Lily's Crossing (8 page)

Chapter 16

G
ram had locked the door, of course. Lily rattled the knob and shoved at it with her shoulder, but it didn’t do one bit of good. She was lucky Gram liked to stand and talk to Mrs. Colgan after church for a few minutes.

She went around the back and slipped off her good shoes and socks. She’d have to climb down into the rowboat and shinny up the pilings into her bedroom.

She stopped. A couple of kids from Broad Channel were rowing out in their boat. They were staring back at her.

She waited a moment, hoping they’d turn away and start fishing or something, but they just sat there, one of them fooling around with the oars, watching her.

Gram would be home in five minutes.

“Forgot my key,” she called, and dropped into her rowboat. She wondered what they thought about her wearing pale yellow Sunday dress as she boosted herself up on the piling and tried to reach the screen.

She couldn’t seem to get high enough, and somehow the hem of her dress was soaking wet. Gram would go on and on about how she’d have to wash, starch, and iron it again.

Lily could hear the sound of voices. Gram’s voice. Mrs. Colgan’s. They were next door, standing there. All they to do was look down the alley.

She tried to raise her bare foot higher on the rough wood. Any minute she’d have a splinter. And any minute Gram would spot her. She held on to the piling with her legs, and feet, and one arm, as tightly as she could, reaching up for the screen, trying to get her fingernails underneath.

And then, finally, she felt the screen give. She pulled it out, opened it wide, then reached out for the sill, holding on, boosting herself in, just as she heard Gram saying, “Good grief, what’s that child doing now?”

She raced through the porch and into the living room, grabbing Eddie’s picture, and then raced back again to shove it under her bed. By the time Gram was in the house, Lily was in the bathroom with the door closed and locked, leaning her head under the faucet in the sink, taking deep gulps.

Her dress was a mess, filthy, with a rip in the hem. She took it off as fast as she could, rolled it up in a ball, and reached for her old bathing suit, which was dangling in the shower.

Gram was knocking on the door. “Lily, are you in there? Whatever made you think of getting into the house like that? You could fall and kill yourself. Lily?”

“I’m trying to get my bathing suit on.”

“I’d like to see the condition of that dress.”

Lily crossed her fingers. “It’s all right.”

“I’ll bet,” Gram said.

Lily could hear her footsteps going into the bedroom. She took the dress and slid out the door and onto the porch. She pulled Eddie’s picture out from under the bed, wrapped it in a towel, and looked around for a place to hide the wet dress. Under the mattress. She’d figure out what to do with it later.

She was out the door, yelling a quick goodbye before she could hear a word about the piano. But Gram had turned on the news.
“It is estimated that ten thousand have been killed in the invasion of France.”

Lily went up the road to cut across the Orbans’ lawn and find Albert.

A moment later, they were rushing down the back road, Albert asking where they were going, why they were such a hurry.

“To the fishing wharf,” she said. “I have to find a purse. A tan one.”

“I will help. Where—”

“Under about seven feet of water, and we have to hurry because Gram will be along to capture me any minute.”

He shook his head. “Why—”

“She’s going to find my soaking wet, ripped Sunday dress. She’s going to remember I haven’t practiced the . . . You ask a lot of—”

“And what is in that towel?”

“Don’t say another word, Albert. Not unless you have a pack of money in your pocket. Otherwise let me think about how I’m going to dive down and find that purse.”

“But—”

“That purse has to be somewhere under the water, unless a bunch of pirates have moved in.”

“When . . .”

Lily sighed. “Will you stop asking questions? We’re in a hurry here.”

A truck had scattered gravel all over the approach to the wharf. It was a good thing Albert had shoes on. It was a good thing her own feet were tough.

Not tough enough. By the time they had gotten to the wharf, she was walking on the sides of her feet, hobbling along. “I hope your eyes are good,” she said. “I want you to look into this water and tell me . . .”

Albert nodded. She could tell he was trying not to laugh.

“What?” she said.

“You look so . . . so odd walking like that, and your bathing suit . . .”

“ . . . is a little faded.” She looked down. She had put on her oldest one, almost no color left from Gram’s Clorox. Too bad. She put the towel with the picture down on a bench and crouched on the edge of the dock to look down into the water. “Dark,” she said. “Really dark today, you can’t see a thing.”

