Sincerely yours,
Pike Jemson
Doubleday, Doran Publishing”
“Oh, Derek,” I called out. “Mr. Henley will be so very pleased. He has tried for so many years to get published.” I threw my arms round Dimples. She wrapped one of her little arms round Derek and pulled him towards us. And her New York Times sailor hat fell off and got smashed by mistake by our joyous, jumping feet.
It was the very first of March now. They say, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” Well then, this March was a wet, soupy lion with ice in his whiskers and sleet in his mane. Still, walking home from school, I could feel a bit of melt in the air. Dimples was wearing her old galoshes that were full of holes. She didn’t care at all that her feet were soaking wet. She was jumping in every icy puddle we passed. Perhaps last year I would have done the same but I was taller now and puddles no longer interested me, except to look at the clouds and sky in them. Sometimes it seemed as if the whole world was displayed upside down in a puddle. Perhaps there were answers there in the deep reflection of the sky. I wanted those answers. And yet every time I looked down into a puddle, Dimples splashed the whole thing with her galoshes and the reflection scattered. “Derek’s gone off today, hasn’t he?” said Dimples.
“Yes, I looked for him after school, but I didn’t see him,” I said.
“That’s because he’s gone off with Mr. Babbit to find his mum and his dad.”
“How do you know that, Dimples?” I said.
“I don’t say,” said Dimples, “I just don’t say.” She was about to call it out one more time but instead she looked straight ahead and fell silent.
A black car had pulled into the driveway in front of our house. A soldier got out and waved slowly to us. He was all dressed up in his somber, freshly ironed uniform.
I suddenly hated him. My stomach turned over. The ground underneath my feet seemed to fall away. I wanted to shout out, “No. Don’t come here. Don’t come to our house.”
Dimples called out, “What does it mean when a soldier comes to your door, Felicity? Does it mean something bad?”
I ran inside and went upstairs. I wanted to go to bed. I wanted to be far away under my covers.
Dimples came pounding into the room after me. “Felicity, his number plates are from New York State. He has driven a long way. I invited him in. He’s in the parlor. Shouldn’t we get him a cup of tea?”
The Gram was in the upstairs hall when I looked out my door. She was walking very slowly and with great care, as if she were balancing a large book on her head, as if she were carrying a basket of glass eggs, as if she were walking on a narrow white line above a drop-off. “Flissy, get my glasses for me, dear. They are on my dresser,” she said.
We followed her downstairs. “Dimples, stand up straight and offer the young man a chair. Girls, go in the library, then, and do some knitting. Dimples, work on your sums. Flissy, don’t jump about. Be still. Be quiet. Don’t make a sound. Excuse me, have you a letter? For me? Can this wait? Is it urgent? I …” She put her face in the crook of her arm. She started to cry. She stopped. She wiped her hands on her skirt. “Is this from Little Bill? He sent you all the way up here? For this? Did you drive all the way today? I’m so sorry. Do I need to read this now? Could we do this later? Flissy, come here. Flissy.” She reached out to me and pulled me against her. “Flissy, don’t go, dear. This nice man has something for me to read and I don’t want to read it. Could you please …” She sat down in a chair and she started to cry again. “Could you please hand it to me, young man? Could you please do me the kindness of handing me the letter? I’m really too tired to do anything at all.”
He held out the envelope and The Gram took it. Then she squeezed me even more tightly against her. She looked down and read the letter and I read it too. Her hand was shaking. The paper was shaking but I read the words.
Dear Helen,
I was sorry I could not be more forthcoming on the telephone when you called. For security reasons, of course, and I’m sure you understand. Anyway, Helen, you have my greatest respect and admiration for your own work and for the work of your sons. Both of them. They are by far and away our best in the field and it’s due to your superb training and support, so you must feel great pride, dear friend.
Meanwhile, I do have some news to report. It’s not conclusive so you mustn’t fret.
