but one behind the other, our bare feet sometimes on the hot sand and sometimes in the cool water. There were special places where without any words we both stopped for a few minutes. One place was a little stream that trickled into the lake, where each day we checked to see how large the tadpoles were getting to be. There was another place where horsetails grew. You could pull the tubes of grass apart and put them back together like a puzzle. For me it was just the useless, dumb activity that made summer so special. The serious way Carrie went at it made me think she was relieved to find something that could be pulled apart and put back together.
Sometimes Carrie would ask me about our house and our neighborhood and our school. Things had changed. Instead of the questions I had asked about Paris, Carrie was asking about the place that would be her new home. It must have seemed as exotic and distant to her as France seemed to me.
She said, “I’ve never had a backyard,” and “I never learned to ride a bike.” The question she asked most often was “What do you do?” as if she were trying to figure out how she was going to survive in some barren desert.
It was a scorching August day. We had on our bathing suits, but even so, I could feel sweat running down between my shoulder blades. The beach was too hot to walk on, and we splashed along on the scallops of wet sand. The air shimmered in the heat as if someone were shaking it. The water was as calm as a sheet of blue construction paper. Even the gulls seemed to drop down rather than land on Gull Rock, as if it were too much trouble to flap their wings. On some crazy impulse I stopped to pick up a gull feather and tucked it in Carrie’s hair. She grinned at me. It was the same grin she had given the chocolate soufflé. “Race you to Gull Rock and back,” she said.
She plunged into the water. I was right behind her, struggling to keep up. By the time I threw myself down beside her on the sand, I was panting.
“Where did you learn to swim?” I asked.
“Every August, to get away from the Paris heat, Papa and I used to go to Deauville on the northwest coast of France. It’s right on the sea. Papa said if I was going to swim in the ocean, I had to be a good swimmer. He taught me. He would stand a little way out and I would swim to him. Then he stood farther out. That day when I heard he had died, I think I was swimming out to him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back.”
It was the first time since the day she’d heard of his death that she had mentioned her father. I didn’t know what to say. Nothing must have been enough, for Carrie kept right on talking about her father.
“They have a famous racetrack there. We’d stay for the Grand Prix de Deauville. It was always held the fourth Sunday in August. Everyone got all dressed up. The men wore top hats. Papa looked so elegant in his morning coat.” She was silent for a minute. “Remember that lilac organdy dress that Papa bought me at the Galeries Lafayette, the one I gave Emily? It was for the Grand Prix.”
Carrie was actually talking with me as if I weren’t the enemy.
“Sometimes Papa and I would go sailing.” She gave me a sidewise glance. “How come Ned never comes by in his sailboat anymore?”
I couldn’t say that he had been hurt by the way she had snubbed him, so I made an excuse. “I think he goes out fishing with his dad,” I said. “With meat rationing people are eating a lot of fish. Mr. Norkin is sending most of his catch downstate.”
Carrie was piling the warm sand on her legs and feet. “He’d come by if you asked him to,” she said.
Part of me thought it would be something I could do for Carrie, something to make up for her losing her father. Part of me didn’t want to do it. Until Carrie had come, Ned had been my friend. The evenings we sailed together were the best part of the summer. I was never uncomfortable with him; we could tell each other anything. Now we were practically strangers and I was about to hand him over to Carrie. I thought it was like the night Nancy had lent Polo to Carrie. The comparison between Ned and Polo was funny, but I couldn’t smile.
The next day Grandpa gave me letters to take to the mainland to mail and Grandma gave me a list of things to buy at the Norkins’ vegetable stand. It was Mrs. Norkin’s day to be at our cottage, so I knew I would find Ned minding the stand. I made some excuse and left without Carrie. I knew there would be no way I could ask Ned with Carrie standing next to me.
I found Ned sitting under the shade of an apple tree, the apples still small and green. He was reading a Detroit newspaper, which got to Birch Bay a day late. He grinned at me over the paper. “Our air force is giving the Germans a taste of their own medicine.” He must have noticed I was thinking hard about something else. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
I picked up one of the brown paper bags Mrs. Norkin saved from her grocery shopping and began filling it with pale-yellow butter beans. They were the skinny ones that you hardly had to cook.
“Come on, Belle, you’re not worried about beans. What’s up?”
“You never come by after dinner,” I said, trying not to sound whiny.
He got up and started moving things around on the vegetable stand. Putting the broccoli where the cauliflower was and the cauliflower where the broccoli had been. “You guys are always busy,” he said. After a minute he offered, “I could come by tonight and take you sailing.”
I could have said yes, and Ned and I would have been back like we were, but I didn’t. I had come for something else. “You could take Carrie out sailing.”
Ned gave me a long look. “I don’t think she’s interested in coming sailing with me.”
“She wants to go sailing with you. She asked why you didn’t come around anymore.”
“She’s not stupid. She should know the answer to that. My dad told me all about what happened when she was trying to pick up Brad—”
“That’s all over with,” I cut in. “She’s been really depressed since her father died.”
“I’m sorry, but what am I supposed to do about it?” He smiled. “You’ve put enough beans in that bag to feed a hundred people.”
