Winnie rested her head on the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. “Hush, darling. Yes. We’ll talk about all that when I’ve rested. Now I need to sleep. Did I tell you how lovely you are, do you know? And you are so much taller! But you are still my pretty little child. Oh, I have missed you.”
She spoke with her eyes still closed and she squeezed my hand again and I suddenly wanted to shout at The Gram, “Come downstairs and greet my Winnie. She did not mean to hurt anyone. She’s been gone so long and she’s tired!”
But The Gram did not come out of her room. I thought for a moment I heard her on the stairs but it was only the sound of the sea that always seemed to transform itself and rise up and become yet again a kind of unexpected visitor in the Bathburn house. I made a pot of tea but Winnie fell asleep on the sofa and never drank any of it.
And then I went upstairs into the spare bedroom at the back of the house. Dimples followed me without saying one word. I opened the curtains and put fresh sheets on the bed. The sheets were cold and smelled of sweet cedar when I took them from the wooden chest. This room had hand-stenciled birds as wallpaper. Cardinals and orchard orioles flew all over the walls and above the doors. In the cupboard was an old doll with a wax head and a calico dress. Dimples watched me as I put the doll on the pillow next to where my mum would lie. Winnie had a small shopping bag of clothes with her. They were new, with tags hanging from them and they did not look like clothes she would pick out for herself.
Derek finally helped me lead Winnie to her room. He called her Aunt Winifred. When she sat at the edge of her bed, she looked at Derek and said, “I don’t believe we’ve met and I’m so sorry about that. I suppose you’re my nephew, but are you Miami’s son?”
“No,” said Derek, looking down.
“Am I unaware of Gideon’s marriage? Are you Gideon’s son?”
“No,” said Derek, turning to the window.
“Well then, dear heart, we will talk about it. I’m a good listener. You will tell me all about it when I wake up later.”
Derek turned round quickly and his face lit up. Every freckle seemed suddenly a tiny point of light. Later that afternoon as Winnie slept, Derek disappeared and I stood at the back window in Winnie’s room and watched him bicycling along the road to town.
The white snowdrops bloomed along the south side of the house in the morning sun the next day and Derek picked a bouquet for my mother. And Dimples said, “Did you want a bouquet too, Flissy Bee Bee Bee?” Then she started singing:
“Derek, Derek, won’t you marry Miss Fliss?
And if you won’t marry, won’t you give her a kiss?”
“Oh, Dimples, hush,” I said. “I shall be quite embarrassed if Derek hears you. He doesn’t love me anymore so please don’t sing that song.”
“Very well, then, can we make a trade?” she said to me. “I shall stop singing the song and in exchange I shall have your mum for mine and you can have the canopy bed back.” And then Dimples got all pouty and wouldn’t say anything else and finally she started to cry.
I poked about the room and fetched Wink for her. He was at his most huggable in the mornings. He was all fuzzy and ready to be supportive. I straightened his red bow at his neck and I handed him to Dimples. I told her we could share my mum but I couldn’t give her over completely the way I could with Wink.
“Wink is not just a toy bear. He’s real, Felicity! Oh and I don’t like sharing. I just need a mum to hug me, that’s all,” said Dimples, kicking at the tassels along the bottom of the pink stuffed chair in the bedroom.
“When she wakes up, I am sure my mum will hug you,” I said and I looked out Miami’s tall windows. From this angle the sea seemed quite elegant and reserved, like a grown-up sea that never slipped over the proper borders or did anything wild. I was used to sharing my mum with others, with everyone in the world, in fact. But I did hope she would have a moment for me. I did hope too that The Gram would let her stay. I knew it was up to me to unravel all that wrong between them and fix the break in the knitted pattern.
My mum slept and slept and slept. And I waited and waited and waited. And I worried about the bruises and scars on her legs and wrists and I hated to think what they meant. Still, it was to me a great relief to have her back here safely in the house. For once my heart was light and soaring like the bluebirds that appeared in our garden that late March when the last patches of snow were melting. How those bluebirds dipped and trailed, as if they were strewing ribbons in the air. At last that gnawing pain, that longing for my mother was gone. The pain was quieted. She was here!
