by Phoebe Stone
“What’s the secret President Roosevelt mentioned?” Miami said.
“Come on, Flissy, you can tell me,” said Derek.
“Be a good sport, Fliss, spill the beans. What’s the secret?” said Uncle Gideon.
And all I could do was say, “No. I just can’t say. It’s a secret.”
I took the letter with me to rehearsals. The gold seal on the stationery seemed to shimmer. The letter got passed round the room. Even Mrs. Boxman saw it, and soon everyone, everyone, even Mrs. Fudge and Mr. Henley and the Balancing Bottlebay Boys and the group that would be singing “Say Au Revoir But Not Good-bye,” everyone wanted to know what secret I shared with the president of the United States. But I just shook my head and said, “No, I can’t. I won’t.” And I didn’t.
We were just taking a break. Mrs. Fudge had brought in a key lime pie and we were all sitting at the table eating the pie, when Mrs. Boxman said, “Oh tra la la, we are going to have the best variety show this town has ever seen! I’m just so pleased with all of you. The show is almost perfect, but I do want to finish with a child singing. That will offer something forward looking for this Christmas season. Do you know a young person who can sing while I play the piano?”
Derek’s good arm shot up and it was a long, strong arm that no one could miss. “Yes, Derek?” said Mrs. Boxman.
“Flissy. Our Flissy can sing. She sings all the time,” he said.
And then I said, “I do sing Christmas carols, actually.”
And Mrs. Boxman said, “Ah. Could you sing while I play the piano?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I can. What should I sing? ‘Once in Royal David’s City’?”
“No, Flissy,” said Derek. “Sing ‘I Think of You,’ my favorite song. She knows all the words.”
Mrs. Boxman looked pleased. “Oh, isn’t that an old jazz song?” Mrs. Boxman said, sweeping over to the piano. I looked at Derek and then I looked at Aunt Miami and then the three of us followed Mrs. Boxman and stood together in a small widening circle round the piano.
So it was on December 1, 1941, at eight o’clock in the evening that I was recruited into the Bottlebay Women’s Club Variety Show at the town hall in Bottlebay, Maine, United States of America, and it was on that very day too that I had received a genuine letter from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
As we were leaving the hall and heading out into the cold, with me sandwiched between Miami and Derek, someone called out in the darkness, “Hey, Flissy Bathburn, next time you talk to the Prez, tell him I said hello.”
Upon arriving home in the car that night, I noticed that the Bathburn house seemed to glow. So many lights were on in so many rooms all at once that it had a sort of warm jack-o’-lantern look to it. It seemed then like a great luminous beacon standing up high on the dark point, taking the wind on easily.
As I approached the back door, I was making up my mind about something again and so I walked quickly though the kitchen and on to the library. Uncle Gideon was writing at his desk in the corner. I walked over to the piano and I laid my hands on the lid.
Uncle Gideon looked up. “Hello, Flissy,” he said, “what are you doing?”
“I’m here to ask you something. I am supposed to sing at the town hall and I was wondering if, I mean, I think it would be ever so lovely if you would, if you could, um, accompany me on the piano that night?”
“Oh, you do, do you?” he said.
“Pretty please? Winnie always said we must follow the things we are meant to do at all costs.”
“She would say that,” he said.
“I think your students at Babbington El might benefit from hearing you play,” I said. “Truly.”
“Oh, Flissy,” he said, “I can’t.”
“Why not?” I said.
“Because,” he said, “just because. I just can’t.”
The next day, I took the letter from President Roosevelt to school. Uncle Gideon helped me frame it and we showed it to the librarian, who hugged me when she saw it. Everywhere we went, someone came rushing over to congratulate us. Mr. Bathtub and I went round to every class and showed the letter. We talked about Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. We even fashioned a kind of conversation between the two, which everyone thought was ever so interesting and a bit funny. Mr. Bathtub and I were rather a famous team all that day.
