Romeo Blue (18 page)

I went into the hallway and stood at the library door, catching a glimpse of handsome Derek sealed away behind a book, refusing to even look my way. And I thought about my friend Dimples, in Selsey, West Sussex, in England. One morning she said to me, when the sun was unbearably bright, “My mum has a friend who has
found the answer to everything. All her problems went away after she grew up and found this answer.”

“What is the answer?” I asked Dimples.

“Oh, I shall never tell. I was promised to secrecy,” said Dimples and she skipped away, her curly hair making wild shadows on the pavement.

I should have liked to talk to Dimples today. Back in England I should have offered to loan Wink to her for a fortnight in exchange for that answer to everything. I should have been much more clever about getting the answer out of her, as I think it could have been rather useful to me just now.

In the late afternoon we had more good news about the landings in North Africa and my father was even happier. He was galloping through the house like a great big horse, neighing and pawing at the floor and trying to get me to act like a child as well. He snorted at The Gram and galloped by her. I
was
tempted to become a lovely purebred racehorse but I resisted because I was too old for that sort of thing.

And later, as darkness fell, the mood in the house shifted. I could feel it change. Derek and Miami were listening to
The Shadow
on the wireless. I loved
The Shadow
. It was deliciously scary. The Shadow had the power to cloud people’s minds so they couldn’t see him. The show always started with the line, “Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men? The Shadow knows.” Then there was the terrible laughter and scary music. I was not going to go into the parlor and have Derek march out.

I sat on the stairs outside the parlor instead, listening to some of the story. But then I got it into my mind to climb the stairs. Sometimes things just came to me for no reason and I usually followed those things. It was as
if the wind had decided to pull me along and I decided to go, because who could say no to the wind?

I suddenly found myself outside The Gram’s room, leaning my head against the closed door. I could hear Gideon saying, “Mother, you must try not to worry, that’s all.”

“Well,” said The Gram, “you are risking your life and I am very nervous. What mother wouldn’t be?”

“I am doing it for Winnie, for all that she has done.”

“Oh, I see. You still love her,” said The Gram. “She still has you in her grip. Even though she’s hurt you so much. And she could still take Felicity away from us. Have you thought about that?”

“Mother, I am doing it for both Winnie and Danny and for the circuit,” he said.

“You still love her. You would risk everything for her.”

“Do you realize how much good they have done? Yes, I would risk everything.”

“This is all Winifred’s fault,” said The Gram. “I will never forgive her.”

“Don’t speak of Winnie that way!” Gideon said, his voice growing louder and suddenly rumbling like thunder in the distance.

“I do not like Winifred,” said The Gram. “And that will never change. And I do not want you to go. If anything happened to you, I could not endure it.”

“Hush, Mother. Hush,” said Gideon. “Even though
the Gray Moth was here in the house, we will proceed as planned. But I shall worry about you and Flissy and Derek all the more.”

I sank to the floor for a moment. In my ears, an ocean, in my heart, the pounding surf. Soon I rolled away from the door and lay on my back, staring at the hall ceiling. I could hear the show on the radio downstairs: “The Shadow can cloud the minds of men. With mist and fog they see him not and yet the Shadow knows.” And then the terrible laughter ringing through the hall.

Perhaps it was the wind that pulled me along that next day. It pulled me down Main Street in Bottlebay. Yes, it was the sky that called me and who can say no to the sky?

So many things were going round and round in the Bathburn house. Strange and scary things. And because I had lost Derek’s friendship, I felt terribly alone. More so than ever. I put my hand in my pocket and I touched the little white dove. I had to think of a way to help Derek feel better. I needed to win him back. It was all too much without him.

As I headed towards the shops in Bottlebay, I stopped at the newsstand, hoping to buy a package of Fleer Dubble Bubble Gum. The store smelled of newspapers and cigar smoke. For some reason a newspaper from this summer lay on a chair near the counter. Someone had circled the headline. I looked down and read:
SUNDAY JUNE
28, 1942.
FBI SEIZES 8 NAZI SABOTEURS LANDED BY U-BOATS IN NEW YORK AND IN FLORIDA.

Is that how
die Graue Motte
, the Gray Moth, had come to America? Did he endure a long journey on a German U-boat, living in airless, cramped quarters with darkness and fear? Did he finally arrive at night, leaving
the submarine and paddling quietly to shore in a rubber raft? Were there others with him or was he alone? Or had he already been living here in some plain, little house by the sea, like that woman who hung her laundry in certain patterns on her clothesline? Red. Yellow. Green. Upside down, inside out. Orange.

I bought the Dubble Bubble Gum and I walked back outside, studying the offices above the shops, looking for a certain sign. There it was, above the greengrocer’s. The sign read,
BUTTONS, BUTTONS AND BABBIT, ATTORNEYS AT LAW
.

I opened the door and climbed the stairs and all of a sudden I got the urge to leap two steps at a time. Then I tried three. I always did that when I got on a staircase. I blamed it on my feet. Twelve years old or not, my feet didn’t care. If they thought I wasn’t noticing, they took over. I had tried to be quite corrective towards them, but they jumped when they wanted to. I was going for a four-stair leap when a gentleman coming down from above nearly knocked me over. I didn’t know if it was Mr. Babbit or Mr. Buttons. Either way he was quite tall and had a satchel and he was leaving.

