Romeo Blue (26 page)

It was I who took the tray up to Winnie later. The Gram still refused. But she stayed downstairs all day. She did the washing up and the cooking and some laundry. She did not speak of Winnie but she no longer stayed behind closed doors in her bedroom.

During that first week of April, The Gram made a tart using the last of our homemade wild strawberry jam. “The wild strawberries will be out in June and I wanted to use up last year’s supply of jam,” The Gram said and she pulled from the oven a blistering, bubbling, cooing, wild strawberry tart.

“A piece of this will be wonderful for my Winnie,” I said. “She isn’t eating much. She must be losing more weight. I’m dreadfully worried.”

The Gram drew a long breath and went to the kitchen window with her back to me and said, “I did not make this tart for
her
.”

It was then that an idea came to me. You never know when an idea may decide to choose you. It’s a bit like a dragonfly coming to rest on the tip of your nose. You either acknowledge it or shoo it away. But I would never advise shooing away a great idea.

I tucked my idea away for now and let it ripen, like a green tomato put in a bag to turn red in the darkness.

When I nosed open Winnie’s door quietly with a tray of tea and a slice of strawberry tart that The Gram had finally given up, Winnie was brushing her lovely hair and sitting up in bed. “Darling, how sweet of you. I was just thinking about how we used to play that board game Uncle Wiggily together. Shall we again? Oh, poppet, we will leave here soon. When I am feeling stronger, we’ll rent a sports car and go off on holiday, you and I. Perhaps we won’t come back to this old, gloomy place.”

“But I love this house with all my heart,” I said. “Winnie, I don’t play Uncle Wiggily anymore. I am thirteen years old.”

“Oh, tomorrow I shall get up and be a normal mum for you. I promise. I do promise, poppet.” She closed her eyes again and held my hand. “I am so sorry I left you so long in this dreadful, awful house. You seem to care terribly for The Gram. Have you forgotten me, darling?”

“Oh no, Winnie, it’s just that I would like to know what happened with Gideon and you, I mean, before … I mean …”

“You are only a child. You are far too young for me to talk about this with you,” said Winnie quite firmly and then she covered her eyes with her delicate hand.

“No, Winnie, you don’t understand. I want to know,” I said.

Right then Dimples plowed into the room with a jar of jam from the cellar in her hands. She put it on the
small table next to the bed and she stood there, staring at Winnie and not saying a word. Winnie reached out and put her arm round Dimples and pulled her up onto the bed next to her. “There you go, you little dumpling,” she said.

I was so glad and relieved to have my mother back! And yet there were clouds forming between Winnie and me. This morning The Gram and Derek and I were in the kitchen unwrapping and setting up our brand-new clock-size Taylor Stormoguide that had just arrived in the mail. It would help predict storms for us since there were no more weather reports on the radio or in the newspapers. The government thought a weather report might help the enemy, so weather was never mentioned on the air.

“It is very attractive, isn’t it? I’m glad we chose the ivory color instead of the walnut,” I said, admiring the chrome along the bottom of the Stormoguide. Then Winnie appeared in the doorway, like a beautiful ghost in a new starched housedress that was too big for her.

I startled. Derek got up and offered her his chair and as she was sitting down, she looked towards The Gram and said, “My sister calls her mother-in-law Mother. May I call you that? After all you are Danny’s mother. You are Gideon’s mother.”

“Don’t mention his name,” The Gram said and then she turned and left the room.

“She wants to call you Mother,” shouted Derek. “Let her. Let her call you what she wants.”

I felt shadows and dismay pour through me. I wasn’t upset with Winnie but I wished she would call The Gram something else.

Dimples had just woken up and come downstairs. She was a very late sleeper and still wearing her pink, wrinkled nightdress. She sort of wandered into the room with Wink. Dimples could be grumpy and cross in the morning and I feared she might be dreadful but she walked over to Winnie and climbed up in her lap with Wink.

Suddenly, I wanted to cry.
Why didn’t you tell me where you were and what you were doing, Winnie? Why did you leave me here and not explain about my real father? Why didn’t Danny write to me and tell me he loved me? And why do you think I am too young to know the truth?
I bit my lower lip and was about to burst into tears when under the table, I felt a gentle nudge of someone’s foot against my foot. It turned out to be Derek’s. He was looking at me, steadying me, as if I were a sailboat that had gone off course in the wind.

