Homecoming (18 page)

“Was the letter returned to you?”

“No.”

“So it must have been received. By someone.”

Dicey was listening hard.

Cousin Eunice waved her little hands. “Let me see. Abigail married a man named John
Tillerman.”

“Where does she live?” Father Joseph asked.

“In Maryland, down south, on the Eastern Shore. A town called Crisfield. I don’t know
anything about it. It is where Mother lived as a girl.”

Father Joseph nodded.

“This John Tillerman farmed, I think I remember.” Cousin Eunice wrinkled her brows
with the effort. “They had children.” Dicey nodded her head. “I don’t know how many,
but one daughter would be Dicey’s mother. I don’t know where they are now.”

Crisfield, Eastern Shore, Maryland
, Dicey said to herself, to fix it in her memory.

“By that time, Mother had been in the north for years and married to Father, and they
lived here. Mother didn’t like her sister. She didn’t like to be reminded of her family.
I don’t know—she wouldn’t speak of them. She became a part of Father’s family. These
are the first Hackett relations I’ve met. I’ll
try to remember more, Father Joseph. We have photograph albums.”

“That would be most helpful. I myself will see what I can find out about the Tillerman
family. Sometimes the Church can make the more sensitive personal inquiries, that
the police authorities can’t.” He turned to Dicey. “What is your religion?”

“I don’t know,” Dicey said. “We never went to church.” He frowned slightly.

“There is another question that I’m afraid I have to ask. The matter of your name.
Tillerman. That would be your mother’s name. Your parents were not married?”

Dicey shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. Cousin Eunice sucked in a noisy
breath. Dicey did not look at her. She pulled at the laces of her sneakers, as if
she had just noticed they were coming loose.

“Had you the same father, all of you? Would you know that?”

“Yes,” Dicey said. Her head snapped up and her eyes met his. He did not seem surprised
at her anger. “Sammy and Maybeth look like Momma, but James and me, we look like our
father. I remember him, a little. Because I’m the oldest.”

“Yes, yes,” the priest said, smiling a little. “I’m sure you’re right.” He didn’t
sound sure.

“No, you’re not,” Dicey said, “but I am. And I know. Aren’t there birth certificates?
There have to be, don’t there? We were all born in Provincetown—why don’t you call
the hospital there? They’ll tell you. Momma wasn’t—” She couldn’t find the polite
word. “She didn’t have boyfriends, she didn’t even go out on dates. She’s nice. She’s
good. She loves us—and you probably don’t believe that either, but she does. We’d
know and you wouldn’t.”

He held up his hands. A smile lifted the corners of his mouth. Cousin Eunice fluttered
in the background making little protests
to tell Dicey she shouldn’t talk like that to a priest.

“No, no, Eunice. The child is probably right. She would know better than we.”

“Then why did she abandon them?” Eunice asked. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say
that,” she apologized to Dicey. Dicey didn’t respond.

“That is what we’ll try to find out,” Father Joseph said. “I think, Dicey, if you
can, I’d like you to speak to the Missing Persons Department.”

“The police?” Dicey asked.

“The police.”

Dicey thought. She didn’t want to talk to the police. But how else could they find
where Momma went? And what if something bad had happened to Momma and the police could
help her? And if by not talking to them Dicey could hurt her? She had a sudden memory
of Momma’s sad moon-face and her sad moon smile in the car window; and then of Momma
running to comfort Sammy when he had fallen off a chair and was frightened, pulling
the little boy onto her knees and wrapping her arms around him, saying crooning comforting
things. The two round yellow heads bent toward each other, and Momma’s strong hands
cradled the back of Sammy’s little head.

“Okay,” Dicey said. “They can’t put us into foster homes when we’re here with Cousin
Eunice, can they? We’re not runaways, are we? I don’t want us to be separated,” she
explained to the priest.

“Neither do we, if it can be helped,” he answered. “I’ll contact the police and someone
will come here to see you. Shall I come with him?”

“Okay,” Dicey said again. She was thinking furiously, trying to see if there was a
trap in this, or danger.

“You really have no choice,” the priest said.

Dicey nodded, with her eyes on his, but she was reciting to herself:
Crisfield. Eastern Shore. Maryland.

