The Romeo and Juliet Code (15 page)

When she hung up the phone, she shouted out, “Felicity Budwig Bathburn, what have you done to me?” And she started crying and she ran upstairs to her room and slammed the door.

Uncle Gideon came down from the gymnasium, looking all interested, like someone was handing out free biscuits and perhaps it might be a good time to say hello. “What ho, Fliss,” he said. “What’s all the racket? What have you done now and where is Wink? Perhaps it’s all his fault.”

I held
The Secret Garden
up over my nose and I didn’t answer.

“Sometimes I can be a good listener, Flissy,” said Uncle Gideon. “Really.”

“No,” I said. “Thank you very much.” I peeked at him over the book.

Finally, I broke down and said, “Wink didn’t do anything. I did it all. I’m terribly sorry. But I did it for Prime Minister Churchill, actually. Yes, I did it for Winston.”

I decided then I absolutely had to disappear completely and forever. So I held the big hat down over my face and I pushed past Uncle Gideon and I headed for the upstairs. I tore down the hall, passing The Gram’s room, hearing the buzzing of her sewing machine.

I planned to go up to my room to lock myself in forever. I was thinking Derek would have to design some sort of pulley system to send food up to me through the window because I was never going to answer the door, even if Derek came by and said, “Flissy, open up! I’ve got the code figured out.” I was going to stay in there until I became a grown-up and then I would emerge, cool and calm, wearing high heels and red lipstick.

As I was running, I got the terrible feeling that I was about to cry. So I leaned against the wall outside The Gram’s room. The feeling was coming towards me like one of the boats in the Cunard line, like the HMS
Queen Anne
, huge and gray and all painted over in her war costume, coming into the harbor silently. I knew it was going to happen.

I was truly sorry for what I had done to Aunt Miami. I hadn’t even realized she would be angry or upset. Now all sorts of things were coming to a peak inside me. I could feel everything rolling towards me like floodwater.

I listened to the sound of the sewing machine. It was buzzing along as if nothing in the world was wrong, as if there wasn’t a war across the ocean, as if my life hadn’t been torn into a million pieces, as if Winnie and Danny hadn’t left me here all alone in a strange land, not explaining anything.

The door was open a crack, and The Gram was sitting there sewing away, making something. She seemed to know I was out here in the hall all scrunched up in a heap about to cry. She turned round and waved to me. “Come over here, Flissy,” she said. I waited. She waved at me again. Then I poked my head through the door very quietly. I could see the fabric she was sewing with. There were British flags printed all over the flannel. I went in to the room and stood by The Gram. And as I stood there, she smelled of roses and soap, and it was because of the soap and the smell of roses that I started to cry. If it hadn’t been for the roses, it wouldn’t have happened.

I cried and I cried and I cried and I laid my head on The Gram’s soft shoulder and she hugged me and that made me cry even more.

“Go ahead and let loose,” she said. “You’ve been very brave and you’ve been through a lot.”

“I have?” I said.

“You have,” she said.

“But Auntie Miami’s angry with me and she’ll never speak to me again. And you’re angry with my Winnie. And when are they coming back for me? How long will I have to wait? And I know about Danny and Uncle Gideon. I know how they fought over my mum, Winnie. I know everything. The only thing I don’t know is where my parents are and what they are doing. What are they doing?”

“Well, Danny has always been a terrible risk taker. You know that.”

“Yes,” I said.

“He’s a risk taker and he wants to save the world. He won’t be happy with less. Some people need the thrill of danger. But I’m angry with him and Winnie for hurting Gideon, and I have been for twelve years.”

“Haven’t Danny and Gideon started making up?” I asked.

“It seems that they have, or you wouldn’t be here. In a way, you were part of the quarrel, though I am not at liberty to explain how,” said The Gram, smoothing my hair away from my face.

“I’m not a part of their quarrel,” I said. “I only just met Uncle Gideon when I came to Bottlebay. And were they really so close once?”

“Oh yes, they were the greatest of friends growing up. Though I will say Danny always seemed to outshine Gideon. He won all the games and races. Danny was so much more outgoing and better-looking than Gideon. Gideon was a bit in his shadow. But they were so close, they even spoke a secret language together.”

“A secret language?” I said.

“Yes, and they went to the same university studying languages and they wanted to go into the same line of work. But of course, that didn’t work out for Gideon. Still, in the end, Gideon has something that Danny doesn’t have, and though I’m not at liberty to explain, that is what you call a blessing in disguise.”

“And what about Auntie Miami,” I said. “She’s so terribly hurt and angry with me.” And I started to cry again.

“Oh, I think what you did was extraordinary. It was just what Miami needed. A good push. It was very forthright and clever of you. It must have been the Budwig in you that did it. We Bathburns are terribly, ridiculously hesitant and retiring. Except for Danny. Yes, it was the bold Budwig part of you that came up with it, and I think it is a grand idea.”

“You do?” I said.

“I do,” she said. “Now, let’s put a barrette in your hair and pull it over to the side to show off your lovely Bathburn forehead.”

“But the
Budwig
part of me wants to know something,” I said. “When are my Winnie and Danny coming home?”

“Well, we can’t know for sure, but we’re going to wait. Waiting is hard, especially now at the edge of war. But we Bathburns are good at waiting, aren’t we? Think about the sea captain’s family that once lived here. They were Bathburns too, you know. How that family must have had to wait and wait and wait for their father’s ship to come home. Imagine them rushing up to your room to watch the water for a sign. Finally, one day, perhaps they saw the mast of his boat slowly coming over the horizon.”

