Summer of the War (9 page)

Grandma sent Tommy, Emily, and Nancy to bed and led Carrie upstairs to get out of her wet clothes.
I dragged up the stairway, thinking I'd spend the night on the sleeping porch. I didn't want to face Carrie, but Grandma found me there.

“Belle, you belong in your own room tonight with Carrie.” She waited until I went into the room, closing the door behind me, shutting me in.

Carrie looked up. She was in a robe, drying her feet. She had a furious look on her face. I felt like Grandma had put me in a cage with a wildcat and locked the cage door.

“I suppose you're the one who told on me?”

I nodded.

“I hope you're satisfied.” She threw the towel on the floor.

I stood there at the doorway, afraid of coming any farther into the room. “I should have kept you from going.”

“It was none of your business.”

I couldn't forget Grandpa's words. “We're responsible for you,” I said.

She stared at me. “I don't want you to be responsible for me. I'm not some poor relation. I'm used to civilization, not to some godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere.” She flung herself onto the bed and pulled the sheet over her head.

I didn't care what Grandma said. Carrie was wearing us all down like the water nudged the stones in the crib, loosening them one by one, until if you didn't rebuild the crib, everything was washed away.

When I awoke in the morning, the reflection of sun and water was dancing on the ceiling. For a second I looked forward to the summer day. Then I saw Carrie lying there, her blond hair spread out on the pillow, her mouth open a little. I remembered. What I had let happen to Carrie would be on everyone's mind. I decided to sneak out of the cottage and make my way to the storm side of the island without anyone seeing me.

I heard voices and then the sound of approaching boats. There would be no early-morning swim. Grandpa would be taking off with Mr. Norkin to recover the runabout. I went to the window, careful not to wake Carrie. There were two boats. Mr. Norkin was in his boat and Ned was in our canoe.

Grandpa was talking with Mr. Norkin, but he wasn't getting into Mr. Norkin's boat. I wondered why they weren't going after the runabout.

Grandpa grabbed one of the dock supports as if he needed to hang on to something. Mr. Norkin put a hand on Grandpa's shoulder, like you comfort a child. A minute later Ned climbed into Mr. Norkin's boat and they took off. Grandpa came up the path. He was bent over and walking slowly, as if he were carrying something heavy, but there was nothing in his hands.

I wondered if Grandpa was ill, if that was why he wasn't going to get the runabout. Maybe he and Mr. Norkin had been talking about the night before, and imagining what might have happened to Carrie had made Grandpa sick. Feeling worse than ever, I watched from the window until Ned and Mr. Norkin were out of sight.

I couldn't face Carrie. I reached for my shorts and a shirt that wasn't too wrinkled and took them into the bathroom to dress. Splashing water on my face didn't help. Neither did brushing my teeth or combing my hair. Everything seemed too much trouble, as if there were no point to it. Carrie was still asleep when I closed the bedroom door and started downstairs, wondering how I could sneak out of the cottage with no one seeing me.

Grandma and Grandpa were in the living room, their arms around each other. No one else was up. Grandma was crying. Grandpa's white hair was rumpled, and his glasses had slipped down his nose. He looked like that character in Shakespeare's play
King Lear
, who had his kingdom stolen right out
from under him. I always imagined Lear shaking his fist at the heavens and wailing. Though he wasn't shaking his fist or wailing, that's what Grandpa looked like he wanted to do. It was all my fault. All I wanted was to disappear. I headed for the door, but Grandma saw me.

“Belle, come here, dear.”

She didn't sound angry at me, only sad, which was worse.

I walked into the room, waiting for them to say something, prepared to be scolded. But no one mentioned the night before. Not then, or ever again.

“Something has happened, Belle,” Grandma said. “Mr. Norkin brought us a telegram from the State Department.” She waited as if she wanted someone else to finish what she was saying.

They were staring at me as if I didn't speak the same language they did and they were wondering how they were going to talk to me.

It was Grandpa who finally said, “Caroline's father has been killed in a bombing raid in England. It happened yesterday.” He pushed up his glasses and smoothed his hair. “Caroline will have to be told.”

It was the end of July and I felt like I was freezing. Up until that minute, war had been the newspaper headlines and reports on the radio. It was a nuisance that kept Mom and Dad in Detroit and Carrie on the island.

“Perhaps we should wait until Carrie's up and
dressed and had her breakfast,” Grandma said.

Grandpa shook his head. “Look at us. She would know in a second something is wrong.”

