Romeo Blue (9780545520706)

by Stone, Phoebe

  Two things were happening at once now. Gideon was going overseas at Christmastime? At Christmas? And the phone was ringing.

  I finally picked up the receiver. “Hello,” I said.

  “Oh, Flossie, it’s Brie. Derek’s cousin Brie,” the voice said.

  “Well, actually, I’m your cousin too,” I said. “And my name is Flissy, not Flossie.”

  “Oh, I never thought of you that way. I mean as a cousin. I guess because of your accent and you being so foreign and everything. Flossie is cute, don’t you think? Is Derek there? I’m inviting him to the autumn dance.”

  I held the receiver in my hand. It was very heavy and instead of answering Brie, I kind of dropped it on the small table and went off to find Derek.

  I passed Aunt Miami on the stairs as she rushed by, her silky chiffon skirt fluttering past me in a whirlwind. “Gideon will be going overseas right before Christmas. Mother! Where’s The Gram?” she said and she seemed to swirl and dissolve in soft silk and tears.

  “And Brie’s inviting Derek to the dance. She’s just rung up,” I called.

  Aunt Miami didn’t answer. She seemed to lift up and disappear down the hall, past moving curtains and fluted shadows, past paintings of Captain A. E. Bathburn’s staring daughters. Then I heard her crying in the kitchen and The Gram too.

  I went on up to fetch Derek from his room. He was studying a map of Europe in there, looking at France. I opened the door. “Gideon’s going to Europe before Christmas,” he said without turning round.

  “But that’s where the war is,” I said. “Why would he go there now? I’ve been in the midst of that, Derek. It’s dreadful. Everyone at school thinks we’re not very safe here in Maine either, because of the coast. We don’t even know what’s lurking in the waters. The Bagley family moved back to Illinois because they thought the coast was too dangerous. Oh, Derek, everything is changing. I don’t want Uncle Gideon to go. Must he? And I don’t want you to go away with your father either or even talk to him. None of the others want you to answer him.”

  “I don’t know what they’re worried about,” he said. “But whatever I decide, it’s up to me now. I don’t want them to know any more about it. Okay?”

  “Brie is on the phone, Derek. She wants to talk to you.”

  “Oh well, that’s peachy keen,” said Derek, dropping his pencil and turning round.

  Then I got rather bold in a British sort of way and I said quite sadly, “Derek, is Brie the cat’s pajamas as well?”

  “Oh, Brie, she’s the dog’s necktie!” Derek said and he smiled that smile that sent me spinning out over the ocean like a piping plover or a bufflehead or a lost and diving common goldeneye.

  I cried that night alone in my widow’s peak room at the top of the house, with the widow’s walk outside it and the terrible gray ocean beyond and all round me. That little walk was built so that Captain A. E. Bathburn’s wife could look out and wait for her husband’s ship to come over the horizon. And that fall it didn’t. And it didn’t and it didn’t and it didn’t and winter came and the snow roared at these windows and she waited and she waited.

  I cried for three reasons that night. The first was for un–Uncle Gideon, my newfound father whom I had grown to love during these many months in America. The second tears were for Derek, because his father had returned, changing everything here forever. And the third tears were for myself, because Derek was going to the dance with Cousin Brie. Those tears were the most raw. I wasn’t at all a pair of cat’s pajamas anymore. I was a pair of plain gray flannels with ugly buttons down the front.

  That night, the wind and rain came in under the window ledges into my room, and when I woke up in the morning, my pillow was damp. When Gideon found out, he said, “Fliss, we’ll have to get you out of that room for winter. The windows have gotten worse and you’re just too exposed to the sky and the sea up there.” Well, I had always liked Miami’s large, airy room anyway.

  And so it was that I packed my yellow suitcase and Uncle Gideon shut up the tower room. “Leaving Wink up here, are you? Too old for Wink now, I imagine,” he said to me as he turned the key to lock the door. “Well, you’ll outgrow us all, I suppose, soon enough. Yes, soon enough.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I don’t need an old bear anymore. I’ll be sending him off to England soon.”

