Singing Hands (7 page)

With trembling fingers, I flipped through the stack. "My Dearest Grace," the letters began. They were written on faded light blue paper and dated 1944 and 1945, the exact years when her husband would have been half a world away at the front, fighting the Japanese and writing his wife from some lonely tent or foxhole. I stopped at the last letter, which was no more than a paragraph long, and read greedily:

February 12, 1945

My Dearest Grace,

In your last letter you said that each word I write only makes our separation more painful. But how can I stop writing? Our letters are the last tie binding us together—the only good to come out of this long, vicious war.

My sincerest hope is that you will write again.

Vincent

I gasped.
Vincent?
Who was Vincent? Corporal Homewood's name was James! I scanned the letter again, not wanting to believe it. But there it was, plain as day, "makes our separation more painful." I turned back to the first letter in the stack and checked the signature. Vincent. The next letter was signed Vincent, too. But how could Miss Grace have loved someone else?

I wanted to read more, to search for an explanation, but I knew I had stayed too long already. So I didn't have a pair of men's shoes when I quietly slipped from Miss Grace's room and locked the door behind me. Or even a pair of suitable Birthmark Baines pants. But I had one very shocking and mysterious letter from the bottom of the secret bundle to discuss with Nell ... if I ever decided to speak to her again.

Forgiving Nell for turning chicken was the easy part. Showing her the letter proved to be more difficult. I was dying to share what I had found. But somehow once I was downstairs again, away from Mrs. Fernley's pounding battle victory music and in the cozy quiet of our bedroom, I knew I couldn't tell anyone what I had done. All of a sudden even I was shocked at the thought of Miss Grace's letter tucked down inside the pocket of my dungarees. What had I been thinking? Nell would be appalled. Genuinely scandalized.

"So you didn't find
anything
for the dummy?" Nell asked as I sat on my bed inspecting a broken fingernail.

I shook my head.

"No pants, no nothing?"

"Nope," I said.

Nell crossed her arms over her chest, studying me suspiciously. "You sure were up there a long time."

"Well, I didn't find anything," I shot back. "All right?"

I swiped a Nancy Drew mystery off the dresser, then threw myself back on my bed and pretended to read
The Hidden Staircase.
After a while, Nell wandered away. As soon as she was gone, I lurched to my feet and fished the letter out of my pocket, searching the room for somewhere to hide it. My old sewing basket sat forgotten in the corner. Quickly I stuffed the letter underneath a tangled needlepoint sampler I had never finished. Once I figured out a way to sneak back up to Miss Grace's room without anyone noticing, I'd return the letter and try to forget any of this had ever happened.

I was just closing the lid of the basket when Nell flew back into the room, her eyes shining with excitement and her arms wrapped around a lumpy bundle of clothes.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Everything you need for Birthmark Baines," she said happily. "You looked so pitiful when you came down from Miss Grace's room. I decided I should help you after all." She dropped the bundle on my bed, and a pair of shoes I had never seen before rolled out.

They were snazzy brown and white buckskins that looked like something an old-timey college boy out on the town would wear. "Where'd you get those?" I asked.

"Daddy's closet," Nell declared triumphantly. "And look." She held up a pair of baggy khaki trousers. They were covered in paint stains, with a rip on one knee. I vaguely recalled seeing Daddy wear them when he organized a team of men to paint the parish house.

"Can you believe he ever wore these?" Nell asked. "Aren't they perfect?"

I started to laugh. "The pants are okay, Nell, but those shoes will never work."

Nell gave a little stomp with her foot. "You said we needed something that did
not
look like Daddy," she huffed.

"Well, gah, Nell, do you think Birthmark Baines would go around kidnapping kids in buckskin dancing shoes?"

Her face flooded with disappointment. I hadn't meant to sound so ungrateful. I reached for the shoes and held them up at arm's length. "But you never know," I said slowly. "Maybe ... maybe these do look like what a convict would wear to disguise himself."

Nell brightened a little. "Really? So you think we should go ahead with the plan?"

"Sure," I said. "Why not?"

No sooner had the words left my mouth than we heard Margaret coming through the front door.

"Dadgummit!" I said. "What's she doing home already?"

