Meg smiled wearily. “That’s me,” she said. She’d had more than enough of being somebody else.
CHAPTER 6
Terrible News
When Meg turned the corner and started up Brookfield Avenue, she saw a moving van in front of her apartment building. The looming shape swept away thoughts about the events at the art museum. Then she saw an unfamiliar green studio couch being carried down the ramp, and she sighed with relief. The van had nothing to do with her family. Someone must be moving into the front apartment on the second floor.
Meg walked faster, hoping to see the new neighbors, but there was no one in sight except the movers and a small skinny boy who stood nearby and watched with a bored expression.
Maybe the new tenants would have a baby and need a sitter. Summer vacation was just a few days away, and Meg hoped to find a job. Most of the people she knew asked senior high school girls to sit for them, but a new family might not care so much about age.
Meg found Bill and her father in the kitchen frying sausages and making a salad.
“Ma has to work late,” Bill explained. “She called and said we should eat without her.” He looked uncomfortable, and Meg wondered what they had been talking about before she arrived.
A moment later she knew.
“This gives the three of us a chance to discuss a few things,” her father said. “Things your mother and I have already talked over.”
His face looked thinner than usual, and very tired. I don’t want to hear! Meg cried silently, but she knew it would be useless to say the words out loud.
“This is hard to explain.” Her father’s deep voice filled the space around her. “But I want you both to understand. The important fact is, my work is getting better right along. I’m sure of it! The comments I get from editors are very encouraging.” His voice trembled as he hurried on. “I think I have a very good chance of having a book published before long.”
Was this what he wanted to talk about? Poetry?
“You already have a book,” Meg said.
“Which I paid to have printed myself.” Her father shook his head, as if the book had been a foolish mistake. “Five years ago it seemed like a good idea—a way of reaching my audience—but now I can see it was a waste of money. I need the support of a major publisher to get attention.”
He paused, and Meg knew he was thinking of the unopened cartons of books that were stored in the basement locker. Once in a while her father gave away a copy, but no one ever offered to pay for it. That was when all the arguing between her parents began—when those boxes were moved into the locker. It was right about then that her father quit his job to write all the time.
“Anyway, the point is, kids, your mother wants me to give up writing and get a job. I don’t blame her,” he went on hurriedly. “I don’t blame her at all. She’s been the money-maker in the family for a long time, and it’s natural that she should get impatient. She’d like me to give up the whole idea. And the trouble with that is”—Bill dropped the frying-pan lid, and Meg jumped—“I can’t do it. Writing is my life. It took me a long time to learn that, and now I have to live with it. Any way I can.”
Writing is my life! Meg couldn’t believe he had said those words. “What about us?” she whispered. “What about Bill and me? What about Mama? Aren’t we your life, too?”
He put out his arms to her, but she stepped back, waiting for his answer.
“Of course you are. You mustn’t ever doubt that. But I can’t be a good father or a husband if I can’t write, too. At least, I need more time to find out how successful I’m going to be.”
Meg felt sick. How neatly he had it all figured out! How willing he was to let them go!
“So what’s going to happen?” she asked flatly.
“He’s going away.” Bill was at the stove with his back to them.
“I called your Uncle Henry in Marquette this morning. He’s going to let me live in the family cottage out at Lake Superior. And he thinks I can get some part-time work around there, helping out the other property owners. It’ll be enough for food, and I’ll still be able to write most of every day.”
He stopped, waiting for them to say something, but Meg had no words for what she was feeling. Writing is my life. That was what he’d told them. Writing was the only thing that mattered. He could sit up there at Uncle Henry’s cottage and write his precious poems and stories and feel like a whole person, with the bits and pieces of his family scattered behind him.
“I wish I could make you see this as I do,” he said. “You feel as if I’m walking out on you, but there’s more to it than you know. I wouldn’t go if your mother didn’t have a good job. Even Bill’s scholarship—it’s a kind of sign that it’s okay for me to try this now.” He looked pleadingly at his son’s rigid back. “You’ll get along fine. You’re great kids. I want to make you proud of me someday, the way I’m proud of you.”
