Summer of the War (10 page)

Ned gave me a long look. “I don't think she's interested in coming sailing with me.”

“She wants to go sailing with you. She asked why you didn't come around anymore.”

“She's not stupid. She should know the answer to that. My dad told me all about what happened when she was trying to pick up Brad—”

“That's all over with,” I cut in. “She's been really depressed since her father died.”

“I'm sorry, but what am I supposed to do about it?” He smiled. “You've put enough beans in that bag to feed a hundred people.”

I started pulling the beans out. “She's really unhappy, Ned. I think it would do her good to get
away from the island with you for a couple of hours. Her dad used to take her sailing.”

“So I'm supposed to be Papa?” he said. “Hey, you'll wear out the beans.” He took the bag out of my hands and weighed the beans that were left. “Will you come along?”

I shook my head. “I think Carrie gets enough of me, enough of all of us, on the island.”

“If you ask me, you're too good for her. I think the girl is confused. She could learn something from you and your family.”

I was amazed. I had never occurred to me that Ned was thinking about our family, judging us. “I don't think Carrie sees it that way.” I held out a dollar bill.

Ned handed me the change. “Like I said, she's confused.”

Grandma had long since turned the calendar in the kitchen from July's picture of a cornfield to August's picture of farmers in a field cutting wheat. On the mainland the hard red blackberries were a ripe, soft purple. Mrs. Norkin brought us quarts and quarts of berries to sprinkle over our cereal and bake into pies. Birdsong disappeared. The silence in the trees was as quick as lifting a needle from a phonograph record.

“They don't sing much after the baby birds have flown,” Tommy explained. “The birds aren't territorial anymore.” He grinned, proud of using a big word.

Mom and Dad sent Carrie pictures of our house and the front and back yards. “So you'll know where you'll be living,” Mom wrote Carrie. “We are looking forward to having you with us.” The pictures were so familiar to me, it was hard to believe they were new to Carrie. I looked to see what she would see. Would she
notice the path into the backyard tangle of shrubbery where Nancy put out lettuce for the rabbits or the bird feeder Tommy had made from a tomato can? Dad had taken a picture of the whole family by setting the camera and then running to stand beside us. You could see he looked more hurried than the rest of us. Was Carrie trying to imagine herself in the picture?

She glanced at the snapshots and tossed them onto the dresser as if they were postcards of a country she had no interest in visiting.

After I talked with him, Ned came by the next night. Carrie hurried out to meet him, never bothering to ask if I wanted to come sailing with them. I stood on the dock and watched Ned's sailboat skimming over the water, surprised at how lonely I felt with my whole family around me. I wondered if that was how Carrie felt, lonely with all of us around her.

The next night, although Carrie stood out on the dock waiting, Ned didn't show up. He didn't appear the night after that either. When I asked Carrie if she wanted to go over to the mainland with me to do some errands, she shook her head.

“No point. It's too depressing. There's nothing there.”

I was sure something had happened, and later when I saw Ned going into the hardware store, I waited for him. He was inside a long time, long enough for me to decide to leave and then to change my mind a
hundred times. He frowned when he saw me.

“What are you doing here? You've caused me enough trouble!”

“I was waiting for you, and what do you mean, caused you trouble?”

Ned looked around him. “Come on over here.” He led me toward a park bench the city fathers had set up in memory of something or other.

“Do you know what that crazy cousin of yours wanted me to do?”

“Carrie?” I just looked at him, my mouth open. I couldn't guess what he was going to say, but I was sure I wouldn't like it.

“Yes, Carrie. She wanted me to elope with her. She said we should get married and go to New York or Washington to live. She said she could get some money from her father's estate. I'm only seventeen and she's only fifteen. She said we could lie about our ages. No one would believe her, and even if they did, I'd end up behind bars instead of in the Navy.”

I believed every word he said. It sounded just like Carrie. I was so angry, I could have slapped her. We had done everything we could for her. I had even given her Ned, and she'd hatched a wild scheme that would have gotten Ned into trouble. “Does your mother know?” I asked.