Father Joseph left, then, and Cousin Eunice brought Dicey a cot that she kept in the
cellar. Dicey put it into the last of the floor space in the boys’ bedroom. Cousin
Eunice wanted to object to having Dicey in with the boys, but she didn’t want her
own room to be crowded, so she didn’t say much.

Dicey looked in on the sleeping Maybeth before she made her final stop in the bathroom
and lay down on her cot. She could hear James breathing softly. Sammy turned and rustled
in the sheets.

Dicey lay on her back with her arms under her head, staring at the blank, black ceiling.
They had come here, had come here safely. If this was to be their home, then she could
learn to get along here. She would have to. Stewart was right, they had to stay together.
That was the only important thing.

She was lulled to sleep by the words repeating in her head:
Crisfield, Eastern Shore, Maryland.

A
sharp knock on the door woke Dicey. She opened her eyes wide. The window was dark.
Dicey had slept and awakened in so many unknown places that she never had that first,
morning feeling of being lost, or not knowing where she was. She knew where she was,
or rather, where she wasn’t.

The knock came again. Dicey jumped off the cot and squeezed around the corner of the
bed where her brothers slept to open the door.

Cousin Eunice stood there, wearing the same black cotton dress, or its twin sister,
and the same high-heeled shoes. “I am about to leave,” she whispered. “Can you come
downstairs for a word before I go?”

Dicey nodded. She closed the door and searched through the darkness for her shorts
and her shirt.

A rustling noise in the bed made her turn her head as she was about to leave. James
sat up. “It’s still true,” he said.

“Go back to sleep, James,” Dicey said. He lay down obediently, and his eyes closed.

Dicey found Cousin Eunice in the kitchen, drinking a cup of tea. Beside her on the
table lay a black purse, black gloves, and a little round black hat with a brim that
tilted up.

“Good morning,” Dicey said.

“I’m sorry to wake you so early,” Cousin Eunice said. Her
face was pale above all the black around her. “But I am going to six-thirty mass.
I always do that,” she said. “I get breakfast on my way to work. There’s a diner on
the way, quite clean. Mother didn’t like making breakfast. And I’ve always gone to
early mass.”

Dicey nodded. She sat down facing her cousin.

“I pray for Mother, and for myself, and for the world,” Cousin Eunice said. “This
morning, I shall pray for you, and for your poor mother.”

Dicey felt uncomfortable. “Thank you,” she said. Was that what you were supposed to
say to somebody who was praying for you?

“I thought of staying home today,” Cousin Eunice went on. She talked without looking
at Dicey. “But I’ve never missed a day of work, not for any reason. Not in twenty-one
years. Somehow, I didn’t want to miss today.”

Dicey nodded.

“Father Joseph said he would come by this morning and bring some clothing for you.
He will register the younger children at camp, so that they can begin right away.
So you must be sure to be here when he arrives.”

“We will.”

“But there is shopping that needs to be done, and usually on Thursday evenings I clean
the living room, dust and vacuum, wash the windows, damp mop the floors. I couldn’t
get that done last night.”

“I can do that,” Dicey said.

“Do be careful not to break anything,” Cousin Eunice urged.

“I will,” Dicey said.

“Here is some money. Try not to spend it all.” Cousin Eunice handed her twenty dollars.
“We’ll need something for supper, I suppose. Can you cook?”

Dicey nodded.

“It has to be fish,” Cousin Eunice said. “Today is Friday.”

“I’ve cooked fish,” Dicey said. Well, that was true. She had just never cooked fish
on a stove, in a pan. What did Friday have to do with fish?

“I get home at five forty. Will you be all right?”

“We’ll be all right,” Dicey said. “You don’t need to worry about us.”

“I don’t know how you’ve managed it,” Cousin Eunice said. “You must be a very resourceful
child.”

Dicey didn’t know what to say.

“But you’re here now, and I’ll take care of you,” Cousin Eunice said.

“That’s awfully nice of you,” Dicey answered. It sounded so flat. But she felt flat,
flat and—she admitted it to herself—disappointed.

“How could a Christian do less?” Cousin Eunice asked. Then she got up and put her
hat on her head. She drew her gloves on over her plump hands and picked up her purse.
“Until this evening then. You’re sure you’ll be all right?” Dicey nodded. “Don’t forget
Father Joseph.”

“I won’t.”

“And the living room.”

“I won’t. I mean, I’ll do it.”

