Diego cupped his hands into a stirrup for my foot. “Grab hold of that first rung and after that keep climbing.”
“That’s okay. I don’t need to climb up to the top.” I hated heights, all heights. Even monkey bars at recess. It was a safety fear passed down from Grandpa Mac and Mama. Ever since I could remember, the two of them always worried I would fall.
“Come on,” Diego said. “It’s totally spectacular.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Sure you can, it’s easy. If I can do it, anybody can.”
“No.” I shook my head.
“It’s too good to be missed. I swear it’s worth it, Raine.
Here’s the trick: just focus on the ceiling. One rung after the next and then you’re there. I’ll be right behind you all the way.”
“You’re sure?” Scared as I was, I reached up for that first rung. My heart raced, but still I did it. Rung after rung. The higher that I climbed, the worse the bars slipped between my sweaty fingers. Still I held on hard, because down below Diego cheered me on.
“You’re almost there,” he said when I made it to the top. “Give a shove to that trapdoor and push it up. Keep going, Raine, and you’ll be on the other side.”
The other side was like standing in the sky. A place so high I could see the whole of Sparrow Road—the artists’ sheds, our cottage, the path to Sorrow Lake, the old gray barn we’d wandered past this morning, the ancient glassy greenhouse, the turtle pond, another bench swing underneath a gnarled oak. And tucked back in the woods, an old white building Viktor hadn’t shown us on our tour.
“What’s that?” I asked when Diego finally stood beside me on the deck.
“That’s the old infirmary. The place the orphans went when they were sick. The Iceberg lives there now.”
“The infirmary? Do you think Viktor has a phone?”
“A phone?” Diego looked surprised. “I would imagine that he does. You got a call to make?”
“I might,” I said.
“Not me,” Diego said. “At home, I’m so busy teaching college I’m glad to have it gone. All of it. Telephones, TVs. Newspapers. Radio. Nothing but pure peace.”
“You are?” I groaned. Diego seemed too happy to like the Iceberg’s rules.
“Time floats at Sparrow Road.” Diego smiled. “There’s nothing here to mark the days but sun. I don’t even keep a calendar. For all I know it’s January now.”
I laughed. “It’s July seventh.”
“It is?” Diego looked surprised. “Oh, right. We just saw the fireworks in Comfort!”
“But the silence until supper?” I asked. “Every day? That sounds absolutely horrible.”
“I know.” Diego nodded. “It sounds bad in the beginning. But trust me, you’ll learn to like it, Raine. If Josie can keep quiet, anybody can.” He laughed and leaned his elbows on the railing. “And Sparrow Road’s the perfect place for dreams.”
“Dreams?”
“Sure. Like the way you start to daydream when you’re bored. Or, there’s nothing but the quiet, so you dream.”
I thought of sixth-grade science and how Mr. Wetmore’s lectures on amoebas always made me daydream. But I wouldn’t want to do that every day. “Six days a week till supper? That’s a lot of bored.”
“Oh, it’s not boring really. Because an artist just gets busy and creates. All that time alone becomes a painting or a poem. Josie fills her quiet up with quilts.”
“When I was young I used to dream up stories,” I said. “But that won’t keep me busy until supper.”
Diego laughed again. “You’re still young, Raine. And you might be surprised how much you create in all the quiet. You could write a book at Sparrow Road.”
“About what?” I said.
“Who knows?” Diego smiled. “That’s part of the discovery. Just start out on a journey. Ask yourself, What if? Or think about what was or what could be. And suddenly”—he snapped his fingers—“like magic, you’ll be drifting in a dream.”
“What if?” I asked. “What was? Or what could be?” Diego made the silence sound enchanted. Not a rule, but a chance.
“I swear it works for me,” Diego said. “Just give a try tomorrow. Let me know what you dream up.”
8
I’m going off to write, I wrote to Mama the next morning. I was eager to drift off in the daydream Diego promised was ahead.
“Write?” Mama glanced up from her Betty Crocker cookbook.
I shook my head and pressed my finger to my lips. The rule, I wrote. I wanted to spend one full day in silence, the way the artists did, so I could see if what Diego said was true.
