“Victoria, how is your brother Edgar?”
Who’s Edgar? Ellie wondered. Suddenly, she realized that Buddy Gandeck had lived across the alley her whole life and she’d never known his real name was Edgar.
Victoria paused. “He’s doing about as good as the doctors expect.”
“I hope he makes a full recovery,” said Miss Deetch. She smiled at the girls. “We are so proud of our Macken Street boys. Let me show you something.” She led the way to the entry hall and pointed to a tarnished plaque, the inscription barely visible. Ellie had passed it every day for seven years…and never once stopped to read it.
OUR HEROES WHO SERVED IN THE GREAT WAR. Underneath, a list of names. Stars next to the ones who had died.
Jelinek, Ignatz. Jellyneck’s father? Uncle? Corsiglia, Salvatore. Mr. Corsiglia, the grocer. McKelvey, Robert. Pop? Ellie knew he had been in the Great War, but Pop never talked about it.
“The Veterans of Foreign Wars put up this tablet after the last war,” said Miss Deetch. She smiled sadly. “It sounds strange to say ‘the last war’. We thought the Great War was the war to end all wars.”
But there was another war, Ellie thought. Could there be another war after this one? It would mean that Jimmy and all the other boys dying didn’t count for anything.
Miss Deetch went on. “The Veterans will add another tablet when this war is over.”
“That’s nice,” said Ellie, to be polite. But inside she shivered, imagining another tablet, with more names. And another and another…
“Well, have a nice visit with Miss Granberry,” said Miss Deetch with a dismissive wave. “A principal’s work is never done.” She chuckled at her own joke as she disappeared into the office.
Ellie and Victoria climbed the stairs, sneakers squeaking on the waxed wood. The second-floor rooms were dark, doors closed. Mrs. Miller’s service flag still had a blue star, Ellie was happy to see.
Suddenly, Victoria burst out. “What about my brother? Is Buddy’s star going to be on that new tablet?”
“But he’s not dead,” Ellie pointed out.
“Oh yes he is,” Victoria shot back. “He may be breathing and walking around, but the real Buddy died someplace in the Pacific and he isn’t ever coming back.”
Light spilled from Room Seven’s open door, a bright patch in the dark hall. Inside, Miss Granberry, in her faded, flowered work smock, fussed with her African violets. Funny, just as the school seemed to have shrunk over the summer, Miss Granberry appeared bigger, stronger. Yet she still had to raise the watering can shoulder-high to reach the window sill. How can that be? wondered Ellie. The whole world has changed…and it hasn’t.
The girls stood at the room’s threshold, uncertain of what to do, what to say. So Ellie said the first thing that came to mind.
“You didn’t leave the violets here all summer, did you?”
Miss Granberry turned, a tiny smile making cat-whisker wrinkles around her mouth. “How nice to see you, Eleanor. No, I took my plants home over the summer.” She looked over the top of her spectacles. “Nice to see you as well, Victoria.”
“Hello, Miss Granberry,” said Victoria. The last time she had spoken that quietly had been at Jimmy’s wake.
Miss Granberry stowed the watering can in the supply cupboard. “And to what do I owe the honour of this visit?” She didn’t sound sarcastic; she sounded like Miss Granberry.
“Do you still have the wall with all the pictures?” asked Ellie. She could see the picture-covered wall right in front of her, but Ellie didn’t know how else to begin.
“Yes,” said Miss Granberry. “I have added quite a few more over the summer, I am sorry to say.”
The photographs now extended past the sides of the blackboard to the top, near the ceiling. How did the tiny teacher manage to tack them up there? Ellie took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “I have this picture of Jimmy and…”
“You would like to put it with the others,” Miss Granberry finished for her. “Would you like to write something on the picture?” she added, offering her fountain pen.
In her best handwriting Ellie wrote James McKelvey, died June 6th, 1944, Omaha Beach, France. In the act of saving a friend. She handed it to her teacher.
Miss Granberry blotted the ink, added a gold memorial star, then studied the wall before tacking it next to the Gandeck brothers.
“I think he’ll feel at home next to the Gandecks, don’t you?” said Miss Granberry.
Ellie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Inside the picture, Jimmy smiled, one arm slung over Max’s shoulder, one leg crooked, the other arm raised in a wave.
Look, Movie Star. I’m happy. You be happy, too.
Okay, Jimmy. Ellie winked at the picture. Did she imagine that Jimmy winked back?
Victoria spoke up. “Miss Granberry, could I add something to my brothers’ picture?”
The teacher took down the colour snapshot and handed it to her along with the pen.
“Could I have a gold star, too?” she asked. “I mean, may I have a star?”
The teacher neatly thumbed a gold star on the picture. Victoria’s bold script sprawled across the margin. Buddy Gandeck, lost, Tarawa Island, South Pacific, November 1943.
Lost, thought Ellie. That’s a good way to put it. Sometimes lost people find their way home.
“There,” said Victoria with satisfaction. “Now they can’t forget.”
Miss Granberry smiled sadly. “Oh, my dear, but people do forget. It isn’t the plaques and statues and medals that make people remember.”
