I sagged to the top step and sat down. I was too late. He was going out. The man, Babbit or Buttons, stopped on the bottom step and looked round and up at me. “Can I help you?” he said.
“Are you an attorney at law?” I asked.
“Yes, Mr. Buttons here. I’m just stopping by the office to pick up some folders. It’s Sunday, you know. We’re closed.”
“Oh. Very nice to meet you, I’m sure. May I ask you a question, Mr. Buttons, even though you are not really at work today?”
“Yes, you may, but briefly. I do try to relax now and again,” he said.
“If there was a someone who was sort of adopted but not exactly …”
“Yes,” said Mr. Buttons.
“And that someone wanted to find his birth parents, say, perhaps a father. Would you be able to help that someone?”
“Possibly,” said Mr. Buttons. “Mr. Babbit would have to see this person in person, if you know what I mean. What I mean is, it would be a private matter discussed only after … discussed only with … You see what I mean.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you ever so much.”
“And take my card. Whoever, whatever, they can contact me. On a regular work day, of course.” Mr. Buttons then disappeared out the front door. Soon he came back in the building and looked up at me sitting as I was on the top step, all scrunched up and thinking. “Come along, then,” he said. “We’re closed up. You mustn’t sit up there all day.”
Then I was back out in the Sunday morning air. I had Buttons, Buttons and Babbit’s card in my pocket. I could feel it next to the white dove. Now I certainly had things to give Derek.
Oh, if I’d only known that what I had just done might come back to haunt me. But I didn’t know. As I walked along, I jumped over every single crack on the American sidewalk because of that horrid jump-rope song Dimples used to sing. “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.” I never, ever stepped on one crack, hoping to protect my mum from everything. Hoping to right all the wrongs, looking for the one answer.
All that autumn there were losses and gains in the war and the Bathburn house would rise with the wins and fall with the losses, like the tide in the ocean rising and falling. Battles that we lost always caused Gideon to go upstairs into his bedroom and slam his door. Sometimes he would miss dinner altogether. But battles like the one in Midway Island last summer or battles in French Morocco, which the Allies won, made my father all happy and bubbly and fizzy like Coca-Cola when you stir it up with your straw till it steams and snorts and pops. Still, Coca-Cola was rather rare these days. There was something called a black market where you could buy anything in the world, even rationed and rare things. Derek talked about it with Stu Barker. It sounded mysterious and dark and dangerous — just those words the black market.
There were fewer and fewer older brothers and fathers seen about town because many of them had enlisted or had been drafted. Though I still saw the ragpicker in the park, swinging his long stick with a sharp metal point on the end, looking to stab old papers and rags and poke them into his cloth bag on his back. I did not think he was anybody’s father. He had a skinny, red, old face and a dreadfully scrawny body, all bent over and sorrowful and dusty. I did not think he would ever be drafted.
It was November 20 and we teetered on the edge of winter. Flurries of snowflakes fluttered here and there and because it was earlier in the morning than we usually got up, the sky was full of raw, painful light. It was Auntie’s turn to leave. I was not sure I could bear another farewell. Everyone was clustered near her on the porch. I stayed in the house, just at the doorway. I did not want to go out and say good-bye.
Gideon stood there, holding one of Miami’s suitcases. “I see you’ve got enough of a wardrobe here to outfit the entire USO theater troop!” he said. “Maybe even the whole US Army for that matter, though all that chiffon could prove a problem on the battlefield.”
“Very funny, Gideon,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder.
Our pet seagull, Sir William Percy, had even flapped over and settled down on one of the hatboxes from Porteous department store. Derek was there too, slouched against the porch railing, fiddling with a yo-yo.
Then Aunt Miami’s carpool to the train station arrived. Someone was beeping a loud horn. It jolted me and I tore out on the porch. I tripped over a chair, landed on my face, and almost started to cry. I suddenly remembered Auntie falling into Bobby Henley’s arms the night he left.
