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.”
Chapter 20
It was Friday afternoon, lunchtime. The church bells were chiming twelve, Kate Smith was singing “God Bless America” on the radio, and Lily and Gram were having hot tuna fish in tomato sauce. It was horrible, but Gram hadn’t caught a fish all week, and Lily hadn’t even tried.
“I agree,” Gram said. “I can tell by your face you don’t like it either.”
“I hate this stuff,” Lily said, eating as fast as she could. As soon as lunch was over, she and Albert were going to practice again. They’d been in the water so much that Mrs. Orban said they were going to turn into fish. She said it smiling. Even Mrs. Orban could see that Albert was never going to be a fish.
Albert had talked about it last night, said the same thing over and over. “We will row the boat out, stay in it until the ship passes right near us. I will only have to swim the last, smallest bit, and I will be wearing a life jacket . . .”
Lily stared
out the window. The water was rough, really rough. Even though the sun was shining, the water had a dark look to it, and she could see whitecaps at the end of the canal. They couldn’t swim this afternoon. Alleluia. What instead? The movies? Fishing. Yes, fishing. They hadn’t done that once this summer.
Gram was saying something, had been talking for minutes. Something about forgetting. Lily looked up.
“You asked me for money,” Gram said.
Lily took another mouthful, trying not to taste the fish. “I don’t need it anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” Gram was saying. “I asked you how much you wanted, but you were getting dressed, and . . .” She raised one shoulder. “I never thought about it again until just this minute.”
Lily looked up, trying to remember. How much? Gram had said. How much had she lost? How much did she need? Lily felt a quick flash of guilt.
Gram looked hot and tired. It was boiling in the little kitchen. Even with the shades halfway down, the sun lay in patches on the table, the counters, and the floor. Suppose something happened to Gram someday?
“Never mind,” Gram said. “I’m going to make up for it . . . and for the tuna too. I have a letter, two letters for you. One from Poppy, and one from Margaret.” She sighed. “Poor Margaret.”
Lily put her fork down. That’s what she got for spending the morning swimming. She had missed the mailman. Now Gram would be reading over her shoulder.
Gram slid the letters over to her. Margaret’s filthy as ways, Poppy’s, airmail, tissue-paper thin. “The mailman was looking for you,” Gram said.
Lily didn’t answer. She opened Margaret’s first, a long letter in pencil, hard to read in Margaret’s scrawl.
Thank your grandmother for the letter.
Lily looked up quickly. Gram wasn’t leaning over her shoulder after all. She was turning the pages of her newspaper, The Wave. Lily looked down again, finding her place.
Thank her for the picture of Eddie swimming and those funny stories about when he was little. She made me laugh. I felt so bad. She misses your father. She calls him Jerry isn’t that strange I always think about him as Mr. Mollahan. We still don’t know anything about Eddie.
Love Margaret.
How’s the house?
“You wrote to Margaret? You sent a picture?” Lily asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”
Gram pushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “I knew how she felt. Suppose it was Poppy?”
Lily sat looking at Gram from the corner of her eye. She’d never thought about Gram missing Poppy, not once in all these weeks. She pushed Margaret’s letter across the table to her, then took a breath. She had forgotten the house part. But Gram didn’t seem to notice anything strange about Margaret’s mentioning her house.
Lily reached for Poppy’s letter, the best for last. It was a funny letter, Poppy reminding her of the time they painted the window and the screen had fallen over the edge of the porch and floated away. Your fault, Poppy had written for fun. They both knew it had been his fault. And then in the end, there was more about books. Don’t forget to read The Story of Roland again, and The Promise. Go to the library for them. See Mrs. Hailey. She knows every book in the world!
Lily had read The Story of Roland with Poppy last winter, but not the other. She and Albert could take a quick trip to the library after they went swimming. Why not?
Gram had finished Margaret’s note and was looking out the window now. Her gray eyes were sad.
“Here,” Lily said, feeling generous. “Read my letter from Poppy. It will make you laugh.”
Lily took the last bite of tuna, thinking about a night last summer when they had eaten the same thing. It was almost dark, after Poppy had come. They had been talking, laughing. It was something about Gram’s fishing being so bad they had to eat canned tuna. And outside, the fireflies had floated over the porch.
“Do you remember . . .” Gram began as she put the letter down.
“Last summer?” Lily asked.
“No, the year of the hurricane,” Gram said.
Lily thought about it, the bay water, usually flat, crashing up against the pilings. Boats, let loose, filled with water, breaking apart and sinking. Their own rowboat, upside down, looking like a walnut shell, under a couple feet of water.
“What made you think of that?” she asked.
“I have a memory of your father, coming down the road, his shoes off . . .” Gram bit at her lip. “His suit pants were rolled up to his knees, full of mud, his newspaper—”
“—soaking wet, covering his head,” Lily said.
