Autumn Street (10 page)

"I am
not
stupid, Charles. Nobody can live in an attic and not eat. And how would he go to the bathroom? There aren't any bathrooms in attics."

Charles explained it to me patiently, the way my Sunday School teacher went through things again and again, making me feel unbearably ignorant.

"He creeps down at night, after everybody asleep, and eats and pees. His wife, she probably knows he's there. Spies, they can tell their wife, but nobody else."

I looked again, nervously, at the Hoffmans' attic windows, wondering if Nathaniel's father could possibly be there, chatting with Hitler. The Autumn
Street attics were very hot in summer, and there was a wasp's nest in Grandfather's.

"Charles," I said slowly, terrified by my own daring, "Mrs. Hoffman took Nathaniel to Harrisburg this morning, to buy clothes for school. And she always leaves the back door unlocked."

Charles grinned. He was always looking for something exciting to do, and I still refused to go with him to the woods. "You wanna go in?"

"What if he heard us?"

"We gotta make a plan. We go in in our bare feet so we don't make no noise. Then we creeps up the stairs without no noise, and we creeps all the way up to the attic door and we listen."

"What do we do if we hear him?"

Charles thought. "We call the army and tell them."

"Charles, what if he knows that Mrs. Hoffman and Nathaniel are gone, and he comes down in the house and sees us?"

"Elizabeth Jane, you don't know yet that spies is serious stuff. He staying in that attic all the time because if he comes out except when it be real dark, somebody might see him through the windows. No, he gonna stay right in that attic in daytime, tapping at his radio to Hitler."

"What will the army do to him?"

"Kill him. They always kills spies. First they torture them some."

"I don't want anybody to be killed."

"Long as he sits there talking to Hitler, people getting put into them ovens. You like that better?"

I remembered Red, with his quick, cocky voice, calling softly to Lillian as she got into the car, "Hey there, Roasted Chestnut!" I didn't want Red to be in an oven, trussed like a turkey, with juices oozing pink from the prick-marks in the browning skin. It was the vision of Red in a baking pan, a cigarette still propped in his grin, that made me agree to go into Hoffman's house.

We slipped through the opening in the hedge, glancing back to be sure that Tatie wasn't watching, that Grandmother had not appeared on the porch to check the roses, or that Mama was not bringing the baby to the yard for some sun. But the house was silent, closed, and uncaring.

The Hoffmans' back door was, as I knew it would be, unlocked. The kitchen was sunny and neat, the breakfast dishes washed and draining in the sink, a bowl of bananas on the table next to a bottle of vitamins. Nathaniel's treasured stack of Captain Marvel comics was on a shelf beside the telephone; I saw Charles eye them greedily, and I nudged him forward through the kitchen. The floor was cool and clean,
recently scrubbed, against our bare feet. The only sounds were the loud ticking of an ornate clock in the dining room and the stealthy brush of our feet on the rug as we passed through on our way to the stairs.

But even empty rooms are populated with the presence of those recently there. I thought that I could smell the thin flowery scent of the cologne Mrs. Hoffman sometimes wore; and I could almost hear the soft laughter of Nathaniel as he played. I grabbed for Charles' hand and held it tight; he turned to me and formed some words with his mouth.

"What?" I whispered.

"Shhh." He formed the words again, adding a little breath to them so that I could understand. "Look for
clues.
"

Clues? I didn't know what he meant. Surely there would be no evidence of Hugo Hoffman's presence here in the empty first floor. Then I stiffened and pulled Charles back into the dining room. I pointed to the large carved wooden clock on the buffet.

Charles looked at me, puzzled, and I remembered that he couldn't read.

"Made in Germany," I whispered, pointing to the words.

He raised his eyebrows, praising me with the look. It was a clue.

At the foot of the stairs, Charles whispered to me. "We should've brung the knife."

I shook my head. I wanted no part of the knife. I had even, when Charles wasn't there, rearranged the leaves and stones over its burial place so that we couldn't find the spot again.

Still clutching his hand, I tiptoed beside Charles up the staircase to the second floor. I had never been upstairs in the house before, but the rooms seemed familiar. There was a guest room; I knew the tidy, unused look of a guest room from Grandfather's house, which had five such impersonal spaces, their closets empty but for a few wire hangers.