He was looking too. “I see a fish.”

“What good is that?” she asked. “It’s about two inches from the top. We’re looking for a purse on the bottom.”

“Down with the bar-
nack
les,” he said, grinning.

She was still smiling as she rolled over the side and hit the water. It was cold this morning, the water rough. She kicked hard to push herself down, opening her eyes in the salt water, trying to see the sand. She swam along the bottom until she thought her lungs would burst, then shot up to the top for a huge gulp of air.

She held on to the wharf for a moment, pushing her hair out of her face with one hand, and felt Albert grab her wrist. She looked at him through blurry eyes. “What?”

“I have money,” he said.

She nodded. “Let me try once more.”

But he wouldn’t let go. “Let me give you this money,” he said slowly, “if it is important. It is important money.”

She took another breath. She knew she wouldn’t find the purse today. It was so dark below, and it could be hours. She nodded and climbed back up on the wharf.

“It’s for Margaret,” she told him, going over to unroll the towel, sitting on the bench. She showed him Eddie’s picture, with his buck teeth smiling up at them. Then she said the rest in a rush, the words spilling out, trying to make him see what Eddie was like, how much Margaret loved him, how Margaret couldn’t remember his face, how she had to send the picture, how . . .

Albert listened; then he touched the edge of the picture. “I cannot remember Ruth’s face,” he said. “I can remember Nagymamma’s. She was sitting in the back of her restaurant the day we went away. She was sewing my coat. The collar was wet when she gave it back to me. It was wet from where she was crying. It crackled when I felt it.

“There is money,” he said slowly. “It is in the coat collar. It is Magyar, Hungarian money, and English money, and American money. Nagymamma said when I touched it again to remember . . .” He stopped.

Lily wanted to ask him “Remember what?” but he looked so sad, she just nodded, and used the towel to dry her face.

Chapter 17

“
L
illllyyyy.” The voice was loud, sharp.

Her grandmother was standing at the other end of the road, hand shading her eyes.

Caught.

Lily stood there, trying to decide what to do. Then she handed the rolled-up towel with the picture to Albert. “Don’t drop it,” she whispered.

“Lilllllyyyy,” the voice came again.

“What?” She stood there; she didn’t move. Gram always wanted her to come when she called, as if she were a cat.

“Lillllyyy.”

She gritted her teeth. “Hold on to that with your life, Albert.” She started back along the path toward Gram, biting her lip as the gravel jabbed into her feet.

“It’s hard to believe you’re walking all over the place wearing that bathing suit,” Gram said as soon as Lily got close enough to hear. “And where are your shoes? Any minute you’re going to get a splinter. Blood poison next. Besides,” she rushed on, “you look like a hoyden. I don’t know what people will think.”

Hoyden
. Lily didn’t even know what it meant. She sighed, a huge sigh. Let Gram see she thought she was acting like a pain. “I’m going swimming.”

“At the fishing dock?”

“Well . . .”

“It’s time to practice the piano, Lily.”

“I’m not—” Lily began.

“Yes,” Gram said. “Your father spent all that money to bring that piano here all the way from St. Albans. For you.”

“Poppy doesn’t care.” Lily shifted from one foot to the other. A stone was digging right through her skin into her bones. Gram was right. She was going to end up with blood poisoning, and Margaret was never going to get Eddie’s picture.

“You were the one who wanted piano lessons,” Gram said.

Lily could see beads of perspiration on Gram’s upper lip. It was hot as a blister, and they were probably going to stand there arguing forever.

Gram was right, though. The piano lessons were all her own idea. But that was last winter. How was she to know that it took forever to learn the piano, that you couldn’t even play a decent song like “Mairzy Doats” or “Swinging On a Star” unless you spent your whole life sitting at the piano bench, while everyone else in the whole world was—

“Will you stop daydreaming, Lily?” Gram said. “Get yourself home. Change out of that bathing suit, and practice for a half hour.”

Lily didn’t wait to hear the rest. Head up, she marched up the road and headed for home.

She threw the bathing suit on the shower floor, put on a pair of shorts and a top, and went to the piano bench. The back door closed a moment later. Gram was home.

Lily looked up at the old alarm clock on top of the piano. One o’clock. She watched the hands for a while. It almost seemed as if they weren’t moving. She stood up and put her ear next to it. It was still ticking, but slowly. It would take forever to get to one-thirty.