Perhaps the Stormoguide could have helped us with the hurricanes or thunderclouds that threatened in the sky
above, but that barometer could not have helped with the storm brewing inside the Bathburn house.

When the mail came later that morning, I received another card from my father. As the postman handed it to me, I felt a wave of fear. Would this be the letter that would say for sure where he and Danny were? Or would we never know? Would we go on wondering all the rest of our lives, the way it was with some families?

Dimples was down on the rocks below singing and her small flutelike voice wafted through the air. I opened the letter, my hands trembling, hoping it might be a real letter. But it proved to be another prewritten card. On the front of the card was another picture of Bugs Bunny. This time that bucktoothed rabbit was playing the piano. My father had added an arrow pointing to the piano keys.

Derek took one look at the card and drew me towards the piano in the library and opened the top. There we saw all the metal strings lined up and all the little padded hammers ready to tap each string loudly or softly to make the music. On the last, heaviest string that would sound the deepest note was a little piece of paper. It read:

Fliss and Derek,

I do hope one of you plays this old contraption. I always loved it. It would mean a lot to me, and if you learn to play it, I will surely hear each note and chord in my mind and think of you. Don’t forget I love you both.

It is the very saddest thing in the whole world to receive a message from someone who might now be dead. It was perhaps like looking at a star that was so far away that it took millions of years for its light to arrive. By the time you saw that shining light, the faraway star was long dead and gone. I put the card against my heart as if to somehow soak it in or absorb it or at least hold it close.

What would my father say of the small, lovely tornado in the house that was my Winnie? Did he know she would come to stay here and every moment would be a wind-storm because The Gram hated her? I was quite sure that The Gram and Winnie needed to talk. I knew that my father would want them to talk. He would not like to see The Gram leaving every room that my Winnie entered.

Derek went into the parlor now and turned on the radio and the song “Stormy Weather,” sung by Ethel Waters, played into the room. That song was always being aired.

Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky,

Stormy weather.

For me it was the perfect coincidence. As I watched Winnie take a walk down the beach all by herself, I rocked in the porch swing, listening to the song. I did not follow Winnie. I did not know whose child I was anymore.

Derek cheered me up by stuffing a clipping from a magazine under my door the next morning. The article and photograph showed a cute black dog wearing a sailor’s uniform. The caption read, “This dog is named Blackout. He is a mascot of a Coast Guard cutter. There are many dogs and cats serving in the US Navy and Coast Guard and they are treated as servicemen. They all have uniforms. They all have military ID cards and they all get shore leave.” I pinned the photograph up on my wall and it made me laugh. Derek made me laugh. I liked feeling his foot knock against mine under the table.

I looked at my father’s last card, Bugs Bunny playing the piano. I decided then to ask Miss Elkin if I could take piano lessons from her. I would help her with spinning wool later in exchange. I would begin practicing the piano right away. I could hear the Bathburn house stirring now and I thought again of how much it would mean to my father if The Gram could somehow find a way to accept Winnie. I had that plan in mind and I decided this morning to put it into action. Winnie had been here for well over a week and it seemed like a
perfect day for my idea, since The Gram was planning to go into town for groceries.

I tucked my father’s card into my pocket and when Dimples came running down the hall at top speed, I whispered my plan in her ear. Her eyes became very large indeed and she looked very solemn and serious. She walked down the hall with her arms flat against her body, not saying a word. She took forever going down the stairs. But finally I led her out into the garden at the front of the house and we stood by the Packard, which was parked by the wild rosebushes.

Then I am rather sorry to report that we went to work. Derek helped. He came darting out the back door with a tool kit in hand and we chose a tire at the back of the car and we went about releasing the valve that held the air in the tire, but of course we didn’t twist it all the way open, so the air would escape slowly.

Later Winnie came downstairs in another awkward, brand-new, a little on the too-big side housedress. “Stephenson’s office purchased these dresses for me, poppet,” she said. “Very sweet of them but they are too big and must look ridiculous.”

I said, “Winnie, we will have breakfast on the porch but would you care for some steamed dandelion greens this morning? There’s a wonderful early patch of them up the road near an old cellar where a house once was.”

“Oh, darling, how lovely,” she said, stepping out into the sunlight. I handed her a colander.

“Shall we ride up on bikes to pick some?” I said.

“What a grand idea!” said Winnie, smiling, but I could see her eyes were filled with shadows. Since she had arrived, they were always filled with shadows.