Gingersnap (4 page)

My feet clattered up the stairs, the bedroom door banged shut behind me, and I slammed into the closet, sinking down in the middle of Celine’s clothes,
smelling the camphor balls she’d strewn around to protect against the moths.

The telegram.

Did they all begin the same?
We regret to inform you …

That meant Rob.

Would they regret that something had happened to him?

His ship:
a destroyer fast and sure, cutting through the waves
. But the Pacific Ocean was huge and dark. It was filled with sharks gliding under the surface, while overhead, fighter planes were diving, diving.…

While I was wearing a hat with a veil, was Rob in the mess hall? Still all right? Not guessing what was going to happen? And while I was studying the products of New York State in school, had the water covered the deck and flooded down the stairs toward him?

Or had there been an explosion? Had he heard the sound of it, that terrible roar?

My dear Rob, big and bulky, who loved to cook, who loved to eat.

Rob, my brother.

Rob, who was all I had.

Stuart was knocking. It hadn’t done any good for me to lock the door. Celine had a key. Of course she did. Sometimes she left it in the Ming vase. I remembered the sound of the metal dropping against the china.

No more.

No more Ming vase.

No more Rob?

They were in the house.

I pictured them stepping over the shards of the vase. “Jayna, where are you?” Celine called, her voice trembling.

I buried my head in a long silky gray dress with a scalloped hem. I couldn’t imagine that Celine had ever worn something like that.

She was coming up the stairs. Then, through the small crack of light, I saw her standing in the doorway. “Jayna?”

My mouth was pressed against that silky dress, the smell of camphor so strong I could feel it burning my nostrils and my throat.

Celine took a few steps across the room and opened the closet door. “You have to come out.” She was breathless. “Stuart is here from the telegraph office. He has a telegram. It’s for you.”

She had to know what it said, but I couldn’t open my mouth to tell her that.

“Don’t worry about the vase,” she said.

The vase?

“It was only almost genuine. It wasn’t important, after all.”

Celine being kind. It made it all worse somehow.

I stood up, rattling the hangers; the dress slid to the floor in a puddle of gray.

I went past her down the stairs to the hall, where Stuart was standing in the midst of broken china.

“I’m sorry, Jayna,” he said, and handed me the beige envelope.

I ripped it open. Yes, someone was regretting about Rob. He was missing, but they’d let me know further details as soon as they were available.

Just words, each one pasted on the telegram paper. Not even kind words.

Stuart ran his hand over his bald head; then he was gone.

Celine came down the stairs toward me, her arms out. She held me against her pillow body, both of us rocking back and forth.

Celine.

It was hard to believe.

I stepped back and shrugged into my jacket, which was on the stair post.

“Let’s have tea,” she said. “A nice cup of tea always helps.”

“I have to go home,” I said.

“But there’s no one there.”

No one.

I listened. Did the voice say, “He’s still alive?”

But it was only the sound of my own footsteps going down the street.

I
went back to the pond, to Theresa, who was swimming lazily with only her head and her dark eyes above the water.

What was I going to do?

How long would it take Celine to realize that she might have me there forever?

I’d have to live with her.

It was unthinkable.

Theresa lumbered up on the other side of the pond, a smear of mud across her beautiful golden brown shell.

I could picture what might have happened: A small, dark speck in the sky, a plane coming closer. I could
almost hear it diving, the noise of it high, whining, sailors looking up, firing. The plane hits the deck with a tremendous explosion. A ball of fire rises, spreads, sparks.…

“Stop,” the voice said from behind the willow tree. “That doesn’t do any good.”

“Do you think he’s alive?”

She sighed. “I don’t know.”

Did I see her shake her head?

I stood up and brushed dirt off my socks. Then I went up to the house. I wandered around downstairs: the kitchen where we’d had dinner, the living room with the big radio.

I started up the stairs.

“Yes,” said the voice. “You know where you’re going.”

I didn’t pay attention to her. I wandered in and out of my bedroom, stepping over a slipper, then headed down the hall to Rob’s room.

“The closet,” she said.

I closed my eyes. “There’s a box,” he’d said. “My baseball glove.”

I opened the closet door. Sneakers and a coat. A jacket.

“On the shelf,” she said.

I dragged a chair over and stood up, pushing aside his hats. A couple of books clunked down to the floor, just missing my foot.

I reached for the box, able to touch it with one finger, and edged it toward me, steadying it with my other hand. It came slowly and then teetered on the edge of the shelf. I grabbed it and slid off the chair.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said the voice.

I slid it open. A peacock feather lay across the top. Just under it was a picture of a man and a woman who had to be my father and mother. My mother wore a hat with a feather—the peacock feather, of course—and my father looked down at her, smiling with even white teeth under his mustache.

