Lily's Crossing (9 page)

Chapter 18

T
hey were at Margaret’s house, sitting on the kitchen floor, with Albert’s coat in front of them. The coat was navy blue wool, scratchy against Lily’s fingers. She poked Gram’s manicure scissors into the collar seam, trying to slide the points under the tiny stitches. Albert was leaning over her shoulder, and Paprika was playing with her sneaker lace.

Lily could feel the perspiration running down her back, the metal scissors sliding in her slippery fingers, when Albert began to talk, grinning. “Hungarians play ‘The Blue Danube’ too,” he said. “It never sounded like that.”

“Like what?”

He looked down at the coat. “Like terrible. Like Ruth plays.” He smiled. “Ruth likes to play duets. Loud.”

Lily swallowed. “I don’t want to play the piano anyway. It takes too much time, and . . .” She’d probably like Ruth. “You should try it,” Lily said. “Hanging around on the bench, trying to . . .”

“In my grandmother’s restaurant,” Albert said slowly, “I played the violin on Sunday. I played that song, and ‘Vienna Life,’ which is my grandmother’s favorite.” He stopped. “I loved the violin, Lily. If only I could have taken it with me . . .”

He took a breath. “In Kalocsa’s, Nagymamma’s restaurant, people ate goulash. They had rolls with sweet butter. For dessert they ate
rigojancsi
, and
gesztenyepüre,
or
palacsintas
.”

“What . . .”

“
Palacsintas
are pancakes. They’re filled with jam, or chocolate.”

Lily looked up.

“Nagymamma gave me plain ones, cold ones, folded over. She put them in my coat pocket when I left.”

Lily knew he was ready to cry, but she couldn’t think what to say. She just kept snipping at the collar until there was a wide opening in the seam. Without looking, she pushed the coat toward him and watched as he edged his thumb and index finger gently into the seam. He worked the bills out, laying each one on the floor next to them. “These are Magyar money,” he said. “We call them
forints
. And this one is an English pound.”

He didn’t have to tell her about the next, a fifty-dollar bill, worn and creased. “Nagymamma did not know where we were going. She had to guess about the money.”

Lily looked at him, thinking about going to another country without Poppy or Gram, without even knowing where she was going. “Where is . . . ,” she began.

Albert reached down for the cat. He held her up to his face, rubbing her soft fur on his cheek. “Nagymamma might be in her house. She might be in prison. I do not know.”

Lily thought of her own mother, who had died, but had died of something wrong with her heart, and not in prison, but at home in St. Albans. Lily touched the money on the floor beside her, patted it the way she patted her stars. It was as if she could almost see Albert’s grandmother, who had touched it last.

The cat put its tiny needle claws into Albert’s shoulder as he reached over to put his fingers into the coat seam again. And now there was a tiny picture with three faces. Albert, of course, with that mop of hair, and an old woman, with a lined face and little round glasses, and a girl. The girl had curls like Albert’s, but they were softer, smoother, and she was laughing.

“Ruth,” Lily said.

“Yes.” Albert looked down at the picture again; then put it carefully in his pocket. He folded most of the money and put that in his pocket too. Then he handed her the fifty dollars. “Here, for Eddie’s picture.”

She looked down at the money. “We can’t—”

“My grandmother would not mind. She would be glad, I think.”

Lily shook her head. “Don’t you see? We could never go to the post office with all this money. They’d ask where we’d gotten it. They’d tell my grandmother.”

Albert raised one shoulder. “It is too much money, then?”

“More than I’ve ever seen at once,” Lily said.

Albert scooped up the money and stuffed it back into the coat. He sat back on his heels, and put the cat down on the floor. “I guess we should not use the Hungarian money. That is not so much.”

Lily grinned. “I don’t think so. Nobody around here has ever seen Hungarian money.”

“No.” He grinned back.

But then Lily heard the church bells. Four times. Four o’clock. The post office was closed, and poor Margaret would have to go another day without the picture.

Lily sighed. “I’ll teach you to swim, Albert. We’ll go over to the bay now, and I’ll figure out how to get money before tomorrow.”

“Not the bay,” he said, “the ocean.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I do not know what that means, ‘ridiculous.’ ”

She narrowed her eyes. He knew very well what it meant. “You can’t learn to swim in that rough water.”

He reached forward to grab her arm. “Do you know that Ruth is waiting for me? Do you know that summer will be over and I will have to go back to Canada . . .”

She nodded. “I’ll have to go back to St. Albans, and Sister Benedicta in the sixth grade.”

