Romeo Blue (11 page)

I brought in the tea tray. All the while I kept wishing Gideon would suddenly come back and barge in and ease my mind about this. I did not like deceiving him. But there was nothing wrong with a father visiting with his son, was there?

“Well, she is British,” Derek was just saying, “and one of my favorite Bathburns, actually.”

“Honestly, truly, Derek?” I said, setting the tea tray down. I put the cups out and poured the tea. “I am actually a dual citizen,” I added, looking away.

“But this is terrific for you, my son, to have someone your own age here. And to live in this marvelous house. What a view, even with the rain. Do you often see whales and porpoises?”

“All the time,” said Derek. “We see all sorts of creatures, even sharks, I think.”

“Sharks too! Quite exciting. Is that one there now?” Derek’s father pointed out the window.

“Look through these binoculars. It’s probably a seal. They love rain,” said Derek.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, how do you focus them? Let me see. I guess I need to remove my glasses.” He took off his glasses and looked through the binoculars. “Ah yes, I can see the water now. There are certainly plenty of birds floating about.” Derek’s father put down the binoculars. “Well, this is a grand place. The water is quite rough out there today!”

“Did we live here by the water when I was a baby?” Derek said then, suddenly. The words came out in a rather awkward way and he seemed startled himself by their sound. Derek’s face rather crinkled up, as if someone had just clapped their hands way too close to his ears. “Where was I born?”

“Ah, of course, you would be curious. Do you really want to open this can of … this can of …”

“Worms,” I said.

“Yes, this can of worms,” said Derek’s father. “Well, perhaps it’s time. You know I hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Really, I had hoped we could somehow just let it go and start afresh. It’s rather sad. Your mother and I were married in Texas. She had the idea that she wanted to marry a cowboy. You were born in that state. I worked on a ranch outside of Austin. I
was
a cowboy but I must confess I wasn’t a very good one. I never could lasso a single steer because I couldn’t handle a rope. This was because of muscle damage in one of my arms from a childhood injury.”

“Oh, but that’s like me,” said Derek. “My left arm is pretty much paralyzed. I can’t use it.”

“I am so unhappy to hear this. Ah, but we are father and son, are we not? Parallels, you see,” said Derek’s dad.

“But how did you come to leave me or whatever it
was?” said Derek, sort of twisting in his chair. “What happened anyway?”

“Well, your mother died. I became deeply depressed. I am sorry to say that I am given to depression. I do hope you have not inherited that! I came to Maine because I lost my job. I really don’t like horses anyway.”

“But why did you not want me anymore? Why did you leave me here? What happened?” Derek’s voice was plaintive and his face was pale. He looked tired suddenly and I barely recognized him for a moment.

“Derek, people’s lives are changing. Sometimes there is no use for regretting. We cannot look around. It would be too painful. I cannot talk about it. I do not want to break down and cry. I don’t have a handkerchief. Will you excuse me for a moment? Where’s your lavatory? I think I’ve drunk too much tea. And I cannot bear to remember.” He laughed and cried in a confusing way and stumbled out of the room, as if the sadness made it hard to walk.

“It’s just up the stairs and down the hall on your left,” said Derek. And then he propped his chin in his hand and looked down into the depths of the floor.

I was always looking to cheer up Derek, so when his father left the room, I picked up his glasses, which he had left on the table in his confusion and sadness. I put them on and I made a face at Derek.

“Come on, Fliss,” he said, “put those down.”

“Very well,” I said, looking round the room through them. It was really quite strange. I expected them to be blurry because most glasses are fitted with lenses to suit the needs of the owner. But these glasses seemed to have no special lenses. They were clear glass. I had no trouble seeing through them.

I put the glasses back on the table and I looked up at Derek. He was now inspecting the little brochure that came with the box of Lincoln Logs that his father had brought him. “This is a special, complicated set. It’s not for little kids, Fliss. It’s a teenager’s set,” said Derek, looking a bit brighter.

“Derek,” I said, “perhaps we shouldn’t allow your father upstairs. I mean, perhaps Gideon would be upset.”

“Oh no, he’s family,” said Derek. “It’s fine. He was so sad. I shouldn’t have asked all that. Didn’t you see how he almost cried?”

I was wondering why someone would wear a pair of glasses that did not help him see better. I mean, what purpose would those glasses serve? Why wear a pair of clear glasses? I suddenly felt a draft sweep through the room.

Lying in my bed across from Auntie that night, I felt I was drifting in a kind of fearful fog. As Derek had said, why can’t a person wear clear glasses if they want to? Why was I being so glum? Why did I want to cast shadows on
the best thing that had happened to Derek in years? He said he loved his father. He said he would trust him with anything. Derek and his father had built a wonderful Lincoln Log construction together and then they had gone outside and taken photographs. Derek’s father brought out his camera and took a number of pictures of Derek standing by the house, on the porch, in the hallway. Then Derek brought out his Brownie box camera. But his father protested. “No, no, I don’t look well in photographs. My nose is swollen from a cold I had. Another day, but not today.”

