“To Grandmother's house?” I asked, dropping a cornflake on the table in front of Henry's nose and jumping back as he raised one paw to warn me.
Josie waggled her hand, her head still bent. She was carving my tree figure from a piece of oak, stripping the bark until the underneath showed pale and smooth. The head was there, still unformed, the nose just a slight sharp mark.
Josie saw me looking at it. “A bit at a time,” she said. “The face last, when I'm sure I know you well enough.”
I didn't say anything. Instead, I ran one finger over Henry's back. His eyes were closed, he was purring, and I figured he didn't know it was me.
“Over the river …,” Josie began again, rocking in her chair with a pleased look on her face.
Water, I thought. The ocean. We'd been there twice this week. Odd to see the ocean near the end of November. I'd always thought of it as something to see in the summertime. I put the tea mugs in the sink, sprayed water over them, and waited, leaning against the counter as Josie took a cut in the side of the wood and gently blew the shavings away.
She stood up then, ready to go, but instead, she stopped to peer out the window. “Someone's coming.”
I glanced out and saw the gray car pulling into her driveway. The mustard woman had come to check up on me.
My own fault, I told myself. Hanging around here today instead of going to school. It was that lingering-cold note. I hadn't been able to resist it.
“It's the wrong time,” I sang to Josie.
She smiled at me, singing too. “And the wrong place?”
I reached for her wool hat and scarf and the brown hat with the veil. “Let's go down to the water instead of entertaining,” I told her.
We slipped out the back door, moving as quietly as we could; it was a game. We passed through Josie's tree-figure garden, went through the woods and diagonally across the street.
It was a long walk in the cold, and we hadn't stopped for jackets, so we were both shivering by the time we felt the difference in the air, smelled the sharp, sweetish smell of the ocean.
We climbed up onto the pier. The fishing boats were gone this late in the morning. I knew some of them by now, and I could see the two smaller ones somewhere out near the horizon. I kept thinking of that gray car and trying to decide what to do. I bent down and picked up a shell. Its edges were crushed but it had a beautiful color, almost like the sea itself with the sun shining on it.
“A piece of good luck,” Josie said.
I slipped it into a pocket of my jeans and nodded. We needed luck.
Josie had moved away from me. I turned and saw her lying on the jetty, holding her hat on with one hand, the loose end of her scarf floating in the water. She wiggled herself down and down until I thought she'd go over; then at last she reached into the mass of foam that had settled around the stanchions of the pier.
A moment later she was up, strands of sea grass clutched in her hand. Several inches long, curled along the edges, they were the color of sand. Josie smiled at me and held them up to my hair. “I thought so,” she said, “almost an exact match.”
I nodded, realizing she had gathered them for my wood figure. It made me think of the drawing box the Old Man had given me. How often I had held up a pencil to match the color against something.
Was the drawing box still at the house in Branches?
I turned as I heard the sound of a car and of tires bumping along the wooden planks of the pier in back of me: the mustard woman.
She came to a stop about two inches away from us and rolled down the window. “Why aren't you in school?”
“School?” Josie asked, looking confused.
I didn't answer, of course I didn't. I had learned to keep my mouth closed long ago. In my mind I pulled myself into a small knot deep inside and tried to think about something else, anything else.
“Get in the car,” the mustard woman said, “I'll drive you there right now.”
One of the fishing boats had almost disappeared. All that was left of it was the needle-thin mast on top. Someday I'd like to be on that boat, I thought, to see what it would be like to look back at the land. I glanced at the railing that ran along the end of the pier. It was so low it would be hard to see from a ship.
“School,” Josie said. “Of course.” She put her hand on my shoulder. It was the hand holding the sea grass. I felt a soft scratch against my skin.
Josie's legs were bare, with dainty spider veins showing, and her silky shoes were soaked with snow and spray. I didn't want the mustard woman to see them.
