The Silent Boy (9 page)

Of course she said how I had grown.

The train blew its whistle and began to move slowly from the station—ours was a very short stop, being such a small town—on its way to Philadelphia beyond. I saw faces in the windows of the cars, and though they had watched with interest as Gram left the train with all of her things, I could tell that now their thoughts were
moving on to their own destinations and whatever families, jobs, and vacations lay ahead for each of them.

"That ' s new paint there, isn 't it, Katy?" Gram asked, pointing to a house on the corner. "I believe that house was gray on my last visit. And now look: it ' s sparkling white. Things change so when you've been away."

I nodded. "And, Gram," I told her, "there was a terrible fire at Schuyler ' s Mill. People were burned but no one died, Gram, because Father took care of them."

"The good Lord helped, I expect," Gram said.

"Maybe.But,Gram?
Colloidal silver.That
' s what the doctors used. And tannic acid."

I could see Father smiling as he tapped the horses gently with the buggy whip and steered them toward home. "Katy aims to be a doctor when she's grown," he explained to Gram.

"I
never,
" Gram said. But she was smiling.

At home she hugged Mother, saying, "Caroline, Caroline," holding her carefully because of her size and the baby inside. "It won ' t be long, will it?"

Father took her coat and hat after Gram had carefully undone the hatpin that held it firmly on her gray hair. Peggy came from the kitchen, looking shy, and was introduced.

There were gifts: baby clothes, lovely things that Gram had embroidered herself; and for me, a
book:
Elsie Dinsmore.
I had already read it from the library but didn't tell her that, and it was good to have it for my own, though in truth I didn't like the girl Elsie much. She seemed too good and had no spunk. Peggy thought the same; we had read it together.

Gram brought greetings from my mother's brother, Uncle James, and from Aunt Eleanor and the Cincinnati cousins. Gram lived at Uncle James's house, and I could tell that she didn't like Aunt Eleanor, though she was careful to say only nice things. There was always a little tone to her voice when she spoke of Eleanor, what a fine house she kept, and such a civic-minded woman.

Uncle James had been just a baby, and mymother only three years old, when my grandfather died. He took sick, she said, one morning, and was gone by nightfall, nothing anyone could do. For that reason Gram always wore a black ribbon around her neck, in mourning. The photograph we had of my grandfather showed him looking no more than a boy, though he was twenty-seven when he died. I wondered sometimes: if they were to meet in heaven, Gram and the young husband she still grieved for, might he still be that young boy and she a gray-haired lady with a mourning band around her neck, and a feathered hat held on by a pin? If so, I thought they would hardly have much to say to each other at all.

I loved Gram. She talked to me as if I were a grownup, and on earlier visits she had taught me card games (Naomi disapproved; her church thought playing cards were of the devil) using the playing cards that she always carried with her in her bag. She played something called patience, by herself, laying the cards out one by one on the table by the parlor windows.

When she went upstairs to freshen up, I followed along behind and took her down the hall to see the nursery with the baby clothes all waiting and the pink and white blanket Mother had knitted folded on the arm of the rocker.

"Mother and Father say they don't care, but I do hope for a boy," I confided to Gram.

"It ' s nice to have both," she said, nodding her head. "I remember being glad when James was born, to have a boy after a girl. But most of all, you hope for the baby to be healthy and strong."

"And not marked," I added. "Our grocery boy was marked on his face because his mother was frightened by something hideous and placed her hand just so." I showed her, with my hand to my chin.

Gram made a tsk-ing sound. "I ' m sure your mother has taken very good care of herself," she said, "and your baby will be perfect. Whoever told you that about the grocery boy? Not your father, certainly."

"Peggy did."

Gram smiled. "She ' s a country girl. But I ' m sure she's a great help to your mother."

"Oh, yes. Peggy works hard. And do you know what? Her sister ' s right next door. Do you remember my friend Austin Bishop, the boy with the pretty little sister named Laura Paisley? Peggy's sister Nell is a hired girl at the Bishops ."

"Two sisters side by side. Isn't that nice? Does Nell look like Peggy, with that thick brown hair?" Gram leaned forward to the looking glass and patted her own hair to tidy it.

"Not really. Nellie's hair is bright red, and she's more—" I tried to think of the right word to describe Nell: the overabundance of pink in her cheeks; her wild, flame-colored hair; the extra flounces in her clothing.

"More glamorous," I said, finally.

Speaking of Peggy's sister made me think, suddenly, of something uncomfortable I had seen in the Bishops barn. I willed the thought from my mind and took my Gram's hand, to lead her down the hall again, back downstairs to the waiting dinner and the warm comfort of my family.

 

Austin came over on Saturday afternoon to play, and Peggy gave us cookies. We stood by Gram, watching her with the cards, and she tried to show
us how the game went, but Austin was bored by it and so after a while we went outdoors.

Austin was in my class at school, but being a boy he played only on the boys side of the playground while I played on the girls , and we never looked at each other during recess. But at home, on Orchard Street, we often played a game we had created together. We called it Tragedy and Disaster, and it took many forms.

On this early April afternoon, we played the version named San Francisco Earthquake. "Tragedy and disaster!" we called out together, and then shook the porch furniture until the wicker legs of the chairs thumped on the floor. We screamed, "Tremors!" again and again until Mother came to the door and told us to be quieter.

So we played Shipwreck, instead, sitting quietly in the porch chairs and commenting about the beauty of the sea, then tipping over and drowning silently after a few last words. "Tragedy and disaster!" we gulped. Pepper kept getting up from where he was sleeping by the steps to come sniff our bodies.

Then, because drowning wasn't very interesting after we had done it twice, we decided to be saved by a lifeboat. There had been a shipwreck off Nantucket a few years before, when a liner named
Larchmont
had collided with another ship. People had been saved by the lifeboats, though the ship
was lost forever, and with it some treasure, or so it was said.