I started pulling the beans out. “She’s really unhappy, Ned. I think it would do her good to get away from the island with you for a couple of hours. Her dad used to take her sailing.”
“So I’m supposed to be Papa?” he said. “Hey, you’ll wear out the beans.” He took the bag out of my hands and weighed the beans that were left. “Will you come along?”
I shook my head. “I think Carrie gets enough of me, enough of all of us, on the island.”
“If you ask me, you’re too good for her. I think the girl is confused. She could learn something from you and your family.”
I was amazed. I had never occurred to me that Ned was thinking about our family, judging us. “I don’t think Carrie sees it that way.” I held out a dollar bill.
Ned handed me the change. “Like I said, she’s confused.”
Twelve
Grandma had long since turned the calendar in the kitchen from July’s picture of a cornfield to August’s picture of farmers in a field cutting wheat. On the mainland the hard red blackberries were a ripe, soft purple. Mrs. Norkin brought us quarts and quarts of berries to sprinkle over our cereal and bake into pies. Birdsong disappeared. The silence in the trees was as quick as lifting a needle from a phonograph record.
“They don’t sing much after the baby birds have flown,” Tommy explained. “The birds aren’t territorial anymore.” He grinned, proud of using a big word.
Mom and Dad sent Carrie pictures of our house and the front and back yards. “So you’ll know where you’ll be living,” Mom wrote Carrie. “We are looking forward to having you with us.” The pictures were so familiar to me, it was hard to believe they were new to Carrie. I looked to see what she would see. W
ould she notice the path into the backyard tangle of shrubbery where Nancy put out lettuce for the rabbits or the bird feeder Tommy had made from a tomato can? Dad had taken a picture of the whole family by setting the camera and then running to stand beside us. You could see he looked more hurried than the rest of us. Was Carrie trying to imagine herself in the picture?
She glanced at the snapshots and tossed them onto the dresser as if they were postcards of a country she had no interest in visiting.
After I talked with him, Ned came by the next night. Carrie hurried out to meet him, never bothering to ask if I wanted to come sailing with them. I stood on the dock and watched Ned’s sailboat skimming over the water, surprised at how lonely I felt with my whole family around me. I wondered if that was how Carrie felt, lonely with all of us around her.
The next night, although Carrie stood out on the dock waiting, Ned didn’t show up. He didn’t appear the night after that either. When I asked Carrie if she wanted to go over to the mainland with me to do some errands, she shook her head.
“No point. It’s too depressing. There’s nothing there.”
I was sure something had happened, and later when I saw Ned going into the hardware store, I waited for him. He was inside a long time, long enough for me to decide to leave and then to change my mind a hundred times. He frowned when he saw me.
“What are you doing here? You’ve caused me enough trouble!”
“I was waiting for you, and what do you mean, caused you trouble?”
Ned looked around him. “Come on over here.” He led me toward a park bench the city fathers had set up in memory of something or other.
“Do you know what that crazy cousin of yours wanted me to do?”
“Carrie?” I just looked at him, my mouth open. I couldn’t guess what he was going to say, but I was sure I wouldn’t like it.
“Yes, Carrie. She wanted me to elope with her. She said we should get married and go to New York or Washington to live. She said she could get some money from her father’s estate. I’m only seventeen and she’s only fifteen. She said we could lie about our ages. No one would believe her, and even if they did, I’d end up behind bars instead of in the Navy.”
I believed every word he said. It sounded just like Carrie. I was so angry, I could have slapped her. We had done everything we could for her. I had even given her Ned, and she’d hatched a wild scheme that would have gotten Ned into trouble. “Does your mother know?” I asked.
“Do you think I’m out of my head? My folks would have a fit. You’re the only one I’ve told, and don’t you tell anyone. Now I’ve got to get back. Dad’s waiting for some bolts.” He suddenly smiled at me. “If you want to go out sailing, let me know, but I’m keeping clear of your crazy cousin.”
On the way back I tried to think what to do. Summer was coming to an end. In a couple of weeks I’d be back in the city wearing shoes and doing homework. Not only would we have to go back home, but this year we would take Carrie with us. We were stuck with her forever. If it had been anyone except Ned, I would have loved to see her elope and run off to New York.
I found Carrie in our room. She looked at me. “Ned told you, didn’t he? It’s written all over your face. You can save the lecture. I don’t care.”
I was furious. “You don’t care about anything. You certainly don’t care about Ned. You would have let him ruin his whole life just so you could get away from here. Why? We’ve gone out of our way to do everything we could think of for you.”
Carrie flung the magazine she had been reading onto the floor. “That’s not what I want. I don’t want to be fussed over like a sick animal that has to be humored and cheered up. Everybody treats me like some bizarre creature who’s dropped out of the sky. You won’t let me be a member of your family unless I turn into one of you, and I’d rather die.”
I ran out of the room. I couldn’t go downstairs. My face was streaked with tears. I didn’t want anyone to see me. Grandpa and Grandma were in the living room, Tommy and Emily in the yard. I turned and stumbled up the stairs to the attic. I heard our bedroom door open. Carrie followed me up the stairs.