I opened the back door of the car and slid in, and we drove off, leaving Josie looking after us, her head tilted as she waved at me, the sea grass in her hand blowing in the wind.
“What's going on here?” the mustard woman said. “No school?”
I ran my tongue over my lips, trying to figure out the best lie I could. “I told her today was a holiday, teachers' conference.”
The mustard woman shook her head. “And she believed that?” she said. “We'll have to see about this.”
I reached into my pocket and held on to the shell. For the first time in my life, I thought, I'd really have to go to school. I'd have to if I wanted to stay at Josie's.
My head was a round burl of wood, the sea grass, dried now, a swirl on top. Josie spent hours over it at the kitchen table, humming to herself, a tray of tiny knives spread out in front of her.
It was Monday, early in December, almost dark in the late afternoon. No Chinese dinner tonight. I was making a dish Izzy had taught me. “Special deluxe,” she had said, and smiled at me. Chopped meat, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and cheese, spooned over hot rolls. Salad. Pound cake with confectioner's sugar sifted over the top.
It was going to be a special deluxe evening. Beatrice was leaving the next morning for New Mexico, where she'd paint the adobe houses and the desert. “I'll come back when the mood strikes,” she had said, “or when my money runs out. We'll close up the movie until I get back.”
All week I'd had a pain in my chest. I was waiting to see what the mustard woman would do. School was all right. I kept my head in the books, made As on two tests, and had no friends. But if the mustard woman talked to Josie for more than five minutes she'd know about Josie. Strange, how much I wanted to stay. Maybe it was because Josie needed me. I'd never been needed before. Or wanted? asked a voice in my head. The Old Man had wanted me, I told myself. So had Izzy, so had Steven. Then why?
Don't think about that. Think about Josie.
“A little forgetful,” Beatrice had said. “Maybe old age.”
But not always forgetful. There was the afternoon Josie had watched me sketch small pictures on my pad. “I remember something.” She tapped one red fingernail on her lower lip. “There's paper in the attic. I haven't seen it for years. I think it belonged to my father.”
I climbed the stairs; then, bent like a pretzel, I scurried around the low attic, stepping over bags and bushel baskets, stopping to look at boxes of paper-thin Christmas ornaments and yellowed leather gloves, until I found what she'd told me about: huge pieces of paper, gray and dogeared. I ran my hands over them, thinking about the day the Old Man gave me the drawing box.
As I had maneuvered my way back to the steps, Josie had called up. “There's an easel, too.”
Beatrice came now, hurrying up the walk. Her hair had been done up in a high pink swirl at the hair-dresser. Her nails matched, and so did her huge pink purse.
We were ready for her with the pound cake on Josie's best plate and the dishes on the table. We ate watching the pale December sun drop behind the trees in the backyard. When Josie went inside for something, Beatrice leaned over. “Take care of her,” she whispered.
I thought of telling her about the mustard woman and the agency, but what if Josie came back?
Beatrice saw me frown. “Maybe I shouldn't go.”
“Josie said you've wanted to do this all your life.”
“But …”
; “Go,” I said, wishing I could go too. I'd take the Shortline bus up through New York State. It would be early summer again, the first time I'd seen Steven and the Old Man, playing checkers in the diner. I'd start over. I'd do everything different.
Everyting.
But instead, I'd do it all right. I'd stay with Josie and …
“I'll take care of her,” I whispered. Somehow, I said in my head.
Beatrice turned over one of my pictures. “I'll leave my phone number,” she said. “I'll write it down.” She patted my hand. “I won't be there for the first two or three weeks, I'll be traveling around. But just in case.”
I watched her make careful, even numbers on the paper and turn it over as Josie came back into the kitchen, another one of my pictures in her hand.
I didn't take any chances, though. Through the rest of the dinner, I said the phone number over in my head. I wanted to be sure I'd remember it.
I never showed this picture to anyone: the golden field, me with my head back laughing, my hands at the wheel of the truck. It took four or five pencils to do this: I started with Summer Green, Iron Gray, and Beach Sand. That was something, that Saturday night.
