“I have some news for you,” he said. “I had a letter yesterday from your uncle Howard. Caroline is coming to spend the summer with us. She’ll be here the end of the month.” It was like all Grandpa’s announcements: You accepted it. If he said the end of the world was coming, you’d just stop brushing your teeth and doing your homework. If he said it was going to happen, you knew it would.
“Isn’t that wonderful news,” Grandma said. Half to herself she added, “I’ll never know how Howard made up his mind to let her come.”
Uncle Howard is Carrie’s dad. Carrie’s mom, my aunt Julia, was my mom’s sister. Aunt Julia died when Carrie was three years old. Carrie’s dad worked for the State Department, and Carrie lived in France with him. In the spring of 1940 Uncle Howard and Carrie had sailed from England to New York on the Queen Elizabeth. For the last year Uncle Howard had been working in Washington. I had never met Carrie. For some reason our family didn’t get along with her father. It had to do with his taking my aunt Julia to France to live when she wasn’t well. There was something else. I once heard Grandpa say, “That man spent more on horses than he did on his wife.”
Now Grandpa was telling us, “The State Department is sending Howard to England for a couple of months. It’s much too dangerous to take Caroline there. Bombs are falling all over England. British children are being sent over here to get them out of harm’s way. Howard knows sending Caroline to us is the sensible thing to do.” Grandpa turned to me. “Caroline is fifteen, just a year older than you, Mirabelle.”
I haven’t mentioned my name before because with a name like that, who would? It’s way too fancy for this family and it embarrasses everyone, especially Grandpa, who thinks Mom must have lost her mind. What’s worse, it’s the name of a plum. “The sweetest and most delicious plum of all,” Grandma once said, trying to make me feel better about my name.
The way Grandpa says Mirabelle sounds like he’s trying to punish Mom for her foolishness. Dad insisted on naming my sisters and brother himself. The best that people can do with my name is call me Belle, which I hate. In first grade the boys used to chant, “Here comes ding-dong.”
Grandpa said, “I expect you to take responsibility for your cousin, Mirabelle, and show her how things work here on the island. I understand she’s a smart little thing….” Grandpa sort of stared off into the distance like he does when he’s saying something that means a whole lot more than you first thought it did.
I was thrilled by the news. I believed it would be great to have a cousin for a friend all summer. I saw myself showing her around the island, taking her to all my favorite places. I had a million questions for her. I had never been anywhere interesting, and I longed to hear what it was like to actually live in France. I had a good time with my brother and sisters, but I was the oldest. I was always in charge. Grandpa always reminded me that I had to set an example. Someone older could share some of the responsibility. Carrie could be the example for a change.
“I have one more thing to say.” Grandpa looked around the porch as if a hungry crocodile might be slithering around. “Caroline will fit into our life on the island. There will be no exceptions made for any—” Here Grandpa paused. “Any eccentricities.”
Emily and I exchanged an excited look. Eccentricities! In our ordinary world eccentricities had a delicious sound.
Two
We slipped into our routine as easily as you put on a comfortable old shirt. Dinner around the dining-room table began with Grandpa saying grace. He was a large man, and seeing his massive shoulders and silver hair, you felt God Himself was giving the blessing. I was starved and wanted to grab for the dish of mashed potatoes, with its glob of melting butter, and the spareribs with meat so tender it was falling off the bones, but grabbing wasn’t allowed and I had to wait my turn. We all groaned when Grandma carried in the strawberry shortcake almost hidden under a volcano of whipped cream, but we finished every bite.
We were all so full of sun and food, it was hard to stay awake for our recorder session. Each evening Grandma sat down at the piano, Grandpa took up the violin, and the four of us got out our recorders, Nancy with her usual hesitation, for her mind wandered when she played and her fingers often ended up covering the wrong holes. None of us was especially musical, but recorders were simple. We hadn’t played since we had left the island last fall, so there were a lot of mistakes, but no one cared—we just laughed and started over. It was magical that the four of us, each one so different, could come together to make the same music. If there had been quarrels during the day, they were all forgotten. When you play music together, you’re all going in the same direction. By the end of our half-hour practice we were always as close as a basket of kittens.
