Footsteps on the Stairs: A Novel

by C. S. Adler

  I released him. “I’m willing if she is,” I said cautiously. I’d never heard of any adult-arranged friendship between two kids working out—especially not where one is supposed to be a good influence on the other.

  “Want to help me tie the sail onto the roof rack?” he asked.

  I learned to sail at summer camp last year. Mother has been mailing me off to summer camp for years to get me out of her way. Once I’m gone, the oddest thing happens. She forgets the awful burden of her duty to raise me right and begins writing me long, chatty letters about herself. I learn more about what she’s doing at work and about her friends than I learn the whole rest of the year. Our relationship works best at correspondence length. No sooner do I get home than she’s at it again. “Dodie, must you lie on the table to eat?” or “Dodie, how do you manage to sound like a stampede all by yourself?” Anyway, sailing was the best thing I’ve ever learned in camp, besides swimming, which I’m also good at. So I was eager to get started, even though I was disappointed when Larry said, “Dodie, why don’t you take Anne and Chip out first while your mother and I jog along the beach. Then I’ll take your mother out for a sail. Okay?”

  “Aren’t I going to get to sail with you at all?”

  “Sure you will, but we don’t want to hog all the fun for ourselves, do we?”

  “I don’t know about that. I’m good at hogging.”

  “You’re also a good kid,” he told me firmly, and bussed my nose, which is Larry’s way of getting me to shape up. Mother should take lessons from him.

  Anne and Chip were standing looking at the Sunfish. It was half in, half out of the water with the sail flopping in the breeze.

  “Well,” I said, “shall we take her out?”

  “I think Chip and I’ll go look for shells on the beach,” Anne said.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m not going to clown around on a sailboat. Really. You don’t have to worry.”

  “I’d like to go sailing with Dodie,” Chip said.

  Anne grunted.

  “Really, you can trust me. I won’t horse around,” I said.

  “Please, Annie!” Chip begged.

  “You could go shell hunting, and Chip and I could go out,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I’d better go along.”

  She probably thought I would drown her brother. Despite the French toast, she didn’t trust me. I looked over my shoulder and saw Mother and Larry jogging slowly down the beach toward the point. “Don’t start showing off out there, Dodie,” Mother had said as they started off. No wonder Anne was suspicious.

  To show how responsible I was, I made a point of our all wearing the life belts Larry had bought. The tide was at the halfway mark and coming in—it had been a perfect week for sailing as far as the tides were concerned. Not much wave action, but a good enough wind. I told Anne and Chip where to sit and pushed us off, feeling happy. It’s fun to sail alone, but even more fun to share something you’re good at with someone else. Before we got back Anne and I might even reset our course for friendship.

  “You want to hold this centerboard up until I say to shove it in?” I asked Anne.

  She was sitting there looking as if some gym teacher had just given her ten extra laps as punishment.

  “Hey,” I said. “Sailing’s the most fun there is. You’ll love it. All you have to do is remember to duck when I yell, ‘Coming about.’”

  I took the end of the mainsheet and hoisted myself aboard, smacking in the rudder neatly. We scudded off at a forty-five-degree angle to the shore. Anne shoved in the centerboard, then sat motionless and stared at the beach. Crouched next to her, Chip watched my every move. I explained to him what was happening.

  “Isn’t this fun?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Chip said.

  Anne said nothing.

  “We can sail down toward Eastham and back,” I said to Anne. “Or would you rather find a deserted beach and swim? That’s one of the great things you can do with a Sunfish.”

  “Don’t go too far,” Anne said. Was she scared of me or the boat?

  “Can you make it go a different direction?” Chip asked. The best way to help him understand the principle of sailing—well, the only way I knew—was to show him. I made the boat come about, pushing the tiller toward the sail and pulling the sail taut as it swung over to the other side, and we headed off on another tack. I showed Chip how you stop the boat by coming into the wind, and I showed him what a jibe was.

  “Don’t jibe again!” Anne said after we’d whipped smartly about and were tearing back the way we’d come.