Nell heaved a huge sigh. "Oh, never mind. Let's just forget about the dummy. It wouldn't have worked anyway."

"Nope," I said stubbornly. "We're gonna do it. But we don't have time to stuff a dummy now. I'll have to be Birthmark Baines."

"You
what?
" Nell's eyes widened as she watched me yank Daddy's trousers off the bed and hold them up to my waist.

"You'll see. But first go listen at the top of the steps and make sure she's not coming up here."

Once I had shooed Nell into the hall, I quickly pulled the paint-stained pants over my dungarees. But even with my own clothes underneath, the pants looked too long and floppy. Daddy was taller than I thought. Hitching up the waistband in one fist, I waddled over to our dresser and yanked the top drawer open to reveal piles of silky slips and training bras and no-nonsense cotton underwear. I never knew Aunt Glo's undergarment obsession would come in so handy. "You can never have enough clean underclothes, girls," Aunt Glo would remind us at the beginning of every stay in Texas before she carted us off to Conway's department store for another shopping spree in the girls' department.

Now I grabbed handfuls of underwear and stuffed them down the pants until the trouser legs began to fill out and appear slightly more manly.

Nell was standing in the doorway again. "What in the world are you doing now?" she asked breathlessly, staring at the pairs of panties clenched in my fists.

"I need more padding!" I cried. "Come help me."

Nell scurried over to shove more underwear up around my shins. She fluttered about my bottom half like a lady in waiting as I started shuffling toward the door.

"What about socks?" she asked.

I grabbed Daddy's shoes off my bed. "If Baines can wear bucks," I said, "I suppose he can wear white bobby socks, too."

"Now, listen," I went on. "I'm gonna get under Margaret's bed. All you have to do is go downstairs and tell Margaret you found the back door wide open while she was gone and you just heard strange noises coming from her bedroom. If she asks where I am, tell her I've been at the vacant lot all afternoon. Mother should be cooking dinner, so she'll be too busy to see what you're saying. Okay? Have you got it?"

Nell was eyeing my lumpy trouser legs doubtfully. "This isn't going to work, is it?"

I shrugged. "Probably not, but it's worth a try. Margaret's been looking for escaped convicts around every corner. Now she's finally gonna get one." I grinned and waddled down the hall toward Margaret's bedroom with a buckskin tucked under each arm.

Nell watched me from the top of the stairs. "Just give me a couple minutes to get myself situated," I whispered over my shoulder.

Getting situated was not as easy as I thought it would be. By the time I had propped my feet in Daddy's shoes, squeezed myself partway under Margaret's bed, rearranged my underwear padding, and strategically placed my legs so that they looked halfway convincing, I was worn out. Margaret's bed wasn't nearly as high as Mother and Daddy's. The musty-smelling box springs were barely two inches from my nose. To make matters worse, a hook on a training bra was poking like a needle into my rear end—but every time I tried to wiggle around to adjust it, Daddy's heavy bucks would flop off my feet and bang on the floor.

At last I managed to fish the shoes back on with my toes and lie still for a few minutes. I couldn't help being impatient. This was the second time in one day I had found myself under a bed, struggling to stay as stiff as a corpse, when what I really needed to be doing was sneaking back upstairs to return Miss Grace's letter before she came home.

"Come on, Margaret," I muttered. I had broken into a sweat inside the two pairs of pants and all those layers of underwear. I wasn't sure how much longer I could stand it. I felt like I was in a coffin ... skewered and roasting on brassiere hooks in a very narrow, dusty coffin.

I took a deep breath to calm myself. What could Nell possibly—

All of a sudden, an earsplitting shriek rang out above me. My heart leaped into my throat, and I could feel a thrill of victory shooting through my veins like delicious, thirst-quenching ice water. I couldn't believe it had worked.

"Hel-l-lp!" the shrieking went on. "Good Lord in heaven above! Girls, come
quick!
"

I froze. That wasn't Margaret screaming. It was Mrs. Fernley. How could I have forgotten? Mrs. Fernley always washed her hair in our second-floor bathroom on Sundays, then set it in pin curls to get herself ready for the week ahead. She must have heard my bumps and thuds and come across the hall to investigate. And she was nearsighted, so if she had left her eyeglasses upstairs in her room...

