Summer of the War (6 page)

“Well,” Grandma said, “there's a compliment for you, and the French certainly know good food.”

Tommy said, “Then how come the French are dumb enough to eat snails and animal brains and stinky cheese?”

“Tommy, that's a very impolite thing to say,” Grandma told him. “You should apologize to Carrie.”

Carrie gave Tommy a sweet smile. “Oh, that's not necessary. I know he was just having a little fun.”

Grandma patted Carrie's hand. “That's very generous of you, Carrie.”

Even Grandma was taken in by Carrie.

I made some excuse about having a headache and skipping music practice, and I walked down to the
lake. I didn't even have to look. I knew Ned would be out in the channel on his sailboat, and he was. I leaned as casually as I could manage against a tree and watched Carrie walk to the end of the dock and wave him in.

“Come and rescue me,” she called.

When he made the boat fast to the dock, she said, “I'm not wearing heels tonight.”

He grinned a foolish grin. “You're learning fast. Climb in.” He spotted me. “Hey, Belle, want to come along?”

“Not tonight,” I said.

He didn't coax me. Carrie said something I couldn't hear, and they both laughed. I didn't wait to watch them cast off. I turned toward the woods. Although the cottage was just down the path, the music sounded far away. I sulked because they were having their recorder session without me. I told myself it was my own fault, but that didn't help. I crushed some pine needles in my fingers and breathed in the fragrance. I didn't know how we would ever go back to being the way we were before Carrie came.

The storm started in the late afternoon. The gulls had been shrieking all day. At breakfast Grandpa had pointed to the anvil-shaped clouds.

“A little weather on the way,” he said.

Carrie looked up. “What kind of weather?”

“Thunderstorm.” He looked at us kids. “Better keep close to the cottage. You don't want to be caught in the woods if there's lightning.”

We had heard the warning a hundred times and paid no attention, but Carrie bit her lip and stared hard at Grandpa.

In the afternoon the sky turned a yellowish gray. There was a minute before the storm when everything was still: no birdsong, no wind, even the gulls hovered silently in the air like scraps of white paper. The world seemed to be holding its breath. Suddenly rain fell in gulps and splashes. Tommy, Emily, and I helped Grandpa drop the canvas curtain to keep
the porch dry. Nancy, her wet hair plastered to her head, followed Polo in his mad dash for the house. Polo shook the water from his fur and with the first thunderclap slunk under the table.

After securing the porch, I stood at the living-room window. I loved the wildness of the storm, the sheets of water blowing across the channel, the wind whipping the cedars and bending the birch trees, the jagged spears of lightning splitting open the sky. I loved holding my breath and waiting for the thunder to follow the flash of lightning. The world was turned over to giants, nothing was small, everything that happened—the wind and lightning and thunder—was huge.

“Belle,” Grandma said, “go upstairs and see what Carrie is doing. She seems to have disappeared.”

I resented having to leave my post at the window to check on Carrie, who seemed to be letting us know over and over that she could take care of herself and didn't need us.

“I'll go,” Emily volunteered.

“No, dear,” Grandma told her, “Belle is going.” I think Grandma was beginning to be a little bothered at the way Emily trailed after Carrie.

I trudged reluctantly up the stairs and pushed open the bedroom door. Carrie was on the bed, her knees drawn up close to her chest, her arms hugging her body. She was crying.

“Carrie! What's wrong?” I stood looking down at
her, afraid she had suddenly taken ill. “I'll get Grandma.” I started for the door.

“No,” she whispered. “I don't want anyone. Just leave me alone.”

I sat down gingerly on the edge of her bed. Putting a hand on her shoulder, I begged, “Please, tell me what's the matter.”

“It's the storm. The lightning will strike the cottage and we'll all be burned up.”

I stared at her, unable to believe she could be so frightened, but she was. Storms on the island had always made me feel secure, as if the island were a refuge like Noah's ark.

I patted her shoulder, trying to calm her. “Grandpa has lightning rods on the roof, and anyhow there are tall trees on the island that would make a much better target than the cottage.” I added, “I've seen worse storms than this one, lots worse.”

Carrie sat up and looked at me. Her face was pale and her eyes huge. She didn't want to hear about storms that were “worse.”