“Lily?” Gram called from the kitchen.

She curled her fingers over the keys and started in on the C scale. At the same time, she looked out the window. The sea was tinged with green. Her father would say it had something to do with algae. There was only the slightest swell now, a perfect afternoon to teach Albert to swim.

She closed her eyes, picturing the troop ship they had seen, huge and ghostly in the mist. For a moment she thought about what it would be like if they could do it. Wouldn’t it be something if they could get the rowboat close enough to swim the last few feet, the last few yards? Wouldn’t it be something if she could teach Albert to swim well enough for that? Even if he could just keep himself afloat, she could help him. And even if it wasn’t Poppy’s ship, it would be going to Europe. Albert could get to Ruth, and she—

Gram was standing at the living room door. “What are you daydreaming about?” she asked.

Lily frowned. “How much I hate this piano.”

“Just try,” Gram said. “You can do anything if you really work at it. And you love music.”

Lily didn’t answer. She started the C scale over and didn’t look up until Gram was rattling around in the kitchen again.

You can do anything.

Could she?

What was she thinking of, anyway? What she had to be doing was getting Eddie’s picture wrapped and mailed before the post office closed at four. Instead, she was stuck in front of the piano, the keys a little dusty, with the John Thompson book in front of her.

She played the C scale as loudly as she could, up and down, faster, faster. It made a terrific noise. She could hear Gram bang a cabinet door shut. Lily was probably driving her crazy. Terrific. She played around with her hand down low at the bass . . . making up some Hazel Scott boogie music as she went along.

“Lily.”

Back to the C scale. The loudest C scale anyone had ever heard.

Nothing from the kitchen.

Lily began to flip through the John Thompson book. Etudes, mazurkas (whatever they were), waltzes. “The Blue Danube.”

She picked the music out with one finger.
Da da da da dum dum
. She knew that, she’d heard it before. And that was Albert’s river.

She leaned over to reach Gram’s atlas in the bookshelf. It was heavy and smelled of the attic in St. Albans. She put it down next to her on the bench and went through the pages,
A Africa, Antilles. G Germany
. That was the Nazi place. It showed a little of Hungary on the edge. Aid there was
H Hungary
two pages later. She tried to spot Budapest, or the Danube River, but all she could find were a bunch of black lines wandering up and down on a yellow blotch that looked like the piece of a puzzle.

In the center of the book was a map of the whole world. She ran her finger across it . . . from Hungary, to Austria, to Switzerland, to France. She smiled a little. Madeline in the book had been there. She remembered that. Madeline was in Paris.

And so was Ruth.

Lily started in on “The Blue Danube” again with one finger of her right hand, and added some
dum dum’s
with the left hand.

Footsteps were coming around the side of the house. She stood up, still playing, as the top of Albert’s head passed the window, then backed up, and his face came into view.

“I thought we were going to . . .” He held up the rolled-up towel.

“Lily, are you playing?” Gram called.

“Hold your horses,” Lily told Albert. “I can’t get out of here for another twenty-two minutes.”

“Lily,” Gram called again.

Lily stretched up on the bench to get a good look at Albert. “Besides,” she told him, “I’ve got a surprise for you. Listen to what I’m playing. It’s for you, special.”

She plunked herself down on the bench again and began to play “The Blue Danube” as nicely as she could.

After a minute, she heard a noise. Was that Albert laughing again? She ended “The Blue Danube” with a crash and began the C scale again.

She could hear Gram at the back door telling Albert to come in for some iced tea while he waited. Good grief. She opened the John Thompson book to the piece she knew best, the piece she had played a million times last winter. She could hear Gram and Albert talking in the kitchen. The clock wasn’t moving.

She began to play. She hit the wrong note with her left pinky. It sounded horrible. For a minute there was silence the kitchen.

Lily went back to the C scale, played it one last time, but softly now, as if she knew what she was doing. Then she slid off the seat and went into the kitchen. Albert and Gram were talking about music, but not about the piano, about violin music. Albert was telling Gram about the lessons he had taken, and Gram, her head to one side, was listening, nodding.

“Come on, Albert,” Lily said, feeling ready to scream, “We’ve got stuff to do, remember? We can’t hang around here all day.”