by Nancy Star
Mimi skipped ahead and tried the door. “Open.” She glanced down the hill. “What’s that?” She raced off to investigate a large shed in a patch of trees.
Charlie and Callie ran after her.
This left Ginger to follow her mother into the house where she hoped her skills as an early warning system could help determine how the rest of their day would go.
“Houses here can be very warty,” Glory said as they toured through the rabbit warren of rooms on the first floor. “Evelyn told me people add on, pell-mell, whenever they can. Even a house that looks small from the outside can turn out to have wings.”
Compared to their house at home, Ginger thought this house seemed big. But she kept her thoughts to herself. She really didn’t know much about houses. Her mother stopped to take in the figurehead of a mermaid that was nailed above the entrance to the kitchen. Ginger was thinking the mermaid looked sad when Glory pronounced it darling. Apparently, Ginger didn’t know much about mermaids, either.
According to Glory, there was a lot that was darling. The roses on the trellis visible through the kitchen window. The sea chest moonlighting as a coffee table in the living room. The blue glass bottles in the corner cabinet of the dining room, no two alike. And most darling of all, the master suite at the back of the house.
“Ooh. A California King.” Glory bounced on the bed and kicked off her sandals. “White carpet.” She dug her toes in the thick plush and nodded toward the drapes. “Let’s see the view.”
Ginger pulled the drape cord and, like Carol Merrill on Let’s Make a Deal, revealed picture windows and a sliding door. Also revealed, outside, was Charlie digging a hole with his hands, Mimi raining dirt over his head, and Callie twirling as fast as she could. Ginger struggled to pull the drapes closed, but the cord was stuck. Mimi saw her and though no sound permeated the glass, Ginger could see her scream a warning. One more tug and the drapes closed. Ginger swung around, ready to defend her ill-behaved siblings, but Glory had seen none of it.
Her mother was at the vanity now, swiveling on a stool as she adjusted the three-way mirror. “The back of my head.” Glory moved the mirrors to get a better view. “Imagine.” She watched as her fingers fluffed up her hair. “It’s like someone saw my dream and made it real.”
The tour ended in the kitchen when Glory tried the phone. “Dead.” She slammed the receiver down. “Your father’s going to have a conniption. What am I supposed to do now?”
It was not a question that needed an answer. It was a statement that Ginger understood meant the good-mood portion of their first day was now over.
Charged by her mother with assigning rooms, Ginger corralled everyone inside. Since this house had no bunk beds, she put Callie and Charlie together in one room and Mimi with her in the other. To keep the calm, she let Mimi have the bed her sister decided was better. But even with the better bed, Mimi was not calm. Within a minute the vertical blinds were cockeyed, a wooden knob from the dresser drawer was under the bed, and the wall had fallen victim to the spindle chair, which went careening after Mimi experimented with how many times she could turn in a circle before falling.
Ginger ran her fingers over the dented molding while a chastened Mimi pleaded, “Please don’t tell. I didn’t mean to.” A begrudging agreement was made. Mimi would lie still as a corpse in bed, while Ginger made things right. She repositioned the chair so the back of it blocked the molding and untangled the cord so the blinds hung straight. But as she was jamming the dresser knob in place, they heard familiar footsteps. Mimi didn’t ask for permission; she darted across the room and threw her weight against the door.
“Don’t come in. We’re changing into bathing suits.”
“For crying out loud. I’m your mother. What am I going to see I haven’t seen before? And why are you changing into bathing suits? We’re going to the grocery store.” She gave up and moved to the next room. “How did that ant farm get here?”
Mimi skipped downstairs to report the newsbreak that Ginger’s suit no longer fit. “Ripped,” Ginger heard her sister tell her mother. “Exploded.” She returned with two safety pins and a message. “You’re supposed to hurry up. We have to go.”
After Ginger finished pinning her suit together, she headed to the living room. She was in the front hall when she noticed the long tube tied with a red ribbon leaning against the wall next to the door. Attached was an envelope with her mother’s name on it. She handed it over. “I guess we missed this when we came in.”
Glory looked at it and beamed. “I thought there might be a surprise around here somewhere.” She pulled off the ribbon and unrolled the scroll. “How darling. A map.”
