Lily's Crossing (4 page)

Chapter 8

G
ram was sitting on the couch in the living room when Lily came in. She was listening to
Portia Faces Life
. Lily liked to listen to Portia too.

In fact, she and Margaret had sent away for Portia’s picture. They’d written a letter straight to WEAF radio station just before Margaret had left. Margaret said stars like Portia always had pictures of themselves lying around.

Right now on the radio, Portia’s husband, Walter, was a prisoner of war in Germany, and he had just thought of an escape plan. He was going to hide in a small boat. Then when an American ship passed he’d signal it with a flashlight and row out to freedom.

Lily sank down on one end of the couch, as far away from Gram as she could get, to listen.

She could see Gram’s hand, soft and plump on the pillows. Gram’s wedding ring was a sliver of silver that had made a deep ridge in her finger. “I was skinny until you started school,” she had told Lily once, laughing. “Then I started to eat and found out how good food was.”

Lily couldn’t picture it, couldn’t picture Gram skinny, and swimming all the way across Jamaica Bay. Her father had told her Gram had done that. “I watched her when I was small,” he had said. “She had a braid to her waist, and she was a seal in the water.”

Gram still had the braid, but now it was twisted around in back of her head in a bun. At night, she’d take out the bobby pins, run her fingers through her hair, and brush it.

Gram’s hand was moving. Lily watched out of the corner of her eye as the plump fingers walked across the pillows, and Gram’s arm came up around her.

Lily was about to shrug her arm away, about to get up, but it felt so good to be sitting there in that circle that she moved closer. A moment later, she was crying, and she didn’t even try to stop.

“I know,” Gram said.

Lily shook her head. “No, you don’t.”

Gram touched her sleeve, making tiny pleats in the cotton with her fingers.

“We were going to go fishing,” Lily said, “and to the movies. We were going to do everything.”

“Your father said exactly the same thing,” Gram said.

Lily looked up. “Really?”

Gram nodded. “Your eyes will be red.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care.”

“Yes, you will,” Gram said. “We’re going out to dinner.”

“Trixie’s Restaurant?”

“Of course not. There’s a war on and not a penny to spare for such foolish—” Gram broke off. “We’re going to the Orbans’.”

Lily sat up straight. She could feel her mouth suddenly go dry. “I’m not—”

“Mr. Orban said you did a magnificent job on his headlight.”

“I don’t—”

“There’s a surprise for you, Mrs. Orban said.”

Lily bit her lip. Some surprise. As if she couldn’t guess. Albert. Lily moved back to her end of the couch. She was definitely not going to the Orbans’ house, not in a million skillion years.

“I’m not . . . ,” Lily began again, and stopped. She always loved to go to the Orbans’ for dinner. Sometimes there was a flounder Mr. Orban had caught that morning, with corn on the cob, and a cake with jelly icing on top. How could she say she didn’t want to go, that she knew about Albert? And worse, that he knew about her. Gram wouldn’t take no for an answer. Never.

Gram was up from the couch now. “We’ll have to see what happens to Walter tomorrow,” she said. “They’re certainly stretching this out.”

Lily followed her into the bathroom and watched as Gram opened her compact and took out her powder puff.

Lily leaned forward to look in the mirror. Her eyes were red, and so was her nose.

“Here.” Gram ran a washcloth under the tap. “Nice and cool.” She held it up to Lily’s eyes. “Better in a minute, wait and see.”

Gram was right. Lily held her head back and felt the coolness of the cloth on her eyes and her cheeks. In back of her, she could hear the news. An American general had told reporters he needed only three hours of good weather and the army could break out of Normandy and start across France.

Strange, Lily thought, in France the weather was gray and cloudy, and the Americans were caught on a beach that was wet and cold. Here in Rockaway, it was beautiful.

She checked the mirror again. No one would guess she’d been crying.

Gram took her powder puff and waved it over Lily’s nose. “I think I hear the church bells. We’re supposed to be there at six. Come on.”

Lily walked out behind her, taking the smallest steps she possibly could. She dreaded having to meet Albert, actually meet him at last. She wouldn’t say a word to him. She’d talk to Mr. and Mrs. Orban and not even look at him.

Mrs. Orban was waiting at the door, excited, smiling. “Have I got a surprise for you,” she said.