“Is it the island?” I asked. “Are you just afraid of being on the island?”

Carrie shook her head. “I hate storms. I had this awful nursemaid when I was little and we were living in France. She used to pull me into a closet with her to hide from the storms. She said the lightning could come through the windows even if they were closed. She said because I was such a bad girl,
it would be sure to strike me. I hated her.”

“Why didn't you tell your dad?”

“She said he wouldn't believe me, and he didn't until she broke my arm.”

“Broke your arm!”

“I don't think she meant to, but I wouldn't do something she wanted me to, so she yanked me by the arm. It got twisted and broke. She told Papa I fell, but I screamed so loudly when she came near me, he got suspicious and sent her packing. I know it's silly, but I'm still afraid of storms.” Carrie looked at me with a weak smile. “I've probably done enough bad things to deserve being punished with a bolt of lightning.”

I remembered how when we kids had a toothache or a sore throat, or measles that itched like crazy, my mother would find something to take our minds off of our complaints.

“Carrie,” I asked, “can I try on your dresses?”

Carrie looked at me as if I were pouring water on a drowning man. “Dresses! Now?”

“It's raining and there's nothing else to do. You don't have to pay attention.”

“Do what you want to,” Carrie said. Her voice was shaky. A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky. Seconds later there was a growl of thunder loud as a cage of lions. Carrie huddled into a ball.

I started for the closet. The first dress I pulled over my head was pink cotton with a white organdy collar. Carrie sat up in bed and stared at me.

“Not your style,” she said. “I got it at Garfinkel's in Washington. I bought all my clothes there. Dad told Louise to use his charge account whenever I wanted something.”

I tried to imagine what it would be like to go out and buy a dress “whenever I wanted.” We were well enough off, but Emily and Nancy sometimes wore my hand-me-downs, and Mom dragged me around shopping for bargains. We were taught it was showing off to wear clothes that looked expensive. We wore clothes that no one would notice.

“Try on the one with the little yellow flowers—that's more your style.” Carrie winced and ducked as a clap of thunder drowned out her last words, but she stayed sitting up.

The yellow dress was simple. I stood in front of the mirror thinking Carrie was right; it did look good on me. I looked like I wished I looked.

Carrie got off the bed. “Wait, there's an even better one.”

Carrie had me try on all the dresses until there was only one left, an organdy dress with lilacs scattered over it. I could see the minute I took it off its hanger that it was much too small for me and would never fit Carrie.

She snatched it out of my hand. “Not that one. I'm saving it.” She put the dress carefully back on the hanger. “In Paris Papa took me shopping at the Galeries Lafayette and bought the dress for me.”

I didn't say anything, but I could tell from the careful way Carrie handled it that the dress must have been a special one because her father had bought it for her. It was her father and not the dress that was important to her. She had all those dresses, but that was all she had. She didn't have a mother, and her father was thousands of miles away.

“Carrie,” I asked, “were all your nursemaids as awful as the one who broke your arm?”

“Oh, no. The ones in France were strict, but Louise is nice. She started working for us when we came back to this country. Anyhow, I never complained to Dad or he would have sent me to your family. Our grandmother and your mother were always sending letters to Dad saying they'd be glad to have me live with them. I know, because Dad kept the letters in his desk, and I read them.”

So the nursemaid who broke her arm and the strict housekeepers were a lot better than living with us. Of course Carrie shouldn't have read her father's letters, but hadn't I done the same thing?

I had tried all the dresses on and Carrie was paying more attention to the storm. I couldn't believe that this was the same girl who claimed to like dangerous things and said she wouldn't be afraid of the bombs in England. The rain battered the windows. Lightning lit the sky, followed seconds later by thunder, and Carrie was folding herself up on the bed again. I felt sorry for her in a way I hadn't before.

Just then Emily burst into the room, a comb in one hand, a mirror in the other.

“Look, Carrie, the lemon juice must be working.” Before the storm had come, Emily had been sitting in the sun with lemon juice on her hair hoping she would turn blond. “I'm sure there's the beginning of a lighter streak.” She looked at Carrie. “Are you sick?”

Carrie sat up. “No, I'm fine.” She tried a thin smile. She had let me see how frightened she was, but she wouldn't let Emily see. Emily's admiration was important to her. Emily looked up to Carrie, and Carrie wasn't going to let her down.

