Ship of Dolls

by Shirley Parenteau

  For a moment, she thought of the care she had taken in measuring Emily Grace. But that reminded her of the closeness she had briefly shared with her grandparents, and there was no room in her heart for closeness. She crumpled the paper pattern, carried it to the stove, and dropped it onto the burning cloth.

  Grandma shoved the cast-​iron lid in place. “Go on to bed. Think about the importance of honesty.”

  Lexie ran up the stairs, slammed her door behind her, and hurled herself onto the bed, sobbing into Annie’s soft cloth body for the loss of the dress she had worked so hard to make. Even deeper sobs tore at her for the loss of the family closeness she had felt so briefly. “I should have told. Annie, I ruined everything!”

  She wouldn’t stay here. She would go to Mama. She would walk all the way to California. One step in front of the other for long enough would carry her anywhere.

  Maybe I’ll go to Japan with Emily Grace. They’ll be sorry then. Or maybe they won’t be. Maybe they’ll forget me and ask each other, “That girl who was here . . . What was her name? Do you remember?”

  Through the window, she saw a light go on in Jack’s room on the far side of the old tree. This is all Jack’s fault. He must have told Louise. How else could she know?

  Anger blazed again, and she slid off the bed and climbed through the window and onto the tree branch. She crawled along the branch and gathered a handful of twigs. When she had crept as close as she could to Jack’s window, she threw them, one after another.

  He raised the blind and shoved open the window. “What do you want?”

  “To tell you that you can be happy now. I’m paid back. Louise told her mother about the doll and she told Grandma and now Grandma hates me!”

  “Louise? How’d she know?”

  “How’d she know? You told her. Her mother said so. I heard her.”

  “You dumb Dora. I didn’t tell her. You oughta know me better than that.”

  “Then who did?”

  “Nobody. Louise probably heard us arguing after school that day. She’s a sneak. She was probably listening.”

  “If you knew that, you shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “You were the one who insisted on talking about the fight with Ollie. The whole story came out. Remember?”

  She did remember. And she knew he was right. He’d said she should be punished and she’d said she was and he’d said sewing a dress wasn’t punishment. Louise must have heard it all.

  Before she could say she was sorry for blaming him, Jack slammed down the window and closed the blind. Lexie reached for another twig, then changed her mind and crawled along the branch back to her room.

  She wanted to stay angry. She needed to stay angry, but slowly her earlier words to Annie spread through her. She’d been wrong to accuse Jack. And she should have told Grandma at once about the accident with the doll. Downstairs, she should have tried to explain instead of clamping the truth away just because she hurt inside.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe she could go down and apologize. Then she could start over and tell what happened from the beginning and why she couldn’t stop it once it got started and how Louise had taken it into her head that making a dress for Emily Grace was an honor.

  She tiptoed down the stairs, trying words in her head, pushing away any that tempted her to make things sound better for herself. She would tell it exactly the way it had happened. At the bottom of the stairs, she paused as she had when Grandma and Grandpa talked about the letter from Mama. They were talking now. About her.

  “You may be right.” Grandma sounded tired, making guilt stab into Lexie as she listened from the stairs. “I may have been too harsh, but she’s a smart child, growing up faster than we want to see. She needs guidance.”

  “She’ll receive guidance,” Grandpa said gently. Lexie pictured him rubbing Grandma’s hand the way he sometimes did when she was upset. “We must be sure to temper guidance with love, Sophie.”

  “Of course I love her,” Grandma exclaimed, sounding insulted. “But when I look at her, I see her mother and I think of the outlandish choices that woman has made. Look where those choices led her . . . . Singing in nightclubs, and who knows what goes on there.”

  “We won’t imagine what we don’t know,” Grandpa warned.

  Grandma sighed so loudly that the sound carried to Lexie on the stairs. “We know she insisted on buying a fancy motorcar that carried our son to his death.”

  Lexie couldn’t listen any longer. She ran back up the stairs, careful to make no sound. Grandma blamed Mama for Papa dying in the motorcar crash. That’s reason enough for Grandma to lock away tender feelings when she sees anything of Mama coming out in me.

