Romeo Blue (17 page)

As we left the five-and-dime the wind picked up and the sky was a promising blue. When I was younger I might have skipped away my worries, but I had grown too old for skipping. What if someone from school were to see me? I thought of the little dove I had bought. It had the dearest little bird face. Surely Derek would smile when he saw it? Out of habit, I finally gave way to the skipping urge and I started in, passing a poster that said,
WAR SHIPMENTS MEAN LESS FUEL FOR ALL. DRESS WARMLY INDOORS
. And another one farther down the street that said,
OUR GOVERNMENT SAYS, “DON’T WASTE FOOD. SAVE DRIED BREAD. MAKE BREAD CRUMBS!”

I skipped and skipped until I had left The Gram
way back behind me, walking under the awnings of the shops. But skipping didn’t change my mood anymore. My worry seemed to catch up with me and take hold easily. I didn’t know when I would give Derek the little dove or when his dreadful anger would subside.

Of all the people I desperately loved in Bottlebay, Mr. Henley was the first to leave. It was early November now and Mr. Henley appeared in the hall one afternoon, shadowy looking because the sun behind him was so bright, the way it can be just before it begins to set. He was a silhouette, a kind of vision in the dark hall, a mirage. “Hey, gang,” he called out, “where is everyone?”

Miami rushed down the steps and fell on the last one and collapsed in a silken heap at Mr. Henley’s feet. He picked her up and she was crying. And then he kissed her. I had never seen Bobby Henley do anything like that before.

I pretended to be searching for something inside one of the overcoats hanging in the hallway. I looked in the empty pockets while he took her in his arms. Miami tilted back and then it was as if they were floating together in our hallway, gently swirling in circles in their kiss.

“My bags are packed. I’m off later tonight by train and then by plane. I’ll keep you posted,” Mr. Henley said, giving us an army salute. Then he clicked his heels together.

“But do you know where you will be stationed?” I asked, buttoning and unbuttoning the overcoat. And then for some unknown reason, I got behind the coat and stood there in the darkness and called out, “I shall miss you awfully, Mr. Henley.”

“Oh, Flissy McBee,” he said. “I hear we’re being sent immediately over to the other side of the pond. That’s all I can say. But because I don’t have any family, I put you Bathburns as my next of kin. Your auntie won’t be here most of the time so I’ve included you in something very important to me.”

“You have?” I said, peeking out from behind the coat.

“Oh gosh, yes. I am planning to have all my mail sent here. I may send off some poetry from the front with a return address in care of you, Flissy. For safekeeping. You’ll take care of stuff for me, won’t you, kiddo?”

“Yes,” I said. “I shall be honored.”

Then Bobby Henley kissed Auntie again. And I soon expected to find them both on the ceiling. If ever there were a true Romeo, it was Bobby Henley just then.

Mr. Henley’s train was leaving at midnight. It was a starry, crisp evening and after dinner he and I were out on the porch, waiting for Miami. They planned to take a walk together. Even though it was chilly I sat on the porch swing, gliding back and forth, looking at the Big Dipper in the sky above us.

Then Mr. Henley handed me something small and square. It was dark and I couldn’t see exactly, but I was
pretty sure it was the little box that held the beautiful ring. “Hang on to this for me, will you, Flissy McBee? Miami and I, we don’t have time for it now, but we will when I come back on leave! It will be a surprise. Keep it safe for me, will you?”

Soon Miami came swimming out on the porch, a slice of light splashing across the floor as she slipped through the door. Then she and Bobby set off together for one last walk.

Derek continued to be angry and silent. And later that week I wanted to talk to Auntie about him. She was always so full of pleasant advice for me. Once I had shrunk up one of my knitted sweaters by washing it in hot water and Auntie showed me how to wash a wool sweater in cold water and then how to block it and reshape it on a towel in the sunlight while it was drying. Perhaps she would have some advice for me now. So I went upstairs to her room one evening.

Aunt Miami was packing. Since Bobby left, there was a somber, quiet air in our room. She had a photo of him in a shell-covered frame hanging near her bed. She wouldn’t be leaving for a while but she needed to be busy. She couldn’t quite decide which outfits to bring with her to the USO traveling theater. She trailed silky dresses across the room from her cupboard to her bed, where a suitcase was propped open, and silk scarves and kid gloves and little straw hats were laid in tidy piles.

“Oh, Auntie,” I said. “Will you be Juliet over and over again for the army and the navy and the air force?”

“The theater troop will be performing
Romeo and Juliet
at all the army bases in the good old US of A. We will be doing camp shows, especially for Christmas.
That’s when we’re needed most. I hope I get the part of Juliet.”

“You won’t be here for the holidays and Bobby Henley won’t be here either,” I said.

“No,” Miami said, looking up and out across the room. A lamp with a blue lampshade cast a blue light across her face, Juliet tinted blue for just a brief moment.

Then suddenly she clapped her hands. “What do you say to taking these little white gloves?” she said, turning her head back towards me. “They are too small for me, you know. Perfect for twelve-year-old hands. And what do you say to this clutch bag? Are you growing old enough for a little purse? Tell me, yes or no?”