“And we laughed,” Gram said.
Lily nodded. She remembered how funny her father had looked, hopping along. She and Gram had watched from the kitchen door, so happy he was home.
And now Gram was crying. Lily couldn’t believe it. She had never seen Gram cry. Lily’s mouth was suddenly dry. “Why . . .”
Gram shook her head, her mouth trembling, trying to smile. “I guess I miss your father.”
Lily stood up, about to go to her, to put her arms around her.
“By the time he comes home,” Gram said, “you’ll be playing the piano for him.”
Lily veered off to the sink. She slid in her dish with a couple of other dishes and ran water over them. She could see Gram standing to put a bottle of milk into the refrigerator. No one would ever know tears had been in her eyes a moment ago.
Lily wiped her hands on a towel. “We’re going to swim, Albert and me. And then go to the library.”
Gram nodded, and Lily was out the door, around the side porch, and down into the rowboat. Albert was sitting there, waiting for her, looking even skinnier than usual with the huge orange life jacket around him.
She hopped into the boat and began to row past the houses, angling toward the marshes, leaning forward to keep the sun out of her eyes.
“I hope I can do this.” Albert sounded worried.
Lily rowed across the bay, moving swiftly, pulling hard on the oars. She wouldn’t have to tell him after all. He’d tell her to go without him, and then she’d say . . .
She looked across at him. His face was white, his lips pale. She threw the anchor into the water. “Now we’ll go over the side. The boat isn’t going anywhere, and if you really get in trouble you can reach for one of the tall reeds.”
Albert’s eyes were almost closed.
“I’ll go first,” she said, and went over the side slowly, Carefully, so the boat wouldn’t rock. She hung on to the edge with both hands for a second, getting used to the feel of the water, cool on her body, then slipped away from the boat. “Don’t forget, Albert. Keep your mouth closed. Last time . . .”
“I know.” He was clumsy getting over the side, rocking the boat enough to create small waves. And then he was in the water, reaching up to grip the side.
“Let go,” she said. “You’ve got on a life preserver. You can’t sink.” She grinned. “Even you can’t sink.”
He shut his eyes and let go.
“Good,” she said, treading water. “Feel how lovely. Not too cold. Open your eyes, will you?”
He struck out with one arm and then the other.
“Kick your feet, remember?”
He opened his eyes. “Too much to remember all at once.” He was out of breath.
“Take your time.”
He started again, head high.
“Not bad, not bad at all, but wait a minute.” She swam over to him, thinking he looked like a turtle. A land turtle. “What do you think will happen if you just put your head in the water?”
“Remember last time?”
“Yes, but your mouth was wide open. Duck your head. Just feel . . .”
He took a deep breath and leaned forward. A moment later he was up again. “I can hardly stay down.” He sounded surprised, pleased.
“See,” she said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
He nodded once, and then a second time. “You are right, Lily.”
He leane
d into the water again, raising his arm. She could see his feet behind him, kicking a little, kicking harder. He was moving. He was swimming.
She watched as he circled the boat, then floated, his hands pale in the water, fingers spread. “I am swimming,” he told her.
“I know,” she answered him, thinking she had done it. She had taught him to swim. And then something else. She’d have to tell him they couldn’t go to Europe.
Chapter 21
The sea was high today. Lily tried to remember when she had last seen it this way, yellow-green water reflecting the strange color in the sky. They had rowed only a short way from the porch, still in the bay, to fish.
She dropped her fishing line over the side of the rowboat. The day was hot, the wormy bait sticky on her fingers. She felt sick with the smell of it, sick thinking about what Albert would say when she told him.
It had been a terrible day from start to finish. The library had been closed for days, and when they had finally gotten there this morning, Mrs. Hailey hadn’t been one bit friendly. “Bringing sand in on your feet,” she had grumbled. “Leaving a trail behind you like Hansel and Gretel.”
And then when Lily had tried to get both books, The Story of Roland and The Promise, Mrs. Hailey had looked up over her glasses. “Don’t you have a book at home, overdue?”
Lily had remembered she had left The Three Musketeers at the beach, and when she began to make something up, Mrs. Hailey had sighed. “Don’t, Lily,” she had said.
It had ended up that all she got was The Story of Roland, which she had already read, and what good was that? And she had thought Mrs. Hailey was her friend.
Albert was going on about meeting a ship. “It will go to France. I think it will. I know it will. I will start at Paris. I will go to every hospital. I will go everywhere. I have money. I will buy what I need. I will find her, do not worry.”
Werry.
Lily took a breath. “Who’s going to take care of Paprika?”
Albert looked over the side of the boat, almost as if he could see the bottom, almost as if he were searching for a flounder. “The Orbans, of course. They will do that for me. Don’t you think so?”