Lily's Crossing (10 page)

Chapter 20

I
t was Friday afternoon, lunchtime. The church bells were chiming twelve, Kate Smith was singing “God Bless America” on the radio, and Lily and Gram were having hot tuna fish in tomato sauce. It was horrible, but Gram hadn’t caught a fish all week, and Lily hadn’t even tried.

“I agree,” Gram said. “I can tell by your face you don’t like it either.”

“I hate this stuff,” Lily said, eating as fast as she could. As soon as lunch was over, she and Albert were going to practice again. They’d been in the water so much that Mrs. Orban said they were going to turn into fish. She said it smiling. Even Mrs. Orban could see that Albert was never going to be a fish.

Albert had talked about it last night, said the same thing over and over. “We will row the boat out, stay in it until the ship passes right near us. I will only have to swim the last, smallest bit, and I will be wearing a life jacket . . .”

Lily stared out the window. The water was rough, really rough. Even though the sun was shining, the water had a dark look to it, and she could see whitecaps at the end of the canal. They couldn’t swim this afternoon. Alleluia. What instead? The movies? Fishing. Yes, fishing. They hadn’t done that once this summer.

Gram was saying something, had been talking for minutes. Something about forgetting. Lily looked up.

“You asked me for money,” Gram said.

Lily took another mouthful, trying not to taste the fish. “I don’t need it anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” Gram was saying. “I asked you how much you wanted, but you were getting dressed, and . . .” She raised one shoulder. “I never thought about it again until just this minute.”

Lily looked up, trying to remember. How much? Gram had said. How much had she lost? How much did she need? Lily felt a quick flash of guilt.

Gram looked hot and tired. It was boiling in the little kitchen. Even with the shades halfway down, the sun lay in patches on the table, the counters, and the floor. Suppose something happened to Gram someday?

“Never mind,” Gram said. “I’m going to make up for it . . . and for the tuna too. I have a letter, two letters for you. One from Poppy, and one from Margaret.” She sighed. “Poor Margaret.”

Lily put her fork down. That’s what she got for spending the morning swimming. She had missed the mailman. Now Gram would be reading over her shoulder.

Gram slid the letters over to her. Margaret’s filthy as ways, Poppy’s, airmail, tissue-paper thin. “The mailman was looking for you,” Gram said.

Lily didn’t answer. She opened Margaret’s first, a long letter in pencil, hard to read in Margaret’s scrawl.

Thank your grandmother for the letter.

Lily looked up quickly. Gram wasn’t leaning over her shoulder after all. She was turning the pages of her newspaper,
The Wave
. Lily looked down again, finding her place.

Thank her for the picture of Eddie swimming and those funny stories about when he was little. She made me laugh. I felt so bad. She misses your father. She calls him Jerry isn’t that strange I always think about him as Mr. Mollahan. We still don’t know anything about Eddie.

Love Margaret.

How’s the house?

“You wrote to Margaret? You sent a picture?” Lily asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”

Gram pushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “I knew how she felt. Suppose it was Poppy?”

Lily sat looking at Gram from the corner of her eye. She’d never thought about Gram missing Poppy, not once in all these weeks. She pushed Margaret’s letter across the table to her, then took a breath. She had forgotten the house part. But Gram didn’t seem to notice anything strange about Margaret’s mentioning her house.

Lily reached for Poppy’s letter, the best for last. It was a funny letter, Poppy reminding her of the time they painted the window and the screen had fallen over the edge of the porch and floated away.
Your fault
, Poppy had written for fun. They both knew it had been his fault. And then in the end, there was more about books.
Don’t forget to read
The Story of Roland
again, and
The Promise.
Go to the library for them. See Mrs. Hailey. She knows every book in the world!

Lily had read
The Story of Roland
with Poppy last winter, but not the other. She and Albert could take a quick trip to the library after they went swimming. Why not?

Gram had finished Margaret’s note and was looking out the window now. Her gray eyes were sad.

“Here,” Lily said, feeling generous. “Read my letter from Poppy. It will make you laugh.”