Mama looked at me, confused. She didn’t know about my tour of the tower, or the attic, or the games of Old Maid I played with Lillian. She only knew I met two artists when I wandered from the cottage. A thing she said I shouldn’t have done, but she was too troubled after town to ask me questions, too lost in thought like she had something weighing heavy on her mind.
We can talk here in the cottage, Mama wrote.
I’m going to try the silence until supper.
Why??? Why’d you change your mind? Mama studied me like she was staring at a stranger.
I shrugged. This was already too much talk. I wanted to get out in the meadow, the place Diego said a dream would surely come. I zipped my backpack closed. I’d packed two pens, a box of colored pencils, and a sketchbook Diego gave me for my dreams.
OK, Mama wrote. She scrunched her worried eyebrows. But stay where I can see you.
I will. I’d spent my life so close to Grandpa Mac and Mama, I never had the nerve to wander far.
Outside in the meadow, I stood still for a second. Diego was right. Sparrow Road wasn’t really silent. It was filled with a background hum most people didn’t slow down long enough to hear. A steady insect buzz, birdsong, the rustle of leaf brushing against leaf. I could even hear the wind whistle through the weeds. If I stood still long enough, Diego said, I might just hear the sun.
I crossed the grass and settled on a bench beneath a weeping willow.
Sparrow Road, I wrote down in my sketchbook. Who left that breakfast basket at our door? Why did Mama bring us here for the last half of my summer? Diego said most daydreams started with a question, a wonder, a puzzle you couldn’t solve. A blank space for the imagination to create. What was wrong with Mama when she came back from town? Why didn’t she take me with her?
A red dragonfly landed on my leg. Doves cooed in the distance. I couldn’t believe my kind of wonders could ever fill a day.
What if? I wrote. Wasn’t that all Diego said I’d need to get a story started?
What if ghosts really lived up in that attic?
What if the orphans were still here?
What if I was an orphan?
I stopped and stared out at the hills. If Mama died today, I would be an orphan, a girl without any parents left. Only I wouldn’t end up in an orphanage like the kids at Sparrow Road; I’d have Grandpa Mac.
But what if Grandpa Mac got really old? Like Lillian? Or what if he died suddenly? Who would take me then? Would I go to an orphanage?
All of my what-ifs seemed more like worries than a dream. It was thoughts like these that made me hate to sit in silence by myself. The kind of what-ifs that sometimes made me anxious before I fell asleep. I tore the questions from my sketchbook and started a fresh page. I didn’t want to imagine Grandpa Mac or Mama gone.
What was? I wrote. What was or what could be?
Who were those orphans who lived up in the attic?
Who owned those small toys buried in the dust?
Who drew those faded drawings?
A cardinal settled on a low branch, flicked its wings, and waited. I closed my eyes. Maybe daydreams came faster in the dark.
Once I had a family, someone said. People think we didn’t have parents. We had parents. Everybody does. They had to be there once upon a time.
It was a boy’s voice I imagined, a boy’s voice speaking
in my daydream. A story, just like Diego promised. A boy I’d never seen, but there he was. In old wool pants that hung below his knees, scuffed ankle boots, a flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves. A boy who lived up in that attic. His skinny lower legs were nicked and scarred. His face was round, his eyes the same grassy green as Mama’s.
Life just has a way, he said. I think you must know what I mean. Even parents can get lost.
I opened up my eyes and wrote it down in one mad rush. Everything he told me. Word after word. I wrote so long a red writer’s bump rose up on my finger. One morning in the silence and the dream Diego promised had already arrived.
9
“It worked!” I told Diego. At five o’clock he’d come into the main house to help Mama with the supper. Lillian too. I stood beside him cutting Mama’s carrots. Lillian sliced mushrooms. Mama didn’t want the artists to help her in the kitchen, but no matter how many ways she said it, they still refused to leave. I could tell both of them were trying to welcome Mama, the same way they welcomed me.
“What worked?” Mama stopped her stirring. The smell of melted cheese and garlic drifted from her pot.
“What was or what could be?” I said to Diego. “I tried it and my imagination went to work.”
“You make it the whole day without a word?” Diego winked, like he already knew I didn’t.