We heard Carrie open the bedroom door and start down the stairway. She had put on her robe and combed her hair. She came down the stairs, putting each foot down firmly. She looked at us, her chin up, her shoulders squared, ready to fight us. In a rush she said, “I want to leave here. I want to go back to Washington. I can stay with Louise until Papa comes back.”

When she saw the way we were looking back at her, she lost her fight. Just as Grandpa had said, she saw that something was wrong.

Grandma put her arm around Carrie and led her to the davenport. “Sit down, dear. We have something to tell you.”

Carrie looked at each one of us, waiting to see who would do the telling.

“We have sad news, Caroline,” Grandpa said. “It's your father. There was a very bad air raid yesterday in London. We've had news that your father was caught in it. He didn't survive. I'm so sorry, my dear.”

Carrie put her hands over her ears and ran out of the house, letting the screen door slam behind her.

Grandpa and Grandma looked at each other. Grandma started for the door.

“Wait,” I said. “Let me go.” Grandpa had said that we were all responsible for Carrie.

Grandpa studied me for a minute and then nodded. I walked out to the dock, where Carrie was sitting. I didn't have any words and Carrie didn't want any. I slipped down beside her and put my arm around her. We were both crying, but Carrie looked more angry than sad. Suddenly she threw off her robe and plunged into the water in her pajamas. She swam forty feet out into the channel. I was about to jump in after her when she stopped swimming out and began swimming parallel to the shore. I saw with amazement that there was no point in my going after her, as she was a much stronger swimmer than I was. Her arms shot in and out of the water. She hardly seemed to come up for air. I hadn't even known she could swim.

When she was nearly out of sight, she turned back. By now everyone was on the dock with me, watching. Polo's hackles were up. He must have thought the commotion out in the channel was some strange, wild animal. That's the way it looked.

Back and forth Carrie went, arms slicing the water, legs kicking up a froth. She must have swum more than a mile before she climbed out onto the dock, shaking off Grandpa's help. Water dripped from her pajamas. She tugged on her robe and marched into the cottage without a word, slamming the screen door behind her.

“Well, I'll be damned,” Grandpa said, and he never swore.

“How come she's such a good swimmer?” Tommy asked.

“Maybe she's a mermaid,” Nancy said.

Emily's eyes were huge. “I wonder what else she can do.”

I had seen Carrie's defiant look as she passed me. I thought she could do anything.

It was after eleven when the rest of us had breakfast. Grandma had taken a tray up to Carrie, who refused to come down. Grandpa had gone over to the mainland to phone the State Department. When he returned, he went upstairs to talk with Carrie.

At the breakfast table Grandpa told the rest of us what he had told Carrie. Uncle Howard had been in London, walking to his apartment from the embassy. The people at the embassy guessed that when the air-raid sirens went off, he had only a short way to go and he kept walking instead of heading for the nearest shelter. A bomb had fallen, collapsing the building he was passing. In the fall the State Department would arrange a memorial service in Washington. We would all go with Carrie.

Nancy, who had tears in her eyes, asked, “What will happen to Carrie? She'll be an orphan.”

“Please don't use that word, Nancy,” Grandma said. “Of course Carrie must make her home with you.”

Emily said, “We'll be her family now.”

Grandpa said, “I phoned your mother and father.
They'll be calling Caroline to tell her how much they want her to live with them. She'll be better off with you children than with old people like us.”

I realized Carrie would truly be my sister. What would that mean?

After breakfast I knocked on our bedroom door. I had never done that before, but now I was a little afraid of Carrie. Swimming out there, she had seemed so desperate.

Carrie flung open the door. “You don't have to knock. It's your room.” Her eyes were red; her hair was pulled back into a fist of hair, thinning her face and giving her a skinned look. She wasn't wearing makeup, which made her look younger.

Her suitcase was open on her bed. “I don't want to stay here,” she said. “I don't want to spend the rest of my life on an island in the middle of nowhere. Papa wouldn't have wanted me to.”

She sank down on the chair, biting her lip to keep from crying. She was so miserable, I could hardly bear to look at her.

“We'll leave here the beginning of September, and then you'll live with us. You'll like Detroit. It's just like any city. We have movie houses and an art museum and dances at the high school every Friday when there's no basketball game.” I was trying to think of things she would like.

“I won't know anyone. Everyone will be a stranger.”

“You'll make friends. You're so pretty. Everyone will like you.”

She looked at me. “You don't like me.”

She surprised me into the truth. “I wanted to like you, but you wouldn't let me. You kept fighting us.”