I looked at Derek. He had a growling, early-morning smile on his face. He was watching me as I limped over to hug Auntie. I saw his eyes follow me and stay fixed on me as his yo-yo droned up and down and then “slept” at the end of the string. Soon he tossed it forward and it went “around the world” and came back “to walk the dog,” all the while he seemed to watch me as I struggled not to cry. Oh, he was a dreadful beast and I think I hated him just then. His anger had smoldered and kept on spinning like a sleeping yo-yo for a long time, it seemed. I had grown almost impatient with it. Almost.
We followed Auntie out to the car. We were a raggedy, tearful, shivering group as she climbed into the backseat. Auntie was all settled in amongst her boxes and suitcases when suddenly she scrambled out of the car. She rushed towards Gideon and hugged him again for a long moment, making my heart drop like piano notes falling down the scale. Then she climbed back in and the car pulled away in a flood of exhaust from a dragging tail-pipe. We stood there in a line, not making a sound. Finally, I shouted out, “Write to me, Auntie!” But the car was near the crest of the little hill by then and I did not think she heard me.
Soon The Gram and Gideon wandered back into the house. But Derek was still outside, working his yo-yo in circles. Suddenly, he caught it up in the palm of his hand and tucked it away in his jacket.
“Derek,” I said, “I have something for you. I’ve had it a while now.” And I reached in my pocket and held out the little white china dove. “It’s for your windowsill. Won’t it be ever so lovely in the sunlight in the morning when you first wake up?”
Derek reached for the dove. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“I am awfully sorry I hurt you,” I said. “I mean, terribly, truly, really.”
Derek shook his head up and down and then sideways, all the while his eyes closed.
“And I’ve done something else,” I said. “And I do hope it will please you.”
“Oh no, Fliss,” said Derek, opening one eye and taking a good peek at me. “What have you done now?”
“I’ve been to see Buttons, Buttons and Babbit for you. They’re solicitors. I mean lawyers. Perhaps they can help you find your true parents,” I said.
Derek frowned and squeezed his eyes even more tightly shut, as if he were avoiding a wild fly ball heading his way on the baseball field. Actually, because of his paralyzed arm, Derek couldn’t play baseball anymore and so he played soccer and his feet were as fast as the wind.
“I mean of course it has to be you who goes to them and you who makes the request. But I might add that Mr. Buttons wanted you to have his card. He asked me to give it to you.” I did hope it wasn’t dreadfully meddlesome of me to say he wanted Derek to have his card, which wasn’t exactly what he had said. It was the truth, but I had stretched it and pulled it a little bit, just as if it were long, stretchy, sweet molasses taffy.
Derek was quiet for a minute. An airplane was roaring and thundering overhead. Suddenly, he took the card and put it in his shirt pocket. When the plane had passed, he looked at me with his swimming-pool eyes, deep brown and changing, like water. His eyes rippled into my eyes for a moment. And then in a very mumbling way, Derek looked down at his black high-top tennis shoes and said, “Thank you, Fliss.”
That next week we had a small Thanksgiving. They had announced on the radio that cooking a turkey would help the war effort, if everyone saved the turkey fat in tins and handed it in. The glycerin in the fat, they said, was greatly needed to make explosives.
I was
often busy with The Gram during that time doing things about the house. I was making Christmas decorations out of odd, forgotten things like old silk ribbons found at the bottom of a drawer. We made sweet-smelling clove balls by sticking cloves into unpeeled oranges and tying ribbons round them. Then we hung them over doorways, filling the rooms with the scent of cinnamon and cloves. (Mr. Donovan sent us a box of oranges from Florida for Thanksgiving. It was a great moment when they arrived! Perhaps he got them on the black market.)
I was very busy and so there were times in the day when I had no idea where Derek was at all. Had he gone into Bottlebay to see Mr. Buttons? It was hard for me to know.
When I was helping The Gram clean rooms upstairs one Saturday in December, I saw the gold-printed card of Buttons, Buttons and Babbit lying out on Derek’s desk but that didn’t tell me much. I remembered that night by the fire when he had come back from the dance with Brie. I remembered what he had said to me. “Guess who it is. Guess!” It seemed now that any love he had for me had vanished in a terrible blast.
