Journey (5 page)

Two months. Two months and a little more had gone by. It didn’t seem so long when you said it, but Grandma said that time was different depending
on which journey you were taking—a trip to the mountains or a trip to get your tooth pulled.

“Sometimes things happen quickly before you have a chance to think about them. Like the hummingbird that comes to my bee balm in the garden,” said Grandma. “You don’t see him come, and you hardly see him go.”

Like Mama’s leaving.

Two months. The kittens had grown what seemed half a lifetime in that time, staggering around the house, leaping straight up in the air when they came on Grandfather’s boots. Emmett was learning words like “Mama” and “Da.” Cooper was trying to teach him “disintegrate.”

Grandma, in that time, had made it through an entire song, from beginning to end, on the flute. Vivaldi it was, she said.

“My
version of Vivaldi,” she added.

Grandfather made several trips to town in the car, alone, giving us all sly looks as he left and sly ones when he returned. He carried packages, and one large box, into the barn.

“Do not follow me!” he commanded in a loud, serious voice, making Cat and me burst out laughing and Grandma smile.

“What’s he doing?” Cat asked Grandma.

“Secrets,” said Grandma. “Secrets even from me, can you believe that?”

She walked to the entrance of the barn.

“Marcus, darlin’ man,” she called. “What are you doing?”

Grandfather’s voice came from the back of the barn.

“Don’t sweet talk me, Lottie.”

Grandma went back to practicing Vivaldi on the porch, surrounded by her claque of cats, and later, when my sister and I went to the barn for raspberry buckets, there was a shiny new lock on the door to the toolroom. Grandfather wasn’t in sight, but we heard sounds behind the door.

Cat knocked.

“Grandfather?”

“I’m busy now.” His voice was muffled. “I’m busy in my office.”

His office? Cat mouthed the words to me,
and we grinned at each other and went to pick black raspberries.

The raspberries grew past the pasture, at the far edges of the meadow where wild chicory and Queen Anne’s lace grew, too. Grandma had put a net over them to keep the birds away. Cat and I pushed back the net and ducked under.

“Every third or every fourth?” Cat asked, holding a berry to her lips.

“Every other?”

“Third,” Cat said, popping the berry into her mouth.

We picked for a while in silence. The berries made a soft plunking sound when we dropped them in the buckets.

“Remember when we used to make tents in the backyard?” I said, sitting back, looking up at the sky through the netting.

Cat nodded.

“You liked to build the tents,” she said. “And when you were done you’d sit inside, all restless and jittery, waiting for something more to happen.”

“That’s because I loved to build them,” I said.

“And I loved to sit inside after you’d gone,” said Cat.

There was a silence. Cat reached over to touch my arm.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Something Grandfather said, Mama waiting for things to happen. Remember when Mama got into the tent with us once?”

Cat nodded.

“She sat for a minute, then looked at us and said, ‘Well, what happens now?’”

“You and I,” I said, “we weren’t enough.”

I ate a raspberry. It was sour, and for a moment my tongue stung a little. “Cat.”

She looked up.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t put the pictures together. I wanted to make things all right again.”

Cat smiled.

“I know. You and Grandfather, two of a kind.”

“What do you mean?”

Cat sat back on her heels.

“Why do you think Grandfather takes family pictures?”

“He likes to. He likes the camera.”

“No,” said Cat. “
You
like the camera in your own way, Journey. Don’t you know that Grandfather wants to give you back everything that Mama took away? He wants to give you family.”

All those times. All those times that Grandfather had rounded us up, gathered us together for family pictures; plucking us out of hiding places, down from trees and from inside the pantry and from under the bed.

“Things for me to look back on,” I whispered.

“Things for him to look back on, too,” Cat added.

Cat dropped a berry in the bucket.

“Cat, do you hate Mama?”

Cat stared at the bucket.

“I hate what she did.”

I nodded.

“You say that, but do you feel that way?”

Cat looked up.

“I’m trying.”

I squeezed a berry between my fingers.

“Do you think she cares about us?”

Cat sighed.

“The only way she can, Journey.”

