Tree By Leaf (11 page)

“Oh, it’s dull. My mother has all these notions about how I’m supposed to—I have to practice piano, and I go up to town to take drawing lessons, I have needlework—sitting up straight and listening to them talk. Do you want to hear something? Sometimes,” Polly confided, smiling and leaning her head closer to Clothilde, “I would rather be a boy.”

Clothilde didn’t much believe that.

“They can go swimming and fishing, even camp out. They have things to do. Doesn’t your brother have lots to do during vacations?”

Polly wasn’t saying exactly what she wanted to say, Clothilde thought, but she didn’t know what it was Polly really wanted to know. “I guess,” she answered.

“Oh, I do admire your family,” Polly said, her cheeks pink. “The way you carry on, even though Mr. Speer was so tragically killed, and your whole life changed so much, and all.”

Clothilde just stared at the girl. That was what the village thought, then, that Mother was a war widow. But Lou hadn’t said anything to her about that, so where had Polly gotten that idea? She shifted from one foot to the other, not wanting to lie, not wanting to tell the truth.

“I’m sorry, Clothilde,” Polly apologized. “I shouldn’t have brought that up. Mother says I haven’t ever learned to control my tongue.”

Clothilde didn’t know what to say to that, either.

“Do you think the fog will be lifted, out at sea?” Polly asked.

“I don’t know,” Clothilde answered: How could she know what the weather was like offshore?

“Anyway,” Polly said, “we’re going to have a new teacher in the fall. Father went to Bangor last week, to interview candidates.”

“What happened to Mrs. Barstow? She didn’t
say anything about not teaching us next year.”

“Mrs. Barstow’s sister’s family is going to move out to Seattle, Washington. Her brother-in-law will have a better job. She decided to go with them.’ Polly always knew all about the teachers because her father was the first selectman of the village, and so he did the hiring as well as boarding them in his big house. “I think Mrs. Barstow hopes to find another husband,” Polly added, and giggled.

Clothilde hated that giggle. “What’s wrong with that?”

Polly didn’t even notice her ill humor. “My father says that there’s no danger this new teacher, Miss Winkle, will do that. He says she’s as plain as a pikestaff and well over thirty.”

Clothilde planned, starting right then, to like Miss Winkle.

“I have only two more years so it won’t bother me what she’s like, and then—can you keep a secret?”

Clothilde nodded, although she didn’t think Polly had any secrets worth keeping.

“Because I might have a coming out party. I’m maybe going to be a debutante. Mother wants me to. Isn’t that—nobody in the village has ever had a coming out party. If Mother gets her way—it’s Father
who’s objecting—it’ll be at my uncle’s house, in Bangor, and we’ll invite everybody. Just everybody. And it’ll be a dance, too. You have to wear a long white dress, and your hair up, and have two escorts too, and—I could ask you, even though you’ll be a little young, exceptions are made. Because your family is … you know. Won’t that be fun?”

Clothilde was spared thinking up an answer by the sound of a motorcar. In the quiet air, you could hear all the putt-putting of the motor before the vehicle crested the hill. The car was coming down the road that led away to the northwest, from one of the summer cottages over to town, probably. By the time it entered the village, the Grindles had stepped out onto their porch and Mr. Dethier stood at the door of his store, watching.

It looked as if the automobile was going to rush right through the village, but it made a hasty halt just a few feet beyond where the girls stood. The two figures riding in the high front seat pushed up their goggles and took off their hats, before climbing out. The motor putt-putted, one of the noisy gasoline-powered engines. The red metal body gleamed with wax and the silver spokes shone with polishing. The driver stood beside the engine, listening, then reached inside the
vehicle to stop the motor. Then they turned around.

They were young to be driving, Clothilde thought. They looked alike, although one was a stocky redhead with freckles and the other a dark-haired young man. They looked alike because they both looked as if they were glad to be themselves, and as if they were about to laugh out loud. They looked alike because under the short car jackets, they both wore bright white trousers with crisp pleats and shoes that were as brightly polished as the automobile.

“The one person we wanted to see,” the red-haired driver greeted Polly. He didn’t even see Clothilde. “Alex? Fetch the charts out, will you? No, honestly, Polly, I said so to Alex, before we even pushed the starter button. He’ll testify, won’t you, Alex? I said to him that if we didn’t find Polly Dethier at home, the whole trip would be wasted. Didn’t I, Alex?”