“Yes!” I said. “Oh, Auntie, I shall treasure them. Auntie, may I ask you a tiny, little question?”

“Oh, Flissy Miss,” said Miami. “The smaller your questions, the harder they are to answer.”

“How did Derek come to live here?” I asked.

Miami closed her suitcase with a tight snap. She looked at me with her head tilted.

“The longer I stay in the Bathburn house, the more questions pop up. It’s not my fault, honestly. Do you find me meddlesome? Derek said so. I was only trying to help,” I said.

“Oh, Flissy,” said Auntie. “Sweetest. I am going to miss you when I’m away. Derek knows this stuff but he’s funny about it. He won’t talk about it. He was brought here by the children’s services in town. It had been The
Gram’s summer project. It was only meant to be a temporary stay until his father reappeared.”

She handed me another pair of gloves. I tried them on but all I could think of was Derek disappearing down the hall or walking out of a room or closing a door behind him, turning his back on me.

“I can still remember the first night the baby was here,” said Miami. “I’d say he was about one and a half. Perhaps he was more of a toddler. We had a storm, a hurricane, actually. It was big enough for people to give it a name. Everyone on the coast was told to go into the school for shelter, but we Bathburns never do that sort of thing. We chose to weather it.”

“And what about Gideon?” I said. “Was he here then as well?”

“Oh yes, Gideon had come home from England a few months earlier and he practically lived in his room, the way the Bathburns tend to do when they are hurt. You know his heart had been broken. His brother had taken his wife and baby away. The Gram was frantic. She tried to interest him in anything and everything. But nothing really was working. He sat in his room and all he did was stare out the window. He’s really quite a mush, that brother of mine.”

“Yes,” I said. And I felt sad and torn again, loving Danny as I did and now loving Gideon as my father as well. And not knowing anymore whose side I should be on, if there was a side at all. I could not imagine any
twelve-year-old having been more mixed up than me. I wanted so much to make all the wrongs right. I wanted an answer to everything. Now.

Miami went on with the story and I leaned back against her pink-flowered cushions and simply listened.

“The wind was extremely strong that night,” she said. “It howled and battered at the house. And of course the waves roared over the steps and almost up to the porch. When a couple of shutters were torn off in the back, Gideon was called down to help. He went ripping off into the wind after the old shutters and when he’d captured them, he returned. He was standing in the hall. I can remember that clearly. He was about to climb the stairs to his room when he saw The Gram with the toddler in her arms. It was just for a split second but I remember clearly a kind of light passing across Gideon’s eyes. We all saw it.

“The next few days it was Gideon who called children’s services in town to discuss everything. It was Gideon who spent hours on the telephone talking about every possibility. The baby’s date of birth was unknown. They said we could give him a first name. He came to us as Baby Blakely, but they were quite clear that in this case, he was not up for legal adoption. His mother had died but the father could come back at any time. We had to live with that.

“So you see,” said Miami. “As we grew to love Derek, we grew to fear the return of his father. It felt as if
Derek came to us in the middle of a storm. How long would he be ours? When would he be taken away? And can you guess what they were calling the storm in Bottlebay?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, they usually give people’s names to the hurricanes around here, don’t they? That storm was named Hurricane Derek.”

I kept the little wrapped dove in my skirt pocket. I kept it with me even at school, for there was always the possibility that I might see Derek in the halls and find a moment to give it to him and to explain how sorry I was about everything I had done. I often looked for him in the lunchroom and in the auditorium when we had an assembly about how to save and repair and reuse things for the war effort. How to patch clothes. How to use both sides of all paper at school. How to save old cardboard. But I never saw Derek anywhere. Now that I knew most of his story, I rather loved him even more.

This morning I sat at breakfast in the kitchen with Auntie and Gideon, who was behind his newspaper as usual. I tipped my head like a teapot when it’s being poured so that I could see the headline. It read,
GREAT WAVES OF AMERICAN TROOPS HAVE LANDED IN NORTH AFRICA IN FRENCH MOROCCO AND IN ALGERIA. NEWS COMING IN SLOWLY AS BATTLES RAGE
.

Most of the war news had not been so good recently. But this North African landing seemed to be a grand thing. I could tell by the way my daddy stretched and leaned back in his chair. “Hot diggity. This is a good move. We need control of the Mediterranean!” He put
his arm over me and drew me towards him. “Come on, look at this. Are you happy about it, Fliss, or are you still my melancholy baby?” And then he started to hum that song “My Melancholy Baby.” He smiled at me but I wouldn’t smile back.

He was right. I was not at all happy. What did Morocco or Algeria mean to my Winnie and Danny? What did it mean to me and to Derek? Would Derek let go of his anger soon? Would he let go of it just like that kite we let loose into the wind when we used to be friends? We let that kite go and it sailed so high, so very high and it headed out over the ocean. We watched it with the binoculars for almost an hour as it got smaller and smaller and fainter and fainter until we could no longer see it. We thought maybe it would go all the way to France, to fly above the Limoges prison where Winnie and Danny were held. Perhaps they would look up from their cell windows and see a blue kite bobbing away in the sky above and perhaps they would know deep in their hearts that the kite was mine, a message from me, their daughter, waiting, forever waiting, across the ocean.