  “It’s a shame you and Derek are in such a hurry to grow up and throw away old friends,” said Gideon. “Well, bears like the cold and I suppose he’ll be hibernating anyway.” He looked at me then with a good-bye kind of look in his eyes that reminded me a tiny bit of Wink for just a moment and then I did feel a little tug in my heart.

  That night I moved downstairs to Auntie Miami’s room, which was quite grand. She had a lovely canopy bed that they said had once belonged to Captain A. E. Bathburn and his wife, Ada. And there were great, long windows to the sea and soft hooked rugs on the floor, covered in wild roses and trumpet lilies. (The Gram had hooked them all.) I had a little bed at the far end of the room. It had a bedspread with a cat on it but the cat was not wearing a pair of fancy pajamas.

  It was nice because Auntie and I could lie in the darkness and talk. That very first night we did. Uncle Gideon popped in with a cup of Ovaltine for me. He wanted to say good night. He sat on the edge of my bed with the hot chocolaty drink steaming up between us, looking at me as if I were a new kind of seashell he’d just found on the shore. “I was visiting Derek a moment ago, and I think he’s going to listen to us, so there’s no need to worry. And I won’t be leaving for several months. That’s ages away.” Then he frowned in the almost darkness and said, “It’s for Winnie, you know, and Danny.” And he didn’t say anything else and I understood what he meant and in my heart I felt proud and sad and nervous.

  Later I heard his Victrola in his room playing jazzy songs again. One of them was “I Think of You.” And I knew he was thinking of Winnie, dreaming of her, reaching out to her as she floated near him, with her beautiful, dark eyes, reaching out to her as she floated away into his brother’s arms.

  When I came downstairs the next day, Derek’s face was bright, like a fire in a fireplace, and yet hidden at the same time, like a fire in a closed-up stove. There was no one about. The Bathburn house was empty except for the two of us sitting at the card table in the parlor.

  “This is to be a secret, Fliss,” said Derek, looking over at me, “but I am going to write to my father. I’m going to invite him over when everyone’s out next week.”

  “But, Derek,” I said, “I don’t think Gideon will like that. Nor will The Gram. They don’t like people coming to the house. And they’re so upset about this. They don’t want to lose you, Derek, because you were not adopted officially.”

  “Never mind about all that,” said Derek. “My father will be coming over. Let’s write a letter to him now.”

  I do love writing letters and straight off I suggested he say, “Dearest Papa, how long it has been since we’ve strolled down the avenue of life.”

  But Derek said, “No, I’d rather just say, Hello, would you like to come for lunch on the point in Bottlebay? Thursday at noon?”

  “For lunch?” I said.

  “Yes,” said Derek. “We don’t drink tea like you do over there. He’d probably rather have that swell new instant coffee called Nescafé. Everybody loves it.”

  Derek looked pleased as he signed the letter and handed it to me. I stuffed it in an envelope and addressed it, though I did not want to. Still, I bent towards Derek and his wishes.

  We gave the letter to Mr. Henley when he popped round with his mail pouch slung over his shoulder. We were standing on the little porch outside the kitchen. Mr. Henley smiled and looked up at the house, hoping to see Auntie at the window.

  Then Derek said to him, “Are you driving into Portland later today and could we possibly go along?”

  I loved being we with Derek. I suddenly felt like the cat’s pajamas again. Like fancy silk pajamas, pajamas with pizzazz, as they say here.


  “Yes, we should very much like to go along,” I said, jumping up a step and then down a step and back up a step again.

  As soon as I could, I whispered to Derek, “Why are we going to Portland?”

  I didn’t really get an answer from Derek until later when we were in Mr. Henley’s car, riding along in the rain. More gray, gloomy autumn rain. We drove along the rocky coast with the ocean below us cloaked in mist and drifting fog.

  Mr. Henley was breezy at the wheel. He loved his car. And so did Aunt Miami. They were always putting on fancy “duds,” as Derek would say, and driving to Portland to the Rotary Club dances just for the fun of it.

  “I shouldn’t be driving at all now because rubber tires wear out and you can’t get new ones these days. The rubber is all being used by the government for the war. And you know gas is going to be rationed soon but because I am a mailman, I’ll have a C sticker and I will get more ration tickets for gas than some,” said Mr. Henley, smiling. Then he began to recite some of his poems. He was a poet and getting better and better with every poem, Auntie said. But no publishers ever liked them. He could never even get his poems accepted by a magazine.

