“I have to tell you . . . ,” Lily began.
But Albert was singing now. He paused. “I will teach her this song from your radio,” and he began again. “ ‘You’ve got to ac-cent-tchu-ate . . . ’ ”
“Albert.”
“ ‘ . . . the pos-i-tive.’ ” He shook his head. “Did you ever notice, American songs are strange. I do not know what they mean most of the time.”
“You’re scaring the fish with that noise.”
“Not my fish.” He raised his line. “On the ship last time I was always thirsty, and the water tasted warm. We have to bring juice.” He nodded. “Yes. And maybe fruit. Nagymamma always said fruit was important. In the winter we ate tangerines.”
“And how would you carry all this?”
“In my pocket.”
“Very interesting,” she said, forgetting for a moment it she had to tell him. “You have pockets in your bathing suit?”
He waved his hand. “I did not think of that.”
“Albert . . .”
“No matter. I will drink warm water, and go without fruit if I have to.”
“Albert . . .”
He looked across at her.
She took a breath. “We can’t go.”
He turned his head, watching her, and she knew he was seeing the tears in her eyes. She opened her mouth to say she had changed her mind, that she’d heard that the convoys were moving out to sea farther south, but lying to Albert wasn’t like lying to anyone else. He had a way of looking at her as if everything she said was important, serious or funny, interesting to him somehow. How could she tell him something she had just made up? How could she lie again?
“I lied,” she said.
She could see the beginning of a quiver on his line. He was about to catch something . . . something small, maybe a sea robin. But he didn’t take his eyes off her, and her mouth was so dry she could hardly speak.
“What do you mean you lied?” he asked. “You mean you do not want to go with me? You are still worrying I am a coward because of the plane, because it took me so long to swim?”
“You’re not a coward, Albert.”
He frowned. “I am not afraid of anything.”
“I tell lies,” she said, almost whispering. “I tell people that my aunt is a spy. I say my father is in the Secret Service. I tell you I’m going to take a ship when I know the ships are too far out, that they seem closer than they are, and the sea is too strong and rough.”
“But I can go,” he said. “I am not afraid.”
She felt tears running down her cheeks and reached up to wipe them away.
“You are crying because of your father?” he asked.
She nodded. “And because of you. You thought I would help you go back . . .” She took a breath. “I said it because I didn’t say goodbye to my father,” she said. “I sneaked out of the house, and I never went back to say goodbye, and now . . .”
Albert reached out. He held his hand over her wrist the way Poppy had. “Lily,” he said. “I lie too.”
She shook her head. “Not the way I do, every minute.”
“Yes, because I am afraid.” For the first time he saw that line was wiggling, that he surely had a fish. “I will pull this fish up and set it free,” he said. “Then I will tell you truth. And you will know why I have to go on this ship back to Ruth.”
Chapter 22
Lily walked down Cross Bay Boulevard. She’d been looking for the mailman all afternoon. Just then he rounded the corner. “I’ve been waiting forever,” she told him.
“It’s too hot to walk fast,” he said. “But I have something for you.” He pulled out a letter.
“Poppy,” she said. She took it from him, smiling. She didn’t wait to open it. She leaned against the window of As Good As New Shoppe to tear open the thin white envelope. Mr. Rowley, the owner, was moving things around. No more straw hat, and the violin was gone. Instead, he was dragging a huge moose head to the windowsill. It must be a thousand years old, Lily thought, and it will be in the window for another thousand.
She looked down at Poppy’s letter, ran her fingers over the handwriting she loved. He didn’t say much about himself, but about the end of the summer, and Lily’s going back to St. Albans. He asked about how many books she had written.
She looked at the moose head. “I’ve written about as much as you have,” she said under her breath. But never mind, there’d be plenty of time for that when school began.
She turned the page over. There was more about books. Poppy wrote about Madeline again, and A Tale of Two Cities. “And remember The Promise,” he had written. “That’s the key to it all.”
There was always something, Lily thought, as she headed for home. Before she went to the library, she’d have to find the Three Musketeers book.
It wasn’t easy. Bent almost double, she searched under the boardwalk for an hour. Up above, she could hear thunder, and once in a while she could see streaks of heat lightning in the distance.
But at last she spotted the book. It was propped up against one of the posts, a little wrinkled, a little sandy, but she blew on the pages, and went off to the library to ask the world’s crabbiest librarian to find The Promise for her.
Mrs. Hailey looked up as Lily laid the book on the desk in front of her. “Ah, Lily,” she said smiling. “I’ve been looking for you. I know I was crabby the other day . . .”
Lily began to shake her head, began to say no, but then just smiled and rolled her eyes.
They both laughed.
“I was hot and tired, and I didn’t need one more story about a lost book,” Mrs. Hailey said.
“That’s all right,” Lily agreed. “I found the book anyway.”
“Another reason I’m glad you’re here,” Mrs. Hailey said. “I searched and searched. I even called the library in Jamaica. Your father really knows books, but this time he’s wrong. There’s no children’s book called The Promise.”
“I’ll tell him,” Lily said. She thought for a moment. “How about A Tale of Two Cities?”