Charlie took the map and laid it on the captain’s chest in the living room. “It’s a treasure map.” His nail-bitten finger followed a thick black line across the yellowed paper. “This must be the treasure.” He tapped a roughly drawn X. “Careful,” he told Mimi when she squatted next to him. “It’s old. It could rip.”
Glory finished reading her note and slipped it back in the envelope. “It is a treasure map. An old map to a secret beach. Compliments of Casper Diggans.”
Mimi took a sniff. “Not old. Painted to look old. With tea. We did the same thing for Document Day. Wrote up class laws. Then painted it with Lipton’s.” She touched the map. “Still wet.” She sniffed again. “Maybe it’s coffee. What do you think? Coffee or tea?”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Glory reclaimed the map and put it on the kitchen counter to dry. “The main thing is it’s a map to a beach where we’re going tomorrow. Now, am I the only one around here who wants ice cream? Are the groceries going to deliver themselves?”
This time not having proper directions was no problem at all. Driving along country roads with the windows open and the ocean breeze wafting in was all part of Glory’s dream come true. Soon everyone fell into a woozy silence. By the time the car bucked up over the curb of the parking lot of their first stop, the ice-cream stand, all the backseaters were asleep or faking it.
Glory squeezed the car into a spot next to an old red school bus, the words “Camp Jabberwocky” painted in cheerful script on the side. The bus was disgorging the last of a crew of campers. Some moved awkwardly, legs in braces; others waited to be helped into wheelchairs.
“Good grief,” Glory muttered. “This is going to take forever. Be a peach, Gingie. Wake everyone up while I get on line.” Ginger watched as her mother tried to scoot around a counselor who was struggling to give a teenage boy, legs hanging limp, a piggyback ride to the ice-cream stand. “Excuse me,” Glory said. “Coming through.”
The counselor, a stocky woman who looked to be in her twenties, turned around, wobbling as she did. The boy, hands around her neck, grabbed tighter. Both of them seemed to find this hilarious. Glory stepped back to avoid a collision while the counselor steadied herself.
“Maybe it would be easier if I just went and brought you your ice cream,” Glory offered, sweet voice on. “I have a carload of kids with a bunch of free hands. They can bring ice cream back for everyone.” She winked and whispered, “That way you can put him down.”
The teenager yelled out, “No way.”
The counselor laughed and said, “You mean No way, thank you. We like to do things ourselves,” she told Glory. “Ready?” she asked her passenger.
“Yes, please,” he answered, and both the counselor and the boy laughed again.
Glory smiled to seem good-natured and sped past them to get on line. By the time Ginger and her siblings joined her, she was chatting with an old man about the weather. “If rain makes your bones hurt, why in the world would you pray for it?”
“A little pain in the knee is no big deal. The island needs the rain. I pray for rain every night, but every morning I wake up to the same blazing sun.”
“Cuckoo bird,” Glory muttered under her breath as she took her place at the “Order Here” window.
When they got back to the car, a young girl, waiting to board the bus, held up
her ice-cream cone and boasted, “I got this because I used the bathroom by myself!”
“Cuckoo bird,” Glory said again, and slid behind the wheel.
There were more weather complaints at the grocery store, people in the aisles remarking about how parched the island was, how the beach sand had turned fine as dust, how the ponds were shallower than anyone’s grandmother could remember.
“Wish I knew a rain dance,” a woman said as they got on line to check out.
“I can do a rain dance.” Callie moved into the aisle and did an imitation of a ballerina.
“Hold on, beauty queen,” Glory said. “If it starts raining because of you I will not be—”
“So bad-tempered.”
Glory swung around to face her scolders, two birdlike women standing close together on line behind them. Ginger tugged her mother’s arm. “Not you. They’re not talking about you.”
The cashier agreed. “She’s right, hon. They’re talking about Miss Hellman. You know, the playwright?” She leaned closer. “Tina, over there? In the blue hat? Works for her. Part-time. Types her private correspondence and makes lunch. Woman asks for the same thing every day, and every day complains she doesn’t like it. I don’t know how Tina works for that dragon.”
“Really?” Glory’s eyes widened. “I think Tina is the luckiest duck in the world.”