  Mr. Henley was coming into his third verse of his third poem when I whispered again to Derek, “Why are we going to Portland?”

  “Because I want to see my father before he sees me,” Derek said.

  “Oh,” I whispered. But my heart dropped and sank, like a small pebble tossed into the sea.

  “Have you heard the poem about Portland and the harbor there, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?” said Mr. Henley. “He grew up in Portland, you know.”

  I remember the black wharves and the slips,

  And the sea-tides tossing free;

  And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

  And the beauty and the mystery of the ships,

  And the magic of the sea.

  “Oh, that’s lovely,” I said and then I whispered to Derek, “You mean we are going to the Eastland Park Hotel?”

  “Yup,” said Derek.

  We passed a jeep carrying a naval officer going the other way out along the peninsula to the point. He was probably headed to the Coast Guard station out there. The Coast Guard had started patrolling the beach below us. They were also seen along the rocky cliffs to the north of our house along the coast, especially at the cliff walk where Mr. Fitzwilliam lived. They were looking and watching for Nazi submarines. We saw them ourselves sometimes when the U-boats rose almost to the surface. They needed oxygen to run their engines to recharge their batteries. I’d seen once the gray top of a U-boat sticking up out of the water but I was all alone that day. I had tried to call the Coast Guard but I couldn’t get through. I didn’t get a chance to tell Uncle Gideon about it until later that day. Usually he reported the whereabouts of a sub immediately. It was never in the papers, any of this. It was something that we didn’t talk about. I think the government didn’t want the people along the coast to know. But we knew. If you lived with the Bathburns, you knew.

  “We’re almost to Portland now,” said Mr. Henley. “I’ll leave you at Monument Square. And we can meet back there. But first I have to drop a package off at the dock.”

  Soon we were passing the piers and wharves of Portland harbor. A huge cargo ship was docked along a wharf. And as we drove by, sailors and navy men and dockworkers carrying their lunch pails walked past us.

  Mr. Henley delivered his package and then we climbed the hill, the car sputtering along. As we rose higher, the rain stopped and it felt like we were riding to the top of the sky, like we might lift up and fly away into the clouds. Then we would be able to see the harbor below and the bay and to imagine, beyond that, the ocean and all the capes and points and islands farther out.

  At Monument Square, Derek got out of the car and looked back in at Mr. Henley. “We’ll see you here in one hour. Thanks.” He patted the top of the car just like Uncle Gideon always did and then he took my hand. Yes, Derek took my hand. He didn’t know it but suddenly I was flying over Portland. His hand felt warm and strong.

  “Portland is peachy keen,” I said.

  “You’re on the right trolley there,” Derek said, looking up at the tall buildings. Then, as if a cloud scattered a shadow across his face, he looked down. “We have to find the Eastland Park Hotel now, Fliss. We haven’t got a lot of time.”

  But Derek and I were holding hands! I could feel his fingers entwined with mine. Brie was a million miles away.

  We walked farther up the hill, past fancy department stores and ornate banks. Benoit and Company had American flags in every window and painted words on the building: FOR VICTORY BUY WAR STAMPS AND BONDS.

  Most of the women and teenage girls passing us on the street were wearing cute little felt hats with veils, while all I had on was an orange woolen beret I had knitted myself. I buttoned up my jacket and held on tighter to Derek’s hand.

  Derek looked wondrous against the city sky. We walked all the way up Congress Street and turned down High Street. There sat the Eastland Park Hotel with its grand-looking entrance. Derek froze on the steps and dropped my hand. He looked up at the tall building and he wouldn’t move.

  There were quite a few sailors and naval officers on the steps. And there was a poster on a stand by the doors. It showed the ballroom inside the hotel filled to the brim with sailors and soldiers and girls dancing to a big band. The poster said, FRIDAY NIGHT COUNT BASIE PLAYS AT THE EASTLAND. BRING YOUR GAL TO BEBOP, JITTERBUG, AND SWING. I remembered for a moment that Derek and Brie were going to the autumn dance together.

