Love, Stargirl (23 page)

It was wonderful, the telling, the going back. When I returned to the present, Tom was on Arnold’s shoulder and we were on the other side of town. I climbed on my bike. I coasted beside him for a minute.

“Arnold?” I said. He didn’t respond. “I think the answer is yes. Yes, I was looking for you. I’m glad I found you.”

Arnold gave no sign of having heard me. I stayed behind as he shuffled on out of town. Tiny puffs of frosty air came from Tom’s nose.

December 6

The earth at Calendar Hill is really hard now and cold. I had to punch through with a screwdriver to plant today’s marker. Only two more markers to go. Two more Thursdays. Two more chances to send my question to you.

Sudden thought:
What if it’s cloudy on Solstice and there’s no sun? What if it snows? What if the snow is so deep it covers the paddles?

“Sun schmun,” said my mother.

“Snow schmow,” said my dad.
“Qué será, será.”

“Spanish?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Means don’t sweat the small stuff.”

Alvina and Dootsie are into phase 2 of their job: attaching the self-stick bar pins to the backs of the sunburst buttons. Dootsie keeps missing the centers of the buttons. Alvina keeps telling Dootsie she’s fired, but Dootsie knows I’m the real boss, so she just sticks out her tongue at Alvina and goes on making a mess.

Days till Solstice: 15

December 10

The town is in a tizzy. Or at least you’d think so if all you did was read the
Morning Lenape.

Here’s what happened:

Every Christmas season Grace Lutheran Church erects a nativity scene on the lawn out front. The figures are life-size, the barn plenty big enough for Joseph, Mary, and the manger and cows and sheep. The straw is real. You can smell it. From the street you can’t see the doll that represents Jesus, but you can see the sky-blue blanket falling over the sides of the manger. With the spotlights, even on the coldest nights the scene seems warm and cozy. Cars going past slow down. Some stop.

Last Friday the church secretary discovered that the blanket in the manger was gone. The baby Jesus doll was naked on the bed of straw.

CRECHE VANDALIZED;
DOLL LEFT IN COLD

read the headline in the
Morning Lenape.

Today’s paper did a “From the Sidewalk” segment, where passersby are asked about a burning local issue of the day.

One person said, “It’s an outrage. Isn’t anything sacred anymore?” Another said, “When they find out who did it, they should put him in jail and throw away the key.” And another: “This is a black eye for the whole town.” And another: “Hey, it’s not really Jesus. It’s a
plastic doll.
Hello? Get a life.”

I’m pretty sure I know who did it. But I can’t figure out why.

Meanwhile, the manger has a new blue blanket.

DTS: 11

December 11

The long-range weather forecast says it’s going to snow on December 21—Solstice. Indians in the Old West did rain dances. I called Dootsie and Alvina over and we did a no-snow dance. Dootsie went wild. At first Alvina said it was “stupid,” but five minutes after Dootsie and I stopped, she was still going.

My father keeps trying to calm my weather anxiety. He said even if it’s too cloudy to see, the sun will still rise, it will still be there.

“But that’s the whole point,” I said. “
Seeing
it.”

“Is it?” he said.

DTS: 10

December 12

The town tizzy has gone the way of all tizzies: it fizzled. But I still think about it. I still wonder why.

DTS: 9

December 13

I planted the sunrise marker at the calendar this morning. One more marker to go. One more chance to send you the question.

Later I saw Perry walking downtown. Nothing unusual about that, just another one of his “sick days,” except…
he was pushing a baby carriage!
I nearly crashed my bike into a curb.

We stared at each other. He looked perfectly normal, like this happened every day. He also looked different—new, older. My first thought was:
He’s a father!

Then:
Which Honeybee is the mother?

Then:
So why was he putting the moves on me?

At long last he laughed. “You should see your face.”

I mumbled out something I don’t even recall.

“Well,” he said, turning the carriage so I could see the face of the sleeping baby, “meet Clarissa. My sister.” He pulled a doll-size arm out from under the blanket—
the sky-blue blanket—
and waved a tiny hand at me and said in a peepy voice, “Hi, Stargirl.”