Tina, checking out in the aisle next to theirs, kept her eyes cast down as Glory leaned over to peer in her cart. “Lillian Hellman likes Corn Flakes? So do I. Gingie, be a peach and grab a box. I forgot to get one. Ask that man to show you where the cereal is.” She nodded toward a clerk replenishing a display of corn right next to where Ginger stood.
“He won’t hear her,” the cashier said. “Tap him on the shoulder, hon. Then point to me.”
Ginger tapped, pointed, and watched as the cashier used sign language to talk to the man. He listened, nodded, and motioned for Ginger to follow him. As she walked away, she heard her mother ask, “They hired a deaf man? That’s so nice. Did he teach you to sign?”
“He didn’t have to. Lots of us sign. Lots of deaf people on the island. We all just kind of pick it up. Comes in handy too. I have conversations in sign language with hearing people all the time. Great for telling secrets. If you signed, I’d tell you one now.”
“Imagine,” Glory said.
By the time Ginger got back with the cereal, the conversation about deaf people and weather was over and Glory had softened up Tina enough to confirm that Miss Hellman was on the island and guests were expected for the weekend.
“Is it Arthur Miller? Is Arthur Miller coming? I should warn you, I might faint if he is.” Glory’s eyes were shining bright. “Let me ask you, Tina. If a person wanted to bump into Miss Hellman, an admirer, like me—I wouldn’t bother her, of course. Maybe a compliment, but that would be it—where would you suggest I go?”
But Tina was done talking. She snapped her purse shut and hurried out of the store.
The cashier handed Glory her change. “I seen Miss Hellman around a couple of places. Once up in Menemsha. Once down the road from Jungle Beach.”
Glory took a quick breath. “Really? That’s where we’re going tomorrow. Jungle Beach.”
Charlie snapped out of his supermarket stupor. “There’s a jungle here?”
The cashier shrugged. “Jungle of hippies. Flower-power good-for-nothings. Ask me, we should load them and their truck on the ferry and ship them off the island for good. No jobs. No rules. No manners. No clothes.”
“Why don’t they have clothes?” Mimi asked on their way to the car.
“Another cuckoo bird,” Glory said, but this time she didn’t sound so sure.
Dinner was hot dogs and buttered corn, which they ate outside at a splintery picnic table under a pergola covered with flowering vines that were magnets for cartoon-sized bees. The bees touched down on the corn, moved to the rounds of tomatoes, and got stuck in the seeds of the sliced cucumbers. Charlie put himself in charge of batting them away, and Ginger cleaned up after him while Glory ducked inside at ever-shortening intervals to see if the phone was working yet. Finally, a cheer. “Hallelujah, dial tone.”
Out on the deck, Ginger could hear her mother’s side of the conversation. “For god sake, Solly. Why are you in bed worrying? Of course I’m fine. Everybody’s fine. Why wouldn’t we be fine?” There was a long pause and then, “I don’t know. What more do you want me to say?”
Glory hung up, marched out, and gave Ginger instructions. “I’m calling Evelyn. You’re in charge. Do not let anyone wander off. Or climb any trees. Or eat any of the berries from any of the bushes. If anyone goes to the pond, you have my permission to slap them.”
“What pond?” Mimi asked, as soon as the screen door closed.
This time, Glory seemed to be mostly listening, and when she spoke, her voice was so low Ginger had to strain to hear. “Paul said what? How awful. Where will Thomas go? He’s welcome to stay with us.” There was a long silence, and then Glory’s tone changed. “Why would I be offended? It makes perfect sense.” The silence lengthened. Ginger stopped listening.
When the screen door reopened, her mother was holding a glass and her eyes were twinkling and damp. “Guess who’s on his way? Little Thomas Clarke. Coming by himself to stay with his uncle Casper. For a whole month.” She shook her glass and watched the ice cubes clink. “Woman is out of her bird.” She sat down at the picnic table and closed her eyes.
Ginger could hear the sound of Mimi and Charlie arguing down by the shed. She watched as her mother’s fingers slid to her temples.
“I’ll take them inside,” she offered, and ran to tell her siblings it was time to go in and play board games. “First one in gets to pick.” She raced them to the house and then waited, so she was the last one in. As she passed her mother, Glory blew her a kiss.