I delayed in sending this until a certain amount of time had passed, again for the sake of security. I am pleased to tell you that the escape and rescue maneuver by the Blue Piano to free the Butterfly and the Bear was successful. It went off flawlessly. However, we understand that some miles from Limoges, the Blue Piano was driving the car and we believe he was shot at a checkpoint or by the local police. We don’t know the extent of his injuries. It’s unclear. We do know, however, that the Butterfly did reach the convent near the Spanish border. Helen, dear, this is the best and the worst possible news. Please take care and do not fret. I shall keep you posted further as information comes in.
I remain your friend and admirer,
William Stephenson
The Gram then put the letter on the table. She walked out into the hall and pulled herself up the stairs, holding on to the railing. She went into her room and she closed the door. All that evening we could hear her crying. It got into the wind and it got into the walls. You could hear it all through the house. No one fetched wood for the fire. No one made any dinner. The house was cold and empty.
The soldier had stood in the driveway earlier, fussing with his briefcase. He kept shuffling his feet, not knowing what to do and then he got in his car and drove off, waving to Dimples. Derek came home at six from where, I did not know, and he didn’t ever take off his jacket. All three of us wore our coats and our wool hats. One light alone burned in the parlor. The rest of the house was dark. Dimples sat on the floor in the parlor and played chutes and ladders with Wink. Derek curled up in a chair and didn’t speak. I lay on the sofa under a quilt and stared up at the ceiling while Dimples talked to Wink about good children getting to climb a ladder and have lovely sweets and bad children having to go down a dark chute all by themselves.
We ended up staying the night in the parlor, Derek on the floor, rolled up in a blanket, me on the sofa, and Dimples sleeping on two stuffed chairs pushed together. In the morning she said Wink hogged the bed and that she had fallen through the crack two times in the night. The Gram was up already and was making scrambled eggs and toast for us in the kitchen. There wasn’t a trace of a tear in her eyes. And I rarely saw her cry again.
The fires were going but when we went in the kitchen to eat, we were still wearing our coats and hats. Dimples stood quite soberly by the door, her hair in a bit of a tangle and some peanut butter and jelly from yesterday still on her cheeks. When I looked at her, I realized she was alone outside the circle of tears, while The Gram and Derek and I were standing in the middle of it. Dimples had not met my father. She had never talked to him. She could not understand how it felt to know he had been shot. He was the Blue Piano and he had rescued the Butterfly and the Bear. The Blue Piano had been brave and daring and courageous and he had saved Winnie and Danny. I burst into tears over and over again. I felt so different now from Dimples. As if there were a very long expanse, an endless, lonely field of winter grass between us. And yet my mum had been freed. She was no longer in a horrid prison. She was safe in a kindly convent. The nuns would feed her. They would let her rest there. I still had a mother. And I still longed for her. And my Danny too was still alive. And yet the Blue Piano had been shot.
We didn’t go to school that day and I spent most of the afternoon in the library because that was truly my daddy’s room. I took my hand and ran it across the backs of all his books on the shelves. I picked up the sharpened pencils standing in their jar on his desk. I went to the piano and let my hands rest on the keys. Then I opened his writing box. I pulled out a little flat drawer at the bottom. Some old, half-finished letters lay in t
here, covered with my father’s big, easy, open handwriting.
Darling Winnie,
If you only knew how I feel tonight. If I could be sitting in the same room with you now, that alone would ease my longing. Even if you were in my brother’s arms, I would still choose to be near you. We love so few people in our lives. Love does not come easily or often. It is rare and stubborn and unyielding. And my love for you, Winnie, in spite of what has happened, is unstoppable. I cannot control or steer its course.
The letter was never finished and never sent. There appeared to be others and all of them were never mailed. In one he spoke of me and his great longing and sadness over not seeing me or knowing me. I closed up the writing box and went over to the Victrola and put on a record. I chose “I Think of You.” Not because I wanted to wallow or drown in tears but because it had been Gideon’s favorite song and I wanted Dimples to know my father. “Dimples, do come in here and listen to this song,” I said.
She wove her way into the library a bit cautiously. She was dragging Wink by his ear.
