Promises to Keep (15 page)
She hesitated before answering. Then she said, “You were crying for your daddy is all.”
“I was?”
She nodded. “But never mind. A fever makes us do funny things. Your mother knows that.”
I missed an entire week of school recovering from strep. Mara brought my homework by every day, but as much as I wanted to see her, Tillie wouldn’t allow her past the front door. “We can’t have that sweet little girl catching your germs and ending up sick herself,” Tillie said.
Tillie worked tirelessly, nursing me back to health. She made sure I took my medicine on time; she fed me the usual homemade chicken soup and Jell-O; she plumped up my pillows and propped me up in bed so she could stick the thermometer under my tongue.
“You should have been a nurse, Tillie,” I told her.
“I was,” she said. “I had three boys, remember?”
My only outside visitor was Grandpa, who came by every day to read to me and help me pass the time.
“I have to have my tonsils out, Grandpa,” I told him.
“So I heard. And do you know what that means?”
I shook my head.
“It means you’ll get all the ice cream you want.” He winked at me and smiled. I took his hand and pressed it against my cheek. How I loved Gramps. And how I wanted to tell him that Daddy was in town, right here in Mills River. I wanted to tell Gramps that I’d seen and talked with him, and that Daddy wanted me and Mom and Valerie back. Grandpa would know what to do.
“Gramps?”
“Yes, honey?”
But Daddy had said not to tell anyone, and surely that included Grandpa too. If I told, it would ruin everything.
“Grandpa, do you hate my father?” The words were a whisper.
A tiny muscle in Grandpa’s jaw tightened. His brows moved lower over his eyes, and a deep line formed between them. “No, Roz,” he said. “I don’t hate him. I . . .” He paused and shook his head. “Listen, let’s not talk about your father. You just need to rest.”
“But, Gramps, there’s something good about everyone, isn’t there?”
Grandpa took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Alan Anthony did one good thing,” he said.
“What?”
“He gave me you.” Grandpa leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I have to go home now. You close those pretty eyes and get some sleep.”
In an odd sort of way, Grandpa’s words comforted me. Maybe I could think of myself, and Valerie too, as something good Daddy had done. After Grandpa left, I slept, and it was a dreamless sleep. When I awoke, my fever had broken and I was on my way to getting better.
“Of course, Hester. It’s no trouble at all,” Tillie said into the phone. “We’ll be happy to have her stay as long as you need. Now, don’t you worry about a thing.”
When Tillie hung up the phone in the kitchen, I looked up from my bowl of oatmeal and caught her eye. “What was that about?” I asked.
“That was Hester Nightingale wanting to know if your little friend Mara could stay with us for a few days.”
“Really?”
“Hester and Willie are going to Detroit to help out with their new grandbaby, and instead of staying with relatives here, Mara said she’d rather stay with you.”
“Really! And it’s all right?”
“Of course it is. You’re all over the strep, and it’ll be nice for you to have a friend here for a while. Willie and Hester will drop her off tomorrow afternoon on their way out of town. I figure she can sleep in your extra bed, can’t she?”
“Sure she can!” I cried. “This is going to be fun!”
When the doorbell rang on Sunday afternoon, I flew down the stairs to get it. But by the time I reached the bottom step, Mom was already opening the door to Mara and her parents.
“Hello, Mrs. Nightingale, Mr. Nightingale. Won’t you come in and have some coffee before you head out?”
Mr. Nightingale, carrying two suitcases, stepped sideways on his long legs into the front hall. He set down the suitcases and took off his fedora as Mrs. Nightingale and Mara stepped inside. “Thank you, Mrs. Anthony,” he said, “but we’ve got a long drive ahead of us, so we best be on our way.”
Mrs. Nightingale nodded and added, “But we’re grateful, Mrs. Anthony, for your willingness to look after Mara while we’re gone.”
“Well, we’re very happy to have her,” Mom said.
Mara and I exchanged a smile as she pulled off her knit cap and unbuttoned her coat. “Hi, Roz,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m better. But I have to have my tonsils out.”
Mara grimaced and nodded. “I’ve had mine out – ”
“There’s nothing to it, honey,” Mrs. Nightingale said, smiling at me. “Snip, snip, and they’re gone.”
It was the snip-snipping that worried me, but I tried to shrug nonchalantly. “I guess so,” I said.
Tillie came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Hello, Willie, Hester. Mara, honey, let me take your coat. Won’t you all come in and have something to drink?”
Mr. Nightingale repeated his earlier regrets and thanked Tillie for the offer.
“Oh, by the way, Willie, since we’re speaking of driving,” Tillie went on, “the car’s been running better than ever since you gave her that tune-up. You do work wonders, you know.”
Mr. Nightingale smiled shyly. “That’s fine, Mrs. Monroe. I’m glad to hear that. Any time you have problems, you bring the car to me.”
“We will, certainly,” Mom interjected.
Mrs. Nightingale pulled a piece of paper out of her pocketbook and handed it to Mom. “Here’s the number where we’ll be, just in case. Celia Greer, that’s our daughter. We’ll be staying with her.”
Mom looked at the paper and nodded confidently. “I’m sure everything will be fine. You just go enjoy that new grandbaby of yours.”
The Nightingales both smiled broadly at that, their white teeth shining in keen contrast to their dark skin. “We’ll do that, Mrs. Anthony,” Hester Nightingale said. “And thank you again for watching Mara.” She leaned over and kissed Mara’s cheek. “Now you be good, baby, and mind your manners.”