And so the Christmas season began with its extra week of shopping and the wonderful letter from Washington and “I Think of You” that I sang under my breath with every step I took. I tried not to look out across the sea and think of Winnie and Danny and what they were doing. I tried not to think about the German factory where Winnie was working. I tried not to think of Danny in his hidden office, making false passports. I tried not to think of the lines of downed RAF pilots in hiding, waiting to be smuggled back to England and I tried not to think about the letters that hadn’t arrived. I pulled my curtains shut against it. Every time any of it floated into my mind, I tried to think of something else.
I thought instead about Christmas and the American Santa Claus and wondered if the British Father Christmas was the very same man. Bottlebay had already put up its town Christmas tree, and all the shops had pretty tinsel and candles in the windows. I knew Auntie Miami wanted a pair of nylons for Christmas, stockings that were not made of silk anymore and were cheaper. It was the newest rage and they were hard to come by. I was hoping I could find some for her. I was making my secret Christmas list in the dining room while Derek and Uncle Gideon and I listened to Sammy Kaye’s Sunday Serenade on the radio.
Then, as soon as the show was over, a news bulletin broke in. “From the NBC newsroom in New York, President Roosevelt said in a statement today that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from the air.” Uncle Gideon turned up the radio. “There will be more reports later as news comes in.”
“That’s it?” said Uncle Gideon. “Nothing more?” And then it cut to the next program.
“That’s it?” said Uncle Gideon again. “My God. They’ve attacked us. Now it’s done. We’re at war. It’s done. That seals the deal. America is at war.” And he fell back into the fat, green stuffed chair in the corner and he put his fingers over his eyes to hold them tight so that no tears would fall.
I believe Uncle Gideon sat by the radio all afternoon and he stayed up most of the night waiting for reports to come in. He seemed very tired the next day at school and his hair looked rather messy. He brought his radio to class and at twelve fifteen, President Roosevelt made his speech to Congress declaring war on Japan, and at the John E. Babbington Elementary School, Mr. Bathtub’s sixth-grade class heard every word.
“The prime minister of your country is thankful we’ve joined the war and he says he’s fond of President Roosevelt. It’s in today’s paper,” said Derek.
“Oh, you mean Winston,” I said. “Yes, I do think he’s quite pleased with Franklin.”
Derek and I were walking along the beach in the cold, heading away from the jetty and down towards the White Whale Inn. In the next few days after Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, Germany had declared war on the United States as well.
I buttoned up my coat against the wind and followed Derek. He had a blue and gray wool scarf wrapped round his neck. He had borrowed it from Uncle Gideon. It made him look for a moment like a British schoolboy, a posh one who went to Eton like Jillian Osgood’s older brother. And that gave me a smashing idea for a Christmas present for Derek. Since there were two weeks left, I was going to try to knit him a scarf.
We kept on going down the beach, and as we walked, the old wooden hotel seemed to float towards us like an enormous abandoned ship. “Derek,” I said quietly, “we haven’t received any letters from the Bear and the Butterfly for a very long time. Do you think it means anything?”
“I don’t know, Flissy. I don’t know,” said Derek.
“Do you think the bombers will come here soon? Do you think we will have to get blackout curtains as well?”
“Don�
��t know,” said Derek again. We were both very quiet for a moment. “I have thought a lot about those letters, and from all I have gathered, I think your mother has saved a lot of children in France, children who would have otherwise been killed.”
“Oh,” I said and I closed my eyes. “I told you my Winnie is lovely.”
“And Gideon does some things too. When I was in his study, there were papers on the desk that I understand better now. I think he wires information from Peace Island to ships at sea, like the convoys on the way to England. I’m guessing he works for Mr. Donovan, who works for the president of the United States.”
“I know, Derek,” I said. “And how lovely that he has been doing all that. And I’ve been wrong and mean.” I closed my eyes again because the wind was making terrible tears that flew out and away behind me.