After dinner I wandered down to the dock, hoping that Ned would come by with his sailboat to welcome me back to the island. I had known Ned all my life. Even in the middle of winter and a couple of hundred miles away from him, I could close my eyes and picture him just as clearly as if he were beside me. He had dark hair, dark-brown eyes, and high cheekbones. Mrs. Norkin said her dad was a Chippewa Indian and Ned got his looks from him. With Mr. Norkin’s help Ned had built a small dinghy that took a sail. Last summer Ned and I had become good friends, and after dinner Ned would sail his dinghy over to the island and take me out. It was a whole different feeling than a motorboat. It was the difference between being a turtle and being a bird.
Ned didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so he was fascinated with our family and the way we all got along. He treated me like his kid sister, protective and bossy all at once. Toward the end of last summer there had been times when Ned forgot about my being like a kid sister and confided his frustration in living in a small town where there would be few jobs when he graduated from high school. His parents would never be able to afford to send him away to college. I had things to tell him as well. Things I couldn’t tell anyone else: how I worried that much as I loved him, Grandpa would never let us grow up and do what we wanted.
I sat on the end of the dock waiting for Ned, my bare feet dabbling in water still cold from the winter snows. Gulls landed and took off from Gull Rock. There was a haze like a veil over the sun. A school of minnows was curious about my toes. In the distance I saw a sail and was sure it was Ned. Minutes later I was climbing aboard his dinghy.
I couldn’t wait to let Ned know about Carrie’s coming to the island. I told him, “She’s probably super-sophisticated because she’s been all over Europe.”
Ned shrugged. “Your cousin sounds like she’s going to be bored to death on the island.”
I just stared at Ned. It had never occurred to me that Carrie or anyone could be bored on the island. There was never enough time for swimming and walking, reading and exploring, or just sitting on the beach looking out at the water and thinking about life.
“Anyhow,” Ned said, “I’ve got my own news. Dad probably told you I’m joining the Navy. I’ll be eighteen next May. As soon as school is out, I’m signing up. Maybe I don’t know much about destroyers and airplane carriers, but I know plenty about navigation and I can take an engine apart and put it back together.”
I didn’t want to think about the island without Ned being there. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
“No chance.” He must have seen my look of disappointment, because he said, “I’ll tell you what—I’ll teach you to sail this summer, and when I take off, I’ll leave you the dinghy. We’ll start right now. You take over the tiller. Just remember it’s not like the steering wheel on your granddad’s runabout. You have to push the tiller in the opposite direction from where you want to go.”
There was no more talk about Carrie or the Navy, just lessons about sailing on the wind, off the wind, and before the wind. It seemed every time I shifted the tiller, Ned was shouting, “No, no, the other way, Belle!” But by the time the sun had slipped into the water and the last gull had landed on Gull Rock, the tiller and I were friends.
One day hurried after another. T
ime lagged until I looked at the calendar and saw with alarm how many summer days had been used up, just thrown away as if summer were endless. The soles of our feet had toughened, and you could see where we were tan and where our bathing suits kept us white. I knew how to hoist a sail and how to take in a reef. The jack-in-the-pulpits were blooming in the woods. The gulls were making nests, and Tommy had seen the summer’s first yellow warbler.
The day Carrie arrived started out like every other, with an early swim in the channel. There was no lolling in bed in the morning, being warm and snug. Grandpa insisted a dip into cold water was good for us. “Wash away the cobwebs,” he said. “Get you ready for the day.” We tugged on bathing suits still damp from the day before and ran down the path to the lake, hardly noticing the prick of the pine needles and the sharpness of the stones under our feet. The trees and sky had a fresh-laundered look. Screaming and laughing, we jumped into and out of the freezing morning water. In seconds, covered with goose bumps, teeth still chattering, we were in our rooms pulling on shorts and shirts ready to plunge into the day with as much excitement as we had plunged into the channel.