“Let’s eat,” Bill said. He turned to reach for the bag of rolls on the counter, his face pale. Meg remembered how he’d looked at the Firehouse the night before. He’d been the happiest person in the world, and they’d been happy with him. Now the joy was gone, and there was nothing left but this, a family falling apart.
It was more than Meg could bear. “I’m not hungry,” she cried and ran out of the kitchen, out of the apartment. She didn’t care where she went, as long as she couldn’t hear her father.
The moving van was gone from the front of the building, and Brookfield Avenue had settled into its usual dinner-hour calm. It was an old street, a mixture of medium-sized apartment buildings, turn-of-the-century houses, and small businesses. Meg sank down on the top step and looked around. She felt like a different person from the girl who had come home less than half an hour ago. Even the neighborhood—ordinary old Brookfield Avenue—looked strange to her. She wondered if anything would ever be the same again.
“Want a Coke?”
The husky voice came from overhead. Meg looked up. The skinny boy she’d seen earlier was leaning from a second-floor window and looking down at her with a hopeful expression.
Meg wanted to say no, but there was something in the boy’s manner that stopped her. “No” was what he expected to hear.
“I don’t mind,” she said stiffly.
A smile spread across the thin, freckled face. “I’ll be down in a minute. Don’t go away.”
If I only could, Meg thought. She waited, staring into the twilight, until the door opened and a bottle of Coke appeared over her shoulder. She turned to say thanks—and stared in surprise. Was this the “boy” she had just seen? Lipstick. Pierced ears. A pale pink T-shirt with dark blue letters across the front:
GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS. TALK TO HER.
“Oh, I thought you were a—” Meg decided not to say what she’d thought. “I’m Meg Korshak.”
“Rhoda Deel.” The newcomer sat on the step next to Meg and stretched out her blue-jeaned legs. “I know what you were thinking. Everyone teases me about looking like a boy. It’s because I’m so flat. The superintendent of the building said, ‘Hi, sonny,’ when we moved in.” She looked down at herself and sighed. “My dad gave me this T-shirt for my twelfth birthday—he said I should be proud to be a woman. Maybe I will be someday. But right now I don’t care what people think. If I did, I’d let my hair grow long and wear skirts—ugh! I mean, if you’re going to worry about stuff like that, you’re not going to have fun at all. Right?”
Meg listened and sipped her Coke. The lipstick and earrings suggested that Rhoda Deel did want the world to know she was a girl—at least, she wanted Meg to know.
“I wasn’t sure I should talk to you,” Rhoda went on. “You looked as if you had something important on your mind.”
Meg didn’t reply for a moment. Then, “I live on the fourth floor,” she offered. “I guess that was you moving in this afternoon.”
“Right. My dad was transferred again. We drove all the way from New York and got here an hour before the moving van. Th
at makes four moves in three years. We’re getting pretty good at timing the trips and packing and unpacking.”
Meg was impressed. She couldn’t remember having lived anywhere except on Brookfield Avenue in Milwaukee. Lucky Rhoda Deel, she thought. Lucky girl whose father loves his family enough to take them along when he moves.
“What’s New York like? Did you see lots of famous people while you lived there?”
“Liza Minnelli once, on Third Avenue. And Carly Simon in a delicatessen. At least, I think it was Carly Simon.” Rhoda frowned, trying to remember. “I guess that’s all.… Oh, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, the doctor who did the first heart transplants. He gave a talk at the All-City Science Fair last year. I didn’t win a prize or anything, but my dad and I went to see the demonstrations.”
“My dad” again! This girl talked about her father more than anyone Meg had ever met.
“My brother Bill did win a prize in the national science contest,” Meg said, feeling mean. “He has a scholarship.”
“Wow!” Rhoda sat up and stared at her in open-mouthed excitement. “What kind of experiment did he do?”