And behind her was Albert. Albert, with that mop of dark hair and blue eyes. She took a quick look at him after all. He was looking at her too. His mouth opened. “You are Lily?”

“Of course she’s Lily,” Mrs. Orban said.

Lily raised one eyebrow and put on her “Too bad for you, Sister Eileen” face. Usually she was good at that, but halfway into the face, her eyes slid away because for the quickest second it looked as if Albert was going to laugh.

When she looked back, he was tapping his lip, looking at her, his own eyebrows raised. What was that all about? she wondered. Albert was crazy.

But then Mr. Orban was leading them to the table, his hand on Lily’s back, smiling. “Sit here next to me,” he told Gram. “And Lily, my love, across from Albert, my nephew. Albert’s here from my brother Emery’s in Canada to spend the summer.”

“From Hungary,” Mrs. Orban said at the same time. “To be safe from the war.”

Albert looked up. He spoke to Gram, though, not even glancing at Lily. “From Budapest, two years ago.” The words sounded different on his tongue, soft, almost musical.

Mrs. Orban shook her head. “It was a long trip for Albert. Through Austria and Switzerland, across the mountains to France, then a ship . . .” She stopped for a breath.

“With Ruth,” Albert said.

Mrs. Orban’s face suddenly looked different, older, sad. “His eight-year-old sister was sick,” she told them. “She’s caught in France.”

Albert made a sound, said something.

Lily took a quick look, but he was smearing margarine over a slice of bread, looking down. And then Mr. Orban began to talk quickly, and so did Gram, and Lily bent over her plate to bone the fish and begin on the corn. She was starving.

Albert must have been starving too. He bent over his own plate; his hand made a fist around his fork. He ate fast, taking huge bites, shoveling it in.

Gram would have had a fit if she had done that.

He raised his head, and immediately she looked past him, toward the lemon cake on the counter, and beyond to the window. Outside, pairs of socks were hanging on the porch railing. The water was flat and slick with the sun slanting over it.

“Isn’t this perfect,” Mrs. Orban said. “Just as Margaret leaves, Albert comes. You’ll have someone to fish with all summer, Lily.”

Gram was staring at her. Lily could feel her eyes. Gram thought she knew what Lily was thinking, thought Lily wouldn’t go to the beach with any boy, fish with him, go to the Cross Bay Theatre . . .

What Gram didn’t know was that it was probably the other way around.

“Yes,” said Gram. “It’s perfect. Isn’t it, Lily?”

She didn’t look at Gram. She took a chunk of corn off the cob, with a bite almost as big as Albert’s. She certainly couldn’t answer them with her mouth full.

Albert had finished his fish and corn and was into the peas now. Mounds of peas were falling off the edge of his fork. And suddenly he looked up and saw her watching him. He was laughing, bringing his hand up to his mouth. And just as suddenly, she knew what he was doing. He was reminding her of the lipstick, Gertz Department Store,
FREE TAKE ONE
. Good grief.

It was a good thing Mrs. Orban was talking, otherwise Lily might just have jumped up to race out of there and never come back. But what was Mrs. Orban saying? “Albert doesn’t know the ocean. He doesn’t know how to swim.”

“And Lily,” Mr. Orban said, “swims like a mermaid.”

“She’ll teach you, Albert,” Mrs. Orban said. “No one swims the way Lily does.”

Teach him to swim—she couldn’t believe it.

“Except her grandmother,” said Mr. Orban.

Gram laughed. “I haven’t put my foot in the water since I taught Lily to swim.”

Lily remembered that, remembered paddling around in the water, listening as Gram held her feet lightly, pointing her big toes toward each other, angling her hands so the sides of her index fingers slid into the water first. “Everything makes a difference,” Gram had said.

And one Friday night, they had showed her father. No life vest anymore, and by that time Lily could dive. She went off the side of the porch, her toes digging into the railing for an instant, then pushing up, arms stretched, head down. She slid underneath smoothly with the sound of the water in her ears, the taste of it on her tongue, up then, and swimming in front of the houses easily, almost as easily as she could walk.

Moments later, she had climbed back up. Her father had wrapped her in a huge towel, hugging her and telling her how proud her mother would have been.

And now Gram was telling the Orbans about Poppy. “I hope he’s still at Fort Dix,” she said. In back of them the teakettle was whistling. Gram’s face was sad. “He’ll go to Europe soon, any day. Maybe he’s gone already. I hope it isn’t Germany.”

