All the Way Home (12 page)

But he wasn’t going to do that. He had to put one foot in front of the other, step by step. He wasn’t going to think about eating, or his feet. This was just the beginning of the trip.

The sidewalk was divided into cement blocks. He’d count to fifty and then another fifty, and then another.
Sooner or later, all those blocks of cement would get him to the bridge.

He wouldn’t let himself think about what would happen after that, unless it was to picture himself sitting in Julia’s kitchen, telling her and Claude about the long walk, telling them about Brooklyn.

After a while he noticed that it wasn’t raining so hard; now there was only a soft drizzle. Windows opened along the avenue, and he could hear people’s radios as he walked: the news, war in Europe, the Dodgers game in Chicago called because of rain.

It was getting dark. Lights came on in the houses, and in the backs of stores, and he was alone, hobbling down the street in the dark, his breath sounding loud in his ears. There was something he was beginning to realize. He would never be able to walk two hundred miles, not in time for the harvest, not unless he hitched a ride, or sneaked up into the back of a truck on its way to the country.

But suddenly, out of nowhere, he saw the lights of the bridge. They curved up over the span in front of him, a tall bridge with a few cars going back and forth.

Just get to the other side
, he thought,
just get that far
. He would have done something then, gotten somewhere. He went up on the footpath and looked down into the shimmering black of the water below. He walked more quickly now. No one else was on the path in front of him.

In the traffic lane going toward Manhattan, a car went by, its wheels splashing water against the metal floor of the bridge. Its headlights threw large blocks of light that zigzagged across the footpath and left patches of darkness between the stanchions. As the car crossed the bridge in front of him, its lights lit up the end of the footpath. In the sudden gleam he noticed someone down at the other end, leaning against the railing under the light, a green-striped umbrella over his head.

He told himself it wasn’t that far to the end, all he had to do was count the steps to that person and he’d be off the bridge, there on Canal Street.

He was halfway across and the person hadn’t moved. He saw then that it was a girl. Under the umbrella she looked as if she were going to a party with her straw hat and a dress with a sash, and a purse looped over her arm.

He stopped because the girl looked so much like Mariel that he didn’t want to go close enough to see it was a stranger. Mariel, who had become his best friend in just two days. And then he heard her call. “Billy … Billy Nightingale …”

He began to run toward her, seeing her smile as he came closer. He watched her pull Claude’s book out of a bag and hold it in the air.

20

T
he Canal Street subway had two sets of stairs to the trains. So many steps! She took them slowly, but still no one would believe she had done this, she thought as she dropped a nickel into the turnstile. No one but Loretta.
“You can do anything, Mariel. I really believe that.”

Loretta would be home by now, dropping her cap on the kitchen table, calling them.
“How about some root beer and a couple of cookies while we listen to the radio?”

How would Loretta feel? she wondered.

And what about Ambrose the cop? Would he be angry when he found out she had run away?
Run home?
she thought. Strange, she had never seen Ambrose angry. He just showed up when he caught her playing
hookey, and walked her back to school. It was like a game. The truth was, she thought in surprise, she liked Ambrose almost more than anyone she knew.

Now she and Brick rocked along in a subway train, and her two-dollar bill was gone, changed into coins by the ticket seller, stuffed into the cash register like all the other money people used.

The two-dollar bill! She’d never see it again. Would that make Loretta sad? As sad as Mariel felt? She opened her purse to feel the change the bill had made, all of it there except for the two nickels she and Brick had used for the subway.

She watched the stations flash by; they were headed for midtown Manhattan and the Shortline bus, Brick reaching into the bag of food for another sandwich, another piece of fruit.

She thought of Loretta again:
“I’d never been out of Brooklyn, but I had no family, and it was an adventure. There I was with my friend Mimi, both of us new nurses, on the eight o’clock Shortline to Windy Hill. I didn’t even know I was on the way to you.”

“We won’t be there until the middle of the night,” Mariel told Brick, holding on to the strap and shouting over the noise of the train.

“We?” Brick asked. “We?”

She patted her patent leather pocketbook. “I have enough money for us both, and a tiny little bit left over just in case.”

“We?”

“I’m going with you.”

He didn’t look as happy as she thought he might, he looked worried.