“I hope so,” I said. “And what are you making with this material covered with British flags?”

“Well, I’m making you a pair of pajamas, Flissy,” said The Gram. “It will be getting cold soon and you’ll be needing something comfy to keep you warm at night.”

It
was
already getting chilly at night. Somehow, summer was climbing towards an end, and the air had a different feel. I thought about all the times during the full summer that Derek and I had sat together at the top of the porch stairs, looking off at the horizon, as if an answer to the code might be found there. I thought about all the times we had stretched back on those steps, watching the sky turn over and change, as if every pattern above us might hold the answer to the letters.

But the light was different now and the ocean seemed gray again instead of turquoise. A bird’s nest blew out of a tree in the garden that next day, and I brought it into the house, worrying about the babies. Gideon had said, “They’re all grown and gone by now. Fall is here, Flissy. School starts tomorrow. Are you ready to get ready?”

I planned to give Auntie Miami the nest because she liked dried flowers and shells and things from nature, but she wouldn’t answer her door when I knocked. I hadn’t realized until then, when I stood there knocking away, that I had grown to love my aunt Miami. I missed our walks and our raspberry picking. She’d been in her room since the day before and I felt very sorry for it.

“Terribly dramatic, that one,” said Gideon, rolling his eyes up towards her room as he passed me in the hallway earlier.

Today, Derek and I were supposed to get new shoes for school. The Gram had been a bit angry at Winnie about the shoes I wore here when she saw that I had a hole in the bottom of one of them. “But I
like
the hole,” I had told her. “I can feel the ground a little bit and it’s quite nice, really, to be able to know exactly what you are walking on.” But The Gram didn’t agree and she shook her head back and forth, looking at my shoe.

Now I was going to have to give up my ever so comfortable black English plimsolls with a nice hole in the bottom of one of them. I hadn’t really outgrown them yet. But most of the other clothes I brought with me were getting too short and too tight. “You are growing in spurts, Flissy, and I think you’ve just had one of your growing sessions,” The Gram had said to me a few days before. Uncle Gideon had taken a measurement on the wall near the kitchen when I first arrived, and when I stood against it recently, it was clear The Gram was right. I was getting taller. I wasn’t nearly as tall as Derek yet, but I wanted to be. I stretched and stretched and hoped I could match his height. I thought it would be jolly nice to be tall enough to look straight across at Derek, face-to-face, without having to hop about and stretch my neck.

“Put on clean socks, Flissy,” The Gram called up the stairs. “You can’t try on new shoes without wearing clean white socks.”

I was singing “Away in a Manger” and hoping Derek wasn’t going to stay in his room forever this morning, though I had heard him calling out to The Gram that he didn’t need new shoes because he wasn’t going back to school. There were two Bathburns behind locked doors right now. Well, three if you counted Uncle Gideon in his secret study. So I decided it was really and truly a Bathburn trait.

The Gram had brought breakfast up on a tray earlier for Miami, and I had seen the tray sitting outside her door afterwards with everything all eaten up, and so at least I knew Aunt Miami was still alive in there. Then the Budwig part of me took hold again and I got out my writing paper and I began a letter to Aunt Miami.

Dearest Auntie Miami,

I am ever, ever so sorry about entering your name in a raffle. The Gram says all you have is a
case of stage fright, which she says is completely normal. But I would like to tell you it would be lovely to see you onstage being Juliet finally. I promise to go with you to every single rehearsal and I promise to clap and cheer and laugh and cry in all the right places. Please reconsider.

Your adoring niece,
Flissy B. Bathburn

After I finished the letter, I put on a new pair of socks and then I brushed my hair and I put the barrette back in. I peeked in the mirror to see how my Bathburn forehead looked today and then I gave Wink a wink and told him not to be antsy or fidgety while I was gone. I hadn’t paid much attention to him recently. He was quite neglected now, but luckily, he was not at all aware of it.

I was just at the top of the stairs, when I heard The Gram calling out, “Derek dear, come now and let’s get going. You can pick out your own shoes, whatever you like.”

I slipped the letter to Auntie Miami under her door and then I went on down to the front porch. It was a crisp morning, and a slight feeling of cheerfulness was seeping through me. It had come through my toes and was up about as far as my knees even though Auntie was angry with me, even though Uncle Gideon was doing something secretive, even though The Gram didn’t love my Winnie. Still, the cheerfulness was clearly at my kneecaps, even though most of the Bathburns were locked away pouting. But then I realized there were voices on the porch.

Voices? We hadn’t had anyone here at the house before. Not a soul. It was not encouraged. Even when Derek had received a call from a friend in town, Uncle Gideon had written a note on a piece of paper and held it up while Derek was on the phone. The note had said,
“Not today. Not here, anyway.”

But now Uncle Gideon was sitting out there chatting with a man wearing a suit and a necktie. For some reason, seeing that made my new cheerfulness drain out of me. It dropped all the way down to my big toe and then sat there on the tip of it, ready to disappear entirely. Who was the man in the suit and why was he here?

The Gram called me into the kitchen. “Before we leave to go shopping, would you take this tray of tea out to the porch? There’s a gentleman from Washington here to visit your uncle, and he wants to meet you.”