In the middle of December, winter came at us with full force, bringing sleet and ice and snow, which whirled and whined and wrapped itself all round our house. Sometimes the snow sifted in at the old windowsills and thin ice formed on the glass most exposed to the wind. Then, looking out the windows, we had to peer through white castles and caves and stars of ice patterns.
One blustery day my father said, “Fliss, shall we take a walk?” He meant to put his arm around me, but he reached too far and he knocked the wall behind me and bumped the painting of Ella Bathburn by mistake. Suddenly, she looked all tilted and confused, staring at the floor. Then we had to stop and try to straighten her out and that became difficult because the Bathburn house itself wasn’t terribly level.
After we’d decided on the perfect angle for Ella, my father looked at me shyly. “Sorry, Fliss,” he said. “Shall we carry on? We haven’t had a walk together in ages, have we?”
“Very well, then,” I said. But I held my breath for a moment because a walk seemed to mean that my father might be leaving soon. And it was almost Christmas. Oh, I didn’t want him to go and, oh, I did want him to go. Then I felt all pulled and stretched and twisted because I knew he was going to help Winnie and Danny. I wondered if Winnie and Danny would be allowed to have Christmas in prison. And then, of course, I knew they wouldn’t. I couldn’t bear to think of Christmas morning and bells ringing and Winnie being hungry and cold and alone. I couldn’t bear to think of Danny sitting on the floor in a dirty cell on Christmas morning.
“Oh, Fliss, if only these times we live in were normal, regular times,” my father said. We were walking down to the water’s edge and heading north. It started to snow and at first the snowflakes seemed to dance about in a playful way and then they fell faster and thicker and harder. Even though the wind was quiet and we were not far from the house, suddenly it felt as if we were lost in a white storm.
“Do you realize it was a miracle for me when you came to live here?” my father said.
“A miracle?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I had waited so long to know you.” We stopped and he wrapped his scarf about his neck and looked at the sea, which was quite rough in this area. “Oh, but these are not normal and regular times. Not at all,” he said and he turned his face away. When he brought it round again, I looked up at him. His eyes were watery and there were sad snowflakes all over his cheeks. “Fliss, I need you to be especially careful now that we’ve had the Gray Moth here.”
“Yes, but he’s been captured,” I said.
“I know,” said Gideon, “but there could be others. You see, these people are looking for things, information. While I am gone, take good care of yourself. And don’t allow anyone other than family into the house.” He clapped his gloved hands together. “I wish you didn’t have to think about all this. It is not right. Still, we cannot hide our work from you, though we tried.” Gideon ruffled the top of my head, knocking snow from my hat. Then he smiled at me. “I guess you are one of us now.”
“Will you really have to leave before Christmas?” I said.
“Fliss, there are terrible, unthinkable tragedies going on in Europe. We must do all we can. It’s more important than anything in the world right now.”
“Yes, I know,” I said.
“And you are my lovely, almost partway grown-up daughter and I think you know why I am going to France.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good. I want you to know what I am doing and why I am doing it. I do not want to abandon you. I know you felt abandoned by your mother and by Danny.”
“No, I did not!” I shouted out, suddenly feeling all wound up, like a skein of wool wrapped too tightly. “No, I did not feel abandoned.” But I started to cry because I had felt abandoned and I still felt abandoned. “If only Winnie and Danny had told me everything first. And now you are going away as well.”
“What I am scheduled to do must be done. Oh, Fliss, I will try so hard to ease your worry while I am gone,” he said. “And I shall not forget you, Fliss, not for one moment in my long voyage. And don’t forget me. Not ever. No matter what.” Then he buttoned the top button of his overcoat, turned up his collar, and looked at the dizzying, snow-filled sky. He finally closed his eyes. Snowflakes collected along his eyelashes and eyebrows and covered his new mustache until it too was lost in whiteness. “You’ll see. Keep a lookout for cards from me, then. I’ll send them to you and Derek,” he said. “And our Christmas will just have to wait until a brighter, better year.”