“What will Loretta say?” he asked. “What will Ambrose say?” But after a moment he grinned at her. “I know what Julia will say. She’ll be glad to see you and so will Claude.”

Mariel let out her breath with a whoosh. She smiled back and then she watched the train slide into Forty-second Street, and pulled him out the door with her.

They went up another set of stairs, slowly now. She didn’t have enough breath to answer the questions he kept asking about what Loretta would say. And why would she want to go all the way to Windy Hill, anyway?

She couldn’t pay attention to the questions. The next part was tricky, getting them from the subway to the bus terminal. But then she remembered.

The movie was
Dumbo.
She and Loretta had sat in the balcony eating popcorn and peanut chews. They passed the terminal on the way back to the subway
.

“Poor elephant with his big ears,” she had said
.

Loretta grinned. “But didn’t he do just fine?”

The lights in the bus terminal were far apart; there weren’t enough of them to brighten the huge room; the exhaust from the buses hung in the air, thick in Mariel’s nose and throat. But she was so glad to be there, she didn’t care. It seemed, though, as if it must be the middle of the night, even though it wasn’t even time to listen to
The Cisco Kid
.

The ticket seller looked doubtful as she slid the money toward him. “We’re visiting our grandmother,” Mariel said, snapping the elastic band under her chin.

He hesitated.

“You were a good brother to take me,” Mariel said, trying to sound as if Brick were almost grown-up, trying not to look at him because they’d both laugh.

The man punched out two tickets, and they climbed onto the bus, sitting back against the smooth brown leather seats. Mariel sat at the window side, leaning against the pane as they pulled out of the terminal. The streetlights made the buildings around them hazy, but it had stopped raining at last.

She wanted to tell Brick why she was really there. Her fingers began that bit of trembling. She tightened them against the paper bag with the pieces of fruit that were left. “I had to bring you Claude’s book,” she began. “I knew you had to have it.”

He nodded. “I’m really glad.”

She shook her head. “But there’s something else. I think I lived in Windy Hill once,” she said. “Before Good Samaritan.”

“On a farm? In the town?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“The room with the green lace curtains is there?”

“I don’t even know that.” She looked down at her hands clutching the bag, still now as she began. “It starts with the ambulance. No one remembers anything else. And I was only four.”

“Someone has to remember,” he said.

“Loretta tried to find out.” She lifted her shoulders. “But there were so many kids with polio, and there were no records about me. Only the date I came, September third, 1934, and a torn piece of paper that said ‘Mariel …’ ”

Her voice trailed off. Even the paper was gone by the time they had left the hospital.
Loretta had shaken her head. “Try to understand, honey. The hospital rooms were filled, the halls jammed with beds, and the nurses running around, working day and night. No time to bother with papers, no time for anything.”

Mariel sighed. She could see that Brick wanted to hear more, but there was such a little bit to tell:
Green lace curtains, when the wind blows … red sweater and a gold bracelet
.

He was thinking about it, feeling sorry for her, but it wasn’t the way Frankie McHugh felt sorry. It was different, somehow, all right for him to look that way. “I’ll help,” he said.

“I know that,” she told him.

They sat there, feeling the motion of the bus, and she told him about Benny the ragman, and Daisy in her straw hat, and perching up on top of the wagon, and then she saw that his eyes were drooping, closing, and he was asleep. But she was still wide awake, that feeling of excitement in her throat and chest.

She pressed her nose against the window as the lights cast an orange glow on the factories they passed, and
then rows of stores. She wondered what Loretta was doing. A window was open next to the empty seat in front of her, and the air felt cool on her arms, almost too cool now. She squinted and the lights ran together in a line; she felt herself shiver.

“I like to be cold,” she had told Loretta. The steaming packs Loretta plastered to the useless muscles of her legs were blistering hot. “I’d like to be in a blizzard, in a mountain of snow.” She was angry. “If my mother was here …”

“There’s a nurse from Australia named Sister Kenny,” Loretta said. “She taught the world to loosen up these muscles with heat. Before that, legs stayed stiff and had to be braced.” Loretta reached for another hot pack. “But you’ll walk right out of here, Mariel.”

Mariel closed her eyes, hugging herself for warmth, thinking of Geraldine Ginty and what she’d say if she found out Mariel was on a bus in Manhattan, New York.

21