Lily took the last bite of tuna, thinking about a night last summer when they had eaten the same thing. It was almost dark, after Poppy had come. They had been talking, laughing. It was something about Gram’s fishing being so bad they had to eat canned tuna. And outside, the fireflies had floated over the porch.

“Do you remember . . .” Gram began as she put the letter down.

“Last summer?” Lily asked.

“No, the year of the hurricane,” Gram said.

Lily thought about it, the bay water, usually flat, crashing up against the pilings. Boats, let loose, filled with water, breaking apart and sinking. Their own rowboat, upside down, looking like a walnut shell, under a couple feet of water.

“What made you think of that?” she asked.

“I have a memory of your father, coming down the road, his shoes off . . .” Gram bit at her lip. “His suit pants were rolled up to his knees, full of mud, his newspaper—”

“—soaking wet, covering his head,” Lily said.

“And we laughed,” Gram said.

Lily nodded. She remembered how funny her father had looked, hopping along. She and Gram had watched from the kitchen door, so happy he was home.

And now Gram was crying. Lily couldn’t believe it. She had never seen Gram cry. Lily’s mouth was suddenly dry. “Why . . .”

Gram shook her head, her mouth trembling, trying to smile. “I guess I miss your father.”

Lily stood up, about to go to her, to put her arms around her.

“By the time he comes home,” Gram said, “you’ll be playing the piano for him.”

Lily veered off to the sink. She slid in her dish with a couple of other dishes and ran water over them. She could see Gram standing to put a bottle of milk into the refrigerator. No one would ever know tears had been in her eyes a moment ago.

Lily wiped her hands on a towel. “We’re going to swim, Albert and me. And then go to the library.”

Gram nodded, and Lily was out the door, around the side porch, and down into the rowboat. Albert was sitting there, waiting for her, looking even skinnier than usual with the huge orange life jacket around him.

She hopped into the boat and began to row past the houses, angling toward the marshes, leaning forward to keep the sun out of her eyes.

“I hope I can do this.” Albert sounded worried.

Lily rowed across the bay, moving swiftly, pulling hard on the oars. She wouldn’t have to tell him after all. He’d tell her to go without him, and then she’d say . . .

She looked across at him. His face was white, his lips pale. She threw the anchor into the water. “Now we’ll go over the side. The boat isn’t going anywhere, and if you really get in trouble you can reach for one of the tall reeds.”

Albert’s eyes were almost closed.

“I’ll go first,” she said, and went over the side slowly, Carefully, so the boat wouldn’t rock. She hung on to the edge with both hands for a second, getting used to the feel of the water, cool on her body, then slipped away from the boat. “Don’t forget, Albert. Keep your mouth closed. Last time . . .”

“I know.” He was clumsy getting over the side, rocking the boat enough to create small waves. And then he was in the water, reaching up to grip the side.

“Let go,” she said. “You’ve got on a life preserver. You can’t sink.” She grinned. “Even you can’t sink.”

He shut his eyes and let go.

“Good,” she said, treading water. “Feel how lovely. Not too cold. Open your eyes, will you?”

He struck out with one arm and then the other.

“Kick your feet, remember?”

He opened his eyes. “Too much to remember all at once.” He was out of breath.

“Take your time.”

He started again, head high.

“Not bad, not bad at all, but wait a minute.” She swam over to him, thinking he looked like a turtle. A land turtle. “What do you think will happen if you just put your head in the water?”

“Remember last time?”

“Yes, but your mouth was wide open. Duck your head. Just feel . . .”

He took a deep breath and leaned forward. A moment later he was up again. “I can hardly stay down.” He sounded surprised, pleased.

“See,” she said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

He nodded once, and then a second time. “You are right, Lily.”

He leaned into the water again, raising his arm. She could see his feet behind him, kicking a little, kicking harder. He was moving. He was swimming.

She watched as he circled the boat, then floated, his hands pale in the water, fingers spread. “I am swimming,” he told her.

“I know,” she answered him, thinking she had done it. She had taught him to swim. And then something else. She’d have to tell him they couldn’t go to Europe.

Chapter 21

T
he sea was high today. Lily tried to remember when she had last seen it this way, yellow-green water reflecting the strange color in the sky. They had rowed only a short way from the porch, still in the bay, to fish.