Nathaniel's room was messy, bright-colored, haphazard and happy, strewn with little-boy toys. Lincoln logs and a half-constructed, green-roofed cabin lay on the rug, waiting for his return, for his cheerful concentration. I felt the guilt of gladness once again, that Noah was dead, that Nathaniel's playthings were safe, and that Nathaniel smiled so much now. I dropped Charles' hand, knelt on the rug, and added a green slat to the roof of the little house.

Nathaniel's pajamas, printed with clowns and jugglers, were discarded in a corner of the room, dropped in a wrinkled heap where they were outlined by a rectangle of sunlight from the window.

The door to what had been Noah's room was closed. I could hear again his high-pitched wail as it had come through the opened window of that room in June, and once again my half-meant prayer of apology to a god disguised as my father, and to the Hoffmans, crept through my consciousness like a bewildered kitten. When Charles made a motion with his hand toward the doorknob of that room, I stopped him decisively, shaking my head no.

Mrs. Hoffman's bedroom, at the front of the house, was prettily decorated with blue flowered fabrics; a quilted satin comforter was folded into a scrupulous triangle at the foot of the double bed. On the bureau, in a gold filigreed frame, a tinted photograph of the twins, dressed in Eton suits, smiled eerily at me. I nudged Charles and pointed to the other photograph, to the grave face of a wavy-haired man who I knew must be Hugo Hoffman. Charles studied it and nodded, apparently designating it a further clue.

As I glanced at some papers on Mrs. Hoffman's bedside table, Charles ventured across the room. Turning, I almost giggled aloud. He was balancing in a pair of high-heeled shoes with ankle straps and gaudy red bows; his bare, brown ankles converged as he tried tentatively to walk across the rug. He grinned, acknowledging his own foolishness in gleeful silence,
and returned the shoes carefully to the floor of the open closet. We went into the hall to find the attic stairs.

It surprised us both that the stairs were open; there was no furtively closed door to which we could press our ears against a keyhole and listen for the spy speaking in low-voiced German. There were no sounds at all from the attic, and the stairs were piled with dusty cardboard boxes, one marked "Christmas tree ornaments" and another "Patterns—size 6—Twins." A mop stood upended in a bucket; and farther up, I saw, with a twinge of pain, a folded, mildewed yellow slicker and a small pair of red rubber boots that I recognized as Noah's.

I was no longer frightened or excited. I was simply sad and ashamed, anxious to get away from the Hoffmans' house and from their lives. I was angry at Charles for having suggested the adventure and angry with myself that the suggestion could have enticed me into a place whose woeful secrets were so small, so despairing, and so private.

"Come on," I said aloud. "Let's go."

Charles was still caught up in the intrigue. "Shhh," he whispered, alarmed by my voice.

"Come
on.
" I pulled away from him, hurried down the stairs and toward the back door. He followed me, and our two sets of bare feet thumped through the
empty house, made slapping sounds on the kitchen linoleum, and finally felt the safety of the yard, the hedge opening, and the familiar soft-shorn grass of our own territory.

"You was dumb to make all that noise," Charles scolded me. "He could still be in the basement. We didn't listen at the basement door."

"He isn't there at all."

"You don't know. Spies has all sorts of ways to keep themselves secret."

"He isn't there. On the table by Mrs. Hoffman's bed there was a letter."

"What'd it say?"

"It was in an envelope. I didn't take it out. But on the envelope it said that it was from Hugo Hoffman, Denver, Colorado."

"Where's that?"

"I don't know, but it isn't Pennsylvania."

"Well, he's probably bein' a spy there, wherever it is. Lillian said there was spies everywhere."

"Old dumb Lillian. I wish they'd put
her
in an oven."

"Yeah, then she
really
be a Roasted Chestnut!"

I pulled up a handful of Grandfather's grass and threw it impulsively at Charles. "Good-for-nothing old Charles!" I said, and giggled.

He spat the green shreds from his mouth, tore a
handful from the lawn to throw back at me, and cried, "No-account ole Elizabeth!"

We lay side by side on Grandfather's lawn, helpless with laughter and freckled with fragments of grass. When you love someone, I thought, you can be
bad
together sometimes. How I loved Charles then.