“Lovely book. A little hard, but worth it.” Mrs. Hailey plucked it off the shelf in back of her and stamped it with the end of her pencil.
Outside the window was a sudden flash of lightning, and then a clap of thunder, so close they could feel the vibration.
Mrs. Hailey shivered. “I’m glad it’s closing time. And you should be home too.”
Lily waved her hand. “No rush. Gram is sewing with her club. She left supper for me in the refrigerator.”
Mrs. Hailey glanced out the window again. “We’re going to have a storm.”
Lily nodded. “I’m on my way anyway.” She tucked the book under her arm and was out the door and down the street, feeling the wind pushing her along.
By the time she crossed to the other side of Cross Bay, it had begun to rain. The wind picked up papers and swirled them into doorways, and huge drops spattered the dust along the boulevard.
Lily began to run, thinking about Albert. She had told a hundred lies, a thousand lies, but Albert had told only one. And it wasn’t really a lie. All he had done was keep his eyes closed.
She sighed.
He had sat in the boat the other afternoon and closed his eyes to show her. “I was afraid of the Nazis in France,” he said. “Very afraid.”
Lily had backstroked the oars gently, keeping the boat away from the porches, as he told her the rest.
“The lady with the gray dress came with the people from the hospital,” he said, “and I closed my eyes. It wasn’t that they were mean. Ruth was sleeping, and one of them said, ‘Poor little girl.’ They took her in an ambulance. I knew if I opened my eyes they would take me with them. I could have stayed.”
“It’s all right.” Lily could see his hands clasped tight together, and his knees clenched. He was shaking as if he were cold on that hot afternoon. “I would have been afraid too,” she said. “I would have shut my eyes.”
“I wanted to come to America,”
he told her. “I wanted to be safe. I didn’t even say goodbye.”
“Oh, Albert,” she had said, knowing how he felt.
“I left Ruth . . . ,” he had begun again, so quietly she had to lean forward to hear him, “ . . . and Nagymamma said to stay together, to be a family.”
Lily had begun to talk. She said everything she could think of, everything she thought Gram might have said.“The war will be over,” she told him, “and Ruth will come, and maybe even Nagymamma. We’ll all be in Rockaway together.”
“Nagymamma was very old. I think maybe . . .” He stopped. “Ruth has no family except me. She has no one special to watch out for her.”
Lily could see him looking toward the sea, the waves high, breakers crashing onto the beach. He shivered.
“The lady leaned over. I felt her putting something into my coat pocket. It’s Ruth’s address. I will show you someday.” He shook his head. “What good is it? I cannot write to her. I have to go back and get her somehow.”
“You can’t go back,” Lily said. “You can see the water. It would never work. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have . . .” She bit her lip. “It was my lie.”
“I want to tell you something, Lily,” he said. “I was so angry, so sad when I left Hungary. I told Nagymamma I would be angry and sad forever.”
Lily looked up. It was hard to see his face because her own tears were blinding her.
“Do you know what Nagymamma said?” he asked, “She said I would be happy someday. She said I’d have a friend, a good friend. It’s almost as if she knew about you.”
“We’ll make a pact,” she said.
“What is that?”
“We won’t lie. We’ll be brave.”
“Yes,” he said.
“But not so brave to try for the ship. Promise?”
Now, in the pouring rain, Lily was reminded of her father. She reached the house and pulled open the kitchen door, thinking she was going to write and ask him about the book The Promise.
There was another tremendous streak of lightning. It lit the porch, and the whole of the sky, and she could see in the distance a rowboat at the edge of the bay, about to cross through the edge of the marshes.
It was Albert.
Chapter 23
Lily couldn’t see light in any of the houses along the row, not even glimpses from the edges of the blackout curtains. Everyone was gone, it seemed. Gram wouldn’t be home for an hour, and the Orbans were probably shopping, caught somewhere in the rain.
A moment later, she slid down the ramp into the rowboat and began to row toward the marshes. Another bolt of lightning lit the bay, and beneath the seat in the stern she could see something almost hidden against the anchor. It was Paprika, small and wet, shivering, terrified.
There was no time to take her back, no time to dry her. She’d have to stay there huddled under the seat until later, until Lily persuaded Albert to come back.
He hadn’t promised he wouldn’t try it, but she thought she had convinced him. How could he have thought he could do it alone, she thought, in a storm like this?
The bay was rough with whitecaps, and the rain, pelting the water, slanted toward her, pushed by the wind. She was soaked through, her hair hanging in strings, dye from her shorts running blue over her legs.
A puddle of water was gathering in the bottom of the boat. She knew she should scoop it out with the old coffee can they kept for bailing, but there wasn’t time for it either. She kept her eyes focused on the marshes so the lightning would show her how far Albert had gone.
She was lucky he was a poor rower . . . unlucky that the center of the bay the waves were beginning to rise so high that the boat dropped steeply at times, and the oars didn’t hit the water with every stroke.
She couldn’t stop thinking of Poppy telling her that someday the war would be over and everything would be same. She couldn’t imagine it. And she didn’t even know where Poppy was.
That last night in the boat he had promised her he’d let her know.
Promised.
