Home Free (10 page)

Cassandra hugged me tighter.

“I'm sorry I was so stupid about you being an orphan. It isn't fun. It isn't like in books. Kathy was right about me.” I did the finger swirly thing at my head. “I am nuts. And now I know. I'm sorry.”

“Please don't be sorry, Leanna. It's okay.”

My mom called me to come in. Cassandra pushed her hair back and looked at me.

“I wish I could cry for my parents like that,” she said.

It was the next week that Mrs. Fergus said they were going to the family cottage for a week and would it be okay if they took me along. At first my mother said no, it wasn't proper right after my father had died for me to go traipsing about, but Mrs. Fergus said she thought it might give my mom a break. She could get a couple of things done without having to worry about me.

My mom said I could go, but she sniffed a lot when she said it.

“Probably just wants you around to keep Cassie out of her hair.”
Sniff
. I didn't mind that my mother was sniffing again. It seemed like she was getting back to normal.

So I just had to get through the next couple of days.
And here are the things I did.

First, I went and called on Kathy. It was just like with Paula. I didn't want to be mad at her anymore. So I just girded my loins (that means I gathered up all my courage), and I knocked on her door. But nobody came. Then the next-door neighbor saw me and said they'd gone away.

“Didn't you know, Lee?” she said. (How did she know my name?) Kathy's switching schools this year. She's going to live with her grandma.”

Well!

The next thing I did was even harder. I went to Sid's Variety Store. If Anne Shirley could apologize to Mrs. Rachel Lynde, then I could apologize to Sid. But he wasn't there. An old lady was working at the counter.

“Excuse me, but is Sid here?” I asked.

“Nope. Gone away.”

Has everybody just gone away
? I wondered. Then I felt tremendous relief and turned to go. But I knew I couldn't get out of my penance (the suffering to which a person subjects herself – on purpose!) that easy. So I said, “When will he be back?”

Then the old lady looked at me in a strange way and asked, “Why? What's so important?”

“Nothing. I mean … nothing. I just wanted to talk to him.”

The old lady said, “My son's gone to live with his old man for awhile. Now, can I sell you something or are you just going to keep wasting my time?”

I had two cents so I bought two black balls.

And then when I was paying I blurted it out. “One day when I was really little … I mean a real kid last … oh … a long time ago … I tried to … I pretended I … I said six pop bottles were mine and they weren't.”

“You saying you got twelve extra cents out of us?”

“No! I tried to, but Sid knew and wouldn't let me. So I wanted to tell Sid I was sorry. That's all.”

The old lady laughed. “D'you know how many kids steal from us all the time?”

Then – suddenly – she stared at me. “Sid ever show you any magazines?”

“No!” I fairly shouted.

The old lady looked me up and down. “Didn't figure he would, but you never know.” Then she picked up a chocolate bar and gave it to me. “Thanks for coming in. Now beat it.”

I took the chocolate bar and saw it was a Sweet Marie, my favorite. I said thanks and ran out the door.

I didn't want to go home because if my mother saw me, I didn't want to tell her how I got the chocolate bar. I walked to the park. A bunch of little kids were there at the wading
pool so I went off under the trees where it was quiet and shady, and David was sitting there reading.

My heart gave a quick queer little beat. (That's what Anne Shirley said when Gilbert Blythe rescued her from the Lake of Shining Waters.) I wanted to back up and not let him see me, but he did and he said, “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said back. “What are you doing?” I asked, which was really dumb of me because I could see he was reading a book.

He held up the book. “I bet you haven't read this one yet,” he said.

I went closer to look. The book was
Cue for Treason
. I shook my head.

“You'll like it. You can have it when I'm done. And you can take it back to the bookmobile.”

So I girded up my loins again, and I sat down beside him. “Why is it good?” I asked.

“It's about this boy and this girl and they live in the time of Queen Elizabeth the first and they work in a traveling theater company. It's really exciting.”

You see? This is why I love David! When we get married, we can talk about books all the time.

