All the Way Home (15 page)

A
t lunchtime, Mariel and Brick sat outside on the back steps. Julia had made sandwiches, slices of ham with cloves on homemade bread.
Loretta would have loved this
, Mariel thought, the hot mustard, the sour pickle, but she was too excited to eat.

Was that the word,
excited
?

No, she was afraid. She could feel her heartbeat in her throat and a wave of sickness in her stomach. Now that she was going to see the hospital, all she could think about was her chipmunk-safe bedroom and missing Loretta.

Julia’s soft voice and the rumble of Claude’s carried through the open kitchen window. The radio was playing Loretta’s favorite song. There were no real words to
it, just Glenn Miller’s sweet music. Mariel closed her eyes, listening to it.

Then Claude must have turned the dial to the sports news. This weekend the Dodgers would play a doubleheader with Chicago to make up for the rainout. “They’ll have to take those games if they want to win the pennant,” Claude told Julia over the voice of the announcer.

Next to Mariel, Brick wiped a streak of mustard off his finger. “It’s a long walk to the hospital,” he said, “but I know a shortcut through the trees.”

She had pictured herself going alone; she wanted to go alone. She bit her lip trying to think of how she could tell him. But he seemed to know. “I’ll just show you where it is,” he said.

She nodded, relieved, then finished her sandwich slowly, brushing the crumbs off Julia’s dress. And then they went up over the hill, and through the trees around Brick’s farm, Regal, the dog, plodding along with them. She wondered what she was going to find at the hospital. She closed her eyes, then stumbled, reaching out to save herself against one of the trees. Something, she told herself. There’d be something there to remind her, or someone. Her mother had been there, leaning over her, she knew that, and she’d remember her face, or her name.

Maybe she’d remember.

It was a long walk, so long that she thought she’d have to give up, but then the trees thinned and the chimneys
of the hospital stood tall and dark across the road in front of them.

Brick pointed, then slid down against one of the trees. “I’ll wait here.”

She went down the hill, trying to put one foot in front of the other as evenly as she could in case he was watching. And he must have been. “I hope …,” he called after her, without finishing.

She didn’t turn but raised her hand to wave back before she crossed the road. There in front was the hospital sign with the large red-and-blue cross. Her feet crunched against the gravel, and she heard the sound of the fountain splashing even before she saw it. She stopped in front of the statue of the Good Samaritan with his kind face and outstretched hands.

Rolling along the gravel path in the borrowed car that would take them to Brooklyn, Loretta smiling: “Let’s get out for a minute. I want to take your picture: Mariel Manning standing on her feet.” In the hospital for two years. Not four years old, almost six now. And winter, not summer. Smelling the cold, raising her fingers to touch the swirling snowflakes …

Winter, not summer.

Her hand went up to her mouth.
Green lace curtains, fine day
.

A summer day. It had happened in the summer.

She shook her head. She knew that, she had known it all along. But she’d never thought about it before. Summer.

She took the path, then pushed open the heavy glass doors. Inside, the halls were just as shiny, the doors wide for wheelchairs, and she stood there waiting for a picture of her mother to come into her head. Instead she thought of Loretta, cap on crooked, cape flying, as she dashed down the hall.

The stairs were in front of Mariel now, and she climbed them, holding on to the railing. The huge room with iron lungs, maybe ten of them almost back to back, would be near the center of the hall. Hers had been near the window, a monster made of metal, a black cocoon so big that only her head stuck out as air pressed down on her lungs and forced her to breathe with that soft whoosh of a sound. And all she could see was reflected in the small mirror in front of her: a bit of green outside the window, the tan wall, and Loretta leaning over her. One other thing: a paper doll, Betty Boop with red cheeks and a bow mouth, pasted up on the edge of the mirror.
“A friend to talk to when I’m working,” Loretta had said
.

Funny, Mariel thought, she hadn’t remembered Betty Boop in all this time, not Betty, nor the bit of green in the mirror.

She reached the top step and went down the hall slowly, touching the bricks, the guardrail, remembering how hard she had held it, and the first time she was able to walk alone, holding her hands in the air, showing Loretta she didn’t need it anymore.

A nurse appeared in front of her now, and Mariel smiled at her. But the nurse frowned, her face irritable.