  “Hey, who’s captain here? Stop worrying,” I said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “The wind’s stronger than it was.”

  I sighed. “No, it’s not. And suppose we did tip over. There’s no big deal about it. You just right the boat, climb back on, and keep going.”

  “I’ve had enough sailing,” Anne said.

  “Okay, okay.” What a pain she was! “We’ll let you off and Chip and I can sail. Would you like to take the tiller to see how it feels, Chip?”

  “No!” Anne snapped. “He’s too small.”

  “That’s no problem.”

  “He’s my brother and I say no.”

  “Some other time, Chip,” I said, but I was mad at Anne. I hadn’t planned to just hand the boat over to Chip. I was going to let him get the feel of it while I kept my hands on the mainsheet and the tiller. But I let her think what she wanted.

  I was running before the wind with the sail flat out, which is one of my favorite tacks because it’s so quiet and effortless you feel as if you’re part of the wind. The day couldn’t have been more beautiful; the water perked and the air was doused with sunshine. Two puffball clouds were it for the entire sky. We could see the length of the beach marked off by pilings and spurs of breakwaters built of giant hunks of rock. The beach houses poked pointy heads over the low dunes. People were tiny dots of color. Just perfect. “I don’t see why we have to go in,” I grumbled. “My mother and Larry are still jogging. You don’t get days like this all that often on the Cape”

  Anne didn’t answer. Suddenly a gust of wind took the sail and did a fast jibe on me. We were dumped in the water before I had time to react. I bobbed up, swam over to Chip, and helped him back to the boat, which was floating tamely upside down. “You all right, Chip?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. All you have to do is hang on to the side here, and I’ll have the boat upright in no time. Where’s Anne?” I saw her thrashing in the water about twenty feet away. “Can’t she swim?” I asked Chip.

  “Sure, she swims as good as me.”

  “Oh,” I said, and swam over to where she was struggling. “Anne, you want to roll onto your back and I’ll tow you to the boat?”

  “I can swim,” she gasped, and went on making like a hooked fish. I was afraid that if I grabbed her, she’d fight me, and I didn’t want to drown either of us. The only safe solution was to move the boat to where she could grab it. When Chip saw me pushing at the stern end, he got the idea right away and moved around to kick his legs alongside mine. We made a badly balanced propeller, but we got the job done.

  “You’re a real cool kid, Chip,” I said. His sister may have been a pill, but I liked him a lot.

  Anne caught her breath as she hung onto the side of the Sunfish, then I backed Chip and her off and hauled down on the centerboard to flip the boat over. One of the things weighing a ton is good for is righting sailboats. I heaved myself back in, and while the wet sail dripped and flapped in the wind, I gave Chip a hand up. The little spider scrambled in easily. Anne screamed.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Don’t leave me here.”

  “Are you crazy?” I reached past Chip, who was offering her his skinny arm, and grasped her wrist as she clung to the boat. Finally she belly-flopped up and in. “See how easy it is?” I asked. “Going over is nothing to worry about in a Sunfish. Happens all the time.” She di
dn’t answer. I figured she was just out of breath, and I proceeded to sail us smartly into shore. I’d handled the boat pretty well—except for when the wind made its surprise attack—but no compliments came my way. The second we beached, Anne got her feet onto dry sand and turned on me.

  “That was a rotten thing to do to me,” she said in a trembly voice.

  “What?”

  “You dumped us over on purpose.”

  “I did not! The wind—”

  “The wind nothing. You knew I was scared. I don’t care how much my father likes you. I’m not having anything to do with you this summer.”

  “That’s not fair! I didn’t know you were scared, and besides, the wind—”

  She marched off, leaving me to sputter out my innocence to Chip. He was staring at me as if trying to make up his mind whether his sister had a case or not.

  “Did you know she was scared?” I asked him.

  “She wasn’t scared.”

  “She says she was.”

  “My sister’s not scared of anything.”

  “You think she’s perfect?”

  “Almost.”

  “You really like her, huh?”

  “Yeah, she’s a good sister.”