In that next week when she was still mostly sleeping, waking up only for very small sips of tea and toast, she had called me her pretty little child again. Somehow that made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure why. And then she said, “I noticed some long, old-fashioned skirts and old hats in the cupboard. When I’m rested, I will play dress-up with you, darling, the way we used to. I am sure we can find you a fairy gown. You used to ask me all the time to bring you a fairy gown. Remember, darling?”
“I don’t really play dress-up anymore, Winnie,” I said.
“But I can’t believe it! It’s your favorite! What have they done to you here? I can still see your little face and that starry little crown you made. Remember? And who is Flissy Bee Bee Bee?” she said in an awkward, tired, and pitiful way, her face lying deep against the starched cotton pillowcase and feather pillow.
“That’s me,” I said, standing up tall and smiling.
“Oh, I prefer your name the way it was given to you, Felicity Budwig,” she said. “That’s you. That’s my little girl.”
But I was Flissy all the way down to the tips of my Pink Passion toenails. (Auntie had given me the bottle of nail varnish before she left.) Couldn’t Winnie see that?
And then I had whispered quietly as I set a tea tray down on the table next to her bed, “Do you think we can have hope for Gideon? And what about Danny? I mean, you know more than we do and …”
“Hush now. I cannot answer your questions just yet. I don’t have any answers, darling. It’s still so soon and hurts so much. Perhaps later, my little baby. Later.”
I didn’t know if I wanted to be called a “little baby” and I had hoped Winnie would talk to me about my father. But she didn’t seem to want to.
Oh, but those bluebirds fluttered and soared and dove about in the garden. My mother was here. She was here. I couldn’t believe it. I felt relief and joy and something else. Something else.
In the next few days I was able to leave the windows open in Winnie’s room. It was soothing and peaceful to see the curtains breathing in and out in the first spring air. She arrived at the end of March and it was the very beginning of April now. I think she had only been freed from prison a short time, but I didn’t know for sure. I would ask her everything when she was rested.
I was in the parlor knitting socks alone, waiting for Winnie to wake up from her endless sleep when the telephone rang again. We had one of the few telephones along the coast in this area and recently a neighbor who lived behind the Last Point Church had come in to use the telephone. He wanted to call Washington to ask the whereabouts of his two sons, who were in the same squadron in the Pacific. He did not receive an answer that day.
And so it was with our Mr. Henley too. We thought he had been moved somewhere and hadn’t been able to tell us. Whenever Miami called, I reminded her of that. “But it has been months now,” Miami had said, crying at the end of the line from so many miles away. She cried from Portland, Oregon. She cried from Santa Fe, New Mexico. And she even cried from Sacramento, California.
The telephone rang and rang now but The Gram did not come out of her room except once every evening to make dinner for us. And so I was left to answer it, as Dimples and Derek were playing horseshoes in the garden. I could hear the clang clang every time a horseshoe hit the iron pole to score.
“With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” I said.
“Hell
o, there. This is Pike Jemson from Doubleday Publishing. We hadn’t heard anything from you or from Private Henley with regard to this marvelous and extraordinary poetry manuscript. Is there any way we could go forward with this project through you, madam?” he said.
“Um,” I said. “Um.”
“Am I speaking with Mrs. Felicity Budwig Bathburn?” said the voice.
“Um, well, um, yes, sort of,” I said.
“Well, Mrs. Bathburn, Private Henley indicated in his letter to us that the matter would be in your hands while he is away.”
“I see,” I said. “Um, well, you see, Private Henley is in a special squadron, I believe, and we can’t contact him. But I know he will be ever so happy, Mr. Pike.”
“Mr. Jemson, if you will,” he said.
“Mr. Jemson. I am sorry,” I said. “Mr. Henley will be, in fact, pleased as Punch, as they say. He loves to write poetry. It’s what he lives for. He thought no one would want his poems. He got rejected about a hundred times, I think. Perhaps you should speak with his fiancée. Her name is Miami.” Then I felt dreadfully bold, as Mr. Henley had not yet asked my aunt to marry him. It was I who still had the engagement ring stored secretly in my room.