Carrie pulled her feet up under her. “You're such a closed circle. You're all so sanctimonious, so proud of your precious cottage, like it's the only place in the world.”

“We do love it. You loved France. Why shouldn't people have places in the world they love?”

“It wasn't just France.” Tears were streaming down her face. “It was all the things I did with Papa. He loved horse racing. He took me to the races at Longchamp and all the men wore top hats. Afterward we sat outside in a little café near the rose gardens and had ice cream. I rode with Papa on the bridle paths in the Bois. We went to Angélina on the rue de Rivoli on winter afternoons, where they have the best hot chocolate in the world. On the Fourth of July he took me to the American embassy for their garden party. He bought me a new hat to wear to the party.”

I saw Carrie in riding breeches and a smart jacket on a bridle path, the scent of roses in the air. I saw her dressed in a frilly skirt, wearing white gloves and drinking hot chocolate, her father across from her, proud of how pretty she looked. I saw her in the garden of the embassy, holding a little plate of cookies and being introduced to important French people. I
could see all those things clearly. I couldn't see her at the high school basketball game. I couldn't see her happily settled into the backseat of the car next June, nibbling chicken sandwiches, eagerly counting the miles until we reached the island.

“Even if you could pack up and go to Paris, it's full of German soldiers now,” I said.

Carrie looked at me. “Don't be stupid. You still don't understand. It wasn't Paris. It was Papa.”

Things happened very fast. Letters came from Mom and Dad trying to console Carrie, saying how much they looked forward to having Carrie with them, how she would be as much their child as we were. It was arranged that we would all go to the Lodge at a certain time so that Mom and Dad would be able to talk with Carrie by phone. Carrie listened to what they had to say, but she hardly said two words herself. It must have meant something, though, because when she was finished, she stood with the receiver in her hand looking around as if she were afraid to hang up, as if it might end the connection between her and my parents forever.

An official-looking letter of sympathy for Carrie came from the State Department, and another letter arrived for Grandpa about Uncle Howard's pension. There was an article in
The New York Times
about Uncle Howard's death with his picture. He had a
pleasant face and a kind of amused smile, as if he knew he ought to look serious for the occasion but didn't care. A long letter came from Louise, who said she was very sorry about Uncle Howard's death. At the end of the letter she mentioned that she had a new job. It was that last letter that bothered Carrie the most. I think she had wanted to believe that if she could just go and live with Louise, somehow her father would reappear.

We all tried to cheer Carrie up and make her feel she was a part of our family. Carrie was determined not to be cheered and not to be a part of us. It was a kind of war. Not the kind in the newspapers, but the kind of siege you study in your history books, where one side is on top of a mountain and the other side on a field looking up at the mountain. One after another of us would try to climb the mountain, but Carrie kept fighting us off.

At first Grandpa said something about how we would all have to “carry on.” “Work and routine will tide you over bumpy spots,” he said. Grandpa had a lot of sayings like that. He added, “Well, Caroline, now that we all know what a fine swimmer you are, you'll have to join our early-morning dip.”

I knew Carrie had no intention of doing that, and she didn't. Grandpa found other things to do. He organized a whole week of frantic activity, nearly killing all of us and getting nowhere with Carrie. He planned a picnic on the beach and used precious
gasoline coupons for a boat ride to Mackinac Island with lunch at the elegant Grand Hotel. Two days were given over to painting the inside of the boathouse. He chopped down some dead trees for firewood and had us carry the wood and stack it into cords. By the end of the week all of us except Carrie were exhausted. Carrie hadn't exactly refused to go along with Grandpa's plans—she just hung back, dab-bing with a paintbrush for a few minutes or carrying a hunk of wood or two and then wandering off. Even the trip to Mackinac Island was a failure.

“How many islands
are
there?” Carrie asked, as if we meant to torture her by dragging her to every island in the world when all she wanted was to find land where you weren't trapped inside a ring of water.

Like Grandpa, we all longed to do something for Carrie. Emily crept in and out of our bedroom, gathering up Carrie's wrinkled dresses to press and straightening up her drawers and dresser top. She spent her allowance on nail polish, files, and cuticle cream and begged to manicure Carrie's nails. At first Carrie seemed amused, but she soon grew impatient. Emily scorched one of her dresses and couldn't seem to get her nails filed evenly. The more impatient Carrie became, the harder Emily tried, until Grandma had to call Emily aside.

“Emily,” Grandma said in a quiet voice, “right now Carrie needs a little time for herself.”