“Not quite,” I said. By lunch, Mama and I were chatting in our cottage, but when she asked about my writing, I kept the orphan to myself.
“What was or what could be?” Mama interrupted. “Is that what you were doing underneath that willow? Thinking of what was?”
“Sort of.” I didn’t want to explain it all to Mama; it was Diego I wanted most to tell. Diego, who knew how daydreams worked. I wished she’d go back to her cooking and let me talk to Diego by myself.
“I don’t think Raine’s imagination needs any help,” Mama said, concerned. “It already runs wild.”
“Oh, it’s really nothing, Molly,” Diego said, embarrassed. I could see that he was struck by Mama’s beauty—her mane of copper curls, her bright green eyes. Lots of men liked Mama, but Mama never had the time to like them back. “It’s just a thing I mentioned yesterday to Raine. While you were in town shopping. How we artists make it through the silence with our dreams.” He snuck another wink my way; I was glad he left out the part about the tower.
“Yesterday,” Mama scolded, “Raine shouldn’t have left the cottage. I hope she didn’t disturb your work.”
“Not at all,” Diego said.
“The children must be hungry.” Lillian looked at me like I was lost behind some fog. “They always need to eat.”
“Well, I certainly am hungry!” a woman bellowed.
“Josie!” Lillian clapped her tiny hands.
Suddenly Josie marched into the kitchen, her long, sure steps reminding me of the cowboys in the westerns Grandpa watched. Except in place of cowboy boots, she had on men’s black work boots, big and clunky, with heavy silver buckles that jangled when she walked. Her dress looked like a patchwork sack of scraps. A nest of neon braids framed her freckled face.
“You’ve come home!” Lillian said.
“I’ll always come home, Lilly.” Josie smacked a kiss on Lillian’s head. “Oh boy,” she said. “I’m beat. Two days of watching clouds drift really wore me out.” She gave a great big laugh.
“We have a brand-new orphan,” Lillian said.
“Fabulous,” Josie cheered. “We need more orphans at this place.” A wide gap flashed between her two front teeth. She gave my hand a forceful shake. “So you must be the long-awaited Raine O’Rourke.”
“I am,” I said, although no one ever called me long awaited.
“And that means you must be Molly.” Josie latched on to Mama’s hand and shook it hard. She towered at least two heads above Mama and she was sturdy as a tree. “I hear you took my job.” She slapped Mama on the shoulder.
“At last!” Diego laughed. “No more of your horrible carrot stew! These two came to our rescue from Milwaukee.”
“Milwaukee?” Josie whistled. “My oh my! How did Viktor find you in Milwaukee?”
“He just did,” Mama said abruptly. She waved the steam back from her face. Red fluster blotches rose up on her neck. “Right now I need to get this dinner served. So if the three of you could gather at the table—”
“Not served,” Josie said. She pulled a stack of plates out of the cupboard. “All of us will help.”
“Not anymore,” Mama said. “Viktor hired me. And please don’t put down plates for us.”
“No plates for you and Raine?” Diego frowned.
“The two of us will eat here in the kitchen.” Mama sounded like a servant. “After your meal has been served.”
“What?” I said. “We can’t eat dinner now?” Warm garlic bread was waiting in the oven. I’d been craving Mama’s tortellini since this morning. It was her specialty, the birthday meal Grandpa Mac requested every year.
“You eat with us or no one eats,” Josie ordered.
“Ladies, you heard Josie,” Diego said. “And you can see,” he joked, “I can’t afford to starve.”
10
Eleanor didn’t want us at the table and everybody saw it the second she sat down. “I see we have a crowd tonight,” she sniffed. In her straight black skirt and ruffled blouse she looked too formal to be here for Mama’s supper.
“Let me introduce—” Diego waved his fork in our direction.
“I know who they are,” Eleanor said.
“Raine and Molly,” Josie finished off the sentence. She yanked a hunk of warm bread from the loaf and dropped it on my plate.
“So Viktor won’t be joining us for dinner?” Mama’s hands were folded in her lap like she wasn’t going to eat.
“Never,” Josie said. “The Iceberg eats alone.”