  “She doesn’t like me much.”

  He didn’t respond to that; here I’d been thinking he and I were friends. “I’m a really nice person,” I said.

  He looked at me doubtfully. Nothing like a hard sell to put people off. “Do you at least believe me that I didn’t dump that boat over on purpose?”

  He considered a while, then nodded. I felt relieved. “Now all I have to do is convince Anne.”

  Larry and Mother jogged into view. I waited until they pulled up beside us. Mother was panting so hard she couldn’t say anything until she got her breath back. Larry asked, “How was the sailing?”

  “The wind was fine, the water was terrific, Chip’s a sailor in the making, and your daughter is a pain.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She went that-a-way.” I pointed toward the dunes. “She thinks I dumped the sailboat on purpose, and I can’t convince her I didn’t.”

  “I see,” Larry said.

  “Well, are you going to do anything about it?”

  He shook his head. “It’s your problem, Dodie. You have to decide what you should do.” He gave a solemn smile and turned to my mother. “Pat, want to try the Sunfish with me?”

  “Why did I have to marry an athletic type?” Mother said. “Don’t you ever stay still, Larry? Oh, all right—if I don’t have to do anything but sit.”

  I helped launch them, though I wasn’t too pleased with Larry for leaving me stuck like that. When the red-and-white-striped sail was toy-sized in the bay, I asked Chip, “Do you think I should go talk to Anne?”

  “You better wait till she stops crying.”

  “How do you know she’s crying?”

  “She is.”

  “You mean, she’s that upset with me?”

  “She’s upset because of Mommy and Daddy.”

  “What did they do to her?”

  “They got divorced.”

  “But that was a couple of years ago, wasn’t it?”

  “She’s still mad at Daddy.”

  “I see. Are you?”

  “No. I’m okay.”

  “You sure are.”

  I settled down to think things over, and Chip squatted, nose to his knees, as he poked through a dark ribbon of matted straw stuff left by the last high tide. I knew I ought to try to convince Anne I wasn’t playing tricks on her, just in case she wasn’t a total pain. But I had more pride than to go begging for her goodwill. After all, I could survive without a friend my own age for this one month of the summer—probably.

  “I found a starfish,” Chip said. “Look.”

  “Does your sister have a lot of friends?”

  “Mommy’s her friend. Do sea gulls eat starfish?”

  “I don’t know. Is she always nice to you?”

  “My mother?”

  “Your sister.”

  “Yes.… Sea gulls eat clams, though, don’t they?”

  “I think they eat fish.”

  “I bet there’s lots of animals in the marsh, isn’t there, Dodie? Birds and crabs and fish—I seen some already.”

  “Umm.”

  “I sure like this place.”

  “You do?” It cheered me up to hear that. Don’t ask me why. It’s just nicer when people like things. I thought of the footsteps on the stairs. “Hey, Chip, you sure you didn’t go downstairs at all during the night?”

  “Positive. I’d be too scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s what I get scared of too,” I said. “We have a lot in common.”

  Anne only came out of the dunes when it was time to get into the car and go home. She didn’t look at me or say anything. For such a china figurine of a girl, she sure could look forbidding.

  Chapter 3

  The closer it got to dark, the more I worried about those footsteps, and the dinner table conversation certainly didn’t serve to distract me. Anne ate with her head down, as if she was reading a book in her lap. Chip had nothing to say. Mother was debating the pros and cons of a deep-sea fishing excursion on a charter boat with Larry. He kept trying to include us kids in the dialogue, without much success.

  “Think you’d enjoy pulling up a big fish, Chip?” he asked.

  “If it didn’t hurt him,” Chip said.

  “Are you a fisherman, Dodie?”

  “Fisherwoman or fisherperson,” I corrected. “Say, if it’s rats or mice running up the stairs, maybe we should set a trap for them.”

  “Rats! Dodie, what a disgusting idea,” Mother said. “There can’t be rats in this house, can there, Larry?”

  “Well, something made those footsteps I heard last night,” I said. “I just thought Chip could be right and it is animals.”

