All the Way Home (9 page)

“My mother told me President Roosevelt had polio—” he began.

She didn’t wait for him to finish. “That’s what I told Geraldine Ginty!”

“The President has to crawl upstairs, he can’t take one step alone,” Brick said at the same time. “And he’s one of the greatest presidents we’ve ever had.”

“That’s what Loretta says.” Mariel wanted to stand up, wanted to twirl around the apple tree, holding the bark …

A friend. She had a friend.

“I was in a room with green lace curtains,” she said, trying to think of how she could explain it. “The curtains blew in the wind and I could see the sky—” She broke off. “If I find that room, I’ll know what happened to my mother.”

He was staring at her, looking at her so hard, listening. She raised her shoulders just a bit, trying to smile. “You have to go home,” she told him. “You have to go home right away and save the apples.”

He shook his head. “I promised Ambrose I’d stay for a week.”

She thought about it. “All right,” she said firmly. “But not one day longer.”

He grinned at her, red hair down over his forehead. “You’re tough. Tougher than I am.”

She smiled at him. Tough? She was afraid of everything all the time. “I am tough.” She crossed her fluttering fingers, hoping he didn’t see.

Loretta came to the door. “Hey, kids. It’s getting late.”

A few minutes later, Mariel stood at her window in her chipmunk-safe bedroom. Outside, the streetlights cast a warm orange glow across the yards. She thought about Brick living in Windy Hill near the hospital, her fingers fluttering against the screen.
Loretta looking up
from her knitting, yellow wool spilling onto the chair next to her. “One day you’ll go back to Windy Hill, sweetie. One day when you’re all grown up. You’ll see the hospital, and the hall where we turned and waved goodbye.”

Mariel closed her eyes, thinking about her own mother.
Red sweater across her shoulders, bracelet clinking … when the wind blows, the cradle will rock …

14

I
t was hot and sticky. Overhead, clouds raced along, one piled on top of another. They started down Midwood Street and turned back to wave to Loretta. Claude’s book was tucked under Brick’s arm, and they carried bag lunches just the way he would have at home.

The difference was they weren’t going to school.

He was careful to move slowly. He didn’t want to make it hard for Mariel to keep up, even though she moved faster than he thought she could.

And she certainly thought faster than he did.

“No school today,” she had whispered over the breakfast table.

He had glanced down the hall, too. Loretta was
nowhere in sight, but he could hear her singing that Glenn Miller song. He remembered Mom and Pop dancing in the kitchen, the radio turned on loud, his father swinging his mother out, barely missing the table, and then back to him.

Going home
, Brick thought,
going home today
. But how? He tried to push the worry down deep inside his chest. What he was going to do was almost like the game they used to play at birthday parties, Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Someone spun you around blindfolded, gave you a little push, and you were supposed to find the right way by yourself.

He didn’t even know the way out of Brooklyn.

“I have to put you somewhere this morning,” Mariel said, leaning across the table, sounding as if he were a package. “A place where Ambrose won’t find you.”

He swallowed a bite of Wheaties, wondering what she was talking about, but Loretta came into the kitchen, her nurse’s cap perched on her head, the point off center.

“The Dodgers are taking on Chicago today,” Loretta said. She looked out the window, head turned. “Wonder if it’s going to rain there? Wonder if it’s going to rain here?”

It is going to rain
, Brick thought as he waited with Mariel to cross Bedford Avenue.

“The hardest part,” Mariel said, “is the next block. Ambrose is always where you don’t want him to be.” She grinned at him. “He’ll be lurking around the park
like the Shadow on the radio. But I know a place … He’s never caught me there, not once in all this time.”

Brick shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“You’ll stay in the park while I go to the library.” Mariel stopped walking for a moment. “I’ll find directions to Windy Hill for you.”

She thought of everything.

“There’s a book of maps on the back table,” she said. “It’s like connecting the dots, going from one place to another, you know? That’s all it is.”

He felt a weight come off his chest.

“And if I get caught,” she said, limping along next to him again, her face turned up, “Ambrose will just walk me to school. I’ll skip out again at lunchtime.”

They crossed Washington Avenue, hurrying, as she glanced back and then went on again. He could see what an effort it was for her, the limp growing stronger, her face a little pale under her freckles.

