“No. She never talked about you. Except to Sammy and he couldn’t remember.”
“Your momma stuck around here a long time just because she felt sorry for me. I was glad when she began seeing Francis. He was handsome and cheerful. I thought, maybe she’ll be happy, maybe she’ll steady him down. But do you know what I said to her, just before she left this house? She was twenty-one then and her father couldn’t stop her. I said—‘We don’t want to hear anything from you until we hear that you’ve been married.’ He was right beside me then and I knew it was what he would say. So I was the one to say it, because I didn’t want her thinking I wouldn’t stand by him. I had to stand by him—he was my husband. Do you know what she said? She said, ‘I’ll never get married.’ She wasn’t angry. She never fought, not your mother. She was gentle—like Maybeth. Your father wasn’t a fighter, either. I don’t know where you get it from because you are.”
Dicey knew where she got it from, but she had a more urgent question. “Why didn’t Momma want to get married?”
“She had seen what happens. She didn’t want to give her word, like I did. We keep our promises, we Tillermans. We keep them hard.”
“But I don’t understand. Can’t you love somebody and fight with them? I fight with Sammy, and with James. I make Maybeth do things she’s scared to do. But that’s because I love them. If I didn’t love them I wouldn’t bother. And they fight back—like James walking out here instead of waiting, that’s fighting back. It was okay too, because it was his own decision. I want him to make his own decisions. Didn’t you love Momma?”
“Oh yes, I loved my children. I had a lot of love to give in those days, to my husband too. But it got turned around. I got turned around. I let myself get turned around.” Her grandmother waved her hand, vaguely, to brush away the memories like you brush away cobwebs. “And it’s all gone now and they’re all gone now. So it’s the past.”
Dicey finished her milk. “Will you tell them about Momma not marrying? I lied to them about it. It was better then, to lie. Now it isn’t; at least, I don’t think so. I’ll tell them if you won’t, but if you would they’d understand better.”
“Maybe. Maybe I’ll try.”
“I saw a picture of you when you were little,” Dicey said. “Cousin Eunice had one. You looked angry.”
“I was angry—most of my life,” her grandmother said. “Not anymore—if you can believe that. Just crazy now, and that’s an improvement. Not really crazy. Eccentric. But those years, morning to night. All that anger—you can choke swallowing back anger. And it still sneaks out, in little ways, and everybody knows although nobody says anything. So they left, every one. They couldn’t stay here. All of my children, they ran as fast and as far as they could. My Sammy, he died of it, and that was hard. Hard. And your poor momma—they shamed me. And I shamed myself.” She chewed on her lip. Then she looked Dicey full in the eyes and said:
“I failed them. I let them go. I told them to go. There were times I could have killed him. He’d sit chewing and the anger and shame were sitting at the table with us. Chew and swallow, so sure he was right. But I’d promised him—and he didn’t know why they each left. I did. So, I’m responsible. I won’t have that responsibility again. Not to fail again.”
“Are you sure you’d fail?” Dicey asked in a low voice. “We can’t stay here, I know. Don’t worry about that. But I don’t think you’d fail with us. We had Momma. And I wouldn’t let those things happen.” That was true, Dicey knew it. They were safe, safer than her grandmother, even though her grandmother had this big house and what remained of the farm to keep her fed.
Her grandmother nodded. “You’ve got determination,” she said.
“Momma said it was in my blood,” Dicey answered. “I never knew what she meant before.”
“Your momma was a kind child,” her grandmother said. “But she never forgave her father.”
“Did you?” Dicey asked.
“No. Yes.”
Somehow, this made sense to Dicey. It let her know that she would be all right, and her family would be all right. They wouldn’t be children forever. They didn’t have to have a place, they just had to have themselves. She yawned, fighting it off and losing.
“You’d better get back to bed. I’ll finish this letter to that Eunice now. I’ll try to tell her about Maybeth—but she’s such a silly woman I doubt she’s got two ounces of common sense rattling around in her head. Your cousin doesn’t care much for you.”