“I'm sorry about your dad,” he said.

I was a little surprised he knew. “Thank you,” I said.

“I heard you might move.”

“Who told you that?”

“My mom heard it from someone. Do you? Have to move?”

“Maybe. I think so. But not far away. My mom says I can still go to Green Meadows.”

David looked at his shoes. Then he said, “I was hoping you wouldn't have to move away. Because … well, there's no one else to talk to about books.”

I was shocked! And the words tumbled out. “Oh! Oh, I know! I love you … ” I heard the words I had said and was mortified! “I mean … what I meant was … I love books and you … you're good at it.”

David smiled at me.

And I smiled back.

Bold as brass.

Then he said he had to go home, and I said I did, too, and he said he'd bring the book over when he was done but I said I was going to Cassandra Jovanovich's cottage and then he said – now I knew he loved me! – he said, “Here. Take the book with you. I'll finish it when you get back.”

So I took the book and I suddenly had a brainstorm and I gave him my chocolate bar.

On Saturday morning we left for the Fergus cottage.

It was a long drive and Cassandra and I sat in the back of the car with suitcases and bags of food and pillows. We tried to pretend Mr. Fergus was our chauffeur and Mrs. Fergus our ladies' maid, but they didn't want to play along and told us to be quiet. And they wouldn't put CHUM on the radio either, so we listened to boring old stuff all the way until the radio went static. Then we just looked out the window and watched for cows and horses.

When we were almost there, I saw a sign on the road that read “You are entering the Near North.” It gave me a thrill, and I wondered about it for the rest of the way. It was like we were crossing over into a new world, but not one with a border you could see. It was just a … a mood.

And then we were there. I had never been to a cottage before. Neither had Cassandra. I had seen pictures in magazines, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. I was wrong. They don't take pictures of cottages that look like the Fergus cottage, let me tell you! It had a name, “Bit O' Heaven,” but it sure didn't look like any kind of heaven our minister talks about. It was made all hodgepodge of different kinds of things and it had a screen door that never shut. There was a pump for water in the kitchen sink and a big bump in the living room linoleum where the cottage was sitting on top of a rock. The room I shared with Cassandra was built right up against the hillside. You could put your hand outside the window one inch and touch rock. All in all, I'd have to say the cottage was dank. That's a new word I learned. It means “disagreeably damp.” Except that Cassandra and I didn't care. She'd never been to a cottage before, either. We kept pinching ourselves to prove we were really at a cottage, dank or not.

This cottage had been in the Fergus family for years and lots of different relatives used it at different times in the summer. The last relatives there left some food out, so lots of mice and ants were using the cottage, too. Mr. Fergus said some of the bad words my father used to say and so Mrs. Fergus told Cassandra and me to go out and play. Before we got to the cottage, she said we would have to
help get settled, but when Mr. Fergus started saying bad words, she changed her mind.

We climbed down the stairs and ran down the path to the water. We kicked off our shoes and waded along the shore, looking for stones and maybe shells. A boat went by and someone waved. We didn't even know him, but we waved anyway and it was fun and we got wet from the splash the boat made. We ran up to get on our bathing suits and we stayed in the water all afternoon until our fingers looked like prunes.

Later, we walked all around the cottage property and found the diving rock around the other side. Mr. Fergus said he'd teach us how to dive, but we could only go there if he was with us. The water was that deep.

That night, Mrs. Fergus made macaroni and cheese and let Cassandra and me eat it outside on the dock. Then Mr. Fergus made a fire and we had marshmallows and stayed up late. And when we finally went in, I didn't care that our bed was lumpy and had a pee stain and that we both rolled to the middle. I lay there listening to the mosquitoes buzzing and the loon calling and was very happy my mother had let me come.