  As she climbed onto her bed, Lexie felt more confused than before. Slowly, she let her body sink into the covers while she hugged Annie.

  Much later, a soft knock on her door startled her awake. She sat up, brushing her cheeks with her palms.

  “Lexie, honey?” Grandpa asked. “May I come in for a moment?”

  “Okay.” She swung her feet from the bed and sat up.

  Grandpa left the door open and settled into a chair near her. “I was just thinking, honey. Rain clouds and stormy moods take time to blow away, but sooner or later the sun always comes out.”

  Lexie looked into his troubled eyes, trying to understand what he meant.

  He leaned toward her, his hands on his knees. “She’ll get over her crossness, you know, your grandma.”

  Reaching behind her, Lexie pulled Annie onto her lap. “No. I don’t think she will.”

  “Grandma loves you,” Grandpa said. “We both do. But she’s a woman who sees things in black and white. And there’s bad blood between her and Eleanor Wilkins, has been for a long time.”

  Lexie hugged Annie closer. Grandma and Louise’s mama could fight it out in the middle of town, as long as they left her alone.

  Grandpa pushed one hand through his thinning hair. “Tonight, your grandma feels . . . Well, she feels a little of the way you’re feeling: betrayed, disappointed . . . pulling back to a safer place. It’s a big responsibility to raise a little girl. Sometimes the more you love her, the harder it is because you want so much for that girl to grow into a sensible and happy young woman.”

  “She made me burn the dress,” Lexie said into Annie, all the pain of that moment rushing back into her.

  “She was feeling proud of her granddaughter in front of her friends, especially Eleanor Wilkins,” Grandpa said. “Now she feels let down and maybe embarrassed. That’s a hard thing for her.”

  “It’s harder on me,” Lexie protested, but her voice sounded small. She took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to take Emily Grace from Miss Tompkins’s room. But I had to hold her. I had to know her, to know what to write in the letter that’s going with her. Because the best letter writer gets to go to San Francisco. And Mama’s there.”

  She took another deep breath before finishing in a rush. “And it was an accident because Miss Tompkins came back and Jack said to go down the fire escape and we did and I still had Emily Grace in one arm. So then I had to take her back to Miss Tompkins and say why I had her.”

  Grandpa leaned over to put one hand over hers, warm and comforting. “You told Miss Tompkins the truth. That wasn’t an easy thing to do.”

  “No. And Grandma was busy getting ready for her book ladies. And then . . . there just wasn’t another time to tell her.” Tears blurred her eyes. She stared down at Grandpa’s hand over hers. “And I guess Louise heard Jack and me talking about it and told her mother and now Grandma hates me.”

  “No, honey. We both love you. We always will. Nothing can change that.”

  There was never going to be a better time to ask the question that had been burning inside her for days. She couldn’t bottle it up anymore. “Did a letter come from Mama? Does she want me to go to her?”

  Grandpa’s hand tightened over hers almost as if he’d felt a stab of pain. “Honey, your mama doesn’t always th
ink things through. Sometimes the things we want just aren’t possible.”

  “But it is possible, Grandpa! I’ll be safe on a steamship. I won’t leave my cabin. Not until we get there. I promise!”

  He reached out to pat her shoulder. “You’re safe here. Believe me when I say we love you and want you with us. I’ll talk to Grandma. This . . . little storm will blow over. That’s my promise.”

  “But . . .”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Grandpa said, getting to his feet. “You get a good night’s sleep. Then Monday after school, you come by the bank. We’ll go next door for a dish of ice cream, just the two of us.”

  A ragged breath shook through Lexie. She wasn’t done asking questions, but they would have to wait. So she simply asked, “Chocolate?”

  Grandpa chuckled. “You can have all the chocolate ice cream you want. And after that, I have a friend I want you to meet. She may have a surprise for you.”

  He paused at the door, reminding her as he sometimes did of her papa. It was in the way he smiled with a sparkle in his eyes that spread over his face. “Things will look better tomorrow. That’s another promise. Good night, honey.”