Something tugged at her mind, and then it was gone.
She was across the bay past the marshes she couldn’t see, and across the channel. The pull of the sea was much stronger now, and as she looked back, she couldn’t see the entrance to the bay anymore, even though she was just a few strokes away. For a moment she could see the misty beams of the tall lights on the boardwalk; then they were hidden again as the rowboat slid into the trough of a wave.
Then, above the sound of the rain and the waves, Lily heard another sound, the sound of a motor. A small boat, she thought, a fishing boat, or maybe a cutter, and nearby. The sound was comforting. She didn’t feel so alone, even though she couldn’t see it.
And just ahead of her was Albert. He had heard the sound too. In the next lightning flash, she could see him turn, looking over his shoulder.
“Wait,” she called. “It’s not a ship, not a troop ship. Don’t, Albert . . .”
He couldn’t hear her, but in another flash he saw her, she was sure. And the rest of it seemed to be in slow motion. The next wave was so swollen, so tremendously high, that it pulled his boat up, and up, and the boat poised there on the crest for an instant, motionless. She could see him clearly, the orange of his life jacket standing out even in the darkness.
Then, as the wave slid out from under the boat, she could see the forward part rising, almost straight up. Lily watched it, breathless, as it slid back, and in that second, Albert was tossed into the sea.
She could see the orange life jacket a little longer, but after only seconds a wave pulled her boat in one direction and Albert in another and he disappeared.
She kept calling, kept trying to turn the boat in circles, glancing at the lights on the boardwalk to mark her place, watching for the streaks of lightning to show her where he was.
She veered away from his empty boat, which was spinning first high on a wave, then into the crest. In another flash she saw him again, just the quickest glimpse, the orange life jacket, and his dark head above the water.
“I’m here,” she yelled, not sure he had heard her, or even seen her, and then another wave came, a mountain of a swell that moved toward them, pushing Albert toward her. Lily could see him turning toward her, his mouth open. He was gulping water, and she reached out, and by some miracle, her hand hooked around the top of the jacket. She held it, feeling her nails rip, but knowing she wouldn’t let go, even if she was pulled out of the boat.
But the wave was past them now, and the water grew calm just for the second he needed to grip the boat, and pulled at his jacket with both hands until he tumbled into the boat.
He lay there in the bottom, the water washing over him, taking deep breaths. “You promised,” she wanted to say, even though she knew he hadn’t. But she knew it was her fault, all her fault because of her lies, and she told herself she’d never tell another lie if she could just get him back safely.
And now Albert was up on the seat, briefly raising one shoulder in the air, coughing, and reaching out to touch her hand. Lily turned the boat back into the bay, rowing toward the houses, watching him trembling with the cold. Finally she nosed the boat in under the porch, the lights on above, and Gram waiting, and watched as Paprika, a furious ball of orange fur, streaked out of the boat and up the path away from them.
Chapter 24
They went into the kitchen, the three of them, Gram sliding the teakettle onto the stove as soon as they were in the door. “Change your clothes, Lily,” she said, “and find something of your father’s that Albert can wear.”
And twenty minutes later, they were huddled around the table, hair damp, but wearing dry clothes, with Gram’s knitted afghans around their shoulders.
“It was my fault,” Lily said slowly. “I told him we could get a ship to Europe. And he was trying . . .”
“Oh, Lily,” Gram said.
Albert’s eyes were on her. “I never really thought we could go. It was a dream. A dream like thi
nking someone will find Ruth . . .” He sighed. “I just wanted to see the ships one more time. I wanted to think about the ships going to Ruth.”
Lily nodded, thinking that she had dreamed the same thing, going to Poppy, finding Poppy.
“When I started, it was not even raining. I just row so slowly . . . ,” he said. “I would not have gone without you.” He shook his head. “And now I have lost the boat.”
“And we might have lost you both.” Gram scraped back her chair. “Don’t you know that this is what it’s all about? Nagymamma sending you and Ruth away from her so you’d be safe? And your parents publishing a newspaper, helping to win the war, so you’d have a good life?”
“For me? My mother and father?” Albert was nodding. “I have never thought about that. I have just never thought . . .”
Gram turned to Lily. “And Poppy, who could have stayed right here . . . He went for you, Lily, and I had to let him go. My son.” She turned her head a little. “It was so hard.”
Gram didn’t say anything else for a moment. She looked like herself, stern, frowning a little. But then she put her hand on Lily’s cheek. “But worth it. Worth the price to keep you safe.”
Before Lily could say anything, Gram pushed back the flowered curtains and went into her bedroom. “I have something for you, Albert.” She came back carrying a blue case.
“From the window,” Lily said, realizing. “From the As Good As New Shoppe.”
Gram smiled. “I’ll have to swap fish every week for this violin for the next two summers.”
And Albert was reaching for the violin, running his hands over the case, then snapping it open to look at the shiny wood and pluck the strings.
“I know about Nagymamma,” Gram said. “I know she’d want this for you.”
But by this time the violin was under Albert’s chin. For a moment he tightened the strings, his head turned to side. Then the kitchen was filled with the sound of a Hungarian song, fast, and sharp, and beautiful.