“Or words to that effect.”

“Alex, you are as stuffy as your grandfather,” the redhead laughed. “Words to that effect,” he mimicked his friend’s voice. “It must be all that old money, you were born with your shirt already stuffed. Whatever he says, Polly, it’s true that the only reason I came was to see you.”

“You—you’re teasing,” Polly said. She stood quietly, looking down at the ground the way a young lady should. It was Clothilde who was staring.

“It had nothing whatsoever to do with a chance to take the Olds out for a spin,” the dark-haired boy explained.

Polly was smiling at the ground, and her dimple showed. Clothilde decided to leave, but Polly reached out and held her elbow, holding her there.

“That’s right,” the redhead laughed. “You’re the only reason, Polly.”

“You’re trying to make me vain,” Polly answered.

“Pretty girls ought to be vain,” he said, and she shook her head at him, and went
ttch
as if she were scolding him. “Nate went off,” he said, “and left his boat at our dock, with orders for us to return it. We need someone to show us exactly where, on this uninhabitable coast, we should take it. He also gave us a message to deliver.”

Polly raised her head at that, and Clothilde saw an expression in her blue eyes that she couldn’t name, something bright and happy, with nothing kept hidden. “Is it that I have to read the charts for you in order to hear my message?” Polly asked. Eager—happy and eager, that’s what her eyes were.

“Now that would be ungentlemanly of us. Practically blackmail.”

“Are you setting up as a gentleman now?” Polly asked. “My, my, I am impressed.”

“She’s got you properly pegged, Bobby,” Alex said, coming back from the car with a nautical chart, which he spread out on the ground. Clothilde looked at it: it was a chart of the bay, she saw; she recognized Speer Point’s mitten shape.
Mine,
she thought, with a smile she didn’t let show, as she looked down at the chart.

“Inscrutable, isn’t it?” the dark-haired boy said, looking at her.

“No,” Clothilde answered.

He laughed at that, as if she had meant to be funny. “Who is this gracious young person?” he asked Polly. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“This is Nate’s sister, Clothilde. Clothilde—meet Alex and Bobby.”

“You’re some of Nates friends?” Clothilde had never met any of her brothers school friends. She felt differently about them, if they were friends of Nate’s.

“We’re more than that, Miss Speer. We are his great friends,” Alex said, bowing his head at her.

“One for all, and all for one,” Alex added.

“Waiting only for D’Artagnan,” Bobby added.

Clothilde didn’t know what they were talking about but she knew what they meant. “David and Jonathan,” she said, to show them that she could show off too.

Alex looked at her; he hadn’t looked at her before. “One hopes it won’t come to that,” he said. “You are sharp as a tack, aren’t you?”

Sharper, Clothilde said to herself, but she didn’t say it out loud. Neither did she stick out her tongue at him, even though she was tempted. She just looked right back at him.

“What are you talking about?” Polly demanded, claiming their attention. “Bobby, what are they talking about?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Bobby laughed. Being sharp as a tack wasn’t what they thought she ought to be, Clothilde thought; and she didn’t give two hoots for what they thought.

“What we need,” Alex said, “is someone to show us on the chart where we take Nate’s boat. He gave us strict orders, didn’t he, Bobby?”

“He did indeed. It was most unlike him. He was quite severe with us. We shall not, for one, take it around the Point to the boathouse, where we might be seen from the cottage. The beautiful reclusive
mama, you know, shut away in her grief. I don’t mean to be flippant,” he apologized to Clothilde. “I mean, I think it’s pretty wonderful all that loyalty to the dead hero. I do, it’s just the way I always talk.”

Clothilde didn’t know what to say. Polly didn’t say anything either.

“So we’re supposed to leave it off in the cove on the north side. There’s a mooring,” Alex explained to Polly.

“But we shall not, for the second point, make ourselves known to the tenant farmer’s family,” Bobby said. “As if I needed warning about that. The natives—with certain most attractive exceptions—are as foreign as aborigines to me. According to Nate, if we could execute this maneuver in the dead of night, under cover of dense fog, that would suit everyone best. It’s like some spy drama, isn’t it?” His laugh invited them to join in.

“So, if you’d show us where we’ll find the mooring?” Alex asked Clothilde.