She dropped her fishing line over the side of the rowboat. The day was hot, the wormy bait sticky on her fingers. She felt sick with the smell of it, sick thinking about what Albert would say when she told him.

It had been a terrible day from start to finish. The library had been closed for days, and when they had finally gotten there this morning, Mrs. Hailey hadn’t been one bit friendly. “Bringing sand in on your feet,” she had grumbled. “Leaving a trail behind you like Hansel and Gretel.”

And then when Lily had tried to get both books,
The Story of Roland
and
The Promise,
Mrs. Hailey had looked up over her glasses. “Don’t you have a book at home, overdue?”

Lily had remembered she had left
The Three Musketeers
at the beach, and when she began to make something up, Mrs. Hailey had sighed. “Don’t, Lily,” she had said.

It had ended up that all she got was
The Story of Roland
, which she had already read, and what good was that? And she had thought Mrs. Hailey was her friend.

Albert was going on about meeting a ship. “It will go to France. I think it will. I know it will. I will start at Paris. I will go to every hospital. I will go everywhere. I have money. I will buy what I need. I will find her, do not worry.”

Werry
.

Lily took a breath. “Who’s going to take care of Paprika?”

Albert looked over the side of the boat, almost as if he could see the bottom, almost as if he were searching for a flounder. “The Orbans, of course. They will do that for me. Don’t you think so?”

“I have to tell you . . . ,” Lily began.

But Albert was singing now. He paused. “I will teach her this song from your radio,” and he began again. “ ‘You’ve got to ac-cent-tchu-ate . . . ’ ”

“Albert.”

“ ‘ . . . the pos-i-tive.’ ” He shook his head. “Did you ever notice, American songs are strange. I do not know what they mean most of the time.”

“You’re scaring the fish with that noise.”

“Not my fish.” He raised his line. “On the ship last time I was always thirsty, and the water tasted warm. We have to bring juice.” He nodded. “Yes. And maybe fruit. Nagymamma always said fruit was important. In the winter we ate tangerines.”

“And how would you carry all this?”

“In my pocket.”

“Very interesting,” she said, forgetting for a moment it she had to tell him. “You have pockets in your bathing suit?”

He waved his hand. “I did not think of that.”

“Albert . . .”

“No matter. I will drink warm water, and go without fruit if I have to.”

“Albert . . .”

He looked across at her.

She took a breath. “We can’t go.”

He turned his head, watching her, and she knew he was seeing the tears in her eyes. She opened her mouth to say she had changed her mind, that she’d heard that the convoys were moving out to sea farther south, but lying to Albert wasn’t like lying to anyone else. He had a way of looking at her as if everything she said was important, serious or funny, interesting to him somehow. How could she tell him something she had just made up? How could she lie again?

“I lied,” she said.

She could see the beginning of a quiver on his line. He was about to catch something . . . something small, maybe a sea robin. But he didn’t take his eyes off her, and her mouth was so dry she could hardly speak.

“What do you mean you lied?” he asked. “You mean you do not want to go with me? You are still worrying I am a coward because of the plane, because it took me so long to swim?”

“You’re not a coward, Albert.”

He frowned. “I am not afraid of anything.”

“I tell lies,” she said, almost whispering. “I tell people that my aunt is a spy. I say my father is in the Secret Service. I tell you I’m going to take a ship when I know the ships are too far out, that they seem closer than they are, and the sea is too strong and rough.”

“But I can go,” he said. “I am not afraid.”

She felt tears running down her cheeks and reached up to wipe them away.

“You are crying because of your father?” he asked.

She nodded. “And because of you. You thought I would help you go back . . .” She took a breath. “I said it because I didn’t say goodbye to my father,” she said. “I sneaked out of the house, and I never went back to say goodbye, and now . . .”

Albert reached out. He held his hand over her wrist the way Poppy had. “Lily,” he said. “I lie too.”

She shook her head. “Not the way I do, every minute.”

“Yes, because I am afraid.” For the first time he saw that line was wiggling, that he surely had a fish. “I will pull this fish up and set it free,” he said. “Then I will tell you truth. And you will know why I have to go on this ship back to Ruth.”