  “Good night,” she answered softly. While his steps faded on the stairs, she sat with Annie and tried to think through everything that had happened. She had made a mistake to keep the truth to herself for so long. She would tell Grandma she realized that and was sorry she hadn’t explained sooner. Part of her rebelled at the thought of apologizing. Grandma said Mama hadn’t grown up right. She saw things she didn’t like about Mama when she looked at Lexie.

  “That’s not fair,” Lexie whispered to Annie. “She doesn’t give me a chance to be me.” But then she remembered Grandpa talking about it being hard to raise a girl, especially when you loved her. They didn’t know her very well. When they did, they would learn that she made good decisions. Most of the time.

  A sigh almost as heavy as Grandma’s made its way through her, and she decided not to worry about it anymore tonight. After changing into her nightgown, she pulled Annie close again. “I’ve never been inside the ice-​cream parlor,” she told the doll. “But I looked through the window one day. It has round tables, and when the door opened, I could smell sweet syrups.”

  Maybe she wouldn’t start walking to California just yet. At least not until after the ice cream and Grandpa’s surprise. And more questions about that letter she’d seen Grandma push into her apron pocket.

  When Lexie stepped into the ice-​cream parlor with Grandpa on Monday, every surface gleamed, inviting customers with chocolate-​ and strawberry-​colored paint. It was a magical place that made her mouth water with anticipation.

  Grandma had made oatmeal that morning with brown sugar on top with the milk. Lexie knew it was a way of saying she was sorry about last night. Sometimes, words were hard for Grandma, the way they were for her.

  Feeling a need to say she was sorry right back, Lexie had hugged her before running to school. Grandma had hugged her, too, and later, Lexie found a freshly baked oatmeal cookie in her lunch box.

  Now Grandpa swept out a chair with a round seat and a heart-​shaped back and waved her onto it. Each table held a Christmassy red candle standing upright in an ice-​cream sundae dish, with little gold balls around it. While Lexie slipped her arms from her cloth coat and hung it over the chair, Grandpa placed his hat on an empty chair between them. Lexie looked around, trying not to think of missing Mama at Christmas. “It smells good in here, like . . . strawberry and chocolate and umm, caramel.”

  A curly-​haired waitress with a frilly apron came to their table, smiling. “We’ll have two of your finest ice-​cream sundaes,” Grandpa told her. “Don’t spare the whipped cream and remember to put a cherry on the top!”

  “Coming right up.” The waitress whisked behind a long marble-​topped counter. Lexie heard a metal scoop clatter against a bucket.

  She saw the ice-​cream sundaes listed on a board behind the soda fountain and was shocked to see how much they cost. When Grandpa had said she could have chocolate, she expected a nickel scoop of ice cream in a dish. Did Grandma know that Grandpa would spend fifteen cents on one ice-​cream sundae? And he got one for each of them. He would have to work a whole hour to earn that much and still not have quite enough.

  Minutes later, when the waitress brought the sundaes, Lexie forgot to worry about how much they cost. “They’re beautiful,” she breathed.

  Each boat-​shaped dish held scoops of vanilla and chocolate ice cream beneath thick blankets of chocolate syrup and creamy marshmallow sauce. Mounds of whipped cream rose on top, with a juicy red maraschino cherry at the very peak. Crunchy cookies poked like wings from each side.

  The waitress beamed. “Enjoy it, honey.”

  Lexie carefully lifted the cherry with her spoon and put it into her mouth. It tasted as good as it looked. She decided to eat her sundae slowly, so it would last as long as possible. Secretly she hoped somebody from school would come by and see her there with Grandpa and the ice-​cream sundaes.

  “Next time,” Grandpa said, raising his spoon, “we’ll invite Jack from next door. You might like someone of your own age to talk to.”

  “I like talking to you.” Lexie hesitated, then added, “Besides, Jack hates me.”

  Grandpa lowered his spoon. “Hates you? Since when?”

  Since I kissed him and he got teased and got into a fight and blames me, Lexie thought, but said only, “He just does.”

  “I doubt that.” Grandpa turned his attention to his ice cream.