She ate a berry, and the juice made a tiny rivulet down her chin. I peered up suddenly at the sun shining through the net like an out-of-focus picture, then back at Cat. The pattern of the netting sat like a spider web across her face.

“What? What’s wrong?” she asked me.

“I wish I had Grandfather’s camera right now,” I said, beginning to smile.

Cat’s eyes widened. I got up quickly, and she scrambled up and after me, chasing me out into the meadow. We startled the redwings, and they flew up above us. A woodchuck on the stone wall ducked away.

Behind us the birds began to eat the raspberries under the net, but it didn’t matter.

It was evening, and the moon hung over the barn. Bloom lay on my bed. Upstairs, over my head in Mama’s room, there were footsteps. Bloom looked up and her ears rose. A drawer opened and shut, then another. I looked up, waiting, and in a moment Grandfather stood at my bedroom door.

“Good night, Journey.”

He held a large envelope and one of the kittens.

“Are you going to bed now?” I asked.

Grandfather, not speaking, stared over my head at the moon out the window. He had been restless and absentminded all day, drumming his fingers on the table at dinner, pursing his lips thoughtfully. Twice he opened his mouth to say something and didn’t. Once, in the middle of our conversation, he said suddenly, “Well, do
you think…?” to no one. We had turned to look at him, waiting, but he’d gone back to eating.

“He’s cooking up something,” Grandma had said at the kitchen sink, handing me a dish to dry. “I would spy on him, or better yet, ask him, but it’s too much fun making him wait.”

“You mean he wants to tell us what he’s doing?”

“Maybe. Maybe he wants to be asked, but you can do that when the time comes.”

“When? What time?”

“You’ll know,” Grandma had said.

Grandfather stood still in my bedroom. The kitten in his arms yawned.

“Grandfather. Grandfather?”

“What? Oh, no, I’m not going to bed yet.” He shook his head. “No, I’ve got work to do.”

He put the kitten down and looked at me with a small smile that was more than just a smile.

“Grandfather, were you in Mama’s room?”

“Ah, yes….”

I knew the tone. He didn’t want to say, or he wouldn’t say.

“The kitten had gone in there,” he said. “Well, good night.”

“Good night.”

I heard his footsteps down the hallway and into the kitchen. Then the screen door opened and shut with a small squeak. Out my window I watched him cross the yard and go into the barn, shutting the door behind him. Inside, the barn light went on. Then, as I watched, it went off again.

* * *

I
am asleep and flying. Cooper and Emmett are there in my dream, and I patiently explain that this is a dream, my flying dream. Cooper smiles at me, and Emmett reaches out a small hand to touch me.
“Do
you think we could fly, too?” asks Cooper. I am about to say “yes,” but I say “wait” instead.

* * *

“Wait!” I said out loud.

I sat up in bed, awake. Beside me the kittens stirred. I got out of bed and walked to the window. The moon had gone, but the outside light was on. I turned the lamp on beside my bed. It was four o’clock. Bloom, from her box in the closet, made a small sound in her throat. I turned off the light and went down the hallway, barefoot, and out into the yard.

The moon had set behind the house. I picked my way across the yard, wishing I had thought of shoes. There was dew on the grass and on the stones when I got to the driveway. Very slowly I opened the barn door and slipped inside. I had never been in the barn at night, and there were new shapes and shadows. It did not look like the same place that it was in daylight. It was as if I were still dreaming, as if I had come to a different barn that was like but not like our barn.

I walked past the grain buckets and the wooden bins; somewhere behind the hay there was a rustle, a mouse or a barn rat. I walked past the stalls to the back of the barn. The door
to Grandfather’s back room was closed, but a slice of red light spilled across my bare toes through the space at the bottom of the door. Very carefully I turned the knob. Very slowly I pushed the door open.

The room was filled with the red light, spilling over the table, over equipment, over my grandfather. There was a sharp, strange smell in the room. Grandfather bent over a tray of liquid, staring at something there. Then he picked up a piece of paper out of the tray.