“Where can we contact her?” said Mr. Jemson.
“Well, she moves about, you see. She’s always moving with the USO. I don’t know where you might find her just now. She was in Wyoming last we spoke but she was leaving that night.”
“I see. Can we send you a contract, Mrs. Bathburn, for your signature and approval, with a check for one thousand dollars payable to Private Henley upon his return? He indicated that you were his contact.”
I paused. I took a deep breath. I did not think Mr. Pike Jemson knew he was speaking with a thirteen-year-old child. Well, perhaps I wasn’t a child. No, of course I wasn’t. It was clear when I stood next to Dimples and when she jumped from her bed to mine, pretending the beds were battleships; it was clear then that I was no longer a child. I hadn’t wanted to jump. I had been too busy to jump. And I didn’t believe my bed was a battleship. “Um,” I said, “um.”
“Well,” said Mr. Jemson, “the reason we are acting so quickly is because this book must come out while the war is on. It will be so meaningful to so many people. It will help so many people and it really can’t wait, Mrs. Bathburn.”
“Oh, I see,” I said again and that word help sort of floated round in my head, like a bumblebee moving amongst the lilac buds outside. “Yes,” I called out. “Yes, go ahead and send the papers. Mr. Henley will be over the moon because of this.”
And then I hung up the phone and I started crying. I cried for my daddy-uncle, who had been shot while saving my mum and Danny and I cried for my sweet Danny because I didn’t know where he was. I cried for my mum, asleep and silent, recovering in her bed upstairs. I cried for Derek because he was unfinished and waiting and wanting. I cried for The Gram, locked away in her room in her anger and for the neighbor who did not yet have an answer about his sons. And I cried for myself because I had made a decision without asking anyone and I could see clearly that I was no longer a child.
I sat in my auntie’s room, looking at all the photographs of movie stars she had sent away for. All of them were signed to Miami Bathburn, some with love and some with best wishes. There was a photograph of the dashing Clark Gable. He had been in the movie Gone with the Wind, which The Gram had finally taken us to see last spring. Miami had sent off for his autograph long ago and she adored Clark Gable. Now he had joined the air force and was seen in the news in uniform. His wife, who was also an actress, had gone down in a plane while on a tour promoting the sale of war bonds to Americans to help raise money for the war. Even movie stars had mixed-up and broken lives because of the war.
Oh, what could I do to make The Gram forgive my Winnie? I decided to write The Gram a letter.
For The Gram,
I love being here at the Bathburn house. I love the bedrooms upstairs, the way they smell of lilacs even when the lilacs haven’t yet bloomed for the season. I love the Lifebuoy soap in the long porcelain bathtub upstairs. I love bathing in it. I have never floated in such a long bathtub. Do you think the captain was an extremely tall man? I love seeing Ella Bathburn’s doll and her whalebone knitting and embroidery needles tucked in baskets about the house. I love seeing her embroidered bed curtains on Miami’s canopy bed. I love the soft, murmuring sound of you being in the kitchen when I wake up in the morning. I love your muffins even without sugar, as they have been recently. I love the sky above the Bathburn house, even full of fighter planes and Coast Guard planes. I love your son Gideon, my daddy-uncle, and I love your handsome son, Danny, my uncle-daddy. But best of all I love you so very much. You are my favorite grandmother. Won’t you come out and greet my Winnie? You cannot blame her anymore. She is part of the family. Come out and hug my Winnie. Do it for me because I love you so.
Love,
Your granddaughter, Flissy B. Bathburn
I stuffed the letter under her bedroom door and waited. For a half hour I sat there in the window seat in the hallway, watching the door and the sun slide slowly across it. Finally, I heard my grandmother stirring. She came out into the hall and she threw her arms all round me. She rocked me tightly, just the way she rocked her bread dough, rolling and coaxing it with care. And then we went downstairs together, grandmother and granddaughter, and put on the kettle for tea. There was something about the sound of the water heating in a kettle on the cooker that seemed always to offer such promise, as if that sound would cure or heal any wound.