Tommy was more successful. All summer he had
patiently been taming the chickadees that flocked to our bird feeder. He stood close to the feeder, sunflower seeds in his outstretched hands, trying to look like a bush or a small tree. At first the chickadees had made little darting pecks at the seeds, but after several days they had begun lighting on his hands and even his shoulders and head. It was so strange to see him, like a birdman. When he saw Carrie standing on the screen porch watching him, he called to her to come out. He made her stand just where he had stood and, giving her sunflower seeds, told her to hold out her hand. One by one the chickadees flew to her hand to take the sunflower seeds. At first she was startled by the light pecks as they snatched at the seeds, but after a few minutes she relaxed. A couple of times a day Carrie would go out and stand by the feeder and let the chickadees eat from her hand, but after a few days she shook her head when Tommy called to her.

Nancy was busy with her thousand things. Each morning she put out dried ears of corn for the deer. She was making bracelets for all of us for Christmas from the snail shells she found on the beach. The porch steps were covered with splatter paintings she did with leaves and a screen and toothbrush. She caught flies for a small toad she kept in an old glass fish tank she had filled with dirt and tiny plants. On hot afternoons Polo trotted along after her or sprawled by her side, his tongue lolling out. When she went to bed, Polo followed her up the stairs, his
nails clicking against the wood, and disappeared into the sleeping porch, where he spent the night on the foot of Nancy's bed.

One evening Nancy appeared in our bedroom in her pajamas, Polo beside her. Carrie and I were both in bed with our lights out, but we were awake. That afternoon Nancy had been there when I had confided to Grandma, “Carrie isn't sleeping much. She tosses and turns, and sometimes I can hear her cry.” I didn't tell Grandma that once when she'd been crying, I had gotten up and knelt down next to Carrie's bed and put an arm around her. Carrie had shaken off my arm and put her pillow over her head so I couldn't hear her.

“It's going to take time for Carrie,” Grandma had said. “She just has to do her grieving.”

When I saw Nancy standing there, I asked, “What's the matter? How come you're up?”

Nancy rubbed the sleep out of one eye. “Polo is really good at chasing away bad dreams,” she said. “When he's sleeping on the foot of my bed, I never have a bad dream. I want to lend him to Carrie.” She dragged Polo by the collar to Carrie's bed. She patted the bed, and Polo sprang up and settled at Carrie's feet. Nancy ordered, “Stay,” and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Carrie looked at Polo, and for a minute I thought she was going to push him away like she had pushed me away. Instead, she reached down and scratched
behind his ears. Then she lay down, Polo draped over her feet, and fell asleep. There was no crying that night.

Even Mrs. Norkin wanted to do something for Carrie. One evening before supper she sent everyone out of the kitchen and warned us all that we had to be in our seats right on time. We could hear her bustling back and forth and the sound of the eggbeater and the oven door opening and closing. When we'd finished the main course, she cleared the dinner plates herself, not allowing us to help and refusing to let us into the kitchen, even keeping Polo out.

“I don't want him stamping around,” she said.

She disappeared into the kitchen, and after a wait while we all stared at one another, she marched into the dining room holding a dish with something chocolate showing up on the top.

“It's a soufflé,” she said. “That's a French dessert.” She set it down in front of Carrie. “You can dish out,” she said.

Carrie looked up at Mrs. Norkin as if a caterpillar had turned into a butterfly right before her eyes. She grinned. It was the first smile since the day she had heard her father died.

Tommy stared at the soufflé. “A
hot
dessert?”

Carrie paid no attention to him but carefully dished out equal portions.

Mrs. Norkin stood by, not returning to the kitchen, waiting for Carrie to taste the soufflé.

“It's heavenly,” Carrie said. “The best I've ever had.” All the rest of us except Tommy, who was elaborately blowing on the dessert, chimed in.

That was a lot for Carrie to say. Most of the time she spoke only when she was spoken to. She hung on to every word as if she had only so many words and they had to last for the rest of her life. She and I often sat side by side saying nothing.

I didn't want to leave Carrie alone, so I had stopped going to the storm side of the island. Instead, on the hot August afternoons we would settle down on the dock and silently watch the gulls taking off and landing on Gull Rock. Sometimes we would walk the circle that was the island. We didn't even walk side by side but one behind the other, our bare feet sometimes on the hot sand and sometimes in the cool water. There were special places where without any words we both stopped for a few minutes. One place was a little stream that trickled into the lake, where each day we checked to see how large the tadpoles were getting to be. There was another place where horsetails grew. You could pull the tubes of grass apart and put them back together like a puzzle. For me it was just the useless, dumb activity that made summer so special. The serious way Carrie went at it made me think she was relieved to find something that could be pulled apart and put back together.