Suddenly Carrie stood up. She walked quickly to the closet and, pushing aside the other dresses, pulled out the dress her father had bought for her at Galeries Lafayette. She looked at it for a minute and then quickly handed it to Emily.

“Here—it's too small for me. You can have it.”

Emily stared at the organdy dress, unable to believe it was hers. “Look, Belle,” she said, “it's got a French label. It's from Paris!”

For the next few days Carrie kept her distance from me. I think she was ashamed of having let me see how scared she had been of the storm. Emily shadowed her just like Polo trailed after Nancy. Emily, with her lemon juice and her pageboy and headband, her nail polish and her garbling of French words picked up from Carrie, was a smaller edition of Carrie.

Nancy was too busy with her own project to pay much attention to Carrie. Nancy had discovered heart-shaped tracks along the beach. From time to time a deer would swim over to the island. Nancy was putting out apple peels and corn to keep the animal on the island. After exploring the beach each morning, she would run into the house to announce, “It's still here!” She was so excited, you'd think it was a unicorn.

Only Tommy said anything about Emily's imitating Carrie. I heard him tell Emily, “You're just like a
mockingbird. They spend all their time sounding like some other bird, so you never get to hear their own song, and their own songs are nicer than the songs of the birds they imitate.”

I thought that was a compliment, but it made Emily angry.

“That's how much you know. You just don't appreciate elegance when it's right in front of you.”

Eventually Emily might have tired of copying Carrie and gone back to being herself, but it happened faster than any of us could have guessed. It was one of those summer mornings when everything looks like it was poured out of a milk bottle. The water was a pale whitish blue. The sky was full of curdled white clouds. The freakish weather made me restless, so I was relieved when Grandma handed me my weekly list of things to get in Birch Bay. Carrie quickly volunteered to go with me. She took a long time to get ready. I guessed she hoped to run into Ned. Ned had come by nearly every night to take Carrie sailing. “She's terrific at crewing,” he told me one evening when I was fishing off the dock and he was waiting for Carrie to join him. “When she was little, she used to go sailing with her dad off the coast of France. The Germans are there now.” I had refused his invitations so many times, Ned no longer asked me if I wanted to go sailing with them.

I suppose I was jealous, so that afternoon when we were heading for the mainland, I took pleasure in
waiting until after Carrie had done all her primping to mention casually that since it was one of the days Mrs. Norkin wasn't working for us, it would be Mrs. Norkin and not Ned who would be minding the vegetable and flower stand. “Ned probably will be off with his father guiding some fishermen.” Carrie just shrugged.

As we anchored the boat, Carrie said, “I've got an errand in town. I'll meet you at the Norkins'.”

By now the sun had burned off the clouds. It was July-hot out. Even walking the short distance down the main road to the Norkins' farm, I felt my damp shirt clinging to my back. In the winter when the city was all gray skies and wet slushy snow, I would dream of July days like this. The fields were gold with yellow mustard and the roadside blue with chicory. In the distance I could make out the Norkins' white farmhouse and red barn. The martins were swooping in and out of the holes in Mr. Norkin's purple martin house. When I got a little closer, I could see Mrs. Norkin fussing over her produce. She was particular about how the vegetables and flowers were displayed. There were freshly picked bouquets of cornflowers, marigolds, and sweet peas. Even the piles of beans and peas and lettuce were like paintings.

The minute she saw me, she called out. “Belle, I just baked some peanut butter cookies. They're your favorite.”

I stood munching my second cookie while Mrs.
Norkin filled one of the used grocery store bags she saved with lettuce and radishes and three jars of her strawberry jam that was Grandpa's favorite.

“Where's your cousin today?” she asked.

“She'll be along. She stopped in town.”

“That girl is a pretty enough thing, but she thinks we're all hicks.”

It was like Mrs. Norkin to say what was on her mind. I felt I had to stick up for Carrie. She was family. “Oh, no,” I said. “I think everything's just different for her.”

Mrs. Norkin raised an eyebrow and, giving me one of the ironic looks she was famous for, said, “I hear she goes out sailing with Ned. I guess she's not above a little slumming if he wears a pair of pants.”