“And while we’re on the subject of questions, what’s the secret you told President Roosevelt?” Derek said, knocking his foot against mine.
I looked at him for a moment, at his pale, freckled face full of new cheer. The secret was in my heart and it wanted to break out. It wanted to. I could feel it, but instead of saying a word, I started to run, ripping and leaping towards the White Whale Inn. And Derek chased me.
We both ran up on the porch and tried to peer in the windows. Through a crack in one of the curtains, we could see white sheets draped over chairs and sofas, everything shrouded and ghostlike.
I watched Derek as he looked here and there. I thought all the while to myself that he seemed very changed since we had decoded the letters from Winnie and Danny. He had really transformed in some quiet way. I wasn’t sure yet how or why.
Through another window, I could see down the hall into part of the dining room. I pushed to see more, but it was impossible. Whatever else was there, I had to imagine. It was that way too with the Bathburns. There were pieces, parts of the picture I understood, but much was still shrouded as if covered in white sheets for winter. Like what was the blessing in disguise that The Gram had talked about, and when would we hear from Winnie and Danny again? And how could the sky be so blue when America was now at war?
Some of my questions were to be answered sooner than I thought. A week before Christmas, we put up a tree in the parlor. Mr. Henley brought it to us one Saturday and it was so tall it touched the ceiling. It really was quite magnificent. He called it a great northern white pine and it filled the house with the smell of pinesap. Aunt Miami and Mr. Henley practiced their lines in the library and I could often hear “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” drift through the hall. It carried with it now so many layers of meaning.
I made a Christmas card for Winnie and Danny. I drew a picture of a bear and a butterfly and a Christmas tree. On the front, it said, “Merry Christmas, Winnie and Danny” and inside I wrote HOPE in great big letters. I put it in the box under my bed.
The Gram had been upstairs in her room sewing all month. Late into the night, I could hear the sewing machine buzzing along, and by day, it pounded above us when we were in the library.
On the evening of December eighteenth, I went up to my room to my closet and I reached under the yellow suitcase and got out the letter written from Winnie to Gideon. It was a bit wrinkled, but unopened, and I put it in my skirt pocket and went downstairs. Uncle Gideon was just coming up the stairs as I was going down them and so we stopped on the same step, and Uncle Gideon said one more time, “Flissy, I’m still waiting for a letter from Europe. I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting. You are sure you haven’t seen anything?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t.”
“It’s very important,” he said. “If you did see a letter, you would tell me, of course.”
“I know what those letters are,” I said. “Derek and I figured out the code. We know.”
Uncle Gideon seemed quite startled for a moment and then he looked very sadly at me for a long time. He didn’t say anything. Finally, he lowered his eyes. “It doesn’t have to mean the worst, Flissy. It could be many things. Perhaps our ally in the postal system in Portugal changed jobs, for instance.” We both sat down on the same step. “It could just be a break in any one of the many links. Bill Donovan in Washington and the Office of the COI has said we must sit tight.”
I looked down at my hands and saw the letter lying in my lap, but it seemed now blurry and so far away, and I felt as if I could barely reach down to pick it up.
“What’s this letter, Flissy?” said Uncle Gideon.
“It’s from Winnie to you,” I said. “It was written in May when I first arrived. Winnie asked me to keep it till now, a week before Christmas. She said not to open it.”
Uncle Gideon reached out for the letter as if it were a rose. His hands lightly trembled. Then the letter lay in his palm like a small white bird resting. He closed his eyes and held the letter carefully, gently, not opening it and not moving. “She gave you this for me?” he said. His voice sounded crumbly and dark and gentle all at the same time.
“Yes,” I said. “Open it.”
“You know, Fliss, I haven’t said this before and I probably won’t say it again,” he said, looking at me now, “but you do look so much like your mother. No, you really do.”
“I do?” I said. “I never thought about that.”