“You’re hurting Wink. He always had very sensitive ears, actually. I never carried him that way,” I said.
“He likes it,” shouted Dimples. “He likes being dragged about by his ears. He told me. He told me.” She kept shouting and shouting and finally she started to cry.
I went over to her and I put my arm round her. I suddenly realized how confused and alone she felt. After all, she was far away from her home and from her own mum. “We shall be all right, Dimples,” I said. “We shall go on waiting and waiting and hoping. And I think we should ask The Gram if she could make Wink some new clothes. I bet she can make him the best pajamas any bear ever had.”
Derek was shattered by all this. He had a look about him, like a sturdy plate that had been dropped too many times. Every morning before school, he walked off way down the shore and I could see him tossing small rocks into the water over and over again. Now we were like other families in Bottlebay, not knowing anything about their brothers or fathers or uncles or cousins. We did not know where Danny was. We did not know if my father was alive or dead. Not knowing left you feeling heavy and confused, with your feelings all in a bottle inside you.
Last week our seagull, Sir William, had shown up on our porch with three fat gray children, all of them waiting to be fed. Miss Elkin was visiting and confirmed Sir William was a girl seagull and not a boy as we had previously thought. We now needed to change her name. I did not think a girl should go flying about with a name like Sir William. I would have loved so to tell my father about his pet. But I could not. Perhaps he would never know now.
We sent packages of biscuits and our homemade jam and sweaters and socks to the last address we had for Mr. Henley but we got no reply. And it was Dimples who asked after we’d mailed off the package if a soldier would need a wool sweater in North Africa. And The Gram rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, how could I be so foolish? You’re right, Dimples, of course. No one wears wool in that climate in the spring, which is, God willing, just around the corner.”
In the middle of March, Dimples found a whole collection of ladybugs that had wintered over in the house, upstairs. She captured about five of them and had them in a jar in our room. She put a tiny thimble of water in for them and sometimes she let them out to wander about on her arms. One day one of them got lost under the dresser and Dimples had a terrible fit until Derek helped her find it.
We read in the New York Times that month that the Allies were planning to send planes to bomb Germany “around the clock.” And I did hope that didn’t make the Nazis bomb London all the more. We had real baths, instead of sponge baths, that month too, when it began to warm up enough in the bathroom to be able to stand it. Dimples told us that when she took a bath in England, the government said you could only have five inches of water in the bathtub. Did they measure the water with a ruler? I wondered. And I hated war and I said so every night before I went to sleep.
And then on a warm evening in late March, the sort of evening at the end of winter that appears out of nowhere, when the air is strangely thick and balmy and new, we decided to pull out the wicker porch chairs and sit outside. The four of us, on the darkened porch, were rocking away all bundled up in our coats. We were rocking in rhythm with the surf and watching the searchlights across the water, when the telephone rang.
The Gram began to shake and she wouldn’t get up even when I tugged and pulled at her. But she wouldn’t budge. She just kept calling out, “No. No. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.” And finally I ran to the phone and grabbed the receiver. I too did not think I could bear any more bad news.
“Hello,” I called into the phone.
“Hello,” a voice called back. “Is it Felicity?”
“Yes,” I called, “who is this?”
“It’s your mum, Winnie, darling. Can you hear me? Are you there? You sound so grown up. I’m just arrived back in the States. Are you there? Hello, darling? Say something. Have we been cut off? Hello?”
“Winnie! Winnie!” I said. “Is it really you?”
The phone started buzzing and sputtering. “Hello? It’s your mum, darling. I have so wanted to hear your voice, my baby. I am going to be trying to come there tomorrow, although Bill thinks I’m too weak.” She started to cry. “But I shall be fine. Can you make up a bed for me? I’m awfully tired, darling. Can you hear me?”
“Oh, Winnie, yes, we can make you a lovely bed. Oh, Winnie, I’ve missed you so. I nearly died waiting for you,” I said.