"Wait!" I called weakly. "Mrs. Fernley, it's me. Just wait." I was wedged in too tight to roll over and crawl from under the bed. I had to push my way out feet first, inch by inch. But even when I felt Daddy's shoes thud to the floor again, Mrs. Fernley kept screaming. Now I could hear her running to the top of the stairs.

"
Girls!
" she shrieked again. "Mrs. Davis!
Anyone!
"

Finally, I was out. I clambered to my sock feet and lurched toward the hallway, yelling as I ran. "It's me!" I shouted, bursting out of Margaret's room. "It's Gussie!"

Mrs. Fernley, in a cold-cream mask and a damp silk kimono, wasn't the only one who turned to stare at me with a horrified gaze. Nell was on the stairs, too, and right behind her, Margaret, and right behind Margaret, Preston Tucker, six-foot-two varsity basketball star of South Glen High and the date of my older sister's dreams.

For a minute, Preston Tucker's wide mouth hung open like everyone else's. But then I saw his gaze land upon my sagging, paint-stained pants and the silky trail of slips, bras, and underpants strewn behind me, and he started to smile.

What was there to say? I closed my mouth, hitched up my pants, and hobbled to my bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind me.

Knavery
Imprudence
Impropriety
Mortification
Perfidy
Ignominy
Acrimony

It was not until after dinner the next evening that Mrs. Fernley summoned me to her room and grandly placed the neatly typed list of words in my hands with a smile as if she was presenting me with a box of chocolates. I squinted down at the crisp onionskin paper, trying to make sense of all those syllables. I recognized only one word—"mortification"—which, obviously, Mrs. Fernley and I (and Margaret, too, I suppose) had experienced in front of Preston Tucker the evening before. But it wasn't very difficult to see that the other rather evil and unpleasant-looking words were mainly meant to describe me and the nature of the trick I had tried to play.

Mrs. Fernley waited for me to look up and meet her pointed gaze. "You know, Gussie," she said, arching one of her penciled-on eyebrows, "before becoming head millinery buyer at Blach's, I used to be a high school English teacher"—she paused dramatically—"for twenty-one years."

I felt my mouth drop open in surprise. Mrs. Fernley didn't look or act like any teacher I had ever known. I couldn't imagine a single one of the faculty members at South Glen wearing a feathered hat and crimson lipstick to work or owning a kimono with a Chinese dragon embroidered on the back or listening to opera every spare minute.

And they certainly would never decorate a room the way Mrs. Fernley had. I remembered how irked Mother was when Mrs. Fernley asked if she could move our plain maple bedroom set down to the cellar to make space for her own showy furnishings. I sneaked a sideways glance at her tasseled burgundy lampshades and the tall wooden screen hiding her hot plate in the corner. It was painted with splashy lilies and some sort of long-necked bird holding a fish in its mouth.

But there she was, sounding more and more like a teacher with every word that came out of her brightly painted lips. "I've seen all manner of adolescent antics in my day, Gussie," she continued. "So when I went downstairs to confer with your poor hearing-impaired mother about your punishment last night, I did my best to assure her that I would take care of this the same way I used to take care of such shenanigans back in my teaching days. With a weekly word list."

"Word list?" I repeated faintly.

"That's right." She gave a curt nod. "I'm aware that your mother has also assigned you extra duties around the house...."

I lifted my chin and gave a tragic little sniff, thinking of all the silver and furniture polishing I was in for over the next two weeks. Of course, I took all the blame and didn't tattle on Nell for her part in our scheme when she swiped Daddy's clothes for my disguise. In return, she had offered to help with my chores. I was pleased with myself for refusing her help and making her feel even worse.

According to Margaret, Nell must have completely forgotten about me yesterday once she spotted Preston Tucker sitting on the davenport, drinking iced tea. Instead of following through with our plan, my little sister had commenced flirting with Preston. It wasn't until Mrs. Fernley started screaming that she even remembered me broiling under the bed upstairs.

But the crowning blow had come that morning when I was downstairs dusting, and Mother must have asked Nell what she had done with the extra set of keys to the third floor. Nell had run directly to our bedroom to fish them out of the pocket of my dungarees and hand them over to Mother, completely ruining my chances of returning Miss Grace's letter any time soon.