Izzy and the Old Man were going to the movie in town. “It's a romance,” the Old Man said, waggling his eyebrows at me. “A waste of a good evening.”
“You'll love it, John,” Izzy said. “There are snacks in the refrigerator and in the cabinet. Snacks all over the place. You won't starve.” She leaned out the door. “And there's a tin of that hard candy on my dresser.”
Steven crossed his eyes. “They're so sour they curl your tongue.”
“Not mine.” I'd been eating them all summer; I couldn't get enough of them.
“That's because—” he began. I knew he was going to joke about my being sour.
But the Old Man came out the door. “I just saw the mess you left in the shed,” he told Steven. “Straighten that place up. It's bad enough your room looks the way it does.”
“What's this neatness kick?”
“Did you notice how neat Holly's things are?”
Without thinking, I put my hand up. “Don't …,” I began, but it came out almost as a breath. Neither one of them heard, or maybe they just weren't paying attention.
Steven unfolded himself from his chair so slowly, it seemed as if he weren't moving.
“Hang in there, Hollis Woods,” Steven said as the Old Man stamped around the side of the house and started the car. “We're going to be out of here in five minutes.”
“Where?” Already he was running around the side of the house to the shed.
I sat there listening as he threw things around for a few minutes, and then he was back. “I'm going to teach you to drive. Good thing they took the car instead of the truck.” He dangled the keys in front of my nose. “Anyone who can keep her things disinfected can drive a truck.”
“I don't think—” I began.
“Scared?”
“Never.”
“All right, don't waste my valuable time arguing.”
In back of the evergreens and the row of holly bushes was a flat field. The Old Man kept it mowed against snakes, rattlers that struck blind in the summer. “Don't worry,” Steven said, sliding into the truck. “No one's been bitten for about a hundred years. Pop worries about everything.”
Steven drove as if he'd been doing it all his life. He grinned across at me in the suicide seat. “Since I was about eight,” he said, knowing what I was thinking. “I'm going to take the truck up the mountain one day.”
He showed me the gears and the pedals, and then we switched seats. And so I drove in that field in the summer-evening light, Steven shouting directions as I lurched through the ruts, bucking, stalling, starting up again with gear-grinding noises.
“Aha, Hollis Woods,” he yelled. “There's hope for you. I knew it!”
I pressed my foot down on the gas pedal a little harder. “Yahoo!” I yelled. “It's me, driving a pickup truck!”
One raw Tuesday morning I awoke and pulled the shade aside; the trees were charcoal smudges against an iron gray sky. Josie wouldn't be up for another hour or two. I hadn't done my homework the night before, hadn't even thought of it. I'd fallen asleep watching television with Henry next to me on the couch and Josie working at the kitchen table.
I still faced rows of math problems. Three pages, maybe four. And there was a social studies composition on Henry Hudson.
I tried to decide whether I could work on it now. It was early. I popped bread into the toaster and opened a can of Salmon Delight for Henry, who sniffed at it and walked away.
“I can never figure you out,” I said, and buttered a square of toast for him instead. Then I pulled my books off the shelf and sat at the table with one of Josie's knitted shawls around me.
In back of me I had the radio on. Two weeks until Christmas. It had snowed upstate, six inches.
Ah, snow for Steven. Were they up yet, the three of them? Were they having breakfast in their winter house in Hancock? What would it be like if I were there, doing my homework, eating Izzy's apple pancakes?
The radio announcer said it was a foggy day on Long Island at three minutes before eight o'clock.
I finished the first page of math problems; I could never do the rest in a half hour. Never mind Henry Hudson sailing up the river.
Maybe I could take one more day off. Just one. I grabbed my jacket and pad and went out the back door, holding it open for Henry to come too. The canal would be wonderful this morning, with a mist rising off the water. And all the while I jogged toward the jetty, I knew it was a mistake. But still I kept going.