So that was what made her critical of Carrie. She didn't like Carrie seeing Ned. Well, that was two of us.

Carrie appeared down the road making her way toward us from town. When you see someone suddenly, you look at them differently because you haven't gotten all your usual ideas together. Seen from a distance, Carrie'd lost her air of sophistication; she just looked like any girl. She was wearing a pair of my shorts and a shirt. For a minute I was confused. She looked like the cousin whom I had been expecting, the one I was going to be best friends with.

Mrs. Norkin must have seen what I did. “I guess she's just a kid,” Mrs. Norkin said. “If she spends
enough time with your family, she'll probably outgrow that fancy attitude.”

I wasn't so sure. It was our attitudes, not Carrie's, that seemed to be changing.

I saw Carrie had a package, but I didn't think anything of it, guessing it would be lipstick or nail polish. She was on her best behavior, greeting Mrs. Norkin in a friendly way. She admired the bouquets on display, and I saw Mrs. Norkin unbend a little.

“I've never seen such
bluets
,” Carrie said.

“Those are cornflowers,” Mrs. Norkin corrected Carrie.

“In France we call them
bluets
.”

Mrs. Norkin's back was up. “Well, this is America, so they're cornflowers.”

I felt a little sorry for Carrie. When we were settled in the runabout, I said, “I think
bluets
is a prettier name. I don't know why Mrs. Norkin didn't like it.”

Carrie shrugged. “Like all the people around here, she's
une provinciale
.”

A fancy French word for hick. Mrs. Norkin was right about Carrie. I didn't protest because I had let Carrie think I didn't know French. When she had asked me if I spoke it, I shook my head, afraid of her laughing at the way I garbled French words.

Carrie was in a good mood. Usually when I asked her about France, she shrugged and changed the subject, so I had lost any hope of discovering what it was
like. I thought that wasn't fair. Carrie had seen so much of the world, I didn't see why she wouldn't share it with me. This day she seemed eager to talk about France. It began with Mrs. Norkin.

“That woman,” Carrie said, “thinks her little market is so special. Maurice, the chef at the American embassy, would take me with him to Les Halles early in the morning while it was still dark. There were blocks and blocks of vegetable and fruit markets, the tiniest beans like green threads, truffles worth their weight in gold, and
fraises de bois
, wild strawberries, no larger than my little fingernail. Or we'd go to the fish market and buy eels and sole flat as a pancake and piles of mussels and oysters.”

Eels and mussels and oysters sounded disgusting to me, but I wanted Carrie to keep talking about Paris, so I tried to look like nothing would make me happier than swallowing a squirming eel followed by a slimy oyster.

“After we finished our shopping,” Carrie said, “Maurice would take me with him to a little café to have onion soup with all the other chefs. You wouldn't believe who all would come and do their own shopping. The chef from the Ritz was actually there. Papa once took me to the Ritz for lunch. We ate in the garden room: cold lobster salad, and for dessert little chocolate soufflés. I've even had
escargots
, snails. Maurice said before you can eat the snails, you have to keep them inside the house and starve
them for a couple of days, because they could have eaten something that wouldn't poison them but might poison you.” When she saw the expression on my face, she laughed. “It isn't really the snails that are so good, it's the garlic and butter sauce they come with.” Her mouth turned down and her eyes got watery. “Of course with the war, that's all gone. The
Boche
are in Paris now, and all the French are starving.”

Carrie turned quiet. I couldn't get her to tell me more about Paris. When I asked her if she would like to go back there to live after the war, she only shook her head. “I don't know. It will all be so different. But of course if Papa goes, I must go, too.”

I guided the runabout into its berth beside the dock. Before I could make the boat fast, Carrie scrambled onto the dock and ran up to the cottage. I saw Emily on the porch waiting for her. The screen door slammed shut, and the two of them disappeared up the stairway, giggling.

They stayed upstairs for the rest of the morning. Tommy and Nancy had made up a game. They had to walk around the living room on the furniture without touching the floor. Polo was trying to follow them. I rescued the vases as they toppled off the tables.

When Grandma called us for lunch, Carrie came down the stairs by herself, looking like I had never seen her look before, timid and defensive. She settled down on her chair keeping her head down.