“Do you think I'm out of my head? My folks would have a fit. You're the only one I've told, and don't you tell anyone. Now I've got to get back. Dad's
waiting for some bolts.” He suddenly smiled at me. “If you want to go out sailing, let me know, but I'm keeping clear of your crazy cousin.”

On the way back I tried to think what to do. Summer was coming to an end. In a couple of weeks I'd be back in the city wearing shoes and doing homework. Not only would we have to go back home, but this year we would take Carrie with us. We were stuck with her forever. If it had been anyone except Ned, I would have loved to see her elope and run off to New York.

I found Carrie in our room. She looked at me. “Ned told you, didn't he? It's written all over your face. You can save the lecture. I don't care.”

I was furious. “You don't care about anything. You certainly don't care about Ned. You would have let him ruin his whole life just so you could get away from here. Why? We've gone out of our way to do everything we could think of for you.”

Carrie flung the magazine she had been reading onto the floor. “That's not what I want. I don't want to be fussed over like a sick animal that has to be humored and cheered up. Everybody treats me like some bizarre creature who's dropped out of the sky. You won't let me be a member of your family unless I turn into one of you, and I'd rather die.”

I ran out of the room. I couldn't go downstairs. My face was streaked with tears. I didn't want anyone to see me. Grandpa and Grandma were in the living
room, Tommy and Emily in the yard. I turned and stumbled up the stairs to the attic. I heard our bedroom door open. Carrie followed me up the stairs.

I didn't want to see her. I didn't want to see anyone. I wanted to figure things out. Something Carrie said had stung. Maybe it was true. Maybe we had tried too hard to make her be like us. I wondered if the island kept things out as well as keeping things in.

Carrie was at the top of the attic stairway. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to scream at you.” She was crying, too. “I guess I thought if I could run away, I could run away from what happened to Papa. I just didn't want to think about it anymore. I didn't mean to get Ned in trouble. Even if he had agreed, and I guess I knew he wouldn't, I probably would never have done it.” She looked nervously around the attic. “What's all this stuff?”

I felt my anger at Carrie petering out. I sighed and looked at the neatly labeled trunks and boxes that covered the attic floor. “Grandma and Grandpa never throw anything away.”

Carrie wandered around scanning the labels. She stopped at one of the trunks. “This trunk has my mother's name on it,” Carrie said. “What's it doing
here
?”

“Your mother spent all her summers on the island until she married your father.”

She seemed stunned.

“Do you want to open it?”

Carrie stood staring down at the trunk. “Papa never kept any of my mother's things,” she said. “I think he was so upset when she died, he couldn't bear to have anything of hers around. There was just her picture that he took wherever we went and a ring and some pearls he was saving for me.” She looked wary, as if she were afraid of what was inside the trunk. “You open it,” she said.

I had to fuss with the trunk's catches to get them to work. When it was open, Carrie stood looking at it, a worried expression on her face, as if touching the trunk might cause it to disappear. After a minute she lifted out a dress. It was a typical twenties dress with a dropped waistline, a pleated skirt, and a sailor collar. Holding it up to herself, she looked at me, surprised and smiling. “It's just my size. Do you think Grandma would let me have it?”

“Sure. It's
your
mom. All those things probably belong to you.”

She began pulling out more dresses, mostly summer cottons but one party dress of pale-blue chiffon. There was an autograph book, each page scrawled with verses and messages. When a dried rose pressed between two pages shattered into pieces, Carrie looked devastated. She hastily put the book down. Beside it was a sketchbook. After what had happened with the rose, Carrie just looked at it, afraid to open it, but I was curious.

“What is it?” I asked.

Carrie lifted it carefully from the trunk. I peered over her shoulder. The words “My Island Garden” were neatly lettered on the cover, the letters decorated with twining ivy. On the first page was a water-color of a garden with hundreds of tiny flowers and the cottage in the background.