“I shall see you tomorrow. I have a ride, says Bill. It’s all arranged.” Her words trailed off and grew faint. “He’s been so very nice. I’m awfully tired, darling. I shall see you tomorrow, perhaps. Is that just lovely, then? Okay, my darling. Good night, then.”
“Winnie! Winnie!” I called out again. “Winnie. Oh, Winnie. Don’t hang up. I have waited so long. Good night. Will I really see you tomorrow? How will you get here?”
“Yes, darling. It’s all been arranged.” The phone began buzzing and sputtering again. “I’ve lost a bit of weight, you know. Don’t be shocked, will you? And I imagine you are a big girl now.”
“Oh, Winnie, shall I tell The Gram? What shall I say?” But I don’t think she heard me because, soon enough, the line was empty and an operator broke in. And then I held the receiver in my arms and I shrieked and cried at the very top of my lungs. I screamed at the very tippy top of my whole being. “Winnie! Winnie! Winnie! My mum, Winnie, is coming home. She is back. Winnie is coming home!”
The next day the sky was as gray and blue as the pearly inside of a mussel shell. The wind was coming in from the south, the clouds high and tumbling. I don’t know how Winnie ended up approaching the house from way down the shore. Perhaps her ride had left her off at the wrong spot along the water or she had taken a wrong turn herself or maybe she just wanted to look at the ocean first before knocking on our door, but there she was, walking up the shore just as I always knew she would, just the way I had seen my mother coming towards me so many times in my mind. The water pearly blue, her dress the same color, the sky too chiming in, matching that soft blue note. All of it melting into wind and wholeness, her hair loosened and blowing. She was limping. God, Winnie, don’t limp. Don’t look so thin and so tired. The wind could carry you away. Don’t let it. Don’t move. Be there really. Really. I ran towards my mother. She seemed farther and farther away, the faster I ran. And she seemed hardly aware of the wind that battered and ruffled her.
“Winnie,” I called out, rushing along the shingles and sand and mud. I raced and ran and for a moment it felt like I would never reach her, that I would run and run and I would never get to her. She suddenly seemed so far away, so far away. Then in a cloud of wind and salt spray I rushed upon her. “Winnie!” I shouted again. I threw myself into her arms and she fell into mine and as soon as I had my head on her shoulder, I realized I was bigger and taller and older now, that I wasn’t the same little girl anymore. Winnie felt small to me an
d her eyes were huge and full of something new, something I did not recognize.
It was all a jumble of sky and sea and tears. Winnie’s voice sounded lost and wavering and her arms were thin. When she and I stumbled up to the porch, The Gram stood at the screen door. Her face was frozen and still. Winnie leaned against my shoulder and looked at The Gram. “Helen,” she said through the mesh of the screen, “Helen, may I come in? I’ve been on a long, long journey and I am very tired and I have lost so much.”
The Gram didn’t answer.
“May I ask you for a place to rest, just for the time being?” said Winnie. She laughed in a weakened, soft way. “I shan’t take up much room and I promise to be quiet.”
The Gram stood there saying nothing for the longest time and then she backed away from the door and I led my mother into the parlor. In the moments that followed, The Gram began to step back a little more and a little more until finally she turned and went upstairs into her room and shut her bedroom door.
Winnie sat down on the sofa and took off her shoes. Her feet and legs were dotted with faded bruises and old scratches and for some reason she began to shiver. She pulled a crocheted blanket across her lap so that I wouldn’t see the marks on her legs. She was shy about that and about her wrists as well. “It’s been almost two months and they are practically all gone now,” she said and she took my hand and I sat down beside her. And for a moment I too felt shy, as if a stranger had come for a visit.
“Would you care for some tea?” I said finally. I spotted Dimples then, peeking round the corner and I shook my head and waved her away.
“Yes, thank you, darling,” said Winnie, closing her eyes and squeezing my hand. “Yes, oh yes, tea would be lovely.”
“The Gram must be tired today, if she forgot to say hello. Sometimes she can be forgetful, especially because of Gideon. We’ve been so very worried about him.”
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