Ship of Dolls (8 page)

“Do you hear yourself?” Grandma demanded. “In my day, a flippant answer was not tolerated. But you get that from your mother.”

Lexie lurched to her feet, glad to aim the hurt away from herself. “I knew you would blame Mama! You always blame Mama! But my mama would never listen to a lady saying mean things at the door. She would shut the door in her face!”

As Grandma drew in a sharp breath, Grandpa set his paper on the table and got to his feet. He stepped behind Lexie and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Sophie, give the child a chance to tell her side of the matter.”

“That is exactly what I am trying to do.” Grandma visibly controlled her temper, though her cheeks had become bright pink. “I will ask you again, Electra. What happened at the Harmons’ boardinghouse with that doll meant for Japan?”

An ache spread through Lexie, blurring her thoughts and stabbing her heart. All she really knew was how desperately she missed Mama. Grandma blamed Mama for everything. It wasn’t fair.

Feeling defiance flare inside her, she raised her head. “You aren’t my mama. I don’t have to tell you anything.”

Grandpa’s hands tightened on her shoulders, as if in warning. Too late. The words were out. And she wasn’t sorry. She’d been sorry enough.

With her eyes too bright, Grandma walked over to the cookstove. “We are happy to have you with us, Electra, but you will not grow up to be as heedless as your mother. Not if I have anything to say about it, and I believe I do.”

She shoved the lid lifter under the heavy stove lid and pulled it to one side. “To lead me to believe that sewing the doll’s dress was an honor was a lie of omission. To my mind, that is no better than a lie spoken.” Flames leaped from the wood burning in the open firebox. Grandma’s voice snapped like the sparks. “Bring that dress over here.”

S
hock washed the feeling from Lexie’s face and arms to somewhere deep inside. All the resistance left her. Grandma couldn’t . . . She
couldn’t
mean to burn Emily Grace’s dress. “But . . . it’s almost done.”

Sounding far away, Grandpa protested. “Sophie?”

Lexie hesitated, hoping Grandpa would somehow make things right.

Grandma raised the cast-iron lid higher. The fire burning below made a wavering glow on the surface. “A hard lesson is a lesson well learned.”

Lexie held up the dress, as if it could change Grandma’s mind. “See . . .? The stitches barely show.”

“Drop it in here.”

Lexie’s fingers clenched over the pretty flower-​sprigged dress with its blue-​trimmed collar and matching sash. She thought of all the tiny stitches she had hand-​sewn into it. Miss Tompkins would be impressed.

But Miss Tompkins was never going to see it.

“Electra.”

“I was going to borrow Emily Grace to try the dress on her. Miss Tompkins said I could.”

Without seeming to move her lips, Grandma asked, “Did you hear what I said?”

Angry tears burned down Lexie’s cheeks. She twisted around to look up at Grandpa but saw no rescue, though his face looked troubled.

Pride rushed new heat through Lexie’s chilled body. She could be as strong as Grandma. She
was
as strong. But until she got to San Francisco, she had to do as Grandma and Grandpa told her. Even when she knew they were wrong. Lurching to her feet, she held the dress before her and tried to see it as nothing but firewood.

Grief could wait. Her entire body felt stiff with the feelings she locked inside as she crossed the kitchen to the cookstove. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t dare. Her courage might not last.

She brought the dress over the open stove, held it briefly — in case Grandma had an unlikely change of heart — then opened her fingers and let it fall.

For a moment, the flower-​sprigged cotton lay on the burning wood. Lexie nearly reached in to snatch it back. The cloth caught fire. Flames leaped. Grandma wasn’t finished. “Bring the pattern.”

“Surely she’s done enough,” Grandpa said.

Both Lexie and Grandma paid him no mind. Anger rode over anguish within Lexie, driving her to the sewing cabinet. She pulled open one of the small drawers and jerked the folded paper pattern pieces from under the scissors.

For a moment, she thought of the care she had taken in measuring Emily Grace. But that reminded her of the closeness she had briefly shared with her grandparents, and there was no room in her heart for closeness. She crumpled the paper pattern, carried it to the stove, and dropped it onto the burning cloth.

Grandma shoved the cast-​iron lid in place. “Go on to bed. Think about the importance of honesty.”

Lexie ran up the stairs, slammed her door behind her, and hurled herself onto the bed, sobbing into Annie’s soft cloth body for the loss of the dress she had worked so hard to make. Even deeper sobs tore at her for the loss of the family closeness she had felt so briefly. “I should have told. Annie, I ruined everything!”

She wouldn’t stay here. She would go to Mama. She would walk all the way to California. One step in front of the other for long enough would carry her anywhere.

Maybe I’ll go to Japan with Emily Grace. They’ll be sorry then. Or maybe they won’t be. Maybe they’ll forget me and ask each other, “That girl who was here . . . What was her name? Do you remember?”

Through the window, she saw a light go on in Jack’s room on the far side of the old tree.
This is all Jack’s fault. He must have told Louise. How else could she know?

Anger blazed again, and she slid off the bed and climbed through the window and onto the tree branch. She crawled along the branch and gathered a handful of twigs. When she had crept as close as she could to Jack’s window, she threw them, one after another.

He raised the blind and shoved open the window. “What do you want?”

“To tell you that you can be happy now. I’m paid back. Louise told her mother about the doll and she told Grandma and now Grandma hates me!”

“Louise? How’d she know?”