"W
ELL, WHY
can't
Charles go to my school?"

"Hold still, Liz. I can't braid your hair when you're wiggling that way." Mama criss-crossed the strands of blond hair deftly and decorated the ends with new blue hair ribbons to match my dress. "Charles lives in a different part of town, that's why. He'll go to a school near his house, and you're going to the Jefferson School near
this
house."

"But I won't know anybody if Charles isn't there. I don't want to go."

"Don't be silly, Elizabeth. You know Jessica. You know Anne, and Nathaniel Hoffman. All the children from Autumn Street will be at Jefferson School."

"They're all older than me. Charles is the only first-grade person I know."

"Well, you'll meet other children at school. You'll make new friends."

"Why can't Charles live here, in Tatie's room, and then he can go to my school?"

"
Elizabeth.
Hold
still.
There; your dress is buttoned. Can you tie your shoes yourself?"

"Yes," I pouted, "but I don't want to. I don't want to go to school. Not unless Charles does."

Mama turned the hairbrush to its flat silver side and swatted my behind. "Stop it, Elizabeth. You are going to school, and that's that. Jess is waiting for you downstairs. Don't forget to get your lunch from Tatie. You're going to be late if you don't go
right now.
"

I tied my shoes and stomped off, glowering. Then I turned in the doorway, went back, and hugged Mama.

"I' m sorry."

"It's all right, sweetheart. You're just scared. Now go on, and have a good day."

I plodded down the stairs and muttered, out of Mama's hearing, "I am
not
scared."

It was a lie, of course, but if I said it to myself often enough, I could make myself believe it.

***

The Jefferson School was brick, tall, and Gothic, rising incongruously from an entire block of flat asphalt. Jessica walked with me and tried dutifully to explain the rules of going to school, but she interrupted herself again and again to wave to friends. Jess had finished third grade at Jefferson the previous year. She had friends. She knew all the rules. And Jess never questioned rules, as I did, even now, trudging dispiritedly beside her on the first day of school.

"That's the playground," Jessica said, waving her arm to indicate the expanse of gray asphalt as we approached. Then her wave shifted when she saw a dark-haired girl across the street. "Hi, Ruth Ann!"

"How can you
play
when there's no grass or trees?" I muttered.

"There's recess in the morning and again in the afternoon. That side over there is the girls' side, and this side is the boys' side. Now don't ever go onto the boys' side, Liz, or you'll get into trouble."

"You mean you can't play with boys at recess?"

"Of course not. You have to stay on the girls' side. You can draw hopscotches on the playground, but you have to bring your own chalk from home. You're not
allowed to take the school chalk outside. Hi, Betsy!" She waved again to a girl in a plaid dress.

I sighed. I was no good at all at hopscotch, which Jess and her friends had played all summer on Autumn Street. I couldn't balance well on one leg; I stepped on the lines. They only let me play if there was no one else.

"Walk with us, Jess!"

"I can't. I have to take my sister in. Tomorrow I'll walk with you." She was calling across the street, to strangers.

"Jess, do you mean you won't walk with me tomorrow?"

"Elizabeth, you're a first grader. I can't walk to school with a first grader every day. You'll find somebody your own age to walk with. Now, look. This is the door we go in. I go upstairs, to fourth grade, but the first grade room is right here. Over there are the bathrooms—that's the boys', and this is the girls'. But if you have to go to the bathroom, you have to ask the teacher first."

I clung to her arm and could tell that she was anxious to leave me. "Jess," I whispered, "do you mean I have to tell the teacher if I have to go to the
bathroom?
"

"Yes. Let go of me."

"I can't tell the teacher that."

"Be a camel, then. Now let go. I can't be late."

She pried me loose and pushed me into the first grade room.

A tall young woman in a flowered dress knelt beside me so that her face was level with mine, and she was smiling. "Good morning," she said in a voice as warm and soft as bedroom slippers. "Did you come all alone on the very first day?"

I dispensed with Jessica in a nod. "Yes," I said.

"My goodness, you're
very brave.
Most children need to have their mothers bring them, and even then"—she lowered her voice to a whisper—"some of them cry. I'm so glad to have a big girl like you in my class. What's your name?"