She hunkered down beside the chart and put her finger on the cove by the beach. Alex took a gold pencil out of his pocket to mark the place“How about rocks, and tides?”

“Except for the dead low tide there’s enough water in the cove,” she told him, without looking up from
the chart. On a chart the mittened hand held onto its place by digging its claws into the water. “If you stay away from shore there’s nothing to worry about.”

“That’s fine then. Thanks,” he said. She got up, and picked up the wrapped chicken. He studied the chart. “It is a nice bit of property, Speer Point. I’ve never noticed how large it is.”

Bobby stepped over to look down at the chart. “My father says it’s worth a pretty penny already. When the old lady bought it, it was too far away for most people. Nobody would have guessed then how its value would rise, with the automobile making everything easier to get to. You could put half a dozen large estates on it, couldn’t you?”

“Your father is a lunatic about land development,” Alex said, folding the chart and getting up.

“He knows how to make money,” Bobby agreed. “He actually—and he was at least half serious—made Nate an offer for it at one point. But Nates too smart to sell now. He told Father he was planning to hold onto the Point and let its value continue to rise.”

“Nate said that?” Clothilde asked, too amazed to keep her mouth shut.

“Now that it’s his, now that your father—” Bobby started to say, then let the words drift away. “I’m sorry,
I shouldn’t sound so callous, and him a hero, too. It sounds like I don’t have any patriotic feelings.”

“I’ve got to go,” Clothilde said, into the center of the group, not looking at any of them.

“May we give you a ride?” Alex offered. “It’s not one of your Speer Electrics, but you might find the added power exhilarating.”

“No,” Clothilde said. “I’d rather walk.”

“Whatever you prefer,” Bobby said, not even waiting before he said to Polly, “And about the message we were entrusted with, to deliver it to you.”

“A message?” Polly asked. Polly’s voice sounded as if she’d forgotten the message, but her eyes lit up again.

Clothilde turned and walked away, but she listened to the voices behind her. “Nate says, we’re to take you back into town with us, and buy you a soda. Or a sundae if you’d prefer that.”

“Oh he does, does he?” Polly’s voice had hesitated before it answered.

“With the permission of your formidable mother, of course,” Bobby said.

Clothilde walked out of earshot, down through the village and up the hill beyond. It wasn’t until she had passed the Twoheys’ farm that she let herself start thinking.

The lies Nate had been telling—all those lies, and why had he been telling them? The friends he’d been making, if those were his friends.

Fog swirled in around her again. The temperature fell, but she didn’t notice it, walking hard. Those two boys, and Nate too, she could see the world they lived in, sunlit and easy, an amusing place. Not like Jeb Twohey’s world, the land that lay behind his blank face and dazed eyes. And Polly—Polly loved Nate. Clothilde suddenly knew that. And she knew that that was what Nate wanted Polly to do, or that was what Polly thought he wanted. The expression in Polly’s eyes, that bright painful expression, was hope.

Clothilde didn’t know why she was suddenly seeing into peoples’ heads like this. She wished she wouldn’t. She liked it better when she didn’t think she knew what people thought or wanted, or were afraid of or were hoping for. When she had crossed the causeway to stand on her own land again, she stopped for a minute, to let her spirit ease.
Mine,
she thought, with the shrouded birches beside her and the rocks behind falling away into the invisible water.
Mine,
the dirt road underfoot. It was there under her feet, deep and steady, the whole peninsula.

Nate was truly gone, then, off on his cruise. She
worked it out as she followed the road back home. Since Nate was off, it had in fact been a dream. It had been the strangest dream she’d ever had, and probably ever would have, but she could guess why she had had it; hoping that something would stop what was happening. But Nate was gone, off cruising, and the man in the boathouse wouldn’t get better. He’d always have that face as long as he lived. Lou wouldn’t find any way to get away from her father, either. She’d be stuck with having him hurt her, and having to give her family the money she earned because her father spent his lawless earnings on whiskey for himself, and nobody could stop him.

On the other hand, Clothilde thought, that might mean that the peninsula was going to stay hers after all. The Yes’s in her dream turned into No’s, so the No had to turn into a Yes. Maybe. Because it
was
hers, she could feel it being hers, with every step she took on it, in the woods or on the beach, and on the headlands especially.