“Where is Emily?” Grandpa asked. “She knows
it's lunchtime.” Grandpa called up the stairway, “Young lady, we're waiting for you.”

Several minutes went by while we all looked hungrily at the sandwiches Grandma had made with lots of mayonnaise and thick slices of Mrs. Norkin's bread and her watermelon pickles on the side. It was Grandpa's rule that no one touched a bite until everyone was at the table.

Finally Emily slipped into her chair. Her eyes were red and she was wearing a cotton sun hat with her hair tucked up into the hat.

“Whatever is the matter, dear?” Grandma asked.

Emily shook her head. Nothing we said could get her to say a word. She tore her sandwich into bits and nibbled on a pickle. We pretended everything was all right and talked with one another, but neither Emily nor Carrie said a word.

As soon as lunch was over, Emily shot a furious glance at Carrie and ran outdoors. Carrie went up to our bedroom and shut the door. It was our time for reading. I took my book and set off after Emily. I knew her favorite place just as she knew mine. I headed for a grove of cedars not far from the cottage. For some reason the cedars had formed a kind of circle. Nancy called it a fairy ring and always checked it on the night of a full moon to see if there were any signs of fairies dancing. Inside the ring of trees was a small circle of grass where Emily liked to curl up and read, pleased to be so close to everyone but still invisible.

I found her sobbing.

“Em, what is it?” As I put my arms around her, her sun hat fell off. “Oh! Em!” Her hair was the brassy orange-yellow of an egg yolk. “What happened to you!”

She was sobbing harder than ever. I could just make out her words. “She did it. I wanted blond hair like hers, and she said she would bleach it.”

I knew now what Carrie had bought in Birch Bay. Bleach for Emily's hair. “It will grow out,” I promised Emily.

She wiped her eyes and snuffled. “It'll take forever. It was awful when I looked in the mirror. It's not me anymore. She's taken me away. I hate her for doing that to me.”

“Carrie didn't mean it to turn out like that. She feels as bad as you do.”

It was late afternoon before I could calm Emily down enough to get her into the cottage and up to her bedroom. When I brought Grandma up to see Emily, she was horrified.

“That was a thoughtless thing for Carrie to do,” Grandma said. “She's older than Emily and should have known better.” It was the first criticism of Carrie I had heard Grandma make.

She tried to comfort Emily. “We'll have it cut short, dear, and by the time the summer is over, it'll be mostly grown out.”

Emily refused to go into Birch Bay to the barber
shop. Instead she let Grandpa cut it.

“Nothing to it,” he said. “I used to help shear the sheep on the farm when I was a boy.” He tried to make a joke out of it, but I could see he was angry with Carrie.

“You were very foolish, Carrie,” he told her.

This time Carrie didn't answer back. She stood there rigid and silent, as if at the least movement she would break apart. Later I found her in our room looking miserable. “No matter what I do,” she said, “it's the wrong thing. Emily begged me to bleach her hair. I thought I was doing her a favor. She was the only one of you who liked me, and now she hates me.”

“She doesn't hate you—she's just disappointed. She'll get over it. And as for her being the only one of us who likes you, that's not true. We all like you. Just give us a chance.” I took a deep breath. “I like you. Honest.”

Carrie gave me a searching look. I have to admit I'm not too good at hiding my feelings, but at that moment, if I didn't exactly like Carrie, I felt sorry for her. I guess that was enough for her, because she gave me a weak smile.

Emily kept to herself, curled up on the porch swing with a book or hidden away in the birch circle. We all tried not to look at her hair, pretending we had just met one another and were showing off how polite we were.

Tommy couldn't stand the gloom that had settled
over everyone. The second day in the middle of lunch he said in a loud voice, “I don't see why it's such a big deal. Goldfinches are bright yellow all summer, and then in the fall they turn a brownish green.”

We all stared at him. Only Tommy would compare Emily to a goldfinch. I couldn't keep a straight face. Grandma and Grandpa started to laugh.

Emily glowered at Tommy. “I'm not a goldfinch,” she said. A minute later she was smiling. Suddenly all the tension was gone. We knew one day this would just be the summer Carrie bleached Emily's hair and it would be a family joke, something to make us all laugh. We were back together again, and even Carrie smiled.