“Your mother is a great idealist. And it’s a rather dark world right now, Fliss.”
“I know,” I said.
“I think you might be a bit of an idealist too, and that’s not a bad thing,” said Uncle Gideon.
“Are you going to open the letter?” I said.
“Yes,” he said, closing his eyes again and nodding his head. “Yes, of course.” And he began pulling at the envelope with the greatest of care, both of us watching his fingers on the white paper. Then, sitting on the tenth step halfway down to the front door, we read the letter. It said:
Dearest Gideon,
I am writing this on the porch while you and Danny go off together to Peace Island. Please know that I still cherish my time with you. I never intended to hurt you. But what happened could not be prevented or stopped or changed. It was too overpowering and thus inevitable. Of course a part of me will always remember you. Can you ever forgive me? Can you ever forgive Danny? When you read this, if you have not heard from us as of mid-November, when, as you know, we will be part of a certain maneuver, please tell my little Felicity everything. Everything.
Love,
Winnie
Uncle Gideon folded the letter, sandwiched it between his two hands, and looked down at me.
“I already know everything,” I said. “We cracked the code. We read the letters. I know everything.”
“No,” said Uncle Gideon, “there’s something else you do not know. Something extremely important. Have you ever wondered why we both have the same reddish-brown hair or why we both like to read Frances Hodgson Burnett while eating toffee or how it is that we both have just the right shaped head and sense of balance to stand with some ease on our heads? Have you ever wondered?”
“No, actually, I haven’t,” I said.
“Well, perhaps you should. You knew that I was once married to your mother.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And that I loved her very dearly.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Flissy. Oh, Flissy. Don’t you know? Don’t you know? You are not my niece at all, you are my own little daughter. I’m your father and you are my own little daughter,” he said and he hugged me and he cried. We both sat there on the tenth step, crying together.
“You are my father?” I said.
“How long, how long I have waited,” he said then, “to tell you and to have you home here with me finally where you belong.”
Where I belong. Where I belong. Where I belong. Those words seemed to rock me to sleep in my tower room. Those words seemed to warm me as I ran in the wind along the shore or as I went through the kitchen to grab a cookie from the just-for-Sunday cookie jar. Where I belong. Where I belong. Where I be
long.
I was the blessing in disguise. It was me. That evening and the days that followed, I was to unravel and understand it all, to untangle it all like something knitted the wrong way. I was to unravel it and to knit it back the right way, just as I knitted Derek’s Christmas scarf. Knit one, pearl one. Knit two, pearl two. My Danny was my uncle, not my father, and Uncle Gideon was not my uncle but my father. Winnie and Gideon had been married in England for three months and I was conceived then. I was Gideon’s child. I had the same reddish-brown hair. We both liked to read. I was his blessing in disguise. I belonged somewhere. I belonged somewhere. I belonged here.
Perhaps it was something like wearing new shoes or having a completely new way of fixing your hair or having a new name or going to a new school or looking in the mirror and having a completely different air about you. Everything was changed. And I needed time to let it all sift through me like beach sand as it falls through your fingers when you try to hold it in your hand.
Derek said to me when I told him about it later, “I always felt I was a stand-in, a replacement for somebody or something, and now I see, Flissy, it was you. It was you I was standing in for. That’s why we have the same birthday. That’s why and how I came to live here. And it was a lucky thing for me, you know that?”
“It’s nice, isn’t it, having the same birthday. Don’t you think?” I said.
While everything sifted through me, I knitted. I was working on Derek’s scarf secretly every chance I got. Every stitch I took, I thought about belonging, belonging, belonging.
Just before Christmas and one day before our performance at the town hall in Bottlebay, I finished the scarf and I put the fringe on the ends of it. I had folded it up and tucked it in red tissue paper. I was sitting on Miami’s bed with her while we wrapped presents and we were handing the scissors and the tape back and forth. The tape was made of brown paper and I had to lick the back to make it sticky.