Tears filled my eyes. I waved back. “Hi, Clarissa.” I hope I smiled. Slowly my wits were returning. “How old?”

The answer came at once, without calculation. “Twenty-two days, seven hours.”

I reached out. I stroked the tiny fingers. “You never said.”

He just shrugged. He returned her hand to the blanket. Passersby were slowing down, peering into the carriage, smiling. A few glanced at Perry, at me.

“Perry—” I said, just to fill the awkward silence, when suddenly something clicked into place. Followed by more somethings clicking into place. Baby blanket…pregnant lady…Perry in Margie’s with…

“Perry—” I stammered. “Neva?…From Margie’s?…Oh my God…is she…your
mother
?”

He smiled. He pistol-pointed at me. “Bingo.”

I must have stared like a moron for an hour. A thousand questions clamored, but in the end all I said was, “Nice blanket.”

He looked at it, gave an impish grin, knowing I knew. “Yeah.”

“Got to have a nice warm blanket for a new baby sister to keep her warm on cold winter days, right?”

He walked off, called back, “You said it.”

It took Margie a full minute to finish laughing.
“Jail?”
she repeated.
“Boot camp? Criminal?”
And she sat on a counter stool and laughed some more. “Who told you
that
?”

I pushed an answer past my stupidity and embarrassment: “Alvina.”

“Well,” she said, “you should have asked me. He was off with an aunt in Scranton. Making money to help his mother. Had himself three jobs.” She wagged her head. “Boot camp.”

For the next hour Margie filled me in on the Life of Perry Delloplane:

He came back from Scranton because his mother—Neva—missed him too much.

His mother suffers from depression. Hence the mood swings. She takes medicine for it.

His mother has an incurable weakness for his father, whose name is Roy.

Roy has an incurable weakness for gambling. Roy gambled away all their money at the casinos in Atlantic City. Then he got loans from sharks that he couldn’t pay back, and the sharks came after him for their money and he took off for good. This was when Perry was five.

Except Roy doesn’t always stay away. Every now and then, when he feels like it, he comes knocking. And much to Perry’s displeasure, Neva always lets him in.

Roy is baby Clarissa’s father.

Not Ike. Ike lets them stay behind his repair shop for free. He gets to be Neva’s boyfriend when Roy isn’t around.

Perry hates Roy. When Roy stays overnight, Perry sleeps on the roof. Not because it’s too hot in the house.

And Margie told me there’s something even Perry doesn’t know: he thinks he’s stealing, but in many cases he’s the only one who thinks so. Some of the merchants downtown are aware of Perry’s situation—“thanks to my big mouth,” says Margie with a laugh—and they make a point of looking the other way when they see him reaching for a lemon, a notebook, a bar of soap.

Like me, Margie knew who had taken the blue blanket as soon as she heard about it.

DTS: 8

December 15

My poor fingers. I spent all of yesterday handwriting the invitations. The guest list includes just about everyone I’ve mentioned in this endless letter. If they all come, the tent won’t hold them. But that will never happen. Why did I ever make so many buttons?

Here’s what the invitation says:

Come To A Celebration

of

WINTER SOLSTICE!

Rte. 113 and Rapps Dam Road

December 21

Before
Sunrise!!!

I’ve decided not to call it Solstar, as Perry suggested on the roof that night. Who am I to change its name?

DTS: 6

December 17

I spent most of the last two days delivering invitations. Alvina and Dootsie helped. My father too, on his milk route.

When I handed Charlie his invitation at the cemetery, he read it and handed it back to me and said, “I gotta be here.” I stuffed the paper into his pocket. I leaned down from my bike and kissed him on the cheek. I reached into his pocket and got the hearing aid and inserted it and whispered into that ear: “She won’t be
here
that day. She’ll be
there.
” I rode off.

It was almost dark when I delivered the last of the invitations. I pedaled up the bluff overlooking the old steel plant, to the spot where legend says the Lenape maiden leaped to her death. With a whisper of apology to Perry for violating my own anti-litter beliefs, I set her invitation on the ground and rode home.