Sometimes Carrie would ask me about our house and our neighborhood and our school. Things had
changed. Instead of the questions I had asked about Paris, Carrie was asking about the place that would be her new home. It must have seemed as exotic and distant to her as France seemed to me.

She said, “I've never had a backyard,” and “I never learned to ride a bike.” The question she asked most often was “What do you do?” as if she were trying to figure out how she was going to survive in some barren desert.

It was a scorching August day. We had on our bathing suits, but even so, I could feel sweat running down between my shoulder blades. The beach was too hot to walk on, and we splashed along on the scallops of wet sand. The air shimmered in the heat as if someone were shaking it. The water was as calm as a sheet of blue construction paper. Even the gulls seemed to drop down rather than land on Gull Rock, as if it were too much trouble to flap their wings. On some crazy impulse I stopped to pick up a gull feather and tucked it in Carrie's hair. She grinned at me. It was the same grin she had given the chocolate soufflé. “Race you to Gull Rock and back,” she said.

She plunged into the water. I was right behind her, struggling to keep up. By the time I threw myself down beside her on the sand, I was panting.

“Where did you learn to swim?” I asked.

“Every August, to get away from the Paris heat, Papa and I used to go to Deauville on the northwest coast of France. It's right on the sea. Papa said if I was
going to swim in the ocean, I had to be a good swimmer. He taught me. He would stand a little way out and I would swim to him. Then he stood farther out. That day when I heard he had died, I think I was swimming out to him. I wasn't sure I wanted to come back.”

It was the first time since the day she'd heard of his death that she had mentioned her father. I didn't know what to say. Nothing must have been enough, for Carrie kept right on talking about her father.

“They have a famous racetrack there. We'd stay for the Grand Prix de Deauville. It was always held the fourth Sunday in August. Everyone got all dressed up. The men wore top hats. Papa looked so elegant in his morning coat.” She was silent for a minute. “Remember that lilac organdy dress that Papa bought me at the Galeries Lafayette, the one I gave Emily? It was for the Grand Prix.”

Carrie was actually talking with me as if I weren't the enemy.

“Sometimes Papa and I would go sailing.” She gave me a sidewise glance. “How come Ned never comes by in his sailboat anymore?”

I couldn't say that he had been hurt by the way she had snubbed him, so I made an excuse. “I think he goes out fishing with his dad,” I said. “With meat rationing people are eating a lot of fish. Mr. Norkin is sending most of his catch downstate.”

Carrie was piling the warm sand on her legs and
feet. “He'd come by if you asked him to,” she said.

Part of me thought it would be something I could do for Carrie, something to make up for her losing her father. Part of me didn't want to do it. Until Carrie had come, Ned had been my friend. The evenings we sailed together were the best part of the summer. I was never uncomfortable with him; we could tell each other anything. Now we were practically strangers and I was about to hand him over to Carrie. I thought it was like the night Nancy had lent Polo to Carrie. The comparison between Ned and Polo was funny, but I couldn't smile.

The next day Grandpa gave me letters to take to the mainland to mail and Grandma gave me a list of things to buy at the Norkins' vegetable stand. It was Mrs. Norkin's day to be at our cottage, so I knew I would find Ned minding the stand. I made some excuse and left without Carrie. I knew there would be no way I could ask Ned with Carrie standing next to me.

I found Ned sitting under the shade of an apple tree, the apples still small and green. He was reading a Detroit newspaper, which got to Birch Bay a day late. He grinned at me over the paper. “Our air force is giving the Germans a taste of their own medicine.” He must have noticed I was thinking hard about something else. “What's the matter?” he asked.

I picked up one of the brown paper bags Mrs. Norkin saved from her grocery shopping and began
filling it with pale-yellow butter beans. They were the skinny ones that you hardly had to cook.

“Come on, Belle, you're not worried about beans. What's up?”

“You never come by after dinner,” I said, trying not to sound whiny.

He got up and started moving things around on the vegetable stand. Putting the broccoli where the cauliflower was and the cauliflower where the broccoli had been. “You guys are always busy,” he said. After a minute he offered, “I could come by tonight and take you sailing.”

I could have said yes, and Ned and I would have been back like we were, but I didn't. I had come for something else. “You could take Carrie out sailing.”