I sagged to the top step and sat down. I was too late. He was going out. The man, Babbit or Buttons, stopped on the bottom step and looked round and up at me. “Can I help you?” he said.

“Are you an attorney at law?” I asked.

“Yes, Mr. Buttons here. I’m just stopping by the office
to pick up some folders. It’s Sunday, you know. We’re closed.”

“Oh. Very nice to meet you, I’m sure. May I ask you a question, Mr. Buttons, even though you are not really at work today?”

“Yes, you may, but briefly. I do try to relax now and again,” he said.

“If there was a someone who was sort of adopted but not exactly …”

“Yes,” said Mr. Buttons.

“And that someone wanted to find his birth parents, say, perhaps a father. Would you be able to help that someone?”

“Possibly,” said Mr. Buttons. “Mr. Babbit would have to see this person in person, if you know what I mean. What I mean is, it would be a private matter discussed only after … discussed only with … You see what I mean.”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you ever so much.”

“And take my card. Whoever, whatever, they can contact me. On a regular work day, of course.” Mr. Buttons then disappeared out the front door. Soon he came back in the building and looked up at me sitting as I was on the top step, all scrunched up and thinking. “Come along, then,” he said. “We’re closed up. You mustn’t sit up there all day.”

Then I was back out in the Sunday morning air. I had Buttons, Buttons and Babbit’s card in my pocket. I could
feel it next to the white dove. Now I certainly had things to give Derek.

Oh, if I’d only known that what I had just done might come back to haunt me. But I didn’t know. As I walked along, I jumped over every single crack on the American sidewalk because of that horrid jump-rope song Dimples used to sing. “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.” I never, ever stepped on one crack, hoping to protect my mum from everything. Hoping to right all the wrongs, looking for the one answer.

All that autumn there were losses and gains in the war and the Bathburn house would rise with the wins and fall with the losses, like the tide in the ocean rising and falling. Battles that we lost always caused Gideon to go upstairs into his bedroom and slam his door. Sometimes he would miss dinner altogether. But battles like the one in Midway Island last summer or battles in French Morocco, which the Allies won, made my father all happy and bubbly and fizzy like Coca-Cola when you stir it up with your straw till it steams and snorts and pops. Still, Coca-Cola was rather rare these days. There was something called a black market where you could buy anything in the world, even rationed and rare things. Derek talked about it with Stu Barker. It sounded mysterious and dark and dangerous — just those words
the black market
.

There were fewer and fewer older brothers and fathers seen about town because many of them had enlisted or had been drafted. Though I still saw the ragpicker in the park, swinging his long stick with a sharp metal point on the end, looking to stab old papers and rags and poke them into his cloth bag on his back. I did not think he was anybody’s father. He had a skinny, red, old face and a
dreadfully scrawny body, all bent over and sorrowful and dusty. I did not think he would ever be drafted.

It was November 20 and we teetered on the edge of winter. Flurries of snowflakes fluttered here and there and because it was earlier in the morning than we usually got up, the sky was full of raw, painful light. It was Auntie’s turn to leave. I was not sure I could bear another farewell. Everyone was clustered near her on the porch. I stayed in the house, just at the doorway. I did not want to go out and say good-bye.

Gideon stood there, holding one of Miami’s suitcases. “I see you’ve got enough of a wardrobe here to outfit the entire USO theater troop!” he said. “Maybe even the whole US Army for that matter, though all that chiffon could prove a problem on the battlefield.”

“Very funny, Gideon,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder.

Our pet seagull, Sir William Percy, had even flapped over and settled down on one of the hatboxes from Porteous department store. Derek was there too, slouched against the porch railing, fiddling with a yo-yo.

Then Aunt Miami’s carpool to the train station arrived. Someone was beeping a loud horn. It jolted me and I tore out on the porch. I tripped over a chair, landed on my face, and almost started to cry. I suddenly remembered Auntie falling into Bobby Henley’s arms the night he left.

I looked at Derek. He had a growling, early-morning smile on his face. He was watching me as I limped over to hug Auntie. I saw his eyes follow me and stay fixed on me as his yo-yo droned up and down and then “slept” at the end of the string. Soon he tossed it forward and it went “around the world” and came back “to walk the dog,” all the while he seemed to watch me as I struggled not to cry. Oh, he was a dreadful beast and I think I hated him just then. His anger had smoldered and kept on spinning like a sleeping yo-yo for a long time, it seemed. I had grown almost impatient with it. Almost.

We followed Auntie out to the car. We were a raggedy, tearful, shivering group as she climbed into the backseat. Auntie was all settled in amongst her boxes and suitcases when suddenly she scrambled out of the car. She rushed towards Gideon and hugged him again for a long moment, making my heart drop like piano notes falling down the scale. Then she climbed back in and the car pulled away in a flood of exhaust from a dragging tail-pipe. We stood there in a line, not making a sound. Finally, I shouted out, “Write to me, Auntie!” But the car was near the crest of the little hill by then and I did not think she heard me.