Why was I becoming so fearful? What was it that seemed to be flying over me like a shadow of a bomber moving over a city? I stayed awake for a long time that night, listening to the waves hammering the rocks below. I kept saying over and over to myself, as the waves broke,
I love Derek. I want to be loyal to him. I don’t want to hurt him.
Derek had been calling me crazy as a loon recently. Perhaps he was right.

But after visiting, Derek’s father had set off down the road on foot, walking into Bottlebay, where he said he had parked his car. As he walked along he was humming a tune. He had given Derek a great hug good-bye and he had taken my hand like a true gentleman and pretended to kiss it in a jokey way. Then he had set off down the road. Only now something came back to me. As I lay here in my bed, the tune Derek’s father was humming suddenly played in my mind. How easy it
was to miss things, to not notice things when you were smack in the middle of the soup of your life. Yes, he was clearly humming a song I had heard before. It was the German soldiers’ song called “Lily Marlene.”

Outside the barracks by the corner light,

I’ll always stand and wait for you at night.

We will create a world for two.

I’ll wait for you the whole night through,

For you, Lily Marlene,

For you, Lily Marlene.

I tried to talk to Derek about his father and my fears the next day but he would hear none of it. “But, Derek,” I said.

And he said, “No. I don’t want you to say anything about my father. He’s my father and whoever or whatever he is, I stand by him.”

“But, Derek,” I kept saying. “Please just think about this.”

“Stop worrying,” he said. “He’s family. He’s a photographer, like me. And he’s a great photographer.”

“No, Derek,” I said. “You must stop seeing him. I don’t like all this. There’s something wrong. Why was he humming that song?”

“You’ve got rocks in your socks,” said Derek. “It’s a pretty tune. Even you said so. You’ve gone nutty, Fliss.”

“Well, I haven’t gone round the twist yet,” I said.

“Yes, you have. That’s just it. You have gone round the twist. Or the bend, as normal people say. Let’s face it, Fliss, you’re just not normal,” Derek said. He looked at me with his eyes that had turned fiery like burning coal.

“No. Gideon won’t want him in the house here,” I said.

“Gideon won’t know. He’ll never know unless
you
tell him,” said Derek.

“Please,” I said. “Maybe we should just talk to Gideon first.”

At the mention of Gideon, I became quiet in my heart. I knew the dance was fast approaching and I had not asked him if he would like to go as a chaperone. I certainly hadn’t mentioned Miss Elkin. He hadn’t wanted to take Miss Elkin to the Boiling Pot, so why would he want to go to the dance with her? As The Gram had said, “In case you haven’t noticed, Flissy dear, my children live in the clouds. They are not an ordinary breed. And they cannot marry everyday, regular people.”

Oh, I felt dreadful on all counts. Everywhere I turned, I felt sorrowful. Poor Miss Elkin. Poor Derek. Poor me! I almost wished I had my old bear, Wink, back. He was always so levelheaded when I was not. He always had that steady smile I could trust, even if it was a sewn-on smile that never changed. I wished then that I wasn’t twelve. Twelve-year-olds do not believe in bears and I needed now to believe in something.

Yes, I tried to listen to Derek and forget my fears about his father. I tried to think of other things. But I did not forget about Derek and me on the road that night. How he held me close to him. I wasn’t sure if it was just because he was momentarily stirred by the news or if it
had meant more to him than that. But the feeling of his cheek against mine followed me everywhere. It brought with it a kind of joyous, tingly feeling, a kind of enormous happiness and that happiness seemed stronger than my fears about Derek’s dad. I supposed Derek was right. Perhaps his father was just a character who put words together in a slightly different way and wore clear glasses for the fun of it. The dreamy feeling of Derek holding me seemed to push away everything else. And I walked round the Bathburn house in a haze of mixed-up happiness and anxiousness.

Four days before the dance I opened the icebox door and there was a corsage, sitting in a box on the shelf, a bright purple rose blooming, glowing in an eerie way, with its terrible, fleshy petals like tentacles. Gideon had been to Portland and had bought it for Derek to give to Brie, for the dance. I hated it. Every time I opened the icebox, there it was.

And Auntie and The Gram were cleaning furiously. I had to help. We opened up the two back bedrooms beyond the little gymnasium and we aired out the curtains, fluffed the pillows, and swept the floors. Mr. William Donovan and Mr. William Stephenson were coming to stay with us.

“Two Williams?” I said.

“Yes,” said Auntie. “They are big shots from Washington and New York. Mr. Stephenson works for Prime Minister Churchill.”

“Well then, we should make autumn bouquets,” I said, “and fill the house with them because I am a great fan of Prime Minister Churchill.”

The Gram scrubbed the kitchen floor and we made all sorts of biscuits and pies, even though we had some trouble getting enough sugar and we had to borrow some ration stamps from Miss Elkin.

When I went round to her house to get the tickets, she looked at me in a longing sort of way and said, “Did you ask Mr. Bathtub? Do you think he would want to go with me as a chaperone to the dance?”