Soon enough, snapping suitcase sounds, unmistakable getting-ready-to-leave noises were coming from my father’s room. It was soon to be Christmas vacation at school, but my father did not go in wearing his Mr. Bathtub, Christmas-red velvet bathrobe over his regular clothes or hand out favors from its large pockets to the youngest kids as he used to do.
There was a substitute teacher at his desk now when I passed his room at school, and the whole of Babbington El seemed already to miss Mr. Bathtub. A few months before, people at school had started calling the point where we lived Bathtub Point. Now when I walked down the hall at school, someone would usually call out something like, “How is Mr. Bathtub? Did it snow last night on Bathtub Point?”
At the house a man from the FBI came to search and check all the rooms one more time for listening devices. My father was uneasy, worrying that the Gray Moth might have tucked a device somewhere in the house.
And then one evening my father was saying his good-byes. He pulled me into his huge arms and I felt his rough, prickly cheeks and chin and I smelled the warm, tweedy, pipe-smoking, book-reading air that was all round him. I had known the time was upon us when he had grown his mustache as planned. He looked quite handsome really, a little like Auntie’s favorite actor, Clark Gable, in Gone with the Wind.
“Mother, take care of my little daughter,” said Gideon. And he squeezed me tightly. When my father released me, I saw Derek standing nearby, dark and like a fire burning all alone in a stove, unattended.
“Oh, Derek,” said Gideon, “come here. I shall miss you with all my heart. Perhaps it is not on paper but you are surely a son to me.” He threw his great, long arms round Derek, who suddenly looked skinny and all swallowed up. “I know you will hold down the fort. I shall be very proud of you.”
Derek began to cry. It was a small sound muffled against Gideon’s shoulder, but the sound ripped and stomped on my heart. Whenever a boy cried, it was so much more wrenching than a girl crying because it didn’t happen very often.
“Daddy,” I called down the stairs after dinner, when our blackout curtains were closed and the house had that lonely, dark, shut-away feeling. From where I stood I could see a few empty branches of the tall Christmas tree in the parlor. “Daddy,” I called before I went to bed, knowing he would be gone in the morning when I awoke. “Bring Winnie and Danny home safely. Make them be safe,” I said. “And promise me you will come home to us.”
&n
bsp; He put his fingers over his lips to hush me. And then he blew me a kiss.
The next day my father was gone and his room at the front of the house was no longer full of coffee cups and newspapers. It was oddly clean and organized. When I went in there, it was chilly and empty and full of light. I kept thinking that my father hadn’t promised me that he would come home. He hadn’t promised.
Derek and The Gram and I managed alone through Christmas. We sang carols at the Last Point Church on Christmas Eve. The Gram held Derek’s hand on one side and my hand on the other. Her grasp was so tight and so strong, my fingers felt numb.
We planned very few presents for Christmas Day but that morning I couldn’t find my slippers and so I went down on my knees and looked under the bed. There I saw a tiny gold ring in a crack in the floor. It was shining in the darkness under there, next to my slippers. I could just barely reach it. It proved to be quite sweet, stamped inside with the initials E.B. In swirling old writing, there was a date, 1864. It had been Ella Bathburn’s little gold ring. I wondered when she lost it or why. It had been found nearly one hundred years too late, but because it was Christmas morning, it almost felt as if Ella Bathburn had given me a gift.
We made it through New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day and the long white stretch of sledding days before school resumed. Derek was friendly now, but he didn’t love me anymore the way he once had. It was over and gone. And that ragged and nagged and pulled on me. It just wouldn’t quit, for I still loved Derek.
But we did everything together because there was no one else about, I suppose. We stacked wood together for the woodstoves. We did the washing up after tea. We rushed home to read Life magazine together every week. There we saw photographs of battles, of fighter planes and parachutes dropping and we read stories of USO canteen belles like Auntie. I liked the advertisement for the lipstick called Patriot Red by Louis Philippe. I wanted to wear Patriot Red lipstick and I wanted Derek to notice it and stare at me, thinking me very patriotic indeed.
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