“It’s not?” said Victoria. “What about the Sullivan brothers? And Commando Kelly? They’ll be remembered for ever.”
Ellie thought about the plaque in the front hall…the one she had never read until today. “But they aren’t braver than Buddy or Jimmy, are they? Just because those guys got a movie or a statue or a parade?” she said.
“Noooo,” Victoria said, as if she were thinking hard. “But how will people remember without those things?”
“People will remember because we remember.” Ellie grabbed Victoria’s hands. “You and me. And Jellyneck. And Miss Granberry and her students. Because in our hearts they’ll never die.”
“Huh?” Victoria’s face was a question mark.
Ellie looked at Miss Granberry. “I don’t know if I am saying it right.”
Miss Granberry folded her hands against the faded roses of her smock. “You are saying it quite well, Eleanor. The stories you tell your children about your brothers will be worth more than parades or medals and folderol.”
Through the open windows, the St. Matthew’s bell chimed the half hour. Six-thirty. The rest of the McKelveys would be home from the picnic by now.
Miss Granberry heard it, too. “You girls need to scurry along to your suppers. We all need a good night’s sleep for tomorrow.”
Suddenly, Ellie didn’t want to leave Room Seven and Miss Granberry.
And Jimmy.
“Your brothers are safe with me,” Miss Granberry said, gently propelling them towards the door. “But you can come back and visit any time.”
A calm came over Ellie. Thank you, Jimmy. You did keep your promise. You are in my heart, for always.
In the hall, the girls stopped short, enveloped in the golden glow of late afternoon coming through the stairwell windows.
“This is how I remember Buddy,” Victoria said in a dreamy voice. “He taught me how to ice-skate and ride a bike and not to take nothing from nobody.”
“So that’s where you got that mean right hook,” Ellie said, only half joking.
“You betcha!” Victoria socked her on the arm. “Buddy loved the Pirates and going to the Do-Drop with Pa after work. He was one tough Marine until he wore out.”
A breeze rustled the treetops, cooling Ellie’s warm neck.
“How about you?” Victoria asked.
Ellie watched the tree shadows ripple on the sidewalk. Like swimming underwater, she thought. A million memories
of Jimmy drifted by like schools of fish.
Leaning out the window, Ellie gulped the cooling air. “When I get married, I hope I have a boy, so I can name him Jimmy.” She started for the stairs.
“But what are you going to say about Jimmy?” Victoria insisted.
Ellie paused on the top step, her hand on the sun-warmed stair railing. She grabbed for one of those happy memories now racing through her head like a sped-up movie.
“The banister,” she said.
Victoria blinked in surprise. “The what? I was talking about Jimmy.”
“So’m I,” Ellie replied. She waved towards the wide oak balustrade curving away from them to the ground floor. “You ever think of taking the short way down, if you know what I mean?”
Victoria grinned. “Every day. You?”
“Yep. You ever do it?”
“Nope. How ’bout you?”
“No. But Jimmy did, once. He always said, ‘You have to let the joy out.’ ”
Victoria and Ellie looked at each other, then at the polished banister, burnished bronze in the afternoon light.
Find the joy, Movie Star.
Ellie hopped on the banister and sailed down the shining expanse of oak. The knot of pain inside her eased. It would never go away, not altogether. But she knew the hurt would never be as strong again.
“Hey,” she called up to Victoria. “Do you know the words to ‘Mairzy Doats’?”
Acknowledgements
I could not have written this story without the collective memory of my personal platoon of “The Greatest Generation”: Roy and Frances Rodman, John Downing, William Neofes, Sarah O’Brien, Georgia Scott, Eloyd Baldwin. Special thanks to my cousins Harriet Newton, Walter and Wilma Scott, and Melissa Neofes Mischak, who shared family stories, pictures and letters. Thanks as well to my first readers, from Ms. Silber’s fifth grade 2004–05, New Prospect Elementary, Alpharetta, Georgia: Joey Albano, Brian Dalluge, Michelle Demaline, Fred Hong, Ryan Quinn, and especially Josh Bugica.
Thank you, too, to my beloved Hive, especially Gretchen Will Mayo and Phyllis Harris, who read, advised, and kept me going. Last but not least, to the WINGS: Nancy Craddock, Connie Fleming, Maureen McDaniel and Susan Rosson Spain, the best writers’ group in Georgia.
About the Author
Mary Ann Rodman wanted to be a writer from the age of three, but only began writing her first novel, Yankee Girl, after leaving her job as a librarian and moving to Thailand.
She was inspired to write this, her second book, after reading a cache of letters that her family members, both abroad and on the home front, wrote to each other during World War II, as well as the diary her uncle (who became the “Jimmy” of the story) kept while he was in service.
Mary Ann Rodman now lives with her husband and daughter in Alpharetta, Georgia.
To find out more about Mary Ann Rodman, visit her website: www.maryannrodman.com
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This ebook edition first published in the UK in 2015 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England. www.usborne.com
Copyright © Mary Ann Rodman, 2008
Published by arrangement with Farrar Straus and Giroux, LLC, 19 Union Square West, New York, NY 10003, USA.
The right of Mary Ann Rodman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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