“Something about energy.” Meg already regretted her bragging. “Solar energy. I’ll introduce you and he can tell you himself.”
“Great!” Rhoda leaned back and tipped her Coke bottle, bottoms up. “I wish I had a brother. Or a sister. Or a dog. Just someone who’d be around, you know? It gets kind of lonesome with all this moving. Every new street looks pretty much like all the others to me—I just wake up one morning and realize all my friends are somewhere else.”
“Maybe your folks didn’t want any more children,” Meg said. She was thinking of something she’d heard her mother say to a friend long ago. Of course it’s very nice to have a boy and a girl, but the second child in our family was strictly an accident.
Rhoda nodded. “I don’t think they wanted even one. Not my mother, anyway. She moved to Los Angeles a long time ago. She had to.”
“Why?”
“To find herself.” Rhoda said the words as if they explained everything. “She’s an assistant to a very important film director. I’m going out to stay with her for a couple of weeks before school starts next fall.”
Meg was stunned. How could Rhoda speak so calmly about her mother’s leaving? She pictured her father upstairs, maybe packing his clothes this very minute, and her throat ached with the effort to hold back her tears.
She stood up. “I have to go. Thanks for the Coke.”
Rhoda looked surprised. “What’d I say?” she demanded. “Did you think I was bragging about my mother’s job? I don’t care about that. We can talk about something else.”
Meg felt the tears begin to spill over. “I just have some work to do now—homework.”
“Oh.” Rhoda continued to look at her. “Well, I’ll see you later then, huh?”
Meg hurried inside and ran all the way up to her apartment without stopping. Maybe it was too late for Rhoda and her mother; Rhoda didn’t seem to care much, anyway. But Meg’s father was still at home. She would talk to him—make him change his mind. If they all worked together, maybe they could help him to find himself right here at home.
But when Meg let herself into the apartment, her father’s bedroom door was closed and his typewriter chattered. She started down the hall, then hesitated. Bill’s door was closed, too. She looked from one door to the other. If her brother didn’t know what to do, what could she possibly say to change their father’s mind?
She wandered into the living room and looked down at the street. Rhoda Deel was still there on the steps. As Meg watched, she leaned back, her Coke bottle clutched in one hand, and stuck out her tongue at Brookfield Avenue.
CHAPTER 7
The Brown Suitcase
The hall was familiar in every detail. The umbrella stand was there, the gate-leg table, the mirror with birds carved in the frame. Above the mirror a small diamond of pink light was reflected from the bowl on the table. The Tinker Bell light—that was what Meg had called it after seeing the stage version of Peter Pan. She stared at the light, knowing that when she turned she’d see something else—something that didn’t belong in the apartment hallway. Something she didn’t want to see.
There were voices in the kitchen and street sounds from the open living-room windows. A truck started up with coughing sounds. Meg pulled her eyes away from the pink light on the wall and looked down at the flowered carpet. The roses. The old ink spot that would never come out. Then, very slowly, she turned. A brown suitcase leaned against the wall, just inside the door.
A suitcase. Her father’s? Meg was wide awake and out of bed in the same moment. She ran into the hall. There was no suitcase. Sunlight streamed through the open door of her parents’ bedroom.
“Dad?” She went in. The room was unexpectedly neat for so early in the morning. The bed was made, and the top of her father’s desk was bare except for the pencil holder she’d made for him in third grade. Her mother sat in the armchair in the corner. She was dressed and ready for work, but she just sat there.
“He’s gone,” her mother said. “He got up at four and packed and left. He didn’t want any more good-bys—said he’d write when he got settled. There’s a bus to Marquette at six ten.” They both looked at the clock on the bedside table. It was five minutes after six.
Down at the bus station, people must be standing in line. Mothers and babies going to see grandparents. Old people going to visit their children. Salesmen with briefcases. Fathers running away from their families.
“I hate him!” Meg cried. “I really hate him!”