“Please.” He was holding her arm so hard now she could feel each one of his fingers tightening around it. His eyes were so blue, and she knew it was never going to happen the way he wanted, and it was all her fault . . . all because of her wild stories.

“Oh yes, Lily. I will learn to swim, and you will row.”

She stuck out her lower lip. “If you want to learn, it’ll be faster in the bay. And that’s my final offer.”

“I do not know what that means,” he said.

“You don’t have to.” She unwrapped his hand from her arm and scrambled to her feet. “I’m going to put Eddie’s picture back in the living room now, and then I’m going to the bay to swim. If you want to come with me, fine. If not, too bad.”

She marched into the living room and dusted the end table with her arm. She thought of Eddie on a beach in Normandy. She’d seen newspaper pictures: Nazi pillboxes set into the rocks, firing; soldiers in the sand, some of them dead, everything confused. They had to get off the beaches before they could begin to free the French cities.

Lily put Eddie’s picture on the table and ran her fingers over his face. “Be just a little lost,” she whispered. He was smiling in the picture, and she could remember him smiling the same way when she had met him coming out of the movie, or at Mrs. Sherman’s, or on the way to church. She wondered if he could count as a friend even though he was much older. “What do you think, Eddie?” she asked.

“Ruth talks to herself all the time,” Albert said.

Lily marched past him and out the door. “Are you coming?”

Albert looked up at the ceiling, blinking, trying to decide.

At the same moment, Paprika darted between their legs and out the door.

Albert reached for her, and so did Lily.

She was halfway down the path before they caught up. “She’s growing,” Lily said, scooping the cat into her arms and bringing her into the house.

Albert nodded. “I could bring her back to Canada, I think.”

“Good,” Lily said.

“But I am not going back to Canada,” Albert said. “Remember? I am going to Europe.”

“And I’m going to the bay,” Lily said.

“I guess I will come too,” he said.

Lily didn’t answer. She marched out the door, taking a deep breath.

Chapter 19

L
ily had dreamed about Margaret, and Eddie too, but when she awoke, she couldn’t remember much more than that. She knew she had been crying in the dream. She was still crying when she opened her eyes.

Gram was standing next to her bed. “It was only a dream, Lily,” she said.

Lily leaned up on one arm. Poppy had been in the dream, and Ruth, but Lily hadn’t seen her face, just her hair, dark and shiny like Albert’s, and there was something about Madeline, the book Madeline.

Gram sat down on the edge of the bed. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Things are never going to be the same,” she said. “Not even when the war is over. Albert might not have his grandmother. He might not have Ruth.”

“Everything is so confused over there. A flood of people have come from the rest of Europe, soldiers . . .” Gram sighed. “If our army can get across France, if they can liberate Paris, then maybe someone can get to Ruth.” She shook her head. “But you’re right, Lily, things won’t be the same. We’ll all be changed, all of us who lived through this.”

“But Poppy said it would be the same.”

“I know.” Gram patted her shoulder. “He wanted it to be the same for you.”

Lily took a breath. She thought of Margaret not remembering Eddie’s face. Lily could see his face so clearly, even without the picture.

And Eddie’s picture was standing there on the Dillons’ living room table. It would take her only five minutes to wrap it and bring it down to the post office this morning. If only . . .

Suppose she told Gram? Gram was sitting there next to her, twisting her long hair with both hands, redoing her bun, looking worried. She could tell Gram she’d never go into the Dillons’ house again if she could just get the picture to Margaret.

Gram was standing up now, picking yesterday’s clothes up off the floor. “Just a mess in here.”

Lily blew breath through her mouth. “I need some money.”

Gram blinked. “How did you get from Ruth to needing money?”

“I lost my tan purse,” Lily said slowly.

“Oh, Lily.” Gram shook her head. “If only you’d think sometimes . . .”

Lily slung her legs out from under her quilt. “Never mind.”

“How much?”

Lily twitched one shoulder. “I don’t remember.”

She went into the bathroom and yanked on her bathing suit. It was still damp from yesterday. Gram was saying something, but Lily turned on the water, blasting it into the sink, and began to brush her teeth.

When she came out, her breakfast was on the table, juice, and Rice Krispies with bananas and strawberries sliced on top, a face with a smiling mouth. And Albert was sitting there, talking to Gram.

Lily ran her fingers through her hair to comb it, then sat across from him. She reached for her juice and took a gulp.

They were talking about music again. Albert was telling Gram that his violin was still in Hungary. “In a blue case,” he said, “maybe in my bedroom where I put it.” He grinned at Lily. “If I had it here we could play duets.”

Gram was laughing, and Lily frowned, but then she laughed too. She could just see skinny Albert playing the violin, playing some wonderful Hungarian thing, and she’d be doing the C scale from one end of the piano to the other.