Lily stuffed her mouth with bread. She wanted to stuff her ears too. She didn’t want Gram to talk about it. She didn’t want to think about it.

Then Mrs. Orban passed them slices of lemon cake, apologizing because it was made with margarine and not butter, and Albert began to eat again, two pieces, and then a third. He didn’t look at Lily again, and she sat there thinking about him laughing at her, and wondering about his sister, Ruth, and trying to pretend she didn’t notice he was there, until they were finished and it was time to go home.

Chapter 9

T
hursday. She had been ducking away from Albert for almost a week. It was just the opposite now. Everywhere she went, she saw Albert. Ahead of her, in back of her, even coming out of Sherman’s Bakery.

But right now, she had other things to think about. A letter from her father. They had received only a quick postcard:
Arrived safely. Miss you terribly. We’ll be fishing this time next year. Letter follows. Best love, Poppy.
Maybe today there’d be a real letter. She could see it in her mind, tissue thin with a red, white, and blue border, exactly the same as the letters Eddie Dillon sent home.

“If you could stop dreaming and finish your breakfast,” Gram said.

Lily picked up her spoon. She could see something else too. Gram would be leaning over her shoulder, reading the letter, her lips moving slightly, reading even faster than she could.

Lily ate her cereal without looking once into the bowl. Bits of cream were floating around in the milk, white things looking like tiny fish. She could almost feel them on her teeth.

She shuddered. The white things were floating around inside her now. She went out to the porch and leaned on the screen. The water was swollen this morning, the tide high.

She knew exactly what she’d do. She’d hang around on Cross Bay Boulevard, maybe stop at Sherman’s Bakery for a roll or a cookie. She’d grab the mailman before he even got around to her grandmother on the bay side.

If only he’d give her the letter.

She reached under her bed for her pad and pencil and the tan purse with the money she had saved all winter.

“Going to Sherman’s,” she told Gram’s back at the kitchen sink.

Gram made a tiny breathing sound, a “no” sound, but before she could say she shouldn’t waste her money on cookies that tasted like cardboard, Lily began, “My money. My Christmas, snow-shoveling, allowance-saving money.”

Gram’s voice rose. “Then don’t forget sunburn lotion. You’ll have blisters on your nose.”

Lily didn’t wait to hear the rest. She was out the door and up the road. Already it was hot, the tar shimmering in the haze, the sound of the cicadas beginning. “Listen,” Poppy would say, “it’s the sound of summer.”

She wondered when she’d see him again. The days stretched out in front of her like long gray sheets on a wash line. Summer would be over, and fall . . .

Lily passed the As Good As New Shoppe on the corner. Everything in the window was just the same, the old coat and dusty straw hat, certainly not looking as good as new, the flute and violin in back, and the stuffed dog that looked as if it would fall over any second.

Sherman’s Bakery was at the near end of Cross Bay Boulevard. It was dim and dusty, and Lily could see through the screen that Mrs. Sherman hadn’t gotten around to baking yet. The trays were almost empty. A strawberry-pink birthday cake stood on one shelf and a plate of pale sugar cookies on another. The cookies had jelly in the middle, but the jelly would be hard by now, the juice drained out overnight.

Lily stood there, hand on the screen door, squinting in the sun. The mailman was halfway up the next block. She could see him plodding along across the street.

She took a step, but Mrs. Sherman, hands floury, came out from the back and spotted her. “Lily,” she said. “My first customer today.”

Lily pulled open the door and went inside, glancing up at the poster over the glass counter:
LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS.

“Not much left,” Mrs. Sherman said. “Sticky buns later, but try those jelly cookies for now.”

Lily looked down at the cookies. Up close they looked worse, shrunken and dry. She wondered which way the mailman was going. Toward the bay? Back along the boulevard?

“Can’t get much butter with the war on, you know,” Mrs. Sherman began, leaning against the counter.

Lily nodded. If the mailman went toward the bay, he’d turn before the bakery. She’d miss him.

“I’ll take a cookie,” Lily said. “Sure.”

“The egg man went into the service,” Mrs. Sherman said. “I don’t know how I’m going to get eggs now, or cheese.”

“My grandmother said I have to be right home. I have to stop for her medicine.”

“Sick? Your grandmother’s sick?”