Her mother stood up and came around the bed. She hugged Meg. “I should probably tell you not to say that,” she murmured. “But I hate him, too, at the moment.” Her voice broke, and she stepped back. “Let’s have breakfast, kiddo,” she said. “You wake up Bill. Life goes on.”
Meg went out into the hall, where the image of the brown suitcase jumped into her mind again. Maybe her father had put it down outside her door, for a second, just before he left. Maybe he’d looked in at her. She was glad she’d been asleep. She didn’t want any more good-bys either. She tapped on Bill’s door, then went into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face and brush her teeth.
When Meg and Bill came downstairs after breakfast, Rhoda Deel was sitting on the front step. She was wearing dark brown pants and a plaid blouse, and her hair had been washed and brushed. She blushed when Meg introduced her to Bill. Most of Meg’s friends didn’t pay much attention to Bill; he wasn’t a high-school jock, and they weren’t interested in science. But Rhoda acted as if she were meeting a movie star. When she found her voice, she asked one question after another about the demonstration Bill had entered in the science contest. Soon they were talking like old friends.
Meg stood on one foot and then the other, wondering how Bill could act as if nothing were wrong. When he finally said good-by, the girls had to hurry to avoid being late for school.
“Boy, are you lucky!” Rhoda said. “Your brother’s a really neat person.”
Meg nodded. Her mind was miles away on a bus racing north to Marquette. She felt Rhoda looking at her.
“You feel okay, Meg? You seem kind of—quiet. Are you mad about something?”
“I’m all right,” Meg said. But then, quite unexpectedly, she found herself telling Rhoda the whole story—about her father, about his leaving, everything. It all spilled out in a furious rush. “And I hate him!” she finished. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened.”
Rhoda sighed. “He’s finding himself,” she said. “Boy, oh, boy, I know just how you feel.”
Meg looked at her new friend gratefully. She’d been wrong about Rhoda. Rhoda remembered exactly what it was like to have a parent walk out on you.
“Want to know something funny?” Rhoda said. “I guess I saw him. Your father. This morning. I couldn’t sleep—I always have a hard time sleeping the first few nights in a new place. So I got up and poured a gla
ss of milk, and I sat at the window for a while. And pretty soon this man came out of the apartment carrying a suitcase and a briefcase and a typewriter. He had a beard, and he was wearing a blue jacket.”
She waited for Meg’s nod. “I’ll tell you something,” she went on. “I didn’t know who he was, natch, but I felt sorry for him. He had a sad look. He kept glancing back over his shoulder at the building as he walked to the corner. Once he stopped and put down the suitcase and just stared. I thought maybe he’d seen me at the window, so I ducked down. And when I looked again, he was gone.”
Meg blinked. She didn’t want to see her father the way Rhoda had described him. “So that’s that,” she said. “Who cares, anyway! We’d better hurry.” She grabbed Rhoda’s wrist. “I’ll show you where the principal’s office is before I go to my homeroom. Maybe you’ll be assigned to the same room.”
“Actually I probably won’t get a room assignment till September,” Rhoda said. “They never want you to start classes so near the end of the semester. I’ll just register today and find out where I am compared to the rest of the kids. And see if there’s anything interesting to take in summer school.”
They crossed the street to the schoolyard, and Meg began to look for Gracie. When she thought about what had happened at home, the trouble at the art museum no longer seemed important. She’d forgive Gracie, because most of the time Gracie was fun.
Meg left Rhoda at the principal’s door with a promise to watch for her between classes. Then the first bell rang, and the school day started.
If Gracie was worried about being forgiven, it didn’t show.
“Wait’ll you hear,” she squealed when Meg joined her on the way to the cafeteria at noon. “Linda told me all about the party. She’s having boys!”
Meg stared. “At a slumber party? You’re making that up!”
“Of course not at the slumber party, silly.” Gracie giggled. “She’s having a boy-girl party first, and then some of us—her best friends—will stay for the slumber party. Wait’ll you see her house!”
The Secret Window Page 4