When I got to the pier, I sat, hands clenched in my pocket against the cold, my legs dangling, watching the fisherman on the DanBar-J gear up to go out for blues. He knew me now, and waved. Last week he'd even dropped a flounder on the bench for me. I had panfried it with a little butter, and Josie had put two dusty pink candles on the table, almost like a party.
Henry had loved his share. He hadn't scratched at me once when I put his plate down in front of him on the radio. “Ah,” I had said, pleased with him. “You'd do anything for a handout.”
Now I watched the fingers of fog drift over the water while Henry sat nearby, washing one mangy leg. It was the kind of day I loved. I couldn't see the end of the pier, and no one could see me from there. I could hear the fisherman from the DanBar-J, though. “Want a job?” he called.
He wasn't thinking about school either.
A job? Why not? There'd be money for cat food, a couple of cans of ravioli. I hadn't had ravioli since the stucco house.
I nodded and found myself hosing down the deck of the DanBar-J. As I scrubbed at the dried-on pieces of fish with a wire brush, I spent the money in my mind.
He handed me three crumpled-up bills. I smoothed them out, and then as I gave him a half wave, he reached into his pocket and gave me another dollar.
I couldn't wait to get back to Josie. She'd pat her scarf around her neck and fuss with her hat. We'd sail up and down the aisles of DeMattia's Food Store, picking and choosing: ravioli, and a pink can of shredded tuna for Henry. Maybe some marmalade, too, to have with the English muffins we had left.
I had forgotten all about homework, and school, and even the mustard woman. Henry and I headed home as the fog lifted and the sun appeared behind the trees. It was going to be a beautiful day, a day for a picnic on the rock jetty.
I pulled open the back door and stopped. Above the newscaster's voice on the radio—“Nine-thirty and still snowing in upstate New York”—was the sound of voices in the living room.
Henry heard them too. He scampered back outside to sit on the bench, an irritable look on his skinny face.
I thought about scampering with him. I knew who it must be. But how could I leave Josie alone with her? Instead, I shrugged out of my jacket, put my pad on the table, and lifted my chin as I went toward the front of the house.
The mustard woman sat on the lilac co
uch, and Josie sat in the chair opposite. They both had cups of coffee in their hands.
Good move, Josie, I thought. Her coffee was great, dark and rich, as the advertisements went.
I nodded at the mustard woman and sank down in the third chair, facing the window, looking out as if something wonderful were going on right there in the front yard.
They talked about old movies and the wonderful colors in the living room; they talked about coffee waking them up, and all the time my heart was pounding. Without looking at the mustard woman's face, I knew she was straining at the conversation, that this wasn't what she wanted to say.
She was wearing sweats…. Did she ever wear anything else? I could see a round creamy spot on her chest. She'd spilled her coffee. What was the matter with that woman, anyway?
But Josie looked fine, Josie looked wonderful, with that slash of red across her mouth, a silky green dress that looked like the sea. I knew she was groping, though. She had no idea who the woman sitting across from her was.
At last the mustard woman put down her cup. “Hollis,” she said, “I know I'm keeping you from school.”
I waved my hand. No problem, lady.
She looked at Josie then. “I think, Mrs. Cahill, that we need to talk about another place for Hollis.”
Josie sat up straight. I could see her thin hands on the coffee cup trembling a little; her mouth, too. “Hollis is leaving?”
They both looked at me.
“I've found a family for her,” the mustard woman said. “A mother and father with a three-year-old boy and a dog.” She kept leaning forward, trying to make me look at her. “I think I remember you like dogs, Hollis.”
“Sharks,” I said, “and barracudas, not dogs.”
“A family would be nice,” Josie said.
Too late, I thought.
“But not today,” the mustard woman said. “It will be a few days. I'll want Hollis to meet them first. They're not so far from here. You and Mrs. Cahill will be able to visit sometimes, Hollis.”