This didn’t surprise Dicey. “That’s okay,” she said.
“Well, I do,” her grandmother said. “I care for all of you. Now get to bed. I’ll wash out your glass. Scat!”
Dicey ran upstairs. She ran into her bed and pulled the covers up over her head. Cousin Eunice didn’t want them, but she would take them in. Her grandmother wanted them, but wouldn’t let them stay. And they, she, James, Maybeth and Sammy—they were the losers. Dicey cried herself to sleep. She couldn’t stop. She tried, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know if she was crying for her family, or for herself, or for her grandmother—or for all of them, all the Tillermans, Momma too, lost up in Massachusetts, and Bullet lost in Vietnam. They were all lost. Dicey promised herself this was the last time she’d cry, ever, and wept until her eyes were swollen shut and she slept.
Sunlight was pouring over the house and yard and through the windows when Dicey awoke the next morning. She pulled on shorts and a shirt and looked into three empty bedrooms before she came downstairs.
Her grandmother was alone in the kitchen. She was kneading dough. “What’s that?” Dicey asked.
“Bread. I haven’t made it for years. You slept late.”
Dicey nodded, without apologizing. She looked at her grandmother. She had gray splotches under her eyes, and the fine wrinkles that came out from the edges of her eyes and her mouth seemed deeper this morning. This was not quite the same woman Dicey had talked with in the dead of night; but this was not a different woman, either.
Dicey poured herself a glass of milk and took an apple from the bowl of fruit. She stood by the sink, drinking and chewing, and watching her grandmother knead the pale dough. Push-pull, slap, push-pull. Her grandmother leaned into the dough with her shoulders, but handled it gently at the same time.
Her grandmother was contradictory. Except for the fatigue, her grandmother looked perfectly ordinary this morning. Only now Dicey knew better.
There was a warm feeling in her stomach, as if she had swallowed sunshine. At least now, everything was settled, she wasn’t battling anymore. She liked her grandmother, her momma’s mother. She liked her all prickly and contrary. She liked the way her grandmother said one thing and then the opposite, because it made sense to Dicey, the same kind of sense Dicey made to herself. She liked the way the woman had watched Sammy roll naked in the grass. She liked her bare feet.
This was a good way to feel to say good-bye.
“We’ll be moving on today,” Dicey said. “I wanted to thank you for letting us stay so long.”
“Not today, you won’t,” her grandmother said. “You can’t just bolt off like that. You’ve done enough running away, don’t you think?”
Dicey couldn’t see her face, but her voice sounded pleasant enough.
“I’ve written to your cousin. We have to wait and see what she answers. You’ll stay here until then. I’ll mail the letter Tuesday. We’re going to town Tuesday, for food and to talk to the people at the school. What grade are you in?”
“Going into eighth,” Dicey said. “But why?”
“Do you know how long it’ll take that dithering woman to get advice from all the people she talks to and arrange to come and get you? You may, but I don’t. Children should be in school. School starts Tuesday, or so James tells me and I have no reason to disbelieve him. Those bikes will give some trouble—I have no idea how to ship bicycles and I won’t have them here, rusting in the barn.”
“What if we don’t want to go back to Bridgeport?” Dicey a
sked.
“First we find out if you can. For today, while the bread is rising, we might go take a look at Janes Island. It’s all marsh and you can’t land there. Don’t know why they call it an island.”
“Where are the little kids?” Dicey asked.
“Down by the dock, bailing out the boat. They have all agreed. They want to see the island.” Her hands slapped at the bread. She poked at it with a finger, then began kneading it again. “I told them, what you wanted me to. Sammy”—she shook her head and slapped the dough down on the table—“he said I was lying and he said he didn’t care. Then he said he was sorry, he knew I wasn’t lying, but he still didn’t care. Maybeth didn’t say a word. But James—he told Sammy he did care, and if it was what your momma wanted then that was okay with him because she might have been crazy in some ways but she was never crazy when it came to loving her kids. I asked him where he got ideas like that and he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘From books.’ ” She laughed briefly. “Yes, I told them, I also told them they ought to think twice before they held that lie against you.”