  Lexie churned her chocolate into slush, frowning at her spoon. “He won’t talk to me. He calls me a dumb Dora and knocks into me when he passes in the hall. Or pretends I’m not there.”

  Grandpa let a spoonful of ice cream melt in his mouth for a moment. Finally he said, “Boys have trouble figuring out how to treat girls they like. I expect he’s just sweet on you.”

  Lexie shook her head. Grandpa hadn’t seen the way Jack turned away when she spoke to him or how he made sure they didn’t walk together anymore.

  “Well,” Grandpa said after another long moment, “tell me this. How’s that doll’s letter coming along?”

  All her hopes for the letter rushed into her mind. She felt she knew Emily Grace much better now. Losing the dress hurt like a wound that wouldn’t heal. That made the letter even more important. No one had said anything more about the winner of the contest going to San Francisco. Maybe it was a secret. Louise had said so. Maybe it wasn’t even true. Lexie pushed that thought away.

  She was glad that Grandpa hadn’t mentioned the burned dress. She wasn’t sure she could talk about it. Grandpa must feel the same way. Would he talk about the letter from Mama?

  She scooped up some marshmallow cream while she thought about asking more questions, but she didn’t want to spoil this day. She let her questions go for now and answered Grandpa’s. “I wrote a Japanese poem. It’s called a haiku. I’m thinking of putting it in the doll’s letter.”

  “Sounds like a bang-​up idea.”

  Lexie thought of the snappy flapper words Mama loved to use. For a moment, the familiar ache caught her. That letter from Mama must say she should come for a visit. Or to stay. Still thinking about Mama, she joked about adding her poem to the doll’s letter, “It will be the cat’s meow.”

  Grandpa chuckled. “Or the cat’s whiskers.”

  Grinning, Lexie added, “Or the cat’s kimono!”

  Grandpa laughed and tapped his water glass to hers. “The winner!”

  Still smiling, Lexie dug into her ice cream. It was the best she had ever tasted. Her time with Grandpa flew by. Again, his twinkling eyes reminded her of Papa. He motioned the waitress over and paid the bill, then stood and reached for Lexie’s coat. “On to the surprise!”

  Lexie looked around, wondering if the surprise was another kind of ice cream and thinking she couldn’t eat anything more. Maybe Mama was here! She knew that wasn’t likely. Still, hope soared hig
her as she looked past Grandpa.

  He opened the door with a flourish, snapped his hat over his head, and waved her onto the rainy wood sidewalk. “You’re going to meet one of my favorite customers from the bank. I talked to her this morning, and she’s expecting us. She goes by the name Mam’selle Maxine in her shop, but she’s really just Maxine Fields from over on the coast, where her father’s a logger.”

  Lexie raised her collar against the rain. “Why is she called Mam’selle? Isn’t that French?”

  “It is and that’s her secret. Those who know go along with it, and those who don’t know are impressed. It’s good for her business.”

  “Her business?”

  “Ah, that’s my secret. Are you ready? Her shop is on the next street. It takes up her front parlor.”

  Lexie’s mind whirled as she tried to imagine who the lady might be. Maybe she wrote letters for people who couldn’t get their thoughts to come out the way they wanted. Maybe she was going to help with the letter. Maybe she had lots of pretty papers in her shop. And colored inks.

  The papers and inks would be good, Lexie decided, but I need to write my own letter. It has to be exactly what Emily Grace wants to say.

  Her thoughts rushed on, each stumbling over the next. If Grandpa found a lady to write the letter, what should I say to her? I don’t want Grandpa to feel bad. He means to help. And I need him in a good mood so I can ask about the letter Grandma shoved in her apron pocket that day.

  “Here we are.” Grandpa stopped before a neat house with gingerbread trim around the front porch. A lace-​trimmed sign in the front window read MODISTE in lavender script.

  As they stepped inside, a string of little bells jangled overhead.

  There were no racks of fancy papers. Instead, shelves shimmered with folded fabrics. At one side, a headless dress form wore a smart frock of Christmassy green. Tapered sleeves hung empty.