  “Now what are you up to?” Mother asked me.

  “Nothing. I’m just trying to figure this thing out. It wasn’t Anne or me on the stairs last night, and Chip says it wasn’t him.”

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t us. Was it, Larry?”

  “Not unless one of us walks in our sleep, Pat.”

  “Then what could I have heard?”

  “I don’t know why you must turn every little thing into a dramatic production,” Mother said. “She’s been like this since she was born, Larry—always making up these ridiculous stories. It drives me crazy.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Dodie’s just an intelligent girl with a good imagination.”

  My hero! I grinned at him. “Ma, I’m not making anything up. Honestly. I heard noises.”

  “Then you were dreaming.”

  “I was wide awake.”

  “Old houses do make strange noises,” Larry said. “Cracks and crevices in the walls let the wind in. Wood creaks. I’d say this house is pretty old, probably built around the nineteen twenties.”

  “Maybe it’s animals,” Chip said hopefully.

  “Rats?” Mother looked alarmed.

  “Whatever. Anyway, you shouldn’t hear anything tonight. There’s practically no wind,” Larry said.

  I nodded. “Can I have a cup of coffee, please?” Mother poured one for me. Anne raised an eyebrow. If I’d been talking to her, I would have explained. Since Mother is convinced all the coffee she drinks helps keep her slim, she encourages my coffee habit. I like it best with lots of sugar and milk. Anne was still looking at me. She had a funny expression on her face, but I didn’t have a clue to what she was thinking.

  I couldn’t believe how early they all went to bed! My pal, Chip, was falling asleep over his comic book. He checked out at seven thirty with no complaint. Anne put her book down and said good night at the dot of ten, as if she’d been watching the clock that Mother had insisted on putting in the living room. She can never stand not knowing what time it is. Anne’s, “Good night” was
the only thing I’d heard her say out loud all evening.

  Ten minutes later Mother said, “This sea air really knocks me out,” and she and Larry went yawning off to their bedroom.

  “Don’t forget to turn out the lights when you go upstairs, Dodie,” she told me. “And try not to hear anything tonight, will you?”

  “Don’t worry, Mother. I will strangle in silence rather than awaken you with my scream when they come to get me.”

  “You see what I mean?” she was saying to Larry as they closed their door behind them.

  With all of them gone, I began to feel uneasy in the gloomy living room. Two ceramic rooster lamps made twin cones of light, but even without any wind, I could hear little cricks and ticks of noise. I sure hoped it was rodents—rodents are real, at least.

  I was sitting on the couch working on the large jigsaw puzzle that I had spread out on the makeshift coffee table which was a door set on top of a lobster trap. I’d thought the puzzle would be fun for all of us to do together, but even Larry hadn’t wanted to help me with it. Just as I bent to pick up the piece of sky I’d been looking for, I felt a prickling at the back of my neck. I can’t describe it better. It was just an awareness. I didn’t dare look behind me. I scooted to the stairs. Halfway up, though, I sneaked a look down into the living room. Nothing there. Dumb to get jittery over nothing. I climbed back down and turned off the rooster lamps. That made it dark—naturally—and terrified me so much I raced up the stairs as if something was about to grab me from behind.

  Anne was already asleep in her bed, which was separated from mine by a night table under a tall, skinny window that looked out toward the marsh. Moonlight brightened the room, if you can call light the color of thin ice bright. I looked out at the marsh, thinking of Chip’s animals. It was an awfully empty-looking place for animals to live in. Low tide now. I could see still waves of slumped grass and shiny spots where the moon turned the water into silver foil. A creek meandered through the wet, black mud and sand toward the inlet to the bay. The dead fish and salt and the mucky clam beds that you had to pay a fortune to get a license to dig up reeked even through the closed window.

  I shucked my clothes, glancing toward the low eaves at either end of the room, hoping they were as empty as they looked during the day. Ours was the biggest room in the house. It was half of the attic. Chip’s room, across the landing, was half the size of ours, but he had a closet and we didn’t. Big rooms are not cozy.