Rob stood next to them, a little boy. He looked so much the way he did now, except that his hair was longer then.

I held the picture to my face and cried for my parents, who were really strangers, and for Rob, who was so far away, who might not even be alive.

“Ah, no,” the voice said. “Don’t do that.”

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and went through the rest of the box. I patted the baseball glove, tried on a pair of woolen mittens that must have been Rob’s, and looked at the picture of a baby in lace. The baby was probably me, certainly not very pretty.

“She has a lot of curls,” the voice said, and I almost smiled. That was about the best you could say about that baby.

At the bottom of the box was a book. I pulled it out,
running my hands over the faded blue cover; it was soft under my fingers. I opened it, looking down at the handwritten recipes.

At first the words were large and loopy, but by the middle of the book the letters were smaller, firmer. I could picture the writer growing older. I couldn’t read a word. It was all in French.

Sometimes she sang French songs
.

My mother’s recipe book?

What had Rob said? A bakery? A grandmother?

So long ago, did it even matter?

But there was an address inside the cover—Carey Street, Brooklyn, New York—and a name—Elise Martin. I went through the pages. Somewhere in the middle was an old black-and-white photo. It showed a girl with braids wrapped around her head, not smiling, but squinting into the camera. I didn’t think it was my mother, but who was it?

I liked her face, her serious eyes staring out at me.

I held the photo to the light. She was standing in front of a bakery. I held the photo one way and then another. A striped awning shaded the shop window. A name was written above the scallops. I could only just make it out, but I couldn’t believe what I saw.

I went down to the kitchen, opening one drawer after another, searching for the magnifying glass. I finally put my hand on it, in with rolled-up balls of string and can openers.

I hurried upstairs again and took the picture to the windowsill. There it was, the name stretched out across the awning:
GINGERSNAP
.

“A coincidence,” I said aloud.

“No,” the voice said. “I don’t think so.”

I sat back on my heels. The time was going. Celine would be waiting.

Gingersnap!

“You’re going to Brooklyn,” the voice said. “We’ll find that bakery, and a family for you.”

“It may not even be there anymore,” I said.

“Yes, it is.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do that.”

“I’ll be with you.”

I kept shaking my head, but I didn’t want to go up the hill to Celine’s. I wanted to …

“Go to Brooklyn,” the voice said. “I think it’s in Mexico, or Canada. People wear leis.”

What nonsense
, Celine would have said. “It’s only a few hours away.”

Did I see her smile? Was she teasing me? “Well, there we are,” she said. “Ready to go.”

I went back to Celine’s. Of course, I wasn’t ready to go. I wasn’t ready to do anything. I let myself in the door and heard Celine talking on the phone.

“I can’t come,” she was saying. “I have to be here for Jayna. It sounds like a wonderful trip.…” Her voice trailed off. “Someday I’ll have my life back.”

Yes. That was what I wanted, too. I remembered Rob’s hands on my shoulders.
Jayna the strong; Jayna the brave
. And somehow, as impossible as it seemed, I was going to Brooklyn. Maybe I’d find the bakery with my name. I’d find the woman with her hair in braids.

“Yes,” the voice said.

T
he next day I went back to our house, to plan, to think, to decide. Could I really do this?

I had money. Rob had left me piles of it to get through until he got home. So that was all right. But skipping school? That was a little scary, but so was all of it.

I went into my closet and pulled out a few things. I packed them into my old suitcase.

“Put the blue book in your pocket,” the voice said behind me.

“There’s room in my suitcase.”

“You’re going to lose that suitcase.”

“I am not.” I was angry now, angry at everything. I put the book in a nest of socks in the case and heard the voice sigh.

“You do a lot of sighing,” I said.

“That’s what ghosts are supposed to do. I’ve been practicing.”

I paid no attention; I stood there, turning slowly. What else did I need?

“Theresa,” the voice said.

Theresa! That was impossible.

I looked over my shoulder to glimpse a pointed nose, a strand of hair across an apple-round cheek, teeth crowded together, almost like mine.

Then nothing was there.

I crossed my hands over my shoulders, chilled. I glanced out the window. How could I leave Theresa to dry up in that swampy pond?

“You can’t,” she said.

I went back down the hall to the spare room. I remembered seeing a carrying case, probably for a cat. But it would have to do.

I went back to Celine’s house for one more night.

Where was Rob?

Was he just gone?

Celine met me at the door. “Are you all right?” she
asked. Maybe she was still thinking about her phone call and wanting her life back.

I nodded. Still she looked worried.

“I’ll make soup,” I said.