I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to see anyone. I wanted to figure things out. Something Carrie said had stung. Maybe it was true. Maybe we had tried too hard to make her be like us. I wondered if the island kept things out as well as keeping things in.
Carrie was at the top of the attic stairway. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scream at you.” She was crying, too. “I guess I thought if I could run away, I could run away from what happened to Papa. I just didn’t want to think about it anymore. I didn’t mean to get Ned in trouble. Even if he had agreed, and I guess I knew he wouldn’t, I probably would never have done it.” She looked nervously around the attic. “What’s all this stuff?”
I felt my anger at Carrie petering out. I sighed and looked at the neatly labeled trunks and boxes that covered the attic floor. “Grandma and Grandpa never throw anything away.”
Carrie wandered around scanning the labels. She stopped at one of the trunks. “This trunk has my mother’s name on it,” Carrie said. “What’s it doing here?”
“Your mother spent all her summers on the island until she married your father.”
She seemed stunned.
“Do you want to open it?”
Carrie stood staring down at the trunk. “Papa never kept any of my mother’s things,” she said. “I think he was so upset when she died, he couldn’t bear to have anything of hers around. There was just her picture that he took wherever we went and a ring and some pearls he was saving for me.” She looked wary, as if she were afraid of what was inside the trunk. “You open it,” she said.
I had to fuss with the trunk’s catches to get them to work. When it was open, Carrie stood looking at it, a worried expression on her face, as if touching the trunk might cause it to disappear. After a minute she lifted out a dress. It was a typical twenties dress with a dropped waistline, a pleated skirt, and a sailor collar. Holding it up to herself, she looked at me, surprised and smiling. “It’s just my size. Do you think Grandma would let me have it?”
“Sure. It’s your mom. All those things probably belong to you.”
She began pulling out more dresses, mostly summer cottons but one party dress of pale-blue chiffon. There was an autograph book, each page scrawled with verses and messages. When a dried rose pressed between two pages shattered into pieces, Carrie looked devastated. She hastily put the book down. Beside it was a sketchbook. After what had happened with the rose, Carrie just looked at it, afraid to open it, but I was curious.
“What is it?” I asked.
Carrie lifted it carefully from the trunk. I peered over her shoulder. The words “My Island Garden” were neatly lettered on the cover, the letters decorated with twining ivy. On the first page was a water-color of a garden with hundreds of tiny flowers and the cottage in the background.
“It’s the garden out front,” Carrie said. Despite what I’d just said, I think it was the first time she really connected her mother with the island. I doubt it had ever occurred to her that her mother had spent her summers here just as we did.
The picture of the garden was divided into sections, and each section was labeled with the name of a flower. When Carrie turned the pages, you could see watercolors of the flowers, mostly wildflowers. The watercolors were delicately colored and showed the flowers and their leaves. Brightly colored butterflies hovered over the blossoms. “There were lots more flowers in the garden then than there are now,” Carrie said. She studied one of the pages. “Dutchman’s-breeches. What an odd name.”
“The flowers look like the trousers Dutchmen used to wear.”
“Look,” Carrie said. “Lavender. Just like I planted. It’s almost like my mother was telling me what to plant.” She gathered up her mother’s dresses and the sketchbook and ran down the stairs. I was right behind her, curious about what she was going to do.
Clutching every
thing to her, she rushed into the living room and confronted Grandma. “Can I have these?” she asked. “They’re my mother’s.”
Startled, Grandma looked from Carrie to the dresses and sketchbook. “Why, of course. If I had only thought, I would have given them to you long ago. But what will you do with them, dear?”
“I’ll wear the dresses, and I want to make the garden just like it was when my mother had it.”
Grandma frowned. “Those dresses are a little out of fashion, I’m afraid.”
“They’re just Carrie’s size,” I pleaded.
Grandma understood. “I think they would be fun to wear, Carrie. Just on the island, of course.”
Grandpa shook his head. “Restoring the garden would take a lot of hard work, Caroline. You’d never get it done in the couple of weeks we have left.”
Carrie’s eyes sent blue sparks in Grandpa’s direction. I knew she meant to have her way. There were waves of energy around her, as if any minute she would fly off in several directions. Grandpa must have felt it, too.
“Well, no harm in trying, I guess.” He buried his head in the newspaper. Carrie swept up the stairway. We could hear closet doors banging.
“She must be hanging those old clothes up,” Grandma said. “I can’t think what she wants with them. They’re from a different age.”
I thought I knew. In all the years since her mother had died, her arms around those dresses was as close as Carrie had come to her.
All afternoon Carrie studied her mother’s garden book. After dinner she hunted up a spade, marched out to the garden, and began digging.
“Grandma,” Emily wailed, “Carrie’s digging up my marigolds.” Planting lavender in the garden was one thing, digging up marigolds another.
From the window we could see Carrie plunging the spade into the soil as if she were after buried treasure, as if hunks of gold were just under the surface and would disappear if she didn’t hurry. The marigolds flew every which way.
Summer of the War Page 10