“The Iceberg?” Mama said. “That isn’t very nice.” Mama hated mean names—even when they fit.
“It certainly is not,” Eleanor said. She snapped her napkin open; it was the same embroidered pattern someone had stitched for us. The towered house. The initials sewn in the corner. I looked around the table. There was one at every plate.
Josie nudged me with her elbow. “I sewed two sets, so you’ll have one at your cottage and one here in the main house.” The painted eggs, the tangerines, the golden glittered WELCOME. It was lively Josie who left that basket at our door.
“Thanks,” I said. “They’re beautiful. I’ll save one as a keepsake.”
“Well, they’re impractical for meals,” Eleanor said. “But charming, I suppose. Josie seems to have the time for crafts.”
“This is our summer orphan,” Lillian said.
“She’s not an orphan,” Eleanor corrected. “She’s the daughter of the maid. There are no orphans here. This is an artists’ retreat.” She shifted in her chair but she wouldn’t look at me. “I shall assume tonight is an exception. I hadn’t planned to have a child at the meal. I understood this summer would be spent among adults. Otherwise, my daughters could be here.”
“You have kids?” I blurted. I couldn’t picture someone as stiff as Eleanor with children.
“Eleanor has three young daughters,” Josie said. “All home with a nanny while she writes.”
“My husband’s in Chicago with the children.” Eleanor stabbed a piece of lettuce with her fork. She hadn’t even tasted Mama’s food.
“You left them for the summer?” I thought of how mad I was yesterday when Mama went to town. Except for work and school, and sleepovers I sometimes had with friends, the two of us hardly were apart. “Would you ever do that, Mama?”
“No,” Mama said. “I couldn’t.”
“Well, I have work that must be done without my daughters,” Eleanor said to me. “Not everyone can be a maid.”
“Mama is a singer.” I don’t know why I said it. Mama hadn’t really sung since I was little, not much more than lullabies or hymns. But once she did. I wanted Eleanor
to know Mama was more than just a maid. More than a waitress. More than a summer cook. “Mama had a music scholarship to college.”
“You sing?” Diego grinned.
Mama’s face burned pink. “I sang.”
“In Amsterdam,” I added. I always thought Amsterdam made Mama’s singing sound important, even if she was just a young girl hippie singing on the street. A life I’d only seen in pictures. The boat where I was born. Me, a barefoot toddler twirling on the street. Mama with a guitar on her shoulder.
“Wow!” Diego said. “Amsterdam? How long ago was that?”
“Another life.” Mama blew a frizzy curl back from her face. Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead. “When Raine was very young.”
“A singer? How impressive,” Eleanor mocked. “So did you perform professionally?”
“No,” Mama said, “I didn’t.”
“Ah,” Eleanor said. “So it really was a hobby?”
Mama shoved her chair back from the table. “May I get anybody anything?” I knew she was going to the kitchen to scream into a towel. It was her waitress trick when she had a cranky customer.
Diego reached for Mama’s chair. “Molly, please don’t wait on us. Sit down and eat.”
“No,” Mama said. “I’ve already had enough.”
11
After that bad meal, Mama made us eat every supper by ourselves, alone in the big kitchen, with milk in crystal goblets and china plates and Josie’s hand-stitched napkins spread out on our laps. Mama tried her best to make it seem like she wasn’t just a servant. “It’s no different from my job at Christos,” she said whenever I complained. “I can’t sit with my customers.” But the artists weren’t our customers. Already that first week everyone but Eleanor treated us as friends. And it was the artists I wanted to sit beside at supper.
Still, every night at five o’clock Diego, Lillian, and Josie gathered in the kitchen to dice and cut and mash and mix. While we worked, the room filled up with stories. Josie told about the troubled teens she taught art to in Detroit, and Diego talked about his sons when they were young. The pranks they played. He said both his boys were grown up and gone, and that his wife, Sophia, died too early, so now he lived in California all alone. Lillian talked about the orphans or Viktor as a prodigy, her piano students, the St. Paul seniors’ high-rise that she hated. Sometimes I told a story from Milwaukee, but mostly I just listened, the way I did to all the folks who shopped at Grandpa’s store.
Sparrow Road Page 3