The next thing she knew, Mrs. Sherman would be on her way to Gram’s with her dried-up cookies. “Uh . . . no. It’s my aunt Celia. In Europe.”

Mrs. Sherman shook her head, clucking a little. “What’s the matter?”

She’d never get out of there. She took a step back, trying to think. She remembered the news awhile back: battles in Russia, with snow and biting cold. “Frostbite,” she said.

Mrs. Sherman raised one eyebrow. “In July?”

Lily shook her head. “I don’t know. I really—”

Mrs. Sherman sighed. “It’s the war. No one knows what’s going on.” She reached for a bag. “Two cookies. Two for the price of one.”

“Thanks,” Lily said. If she ran maybe she could cut the mailman off. She counted pennies out on the counter, reached for the bag, then banged out the screen door.

He was there, crossing the street, still on the boulevard. A miracle.

“Hey,” she called. “Wait up.”

He didn’t turn around. He stopped to stuff a paper into the slot at the restaurant, then went next door to the dry cleaner. By the time she caught up with him, she could feel perspiration streaking down her back.

“I need my mail,” she told his sack, not looking at his face.

He’d never even give her the movie advertisement. He shook his head. “I’ve told you. I have to deliver to your grandmother’s house. Can’t be dropping her mail all over the place. She’d carry on and—”

“My mail,” Lily said. “My own mail.”

Inside the sack was her letter, written in her father’s handwriting. It would start with “Sweetheart,” or “Dear Lily Billy.”

“My father,” she said in a voice she could hardly hear herself, “is in the service. The Secret Service.” She stopped, trying to think how to convince him. “He told me to be sure to get the mail first. He—”

The mailman looked up. “Jerry went overseas?”

The letter was there, so close she could reach out and take it. She hated the mailman.

“You know you’re not supposed to ask,” she said. “You saw the poster in Mrs. Sherman’s, ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships.’ Spies could be walking up and down Cross Bay Boulevard, and my father, who’s on a ship right now . . .”

She could feel her lips trembling even though she didn’t know if her father was on a ship, or still in New Jersey at Fort Dix, perfectly safe.

The mailman shifted the leather strap on his shoulder. “Don’t cry, Lily. Let me take a look. Let me just see . . .”

She stood there waiting as he went through dozens of envelopes, it seemed, stacks of papers. He kept shaking his head. Then at last he plucked a letter out of the sack.

She breathed in, and could really feel the tears now.

“It’s not from your father,” he said.

Then she could see it too. A small white envelope, filthy,
MISS LILY MOLLAHAN
, in pencil.

Margaret. Only Margaret.

“Listen, Lily,” he said. “There’ll be a letter tomorrow. Betcha. You’ll come right down here to Cross Bay . . .”

She stared at the sidewalk, at a crack running along it, a hill of ants bustling. “He’s very busy,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “He’s a great guy.”

Lily took the letter from him, dug it into her shorts pocket. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said.

“You can count on it.”

She headed for the fishing dock, looking back once to wave to him. It was a hot walk along Cross Bay Boulevard, but worth it. The fishing boats would be long gone now on a weekday, out since early this morning. She’d have the wharf to herself, with only a fisherman or two trying for fluke.

She ran the last bit, seeing the weathered dock in front of her, the flag flapping wildly on the pole, and best of all, no one there, not a soul. She took a deep breath, smelling the sea, and kerosene from the boats, and sat on a bench halfway down to read Margaret’s letter. But before she even got to take it out of her pocket, she could see someone on the beach path. No, two people. Her luck.

She shaded her eyes. One was coming on a bicycle, wobbling along, a basket in front, and the other, a good way in back of him, seemed to be . . . She sat up straighter. Yes, it was Albert running down the road after him. He stopped once, and darted into the reeds, as the bicycle rider looked over his shoulder. What was Albert up to, anyway?

The rider slowed as he neared the dock. It was probably a fisherman who would talk and talk, and she’d never get one minute’s peace, when the person she really wanted to talk to was Albert.

She slid off the bench, leaning against the side. If he didn’t see her, maybe he’d go all the way to the far end on that bicycle and pass her right by.

He didn’t, though. She could hear him swinging off the bike, the sound of metal as he rested it against a bench farther down, a splash as he tossed something into the water, and as she peered around the side of the bench, he was on his way again, and Albert was running toward her, waving his arms, shouting.