Five minutes later, water from our wet hair dripping down our backs, we were sitting on the screen porch having our usual enormous breakfast of eggs, bacon, pancakes, and hot cocoa. Grandpa, who had a lot of self-control and never filled his plate, finished first. He took a last swallow of his coffee and said, “I want to have a serious talk with you children. Your cousin Caroline should be here in time for supper.” He announced it as if it were brand-new news to us, when we had been talking of nothing else for days.
“Naturally, traveling around most of her life, and with no mother, Caroline has been a little too much on her own, but I’m sure things will work out. Once she’s here, we’ll soon have her feeling like one of us.” I could see Grandpa meant to take her in hand. Carrie would be one more female on the island. I thought Grandpa was getting to be like a rooster in a hen yard.
Grandma said, “I’m sure Carrie won’t be any trouble, Everett.”
Grandpa gave Grandma the look he gave people who decided to take up his time by saying something that needn’t have been said.
I was thrilled to have Carrie. Our lives were so ordinary, I couldn’t wait to hear the stories I was sure she could tell us. Though I envied her exotic life, I felt sorry for her. She had no mother, and now her father was off to a country where bombs were dropping out of the sky.
I had a bedroom all to myself that Carrie would share with me. I loved the room. All winter long I kept it in the back of my mind, something to bring out when I needed cheering up, like a piece of candy you hoard against a special hunger. The walls of the room were pale yellow. There were two white metal beds and a chest of drawers with several coats of white paint and a bottom drawer that always stuck. There was a big old white wicker chair with faded blue and yellow cushions. My window looked out on the channel, and the first thing I saw in the morning was the reflection on the ceiling of sunlight dancing on the water.
I was giving up my privacy, which was hard to get in our family, but I was excited at the idea of having my cousin all to myself. To make her feel welcome, I had gathered trillium into a bouquet for our dresser. I had cleared out half the closet, which wasn’t hard because I had only one dress, some shorts and shirts, and a few one-piece playsuits that I hated so much I hid them behind the rest of my clothes. I had given Carrie my bed, which was next to the window, so she could look out at the channel. On her side of the little table that stood between our beds I had placed my favorite books: Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, which I loved because it was so sad, and Jane Eyre. I had practically memorized the scene where Mr. Rochester’s wife escapes from the attic and creeps into Jane’s room with a knife. I couldn’t wait for Carrie to read it so we could talk about it.
I think Grandpa was afraid we would waste time by sitting around chattering about our cousin, so he had planned the whole day. There was an hour given over to dragging rocks to help rebuild the cribs that held up the dock. The cribs were square log boxes filled with stones. We had repaired them every year for as long as I could remember. The ground was mostly rocks, so stones were easy to come by.
We had a kind of sled Grandpa had made. We loaded it with the rocks and pulled them to the dock. Every winter the waves and ice wore away the cribs that supported the dock. Every summer we built them up again. It was as if Grandpa were fighting a war with the channel and we were his soldiers. He knew the channel was stronger than he was, but he didn’t mean to give in.
Tommy took the job seriously; he took everything seriously. He was skinny, with twiggy arms and legs and enormous brown eyes. He struggled with one mammoth rock after another, calling out each time, “Hey, Grandpa, look at how I can pick this one up.” The weight of the rock would nearly buckle him, but you didn’t dare offer to help. He was stubborn and independent, which I guess you have to be if you have two older sisters. He took the same interest in the stone cribs that Grandpa did. He would stand on the dock, checking out the way the wake broke against the cribs, an exact imitation of Grandpa. Tommy knew in which crib each one of his rocks would fit. If Grandpa placed them somewhere else, Tommy sneaked back later and put them where he wanted them. Nothing was ever said, but between Grandpa’s and Tommy’s stubbornness those rocks sometimes got moved back and forth a dozen times.
When we were finished with the cribs, Grandpa set Emily to weeding the garden and I offered to help. Emily and I were careful to keep Tommy and Nancy out of our way. Tommy pulled up everything he could get his hands on, and Nancy pleaded for the life of every weed. Anyhow Emily and I were eager to discuss Carrie.