Dicey ran down to the dock. The bay was lively, with crisp-topped blue waves under a steady breeze. Her family had bailed out the boat and now they were swimming.
“What’s going on, James?” Dicey called. He swam over to her.
“I dunno, Dicey. We’ll be here a little longer, that’s all I know.”
“We’re going to an island!” Sammy called. “It’s okay about Momma. She didn’t want to get married. Did you know?” Dicey nodded.
They motored over to the stretch of marshland just off the town shore. There, they dropped an anchor on the bay side. Birds lived on Janes Island, but nothing else could. One snowy heron soared down, folding its wings in at the last minute, returning to its nest deep in the marsh grass. A few ducks wandered along the muddy shore, in and out of the tall grasses. They saw flocks of gulls, gossiping, bickering, bobbling on the waves, flying in noisy swarms.
Their grandmother had packed a bag of fruit and some cold crab, left over from yesterday’s lunch. As they ate, she asked them about their travelings, so James and Dicey took turns telling her. “Well,” she kept saying. And, “That was a piece of luck.” She didn’t ask them about Bridgeport.
Back at the farm, Dicey took Sammy to the barn to begin patching, while James and Maybeth rode their bikes up and down the driveway. “You don’t have to do that,” their grandmother said to Dicey.
“I know,” she said.
The patched places showed up bleak against the wasted pink paint of the barn. They would hold, Dicey knew; they had been nailed into place firmly and the edges were sealed against the weather. If she’d had time, she would have liked to paint the whole barn. Just so there would be something here to say, “Dicey Tillerman stayed here awhile and she made a difference.” Dicey figured they had a week, maybe two, before they had to go back to Bridgeport, to the little house and the fussing and fretting. She planned to enjoy the time and not worry about the future. Her grandmother seemed to feel the same way. It was as if now everything was decided, they could both relax.
So they passed two quiet days, hammering, bike riding (except Sammy), swimming, weeding, picking, fixing the mailbox—just living together. In the evenings, they went onto the back porch or into the living room. Their grandmother found an old checkers set, somewhere deep in a closet. Maybeth picked out tunes on the piano. Some of the songs they sang, the songs Momma had sung, their grandmother knew. Some of them she had to learn, and she wasn’t very good at it.
Yet, the feelings in the air were not all placid. Dicey disagreed with her grandmother whenever she thought her grandmother was being unfair. “Ah-ummm,” she would say, because they still had no name to call their grandmother, “Cousin Eunice tried to do her best. Sure she’s silly, but that’s not her fault, is it?”
“Well, whose fault is it then?” their grandmother would answer sharply. “If it’s not her own fault for what she’s like, I’d like to know whose fault it is.”
“Okay,” Dicey would say, giving ground because privately she thought her grandmother was right, “but she’s not bad.”
“Who mentioned bad?” their grandmother would say. “James? Did I? Maybeth, did I say bad? I said silly and I meant silly.” Their grandmother would rush on before they could answer. “And there’s an end on it.”
“Dicey’s the one who said silly,” James would say.
“Aha!” their grandmother would say. “I told you, Dicey, it’s all your fault.”
Then Dicey would swallow her disappointment and enjoy this temporary haven. For these two days, she stopped thinking ahead. She learned how to put the bandage on Maybeth’s arm, which Maybeth said was better, but their grandmother said should be supported for two full weeks, especially since Maybeth was riding her bike so much.
They took one long ride, James and Dicey and Maybeth. They saw several farmhouses. Some of them had cows and horses. All of them had chickens. Most of them had fields of corn and tomatoes.