And when I lay there in the dark, I thought about my father. And it was funny, because I knew my father was close by. Not scary close by like a ghost, but somewhere near
me. Maybe inside me. This isn't coming out right. What I mean is, I was afraid when I moved to our apartment my father wouldn't belong there. I'd start to forget about him. But here I was, way up north at the Fergus cottage and my father had never been here. He didn't belong here. But I felt like my father was as close to me as could be. I don't know why. Maybe I can ask Mrs. McMillan.

But without having to ask anybody, I was very sure that my father could see the moon that I could see and hear the loon that I could hear.

Every day at the cottage was almost the same. We ate and swam and went fishing and learned how to dive off the diving rock. It was called the diving rock because the water was deep there and you wouldn't get hurt diving down. Cassandra and I tried to touch the bottom, but we never did. I'd stretch out my toes, but just when I thought maybe,
maybe
I'd touch, the water would push me back up. And every day, Mrs. Fergus gave us some chores to do. We had to pump water and heat it up and do the dishes and sweep the floor.

One day when it was raining, I wanted to start reading
Cue for Treason
. I couldn't believe I hadn't read one bit of one book yet, but Mrs. Fergus told us to clean up our
bedroom. We got the broom and went way under our bed. I don't think anyone had cleaned under there for a long time. We pulled out piles and piles of dust, candy wrappers, a baby bottle, and a pair of someone's dirty underpants that were dirty both sides like they didn't have a change and had to wear them inside out.

We showed them to Mrs. Fergus and Mr. Fergus said, “Those are quite the racing stripes!”

Then Mrs. Fergus hit him and said, “Ray! Not in front of the you-know-who!” (By which she meant Cassandra and me.) Then Mr. Fergus pinched his nose and took the underpants from us and held them at arm's length and marched outside.

Cassandra and I finally figured out what racing stripes were and after we got over the ewie-ness of it, we laughed like a couple of hyenas.

That's what Mrs. Fergus said. “Really, girls. You sound like a couple of hyenas. Try to behave like young ladies!”

“You sound just like my mother,” I told Mrs. Fergus.

Mrs. Fergus nodded. “Well, of course, Lee. In our day, we knew what was what.”

“See? My mother says that all the time! What does
we knew what was what
mean?” I asked. “And what is
what
? I mean,
what
is what?” I just couldn't get my question to come out right.

“That's enough, Lee,” said Mrs. Fergus.

We just laughed even more and went back to our room. We didn't want to find anything else after the underpants, I can tell you, but we did. On our next sweep, we pulled out a book. It was yellowed and the cover was crumpled and lots of page corners were folded down. Cassandra Jovanovich straightened out the cover and showed it to me.

It was what my mother calls dirty. And I don't mean from dust under the bed. It showed a lady with a dress that showed a lot of her chest and a man was touching her there and she was smiling. I was pretty sure my mother would find the strength to wallop my beee-hind if she could see me now.

And then, I suddenly thought of Kathy.

Cassandra and I looked at each other. And then Cassandra put a chair in front of our door and wiped the dust off of the book. I sat on the bed and Cassandra sat in the chair and read in a loud whisper.

The people said lots of stupid things to each other about love. But then Cassandra read a page where the corner was folded down. The man and lady were naked in a swimming pool and he kept talking about her breasts. Big buttery breasts, he said, and they bobbed up on top of the water. Then Mrs. Fergus knocked on our door and wanted to know what we were whispering about. Cassandra shoved
the book under the mattress and said we were reading. It was the truth, but it was a lie, too.

By then the rain had stopped and we put on our bathing suits. Mrs. Fergus came down with us, but then said she was too hot to stay out and went up to lie down. But soon she came marching back waving something in the air. It was our book. She said that Mr. Fergus was sleeping in their bed so she went to lie down on our bed and found this. And when she said THIS, it was in capital letters, and she waved the book in the air.

“Well?” she demanded.

I was going to ask how she found it because it was shoved way under the mattress and it didn't even make a bump and I didn't think Mrs. Fergus was like the princess and the pea and could feel things under the mattress to prove she was fancy. So I think she was snooping on purpose. But before I could say anything, Cassandra said, “What is it?”