Gram patted her head. “I love to hear you laugh, Lily.”

And Albert nodded. “She is like my sister, Ruth.”

Gram was on her way out. “Going to catch a fish,” she said. “I’m not going to do another thing all day but spend time in that rowboat and feel that ocean underneath me.”

Then she was gone. Lily watched her through the screen, going down to the rowboat, her fishing rod in one hand. And then she noticed Albert was wearing his bathing suit and one of Mr. Orban’s old shirts. She knew he was hoping she’d teach him to swim this morning.

Lily stood up, finishing her cereal in a couple of spoonfuls. “I still need the money for Margaret,” she said. “I thought of telling Gram . . .”

Albert nodded. “I was thinking about that too,” he said. “I have the money.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Fifty dollars is so much . . . too much.”

“From my aunt,” Albert said. “I asked her for money.”

“Mrs. Orban? You told Mrs. Orban?”

“No. I just asked, ‘Could I have . . . ,’ and before I could finish she said I should have some money to spend for myself. She said she never thought of it.” Albert was pulling money out. A dollar in one pocket. Fifty cents in another.

“I’m so glad.” She felt like hugging him. She reached for his hand, warm and dry, and he squeezed back.

They spent the next half hour taking care of the picture. They cut up a paper bag and found cardboard and a ball of string in Mrs. Dillon’s closet.

Paprika loved it, the noise and the crinkling of paper as they wrapped the picture in layers of cardboard, and the ball of string to bat across the kitchen floor. But Margaret’s house was spoiled for Lily. She wondered what would happen if Mrs. Dillon found out Lily had been in her house all summer. And she would find out. She’d see the picture, and ask Margaret.

Just before they sealed the package, Lily reached for the key on the table, and dropped it inside. “I think we shouldn’t come back anymore,” she told him.

“All right,” he said, thinking about it. “I will take Paprika home with me.”

Then they were finished, the package neatly addressed, delivered to the post office, on its way to Margaret at last.

They walked back to the Orbans’ with the cat, and by the time Mrs. Orban had made them a picnic snack, Paprika was sound asleep on the couch pillow.

“Now we swim,” said Albert. “In the ocean.”

“In the bay,” Lily answered.

It was hot and humid, and by the time they crossed the tar road and walked through the sand and rushes toward Jamaica Bay, Lily felt sticky and irritable. She raced into the water, arms stretched, diving deep, feeling the cold bay closing over her, and then she was up again, feeling washed and cool, the sun warm on her face. She brushed her hair back away from her eyes.

Albert. She had forgotten him. He was standing on the edge, his feet dug into the sand, waiting. Lily swam back toward him, as close as she could without scraping the bottom. “You have to float first,” she said. “Don’t even try to swim yet.” She had said that a dozen times the other day

He took a step into the water. “I have no time to fool around with floating.” He had said that a dozen times too. He sounded the way she did over practicing the piano.
I have no time to fool around.

“Thick as a piece of wood,” Sister Eileen would have said about him. It was what she always said when she was teaching math problems and someone couldn’t understand.

But there was something else. He was afraid of the water, she was sure of it. She told him to loosen up, to lie back and drift with the water. She told him to unclench his fists and pretend he was one of the reeds, floating.

She told him all the things Gram had told her when she was learning. But it didn’t do any good. He couldn’t float.

He couldn’t swim either. They tried that next. Albert was like a cat who didn’t want to get wet, or a bird weighed down with feathers.

“You are a terrible teacher,” he said, trying to joke.

She bit down on her lip, feeling sorry for him. “It takes time. That’s what Gram always says.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m sounding like Gram.”

“You are lucky . . . ,” he began, and stopped.

She held up her hand. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I know it. I’ve been thinking about you and Nagymamma, but you don’t know what a pain Gram is.”

He smiled a little. “Nagymamma was a pain sometimes too. We had to say
kerem
, and
köszönöm
, and
szívesen
every two minutes . . . ‘Please,’ and ‘Thank you,’ and ‘You’re welcome’ . . .”

“She didn’t teach you very well,” Lily said, smiling too. “Here I’m wasting time showing you how to swim, and you haven’t said
kos
whatever once.”

“For teaching me how to drown myself?” Then his face was suddenly serious. “It is August, Lily.”

She took a breath. “Maybe we should forget about Europe,” she said. “Maybe the war will be over in a year.”

“A year,” he said, sounding as if it were forever.

She tried to think of what else to say, but he was watching her, and she couldn’t even look into his eyes. “All right,” she said. “I guess we could try again after lunch.”