“What do you think Grandpa meant by Carrie being ‘a little too much on her own’?” Emily asked.
“Carrie lived in France for a lot of years. Maybe the French do things differently.” I had had two years of French and I could read it pretty well, but it killed me to have to say it out loud. I hated being called on, because our teacher would throw up her hands in despair and show me how to hold my mouth in a weird way so that the French words would come out like they were supposed to.
“What things?” Emily replanted a marigold that had wandered out of its straight line. She kept everything in straight rows, the plants so many inches apart and the rows so many inches apart like a marching army of flowers.
I pulled up a thistle and yelped when it pricked me. “I don’t know.” I longed to hear about France. I had read A Tale of Two Cities and Les Misérables. Carrie must have walked past the Bastille and the square where Sidney Carton was guillotined. She would have seen Notre Dame Cathedral, where Quasimodo had lived.
Emily interrupted my daydreams. “Carrie went to school in Paris. Will she speak English?”
“She’s been in Washington since 1940, just over two years.”
Emily got rid of an oak seedling, which Nancy, who had wandered back, then picked up and replanted. While Nancy was busy with her seedling, Emily leaned closer to me and said in a half whisper, “I overheard Grandpa tell Grandma that Carrie’s father is ‘a stubborn, irresponsible ass.’ He said Uncle Howard shouldn’t have taken our aunt Julia to France when she was sick, and I think he lost some of Aunt Julia’s money betting on horses.”
“Gambling!” I was shocked. Grandpa wouldn’t even let us play cards for pennies. Grandpa was striding toward us, frowning because we were talking and not working. “Lunch is ready,” he announced, “and then off to your books.” After lunch we weren’t exactly on our own, but as long as we read for an hour, we could read what we wanted to and where we wanted to.
I made my way to the storm side of the island. There was a mossy place under some cedars where I was nearly invisible. I couldn’t hear anything except the waves slapping against the rocks and, overhead, the gulls complaining to one another. It was peaceful and lonely all at once, the perfect place to read David Copperfield. I imagined the island was England and the lake was the sea. I was at the part of the book where Ham dr
owns, and I felt awful not only because it was so sad, but because it scared me that the sea he loved could be so unfriendly. I looked out at the lake and imagined it all happening right before my eyes. With no one around, I could cry all I wanted.
After the hour Grandpa set aside for our reading, we could do what we wanted. If the weather was warm, we went swimming. Sometimes we fished or explored the island for shells or fossils, or we tracked a deer or a raccoon. We had our own games, made up over the years: We were pirates hunting treasure on the island, or Robinson Crusoe abandoned on a desert island, or explorers discovering an island with strange monsters hiding behind each tree. We never ran out of ideas. We were never bored.
I suppose it sounds odd that at fourteen I was perfectly content to be with my younger brother and sisters. That wasn’t true back in the city, where I had friends my own age, but on the island it was different. On the island we all seemed to be the same age, as if the island were magic and we were caught up in an enchanted world where nothing ever changed.
Although she was only eight, Nancy usually organized us. It had been Nancy’s idea to build a tree house and Nancy’s idea to build a raft. That morning she had seen a porcupine.
“Let’s find it. Maybe it’s shed some quills.” The summer before, we had seen Indian quill boxes for sale in Birch Bay, and we wanted to make our own. Reluctantly Nancy shut Polo, who followed her everywhere, on the porch. “So the porcupine won’t give him quills,” she said.
We didn’t see the porcupine, but Nancy discovered a patch of wild strawberries and Emily found bits of lavender and green glass worn smooth by tumbling in the lake. She held them in her hands, smiling as if they were jewels. Tommy collected gull feathers for an Indian headdress. He had a collection of arrowheads and had seen The Last of the Mohicans with Randolph Scott about ten times. Next to being able to fly he would have liked to be an Indian. I found an oak tree with low branches making it easy to climb, and we all scrambled up, stretching ourselves out on the branches pretending we were a pride of lazy lions with stomachs full of antelope, except for Nancy, who didn’t like the idea of killing an antelope. “My lion found a box of cookies some camper left behind,” she said.