DTS: 4

December 18

I kept to myself all day. As the time draws near, I feel the need to be alone, to get myself ready. I’ve composed a song, to be accompanied by ukulele. I will just pluck an occasional string—no strumming. I’m working on a dance. I’ve made a red and yellow wreath of bittersweet berries to frame the sun spot. I’ve written some words.

Still, I have the sense that something is missing, that I’m overlooking something.

The only person I’m tempted to visit is Betty Lou. I’m dying to know if she’s coming to Solstice, if she’ll leave her house for the first time in nine years. But I don’t want to put pressure on her. If she comes, it should be of her own free will.

I’m trying to ignore the fact that it’s snowing in Chicago.

DTS: 3

December 19

I’m afraid nobody will show up. Well, not exactly nobody. I know Dootsie and Alvina will be there. And my parents. And Margie. And Cinnamon. But I’m not sure about anybody else.

I’ve rehearsed the song.

And the dance.

And the words.

It’s snowing in Pittsburgh.

DTS: 2

December 20

Except for putting up the tent, I expected today to be mostly a day of seclusion and contemplation, the soul’s quiet preparation before the big event.

It didn’t turn out that way.

Because today happens to be a Thursday, my mother staggered down the stairs before sunrise, muttering, “One last time…one last time…,” and for one last time she sat on the rocking chair and watched me trek down the aisle of frosty porch lights to Calendar Hill.

Only my flashlight lit the field on this moonless, cloudy night. For one last time I pulled the rope out from the croquet stake and planted the final marker. A dismal daylight came, but not the sun. Ninety-three million miles the sunlight traveled only to be blocked by clouds shrouding this hill on planet Earth. And so my final paddle placement, the most important placement of all, is imperfect. All I could do was eyeball the long arc of markers stretching from July to December and take my best guess at where the last one should go.

I hate having to resort to guesswork. If my paddle placement is off, the whole thing is going to flop. The setup will be like those pinhole cameras for indirectly viewing an eclipse. The light from the rising sun—
Please let there be a rising sun tomorrow—
will strike the front panel of the Blackbone tent. The light will funnel through a little round hole in the panel and will fly through the tent as a golden sunbeam. It will land as a circular spot of sunlight—the Solstice Moment—on the back, black panel, hopefully in the center of the bittersweet wreath. But if the alignment of the tent-hole-to-backdrop is off, the sunbeam will miss the mark and go flying off to Route 113 and beyond, and we will all be staring at a black, blank wall.

I sat down on the ground and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t get the weather and the paddle placement problem out of my head. My mind wash was a washout. When I finally gave up and opened my eyes, my upturned palms were wet from the first snowflakes. I turned west to send my final weekly message to you, my question, but I was so distracted I’m afraid it was garbled.

So much for quiet contemplation.

My father hurried through his milk route today, so that by early afternoon I was back on the hill helping him set up the tent. The snow was already up to our shoe tops. Off at the edge of the field the charred remains of the Van Burens’ house were turning white.

We footed snow away and dug four pole holes. My father used a heavy hammer and a screwdriver to break the frozen ground. We pulled up the croquet stake, and that’s where the back wall of the tent went.

There were five panels of Blackbone material: four walls and the roof. They were heavy and totally impervious to light. My mother had folded over the edges to resist tearing and had fitted the pole and stake rope holes with brass reinforcement rings. I don’t know how her sewing equipment managed to punch through that material.

I myself can hardly build a sandwich, much less a tent, so I was only too happy to be a working grunt while my dad gave the orders. Plus, with the snow falling fat and furry, I worked to keep myself from bawling over the weather.

“It’s a fast-moving storm,” my father kept saying. “It’ll be clear by tomorrow.”

I didn’t believe him.

I picked a spot on the front, east-facing panel, straight up from today’s marker. Using a cardboard cutout I had made at home, I traced a circle on the Blackbone with a yellow marker. A small circle, about the size of a golf ball. My father cut the hole out. He squeezed some plastic stuff around it so the edge wouldn’t fray. The sharper the circle, the better the sunbeam.