“You’re not supposed to be up here.”

Mariel swallowed. “I was here,” she said.

“There are sick people here, some of them contagious.” The nurse shook her head.

“I need to see it again,” Mariel said. “I’m looking for—”

The nurse put her hands on her hips. “If you’re looking for someone, you have to go to the office and get a pass.” She waved her hand. “That’s all I need,” she muttered, “kids wandering around.”

Mariel didn’t move. She reached out to touch the bricks again with one finger. But the nurse took a step toward her. “There are guards, you know. I’ll have to call one of them.”

Mariel felt a burning in her throat, her hands tapping against Julia’s pink dress. She looked over her shoulder at the door to the room with the iron lungs. She could even hear the soft whooshing of the machines.

“You don’t belong here,” the nurse said, following her as she went toward the stairs, and stood at the top step until Mariel reached the hallway on the first floor.

Outside she leaned against the door, the sun in her eyes, the sound of the fountain in her ears.

There was nothing of her mother here. After all those years of thinking about her, wondering about her, dreaming of her! She had been so sure. Loretta would
say Mariel didn’t belong there in the hospital either, hadn’t belonged there for a long time.

Brick had crossed the road. He was coming toward her. How lucky he was, she thought. He knew where he belonged.

26

H
e didn’t ask; he didn’t have to. Mariel hadn’t found what she was looking for. She’d been inside only a few minutes. She followed him back to Claude’s orchard without a word.

He tried to fill up the silence, tried to talk about anything except the hospital and her mother. “You can get up on a ladder,” he said. “Both of us can do that. Julia will fill the baskets underneath. We’ll get a start.” He tried to smile. “We’ll eat apples as we go along.”

She stopped and leaned her head against a tree.

“Mariel?”

“I know,” she said. “I’ll help. I just have to get used to this.”

“Want to tell me?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing happened. Everything is just the same.”

They walked back through the trees toward Claude’s house. He couldn’t wait to get into Julia’s kitchen. She’d see that something was wrong and somehow help him to make Mariel feel better. At least there’d be talking and not this terrible quiet with only the soft sound of their footsteps on the path.

But when they opened the kitchen door, Julia’s back was toward them. She was bent over the table, a rolling pin in her floury hands, smoothing out circles for pies.

Brick went around the table, hoping she’d turn and see Mariel’s face, but instead she thumped with the rolling pin, saying, “Root beer or tea in the icebox. It’s so hot outside you must be thirsty.”

At least it wasn’t quiet in the kitchen. The radio blared from the windowsill and Claude creaked back and forth in his rocking chair, his laced-up shoes hitting the floor each time he came forward. He shook his head when he saw them. “No pennant for the Dodgers this year, I think. They’ve just lost the game in Chicago, five to four. And, just as bad, St. Louis won theirs. They’ve pulled ahead of the Dodgers.”

Brick opened the icebox and pulled out two bottles of soda. He began to pour, watching Mariel from the corner of his eye. She was staring out the window. “They’ll lose tonight’s game, too,” she said. “And St. Louis will win theirs.”

“Maybe not.” He picked up one of the glasses; it was
cool and wet in his hand. He put it on the table next to her, but she didn’t even look at it.

“Loretta was counting on them,” Mariel said.

From the rocking chair, Brick saw Claude glance across at her, his thick eyebrows raised. “When we first came here,” he said in his rumbling voice, “Julia and I thought we’d never get started, but we did.”

Julia turned now, a spot of flour on her cheek. “It’s not the starting that’s so hard,” she said. “It’s the finishing up.”

But Claude had changed his mind about the Dodgers. “They’ll come back, you’ll see. Once you begin, you can’t let it go.”

“Do you think so?” Mariel asked.

“I think so.” He smiled at Julia’s back. “The Dodgers will win, we’ll make the harvest …” He raised one shoulder. “At least we’ll begin first thing in the morning.”

That night they sat up late around the kitchen table, finishing the pie Julia had made, the pitcher of iced tea empty, their dinner plates soaking in the sink. Insects hit the porch light with a pinging sound, and the Dodgers lost again, the score even worse: five to two. And when Red Barber announced that the St. Louis Cardinals had just won their game, Claude stood up and switched off the radio.

27