Although there were a lot of games in the house, there was nothing they could actually play. Mimi’s first choice, Monopoly, had no dice. The Ouija board had no pusher. In Clue, all the weapons were gone. When Glory finally joined them, Charlie was fiddling with the TV antenna, but that proved useless too.
Glory took one look at the snowy picture on the screen and sighed her way out of the room. When she came back, there was a slim phone book in her hand. She sat down and flipped lazily through the pages, as if it were a magazine.
“What are we going to do now?” Mimi wanted to know.
Glory didn’t look up. “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”
“Time for bed?” Ginger suggested.
Her siblings clambered up the stairs, eager to get to their rooms before their mother stopped them. Unlike Ginger, they hadn’t noticed Glory had lost interest in them. From what Ginger could tell, her mother didn’t care one way or another whether they were there or whether they were gone.
CHAPTER TEN
Ginger rang Glory’s doorbell and tried to give one more go at positive thinking, but this time all she could come up with were pipe dreams: Julia and Nick were kidding and would show up any minute; Glory forgot to tell them this year she was going to the Popkins’ for Thanksgiving instead; maybe it wasn’t really Thanksgiving at all.
The door swung open and her pipe dreams died. “Finally.” It was Mimi. “They’re here,” she called into the living room.
After obligatory kisses on cheeks, Ginger shared the news that Julia was under the weather and not coming. There were mild noises of concern, and then everyone went back to what they were doing before Ginger and Richard had arrived, recoiling from a platter Glory was offering around the room, deviled eggs with yolks crusted over like warnings.
“Want one?” Glory offered an egg to Richard, but he declined. “What, are you all on the same cockamamie diet? Have an egg,” she told Ginger. “You look pale.”
Across the room, Mimi sent a signal to her sons, her thumb and forefinger together, moving—zip—in a straight line through the air. The boys understood: time to turn off your devices. They shut down their ele
ctronics and let their mother herd them out of the living room. As with all holidays, the meal at Glory’s was only a first stop for the Popkins. As soon as the main course was over, sometimes directly after it was served, Mimi would apologize and then hustle her family out for the next dinner, at Neil’s mother’s house—the fun dinner, Ginger now knew, where the boys were allowed on the roof.
As soon as she walked into the dining room, Ginger stopped. “What happened to the table?” Her mother’s table, when opened, could comfortably fit eighteen. But today it was closed to its smallest size, cozy for a family of six. The plates, she saw, teetered, one atop the other. Napkins had been tossed helter-skelter. The centerpiece was an untidy jumble of silverware.
“I ran out,” Glory said.
“Of what?” Ginger asked.
Neil knocked on the table and chuckled. “Might be a little tight here, Glore.” Neil was a husky man who liked big things, oversized sofas, large cars, prominent noses. “How about we open this baby up? Where do you store the leaves?”
“Used to keep them in the closet. Till they were stolen. Imagine.”
Of course later Ginger realized she should have questioned why Glory would think someone would break into a house to steal the leaves of a dining room table. But in the moment she wasn’t on the lookout for signs of a diminishing mind. Her attention was turned inward—to unclenching her jaw and bringing her shoulders down from her ears, now that Glory and Mimi had moved on, without interrogating her further about the details of Julia’s health.
Eager to get going, the Popkins quickly squeezed around the table, Neil taking the seat at the foot, Glory in her usual place at the head. This left Ginger and Richard, who’d hesitated, to sit slightly exiled, half a foot from the table, plates balanced on their thighs.
Sitting close to the buffet, Ginger could see Glory’s cuisine had reached a new low. Overcooked asparagus dripped off the rim of a platter like clocks in a Dalí painting. And wasn’t that the platter Ginger had tested for lead paint? There had been a bunch of them—serving dishes Glory picked up for practically nothing at garage sales—and to finally settle the argument over whether they were safe to use, Ginger had brought over a lead paint test kit. She was sure the asparagus platter was one of many that had failed. The large bowl beside it hadn’t failed, but what was in it looked inedible. Breakfast sausages, possibly cold. Next to that was a casserole of stuffing that looked like a science experiment about dehydrated food.