We found boards in the Bishops barn, dragged them to my front yard, and arranged them just below the porch railing, though we were careful not to smash the budding azaleas, because I knew Mother would be cross if they were ruined.

We began the game again, seating ourselves very properly in the porch chairs that we had arranged side by side, imagining them to be on the deck of a ship.

"How do you do," I said to Austin, holding my fingers around an imaginary teacup. "What a lovely day it is."

"Yes," he replied. "How do you do. My name is Mr. Larchmont."

I kicked his chair and whispered, "You can't be. That ' s the
boat
' s name."

He puffed on an imaginary cigar. "They named this ship after me," he explained in a loud voice.

"Oh," I replied, sipping my tea. "How nice. And isn't it a lovely ocean? Such beautiful water."

"Yes indeed," he said. "But I believe I can see another ship coming dangerously close."

"I do hope it doesn't strike us."

"I ' m sure it won ' t," Austin said. "Would you like to dance, or stroll?"

"Stroll," I decided. So he took my arm and we
walked slowly across the porch. He puffed some more on his cigar.

"Here it comes!" I called out. "Collision!"

"To the lifeboat!" Austin cried, and we scurried to the porch railing.

"Tragedy and disaster!" we shouted together. We climbed the railing, held hands, and jumped down onto our boards.

"I think it' s supposed to be only women and children," I said, after we were afloat in the yard.

Courageously Austin said, "I ' ll make room for them." He leapt into the sea and prepared to drown.

"Wait!" I said. I jumped from my lifeboat and shook a branch of the nearby forsythia bush. Its few remaining yellow blossoms broke loose and fluttered down. "Treasure," I announced, and returned to my boat. "Falling into the sea."

"I drown surrounded by gold!" Austin shouted heroically. Then he added, "Also sharks." Those were his last words before he flopped over and was still.

I noticed that a splinter from the lifeboat boards had torn my stocking and scratched my leg. Bravely, ignoring my injury, I picked up a small stick and used it as a paddle, stabbing at the earth of my yard to propel myself to safety while Austin floated nearby, his eyes open, golden forsythia
blossoms in his hair. Pepper once again lifted his head curiously and ambled down the porch steps, sniffing at us to see what was wrong.

"No dogs allowed in the lifeboat," Austin announced from where he drifted dead in the sea, so I shoved Pepper away and floated on alone.

"Katy, wake up!" Peggy shook my shoulders, and I opened my eyes. It was very early on a Sunday morning.

"I have a surprise for you!" she said, as I sat up and yawned. "Hurry and dress."

"For church? It ' s too early."

"No, not church." Peggy was getting my underclothes from the drawer.

"The baby! Has the baby come?"

"No—whatever made you think that? Here, stand up. I'll help you with your nightgown."

"I thought I heard something in the night." I
tried to remember, but it was blurred now. "Father waswalkinginthehall,Ithink.AndIheard Mother ' s voice."

"You must have dreamed it."

She was right; it was as hazy as a dream and already disappearing from my memory the way a dream does.

"Look out the window. Levi has the horses hitched up. Your father called him to come."

I glanced down and it was true. The buggy was waiting in the driveway beside the house, and Levi was there holding the harness reins. Jed and Dahlia stood patiently. The neighborhood houses were silent. The sun was just rising. The light was pink.

"Are we going someplace? It's Sunday. I'm supposed to go to Sunday school. These are the wrong clothes." She was buttoning my dress, an old one that I wore for play, not even to school, because it was faded and patched. Then she held up a pinafore and directed my arms through. "These are
play clothes,
Peggy."

"We have a vacation today," she said, and pulled the brush deftly through my hair. "Now go into the bathroom and wash your face and brush your teeth. Be quiet. Don ' t wake your mother."

I thought I could hear Mother and Father stirring in their bedroom, behind the closed door, but I obeyed Peggy. I was quick and quiet, and then I
hurried down the stairs and was surprised to find that we were not even stopping for breakfast. Peggy had a basket packed already with toast and jam, which she said we would eat in the buggy. I drank a glass of milk quickly, put on my jacket, and we were off.

Off to the Stoltzes ' farm! Peggy said we were going to visit her family.

She took the reins and to my surprise she could managethehorsesaswellasFatherorLevi.She chuckled to find that I was surprised.

"I ' m a farm girl, Katy!" she reminded me. "Eat your toast now so you won't be hungry. My ma will give us breakfast but it'll be awhile."

"Why don't we take Nellie, too? She could come, and Austin."

"Just us," Peggy said. "Nellie doesn ' t like the farm. She's too fancy, she thinks, for farms. And Austin? He's still asleep. It's just us today, Katy."

We had already passed the Bishops house and moved down our quiet street; soon we were on the main street headed out of town. It was so early that no one was out.

"Want some toast?" I handed Peggy a half a slice of the toast smeared with blackberry jam.

She took it and nibbled. "Nellie never goes home," she said. "It really frets my ma."

"Never? But she has her days off, like you! All hired girls do!"

Peggy shrugged. "She finds other things to do. You know she goes to the pictures."

"She should go to the library instead," I decided aloud, but Peggy scoffed at the thought.

"Really," I insisted. "She never does, and she might like it. She could go with us. We could stop afterward at Corcoran ' s and have a ginger beer, with straws."

I loved drinking straws. And Corcoran's served tea biscuits, too. It was a treat to go there after the library.

Peggy clucked at the horses to remind them to lift their feet. "Nellie don't like to read," she said. "Even in school, she never did."

"Your sister Nellie doesn't like to, and your brother, Jacob, can't," I pointed out. "Isn't that strange?"