Dicey made herself stop thinking about the sailboat in her grandmother’s barn. That was to have been the prize, her prize, if they had stayed. She wouldn’t go near it now. She knew that if she did she’d begin planning again, and she’d get it down to the water, somehow. Once the boat was in the water, they could take it away and sail south, and hide. But they didn’t have any place left to go to. She had been beaten this time, down to her bones beaten. She had fought her hardest and her smartest, and she had lost. She could take that, and she could understand the whys of it. But not if the boat was in the water, and the sails fitted to the mast, and the wind blowing little clouds along the sky. So she shut the sailboat out of her mind, just as she shut out hoping and caring and the disappointment that waited for her to relax her guard so it could leap out and get its teeth into her. She just lived through the hours, taking them as they came, knowing they would never come again.
CHAPTER 12
On Tuesday morning, their grandmother started another batch of bread, then told them to take baths and put on fresh shorts and shirts. When the children came downstairs, their grandmother was waiting in the kitchen. She had combed her curly hair with water, but it wouldn’t lie flat. She was wearing a dark blue suit, with her blouse tucked in, and lipstick, stockings and loafers.
“You’re all dressed up,” Dicey said.
“It’s old,” her grandmother said. “But I’m old. Or do you mean the shoes? I hope you children appreciate what I’m going through for you.” But she said that as if it was a joke.
“I don’t care if you have bare feet,” Sammy said, very serious.
“Neither do I,” his grandmother said, “but there are them that do.”
Maybeth stood shyly beside Dicey. “You look different,” she said to the woman. “Pretty.”
Their grandmother blushed. The dark red came up under her tanned cheeks. “I’ll be getting vain the next thing you know. And that’s a vice I never had. Let’s go.” She picked up a worn black purse from the table. “I’m bound to leave this behind somewhere. Keep an eye on it, somebody. James, you’re reliable, will you?”
“I’ll try,” James said.
The wind blew their carefully combed hair all out of order, and the salt spray covered their bodies, so they arrived at the dock looking as they ordinarily did, except their grandmother. She led them down the main street, and then down a side street, to a long, low building that had windows over most of its walls.
Inside, the air was noisy with children’s voices. The halls were made of white-painted concrete blocks. A long dim, windowless hallway went down the center of the building, with classrooms on both sides. It smelled like a school, of chalk and children’s sweat, and warm food from the lunchroom. A teacher told their grandmother where the registration office was. The sign over the door said Guidance. In the tiny office, they found a fat young woman seated behind a big wooden desk.
“My name is Abigail Tillerman,” their grandmother anno
unced. “These children will be in Crisfield temporarily and they ought to be in school until they go back. What’s your name?”
Their grandmother sounded nervous.
“Mrs. Jenkins,” the woman said. “I’m the guidance counselor.” She told them to come in and sit down. The room was so crowded with filing cabinets and plants and her big desk, there was room only for two straight chairs for visitors. Dicey and her grandmother sat in those. James and Maybeth and Sammy crowded into the corners of the room.
“What do you mean by temporarily?” Mrs. Jenkins asked.
“For a short time. I’m not sure how long exactly,” their grandmother said. “If I could tell you I would.”
Mrs. Jenkins asked their names and ages, and Dicey told her. She asked for their address, and Dicey looked at her grandmother, who told Mrs. Jenkins. Mrs. Jenkins asked what the last school they had been in was; her grandmother looked at Dicey, and Dicey told her.
“Parents?” Mrs. Jenkins asked.
“Not noticeably,” their grandmother said. James gave a short snort of laughter.
“What then is your relationship to them, Mrs. Tillerman? I assume you will be responsible for them while they are attending school here.”
“I am their mother’s mother,” their grandmother said.
Mrs. Jenkins looked at her for a long moment. Dicey watched her write down, grandmother.
“All right then. I will call the Provincetown school to have your records sent to us. I think it would be well to do that now, before we assign the children to classes. Would you like to walk around the school for a bit? Come back, in half an hour, I think.”
They trooped out of the office. All the classroom doors were closed, so they went outside. The playground was a huge field of short grass. Scattered over it were jungle gyms and tall swings, sandboxes, slides and a baseball diamond. It was empty now, with the children inside. The equipment gleamed, as if it had never been played on.
“It looks brand-new,” Dicey said. “The whole school does.”