“How’d she know? You told her. Her mother said so. I heard her.”

“You dumb Dora. I didn’t tell her. You oughta know me better than that.”

“Then who did?”

“Nobody. Louise probably heard us arguing after school that day. She’s a sneak. She was probably listening.”

“If you knew that, you shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You were the one who insisted on talking about the fight with Ollie. The whole story came out. Remember?”

She did remember. And she knew he was right. He’d said she should be punished and she’d said she was and he’d said sewing a dress wasn’t punishment. Louise must have heard it all.

Before she could say she was sorry for blaming him, Jack slammed down the window and closed the blind. Lexie reached for another twig, then changed her mind and crawled along the branch back to her room.

She wanted to stay angry. She needed to stay angry, but slowly her earlier words to Annie spread through her. She’d been wrong to accuse Jack. And she should have told Grandma at once about the accident with the doll. Downstairs, she should have tried to explain instead of clamping the truth away just because she hurt inside.

Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe she could go down and apologize. Then she could start over and tell what happened from the beginning and why she couldn’t stop it once it got started and how Louise had taken it into her head that making a dress for Emily Grace was an honor.

She tiptoed down the stairs, trying words in her head, pushing away any that tempted her to make things sound better for herself. She would tell it exactly the way it had happened. At the bottom of the stairs, she paused as she had when Grandma and Grandpa talked about the letter from Mama. They were talking now. About her.

“Y
ou may be right.” Grandma sounded tired, making guilt stab into Lexie as she listened from the stairs. “I may have been too harsh, but she’s a smart child, growing up faster than we want to see. She needs guidance.”

“She’ll receive guidance,” Grandpa said gently. Lexie pictured him rubbing Grandma’s hand the way he sometimes did when she was upset. “We must be sure to temper guidance with love, Sophie.”

“Of course I love her,” Grandma exclaimed, sounding insulted. “But when I look at her, I see her mother and I think of the outlandish choices that woman has made. Look where those choices led her . . . . Singing in nightclubs, and who knows what goes on there.”

“We won’t imagine what we don’t know,” Grandpa warned.

Grandma sighed so loudly that the sound carried to Lexie on the stairs. “We know she insisted on buying a fancy motorcar that carried our son to his death.”

Lexie couldn’t listen any longer. She ran back up the stairs, careful to make no sound. Grandma blamed Mama for Papa dying in the motorcar crash.
That’s reason enough for Grandma to lock away tender feelings when she sees anything of Mama coming out in me.

As she climbed onto her bed, Lexie felt more confused than before. Slowly, she let her body sink into the covers while she hugged Annie.

Much later, a soft knock on her door startled her awake. She sat up, brushing her cheeks with her palms.

“Lexie, honey?” Grandpa asked. “May I come in for a moment?”

“Okay.” She swung her feet from the bed and sat up.

Grandpa left the door open and settled into a chair near her. “I was just thinking, honey. Rain clouds and stormy moods take time to blow away, but sooner or later the sun always comes out.”

Lexie looked into his troubled eyes, trying to understand what he meant.

He leaned toward her, his hands on his knees. “She’ll get over her crossness, you know, your grandma.”

Reaching behind her, Lexie pulled Annie onto her lap. “No. I don’t think she will.”

“Grandma loves you,” Grandpa said. “We both do. But she’s a woman who sees things in black and white. And there’s bad blood between her and Eleanor Wilkins, has been for a long time.”

Lexie hugged Annie closer. Grandma and Louise’s mama could fight it out in the middle of town, as long as they left her alone.

Grandpa pushed one hand through his thinning hair. “Tonight, your grandma feels . . . Well, she feels a little of the way you’re feeling: betrayed, disappointed . . . pulling back to a safer place. It’s a big responsibility to raise a little girl. Sometimes the more you love her, the harder it is because you want so much for that girl to grow into a sensible and happy young woman.”

“She made me burn the dress,” Lexie said into Annie, all the pain of that moment rushing back into her.

“She was feeling proud of her granddaughter in front of her friends, especially Eleanor Wilkins,” Grandpa said. “Now she feels let down and maybe embarrassed. That’s a hard thing for her.”

“It’s harder on me,” Lexie protested, but her voice sounded small. She took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to take Emily Grace from Miss Tompkins’s room. But I
had
to hold her. I had to know her, to know what to write in the letter that’s going with her. Because the best letter writer gets to go to San Francisco. And Mama’s there.”

She took another deep breath before finishing in a rush. “And it was an accident because Miss Tompkins came back and Jack said to go down the fire escape and we did and I still had Emily Grace in one arm. So then I had to take her back to Miss Tompkins and say why I had her.”

Grandpa leaned over to put one hand over hers, warm and comforting. “You told Miss Tompkins the truth. That wasn’t an easy thing to do.”

“No. And Grandma was busy getting ready for her book ladies. And then . . . there just wasn’t another time to tell her.” Tears blurred her eyes. She stared down at Grandpa’s hand over hers. “And I guess Louise heard Jack and me talking about it and told her mother and now Grandma hates me.”

“No, honey. We both love you. We always will. Nothing can change that.”

There was never going to be a better time to ask the question that had been burning inside her for days. She couldn’t bottle it up anymore. “Did a letter come from Mama? Does she want me to go to her?”

Grandpa’s hand tightened over hers almost as if he’d felt a stab of pain. “Honey, your mama doesn’t always think things through. Sometimes the things we want just aren’t possible.”