“I will, Mama.”
Her father laid his oversized hand on her head and patted her hair gently. His nails and palms were pink, though the skin on the back of his hand was tough and wrinkled as an elephant’s. “Bye now, baby girl,” he said quietly. “We’ll be back in about a week.”
“All right, Daddy.” She hugged him around the waist, then picked up her suitcases and looked at me. “Where’s your room?” she asked.
“Upstairs. Come on!”
I showed Mara the way and pointed to the bed that would be hers. She dropped the suitcases on it and sat beside them cross-legged. “I’ve been checking your desk at school every day while you’ve been gone,” she said.
“You have?” I sat down on my own bed and cocked my head.
“Yeah. You know, to check on the note to your daddy. It’s still there. He hasn’t come.”
“Oh.” I looked past her to the window, not wanting to lie but afraid to tell her the truth, that I’d seen Daddy at the library. Now that I knew Daddy was in town, and now that I knew what he wanted, I’d get rid of the note in my desk in the morning. “Well – ”
“Maybe whoever left those Sugar Daddies wasn’t your daddy.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry, Roz.”
“It’s all right.”
“I know you were hoping . . .”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. What’s in your suitcases?”
Mara looked at the suitcases wide-eyed. “I’ll show you.” She tapped on one of them, saying, “This is just clothes and stuff, but this one . . .” She finished by pulling the suitcase toward her and popping the two latches. She opened the lid and smiled at me, as though she were showing me a treasure.
“What’s with all the books?” I asked.
“You haven’t done your report on Marie Curie. I’m going to help you get it done, so I checked out every book in the library that says anything about her.”
“All those books are about Madame Curie?”
“Well, not all of them. Some of them I’m just reading for fun. Like this one.” She lifted one of the books so I could see the cover.
I squinted, as much in exasperation as in an effort to read from several feet away. “
Greatest American Poems of the Twentieth Century?
You read that kind of stuff for fun?”
“Sure! I love poetry. Besides, how am I going to be a great writer if I don’t read important stuff ?” She was beaming. I was frowning. She didn’t seem to notice. “Do you want to start reading about Madame Curie?” she asked.
Schoolwork hadn’t exactly been on my list of things to do when I learned Mara was coming over. But she’d gone to the trouble of getting the books I needed for my report, and anyway, I didn’t want to disappoint her.
“Yeah, okay,” I said with a shrug. “I guess I should get started on that paper.”
I sure hadn’t had any friends in Minneapolis like Mara Nightingale. She was like a grown-up living inside a little girl’s skin. But I liked her, and so far she was my one and only friend in Mills River.
I took the book she offered and together we quietly read about the life and work of Madame Curie until finally, to my relief, Tillie called us down to supper.
That night, when I turned out the bedroom light at nine o’clock, Mara turned on a transistor radio she’d brought along with her.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Listening to a show. Will it bother you?”
“No, it’s all right. What is it?”
“
The Literary Hour With William Remmick.
Though I don’t know why they call it that, since it only lasts a half hour.”
“I never heard of it.”
“No, I didn’t think you would have. It’s coming out of Chicago.”
“What’s it about?”
“You know, books and stuff. Professor Remmick, he interviews authors and talks about their books. Stuff like that.”
The radio was turned down low, nestled on the pillow close to Mara’s ear. I heard the murmur of voices, first a man’s voice, then a woman’s. I couldn’t quite make out the words, but I knew I wouldn’t be interested anyway. I wondered why Mara wanted to listen to a show like that. I wondered even more why she’d rather listen to a grown-up talk show than talk with me. Mom had told us to go to sleep, but I’d have gladly lain awake whispering in the dark with Mara, and would have too, if it hadn’t been for the radio putting a wedge between us.
I tried to keep the hurt out of my voice when I said, “Do you listen to this show every night?”
“No,” she said. “Just Sundays and Wednesdays. That’s when it’s on.”
“Oh, okay.” I lay on my back in the dark, looking up at the ceiling. Laughter came from the radio, and Mara chuckled along with it. I felt like I’d been abandoned. “Well, I’m going to sleep now. Good night, Mara.”
“Good night, Roz.”
She probably thought I drifted off, but I didn’t. Not quite, anyway. I might have been right on the edge of sleep, but after a time my dreams got snagged by the show’s theme song rising up from Mara’s pillow. Mara must have turned the volume up a notch, because I heard the man’s voice say, “That’s it for tonight, folks. We’ll see you again on Wednesday, when we’ll be interviewing best-selling author J. P. Westmoreland. Until then, this is William Remmick saying good-night and thank you for joining us. And good night to you, Beatrice. Sweet dreams.”
And then Mara’s soft voice drifted toward me as she whispered to that faraway man, “Good night, Daddy. I love you.”
The radio clicked off, the room fell silent, and in another moment Mara’s steady breathing told me she was asleep.
In the morning, I didn’t say anything to Mara about the man on the radio. But over the next three days, as we went to school, worked on homework, ate supper, helped Tillie with dishes, played with Valerie, and fell asleep side by side in the twin beds in my room, I regarded her with no small amount of suspicion. I had heard that crazy people could appear completely normal, and I wondered whether that was the case with Mara Nightingale. I thought maybe her dreams had carried her into a fantasyland and somehow imprisoned her there, though
imprisoned
may not be the right word. Maybe she wanted to stay in that place of make-believe, where some guy on the radio was her father. Maybe she was happier there than in the real world, since in the real world her daddy was a mechanic and not a professor of literature.