“It's the garden out front,” Carrie said. Despite what I'd just said, I think it was the first time she really connected her mother with the island. I doubt it had ever occurred to her that her mother had spent her summers here just as we did.

The picture of the garden was divided into sections, and each section was labeled with the name of a flower. When Carrie turned the pages, you could see watercolors of the flowers, mostly wildflowers. The watercolors were delicately colored and showed the flowers and their leaves. Brightly colored butterflies hovered over the blossoms. “There were lots more flowers in the garden then than there are now,” Carrie said. She studied one of the pages. “Dutchman's-breeches. What an odd name.”

“The flowers look like the trousers Dutchmen used to wear.”

“Look,” Carrie said. “Lavender. Just like I planted. It's almost like my mother was telling me what to plant.” She gathered up her mother's dresses and the sketchbook and ran down the stairs. I was right behind her, curious about what she was going to do.

Clutching everything to her, she rushed into the
living room and confronted Grandma. “Can I have these?” she asked. “They're my mother's.”

Startled, Grandma looked from Carrie to the dresses and sketchbook. “Why, of course. If I had only thought, I would have given them to you long ago. But what will you do with them, dear?”

“I'll wear the dresses, and I want to make the garden just like it was when my mother had it.”

Grandma frowned. “Those dresses are a little out of fashion, I'm afraid.”

“They're just Carrie's size,” I pleaded.

Grandma understood. “I think they would be fun to wear, Carrie. Just on the island, of course.”

Grandpa shook his head. “Restoring the garden would take a lot of hard work, Caroline. You'd never get it done in the couple of weeks we have left.”

Carrie's eyes sent blue sparks in Grandpa's direction. I knew she meant to have her way. There were waves of energy around her, as if any minute she would fly off in several directions. Grandpa must have felt it, too.

“Well, no harm in trying, I guess.” He buried his head in the newspaper. Carrie swept up the stairway. We could hear closet doors banging.

“She must be hanging those old clothes up,” Grandma said. “I can't think what she wants with them. They're from a different age.”

I thought I knew. In all the years since her mother had died, her arms around those dresses was as close
as Carrie had come to her.

All afternoon Carrie studied her mother's garden book. After dinner she hunted up a spade, marched out to the garden, and began digging.

“Grandma,” Emily wailed, “Carrie's digging up my marigolds.” Planting lavender in the garden was one thing, digging up marigolds another.

From the window we could see Carrie plunging the spade into the soil as if she were after buried treasure, as if hunks of gold were just under the surface and would disappear if she didn't hurry. The marigolds flew every which way.

Grandma said, “Your aunt Julia never had marigolds in her garden, Emily.”

“But they're blooming.” Emily was ready to run outside.

Grandma put a hand on her shoulder. “Let her be, dear. It's the first time I've seen Carrie actually interested in something.”

By the time Carrie had finished, it was almost dark. It had been like watching her swimming. She had so much energy, she could have lighted up a whole city. Grandpa trundled out the wheelbarrow and helped Carrie load it with garden discards and clumps of grass that had overgrown the garden.

When I got ready for bed, Carrie was still poring over the sketchbook. “Grandma says most of these flowers are wildflowers and that they grow in the woods. How am I supposed to find them?”

Leafing through the book, I recognized several of the flowers Aunt Julia had painted. “I know where some of them are. Emily and Nancy and Tommy can help. That one I'm sure just grows on the mainland. We'd have to hunt over there.”

“Will you help me?” Carrie asked.

Carrie had never asked me for anything, and everything I had given without her asking hadn't worked out. I wanted to shrug off what she was asking, to tell her that a lot of wildflowers nearly disappeared after they bloomed, that I didn't care that much for wildflowers anyhow. I think it's a good thing that sometimes when you are rushed into something, you make the right decision even if you don't want to. I think it means that inside people there's a lot of good stuff just waiting to pop out. Anyhow, before I could say no, I said, “Yes.”