He followed her, houses on one side, not as pretty as the ones on Midwood Street, the green trees of a park on the other. A few black cars were parked here and there; a few kids passed them on the way to school. Then in front of them were the gates to the park.

“Prospect Park,” Mariel told him. “An everything place, like the everything table in my bedroom. Woods and parade grounds and a lake with a house almost like a castle, even a merry-go-round.” She pointed. “And another kid playing hookey. See there. He doesn’t go to school some days either.”

Brick looked over at him. The boy was sitting on a bench, not paying attention to them, it seemed, not paying attention to anything, but then he raised his hand in a half wave.

Mariel kept going around the path, then leaning closer, almost whispering. “And there’s my place.” She gave his arm a little tug, leading him now, going as fast as she could.

A few minutes later she stopped. “Here.”

“But what is it?” he asked.

“A band shell. They play music here on Sundays,” she said. “It’s the best hiding place.” She held up one hand. “I think I felt a drop of rain.”

How could he hide without someone seeing him?
he wondered.

It was as if she knew what he was thinking. “Once Ambrose walked around it looking for me,” she said. “I just kept going ahead of him, crouching down, just as if I were a merry-go-round.” She fanned her face with one hand. “Hot, isn’t it? Someday when I’m grown up, I’m going to tell him.”

Brick shook his head. “Won’t he be angry?”

“I’ll be grown up then,” Mariel said, sinking down on the grass. “But I don’t think so. I think he’ll laugh.” She bit her lip. “Ambrose is”—she raised her shoulders—“there when you need him.”

He sank down next to her, looking up at the gray sky through the leaves of a bushy little tree, putting Claude’s book inside his bag of lunch, out of the rain.

He ran his hands through the grass, feeling the spikiness of it, the damp earth underneath. He told her about the river in Windy Hill on a day like this, the trees leaning over to dip their branches into the warm shallow water, the gurgling sound of the river as it ran across the rocks, the pattering of the rain on the leaves.

He was hit with a wave of homesickness, remembering his bedroom window, the apple trees outside in neat paths, Mom downstairs in the kitchen, laughing with Pop.

Home.

“Listen, Billy Nightingale. Brick?” She turned her head. “For your hair?”

He raised one shoulder. “It’s the color of the bricks in our icehouse.”

For a moment they sat there, the rain pattering against the side of the band shell. He watched her fingers tap on her dress and then she clasped her hands together. He wondered what she was thinking.

“I’ll go to the library now,” she said. “When I come back you’ll know the way to Windy Hill.”

15

M
ariel passed the candy man on the way to Grand Army Plaza. He was bent over, the weight of his square pack on his back, an umbrella over his head. He tossed Mariel a peppermint and she managed to catch it with one hand. A little kid, too young for school, stood under an awning on one of the stoops. He held out his hands. “Hey, girlie,” he said. “How about sharing?”

She looped the peppermint toward him, watched him scramble for it, then turned the last corner and went up the library steps, holding on to the railing, slick with rain.

A memory.
The green lace curtain clutched in her hand. Someone had tossed a piece of candy to her. But her head felt as if it had been stuffed with something thick and damp
like rolls of cotton. So she didn’t reach out and the candy fell in an arc down and down.…

Inside, the library was cool and dim, the squares of windows streaming with rain. In the center of the bulletin board was a picture of two kids smiling, and a sign:
FRIENDS GO BACK TO SCHOOL
.

Mariel ran a finger over the words. She had a friend for the first time in her life. She practiced saying it in her head.
Friend. My friend
.

No one would ever know about it. By this afternoon he’d be gone.

She’d know, she told herself, she’d know forever.

She skittered past the desk. The librarian’s head was bent. She didn’t even look up to see a girl out of school.

Mariel went down the long aisle filled with books on both sides. She knew the library, the children’s section, the adults’. She had spent years here.
Everyone out playing. Mariel has germs
.

On Saturday afternoons, she had looked at the books of world maps with their strange names: Ceylon, Singapore, Burma. And the maroon one of her own country, a page for each state: Maryland, Montana, Nebraska. She had flipped through, getting closer to her state all the time.

And there it was, the triangle of New York.

Windy Hill was just a small dot on the top. The first time she had looked it up, it had taken forever to run her fingers from one corner to the other. And when she finally spotted it, she had shivered. It was almost as if she
were there in Good Samaritan Hospital, and back even farther, somewhere with the green lace curtains trembling in the breeze.