It was I who took the tray up to Winnie later. The Gram still refused. But she stayed downstairs all day. She did the washing up and the cooking and some laundry. She did not speak of Winnie but she no longer stayed behind closed doors in her bedroom.
During that first week of April, The Gram made a tart using the last of our homemade wild strawberry jam. “The wild strawberries will be out in June and I wanted to use up last year’s supply of jam,” The Gram said and she pulled from the oven a blistering, bubbling, cooing, wild strawberry tart.
“A piece of this will be wonderful for my Winnie,” I said. “She isn’t eating much. She must be losing more weight. I’m dreadfully worried.”
The Gram drew a long breath and went to the kitchen window with her back to me and said, “I did not make this tart for her.”
It was then that an idea came to me. You never know when an idea may decide to choose you. It’s a bit like a dragonfly coming to rest on the tip of your nose. You either acknowledge it or shoo it away. But I would never advise shooing away a great idea.
I tucked my idea away for now and let it ripen, like a green tomato put in a bag to turn red in the darkness.
When I nosed open Winnie’s door quietly with a tray of tea and a slice of strawberry tart that The Gram had finally given up, Winnie was brushing her lovely hair and sitting up in bed. “Darling, how sweet of you. I was just thinking about how we used to play that board game Uncle Wiggily together. Shall we again? Oh, poppet, we will leave here soon. When I am feeling stronger, we’ll rent a sports car and go off on holiday, you and I. Perhaps we won’t come back to this old, gloomy place.”
“But I love this house with all my heart,” I said. “Winnie, I don’t play Uncle Wiggily anymore. I am thirteen years old.”
“Oh, tomorrow I shall get up and be a normal mum for you. I promise. I do promise, poppet.” She closed her eyes again and held my hand. “I am so sorry I left you so long in this dreadful, awful house. You seem to care terribly for The Gram. Have you forgotten me, darling?”
“Oh no, Winnie, it’s just that I would like to know what happened with Gideon and you, I mean, before … I mean …”
“You are only a child. You are far too young for me to talk about this with you,” said Winnie quite firmly and then she covered her eyes with her delicate hand.
“No, Winnie, you don’t understand. I want to know,” I said.
Right then Dimples plowed into t
he room with a jar of jam from the cellar in her hands. She put it on the small table next to the bed and she stood there, staring at Winnie and not saying a word. Winnie reached out and put her arm round Dimples and pulled her up onto the bed next to her. “There you go, you little dumpling,” she said.
I was so glad and relieved to have my mother back! And yet there were clouds forming between Winnie and me. This morning The Gram and Derek and I were in the kitchen unwrapping and setting up our brand-new clock-size Taylor Stormoguide that had just arrived in the mail. It would help predict storms for us since there were no more weather reports on the radio or in the newspapers. The government thought a weather report might help the enemy, so weather was never mentioned on the air.
“It is very attractive, isn’t it? I’m glad we chose the ivory color instead of the walnut,” I said, admiring the chrome along the bottom of the Stormoguide. Then Winnie appeared in the doorway, like a beautiful ghost in a new starched housedress that was too big for her.
I startled. Derek got up and offered her his chair and as she was sitting down, she looked towards The Gram and said, “My sister calls her mother-in-law Mother. May I call you that? After all you are Danny’s mother. You are Gideon’s mother.”
“Don’t mention his name,” The Gram said and then she turned and left the room.
“She wants to call you Mother,” shouted Derek. “Let her. Let her call you what she wants.”
I felt shadows and dismay pour through me. I wasn’t upset with Winnie but I wished she would call The Gram something else.
Dimples had just woken up and come downstairs. She was a very late sleeper and still wearing her pink, wrinkled nightdress. She sort of wandered into the room with Wink. Dimples could be grumpy and cross in the morning and I feared she might be dreadful but she walked over to Winnie and climbed up in her lap with Wink.
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