  “Come on,” said Derek suddenly. “Let’s go in. We have to be quick and quiet and calm. Okay?”

  We walked in the doors and found twisted painted columns and arched doorways on all sides. There were steps up to the grand mezzanine, with plush rugs and soft-looking sofas and bright-colored Spanish tiles on the walls near the wooden front desk. “What a swanky place,” said Derek, rolling his eyes across the room.

  “Your father must be dreadfully rich,” I said. I was hoping Derek would reach for my hand again, but he didn’t. Instead, he crossed the polished marble floor to the desk. There were hundreds of wooden cubbyholes for keys and messages and letters for the guests.

  “Hello,” said Derek to the hotel manager. “We’re here to see one of your guests, my father, Edmund Blakely. Is he in?” Derek seemed to exaggerate the word father.

  “I’m sorry to say he’s not,” said the manager. “Mr. Blakely only stayed one night with us last week and left. He does pick up his messages occasionally. Perhaps you’d like to leave him one.”

  Derek backed up, shaking his head, and then he trailed away. I followed him.

  We walked to the edge of the dining room and peeked in. On all the walls there were Egyptian murals, as if the dining room were in an Egyptian tomb. It was dimly lit and full of tables and every one of them was taken. There seemed to be naval officers and sailors and welders and ironworkers from the shipyard having lunch. We were told the government put up shipyard workers here. They said all the rooms in Portland were occupied because shipyard workers from across the country were brought here to build the new Liberty ships for the war. I was feeling proud and pleased to see them all. But then, in the far corner, I spotted someone.

  “Derek,” I said. “Do you see that fellow who has turned away from us now? Isn’t that Mr. Fitzwilliam having lunch over there?”

  “What?” said Derek. “Yes, it does look like Fitzwilliam.”

  There was also a fellow who appeared to be lunching with Mr. Fitzwilliam, or rather just leaving him, putting his share of the bill on the table. Quarters and nickels spilled out and rolled onto the floor. “I’d like to get a photo of the parade,” he called out to Mr. Fitzwilliam as he crossed the room and walked past us.

  He took some photographs of the lobby. He dropped some newspapers on the tiled floor. He leaned over and picked them up, then pushed out the main doors. We went towards the glass double doors too. There was a sma
ll parade going down the street outside. There were several marching bands and soldiers carrying banners that read, SUPPORT YOUR COUNTRY AND YOUR SOLDIERS. BUY WAR BONDS NOW. It was too bad about the rain. It had started again. Umbrellas lined the street.

  We were just going to go out the doors ourselves when we realized that the man had also dropped an envelope, a letter not yet mailed. It was lying there in the corner on the tiled floor near the exit.

  Derek picked up the envelope. It was stamped and addressed to Louise Mack in Cape Elizabeth. “What should we do with this?” he said, handing me the envelope.

  “I don’t know,” I said. Derek took my wrist then and sort of pulled me out through the doors on to the sidewalk. Sailors playing trumpets were pounding by. We could hear flutes scaling high notes and people cheering and clapping. We looked for the man who had dropped the envelope but it was quite crowded in spite of the rain and we didn’t see him.

  We wove through flocks of people and umbrellas and then, because it was getting late, we headed back towards Monument Square to meet Mr. Henley. We had decided now to mail the letter for the man. But before we did, Derek became a bit curious and worked the seal open without damaging anything. Then of course we decided not to bother to mail it because the paper inside was completely blank.

  “She mails things to the house, doesn’t she, your mother? I hear she’s as lovely as a butterfly,” Mr. Fitzwilliam had said. “Just as pretty and delicate as a swallowtail.”

  The ride home in the dark would have been cozy but there was something looming in the stormy air. Bob Henley had offered a ride to a coastie who needed to be dropped off at the top of our peninsula. I had learned that a coastie was one of the Coast Guards who patrolled the shoreline and bluffs here. He was rather a rough fellow as all the coasties were. It was still raining, that dark, misty kind of rain and our windscreen wipers were slowly dragging back and forth over the glass. They only went as fast as we were traveling and we were moving slowly because it was hard to see with our dimmed headlights.