“And the shopping.”

Dicey nodded.

“Fish, remember. Why don’t we have a tuna casserole?”

Dicey nodded. She hoped she could find a cookbook in this neat and tidy kitchen, maybe
behind a cupboard door.

Cousin Eunice left, drawing the door quietly closed behind her. Dicey breathed a sigh
of relief, but the door opened immediately. “Don’t leave the house empty,” Cousin
Eunice said. “There must be someone home, at all times. Thieves come, even in broad
daylight these days.”

“All right,” Dicey said.

“It’s not as if I have anything valuable,” Cousin Eunice said. “But they steal anything.
And murder—and other things—I don’t know—the world has gone crazy. I’ll have a key
made for you, just one. Until then, don’t leave the house unlocked.”

“I won’t,” Dicey said. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.”

“How can I help worrying?” Cousin Eunice asked. She did not give Dicey time to answer.

Dicey looked at the clock hanging on the kitchen wall. It was shaped like a cat, with
a long, curled tail that twitched the seconds. Six fifteen. Dicey familiarized herself
with the kitchen, cupboards (no cookbook), drawers, refrigerator and freezer. She
took a dustcloth and the vacuum and went into the living room.

The room was cluttered, but not messy. Dicey didn’t think it needed cleaning, but
if Cousin Eunice wanted it cleaned then she would clean it. She dusted the wooden-backed
chairs, the table tops, the windowsills, the one bookcase, which held a Bible and
two rows of photograph albums. Dicey thought she should ask permission before she
looked through the albums. She dusted the pictures on the walls, of Jesus and Mary,
like the ones that she used to see on Aunt Cilla’s Christmas cards, of Jesus being
crucified, and photographs, of a round-faced man standing beside a round-fendered
car, of a sharp-eyed woman with a fur around her neck, of a little girl with curly
hair and a flouncy white dress and a bouquet of flowers held in her white-gloved hands.
Dicey dusted the row of china cats on top of the bookcase. She dusted the lamps and
the doorhandles. Then she ran the vacuum over the pale blue rug, careful to clean
under tables and chairs.

When she finished, it was seven thirty. She set out bowls and spoons and glasses of
milk. Cousin Eunice had two kinds of cold cereal, cornflakes with sugar frosting,
and a fruit cereal that said
it had fifteen flavors in its different-colored little balls. Dicey put both boxes
in the middle of the table. She wished she could find some flowers to put in a glass
in the middle, but there were none in the backyard. Nothing grew there except a straggly,
neglected cover of grass.

Dicey enjoyed getting ready for this meal. The morning sun brightened the living room
beyond. Light made things cheerful.

They ate a quick breakfast and then Dicey washed and dried the bowls and glasses and
spoons. Maybeth helped her put them away. Sammy and Maybeth went out to the backyard.
Dicey took James upstairs and made him help her make their beds. Cousin Eunice had
made her own.

She left James in charge while she went to the store. There she purchased bread and
milk and fruit, tuna fish and noodles and (after reading the instructions on the back
of the bag of noodles) a can of mushroom soup, peanut butter, jelly. She also bought
a dozen eggs, a box of pancake mix, a jar of syrup and a cheap red rubber ball (because
if Sammy was going to spend most of the day waiting around, he’d need something to
play with).

Returning, unpacking the groceries, piling the dollars and change beside the toaster,
washing the apples before putting them in the refrigerator, Dicey heard herself humming
the song about Peggy-O. It was like playing house.

James wandered in and took an apple. “There aren’t any books in the house. Are we
going to stay here?”

“I don’t think we can do anything else,” Dicey said. “So we’ve got to please Cousin
Eunice, you know? And that Father Joseph too, I guess. We’ve got to be on best behavior
all the time. Can you do that, James?”

“Sure,” he said. “But it’s an awful small house for four kids.”

“Bigger than ours was.”

“Yeah, but there we had the dunes and the beach.”

Dicey went out into the tiny yard and called Sammy and Maybeth to her. To them she
repeated what she had just said to James. They nodded solemnly at her, then she pulled
out her hand from behind her back and tossed the red ball to Sammy.

He grabbed for it, missed, ran after it and caught it in two hands. He bounced it
high. He turned and grinned at Dicey. Then he ran up to her and nearly knocked her
over, hugging her. He called Maybeth to play catch.