Grandfather set Grandma’s metronome going, and it began to click back and forth.
Click. Click. Click.
I watched it, half hypnotized by the sound and the movement. And then, very slowly, Grandfather turned his head and looked at me. He looked at my pajamas, then down at my feet.
Click. Click. Click.

“Where are your shoes?” he asked, his voice making me jump.

I opened my mouth to answer him, and then I saw it. Behind Grandfather, hanging on a line, held by clothespins, was my family picture. The
picture of the kittens and Bloom in a box, Cooper with his cowboy hat, Cat leaning against Grandmother, and me, lying in Grandfather’s arms, my face turned to the camera with a startled look.

“What…” I started to speak.

“Don’t talk for a minute,” said Grandfather, taking what I saw was a picture out of a tray and putting it into another.

He reached up and turned the red light out and the overhead light on. I blinked, then came closer to the table and looked down. It was the picture of Cooper on his bicycle, his mouth open, looking amazed.

“The day I drove the car,” I said.

Grandfather smiled at me.

“A darkroom,” I said, smiling back at him. “You did this?”

Grandfather, his hair all tousled, grinned wider.

He saw me looking at my family picture.

“That is a fine picture,” he said.

“Not perfect,” I said. “But…”

“Good enough,” we said, almost at the same time.

Then Grandfather lifted his shoulders in a sigh, his face slipping out of his grin.

“And there’s more, Journey,” he said softly.

* * *

In the large envelope are the negatives of Mama’s pictures. Grandfather spreads them out on the table, and I hold one up to the light, my hand trembling. The people in the picture, all white as if they’ve been caught in a flash of sun, stare at me. There is a baby.

“This one,” I say, my voice a whisper.

Grandfather nods and hands me another. He watches me as I hold it up.

It is a man, a baby on his knees. I stare at it for a moment. Then Grandfather reaches up to turn on the red light.

Grandfather talks softly all the time, his face touched by the glow of the red light, telling me what he’s doing. But I hardly hear his words. He tells me about the enlarger and how it works, but silently I wait and watch as, like a face out of the fog, Mama’s face appears on the paper,
Papa beside her, the two of them smiling at the baby who is me. The baby’s hand reaches out and the mother bends toward him. After the shutter clicks she will kiss him.

I stare at Mama’s face. Then at Papa’s. And something that I’ve been trying to remember appears in my mind suddenly, like a face on a piece of paper. My papa’s face is a face I don’t know.
It is a face I don’t remember.

Grandfather washes the picture and hangs it up to dry. He sucks in his breath with a little whooshing sound.

“Now,” he says, “the other picture.”

I put my hand on his arm.

“I know,” I say. “I already know.”

Grandfather is not surprised. He smiles a little and looks up at my family picture.

“I sat on
your
knees,” I say, “not on Papa’s. And you sang Trot, trot to Boston.’ It was your shirt, your button I remembered.” I pause, then whisper. “It was
your
face.”

Grandfather takes down my family picture.

“And this was when you knew,” Grandfather says.

I stare at my startled face in the picture as I lay sprawled in Grandfather’s lap.

* * *

We turn out the lights and walk out into the barn. I trail my fingers along the wood walls. I touch the hay, as if touching it somehow makes it mine.

Grandfather reaches over and takes my hand. At the door I stop suddenly.

“Once they loved me,” I say.

His hand tightens around mine, and when we open the door and walk out of the barn, the night has gone, and the sun has come up.

Twelve-year-old Larkin returns home one day to discover a baby sitting in a basket in the driveway of her family’s house. The only clue to the baby’s appearance is a note from the child’s mother. “This is Sophie,” the note reads. “She is almost a year old and she is good… I will come back for her one day. I love her.”

T
URN THE PAGE FOR AN EXCERPT FROM THIS
POIGNANT, RIVETING, AWARD-WINNING NOVEL.

A Dell Yearling Book
ISBN: 0-440-41145–9

Excerpt from
Baby
by Patricia MacLachlan
Copyright © 1993 by Patricia MacLachlan

Published by Dell Yearling
An imprint of Random House Children’s Books
A division of Random House, Inc.
New York

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