The Romeo and Juliet Code (26 page)

Derek said to me when I told him about it later, “I always felt I was a stand-in, a replacement for somebody or something, and now I see, Flissy, it was you. It was you I was standing in for.
That’s
why we have the same birthday.
That’s
why and how I came to live here. And it was a lucky thing for me, you know that?”

“It’s nice, isn’t it, having the same birthday. Don’t you think?” I said.

While everything sifted through me, I knitted. I was working on Derek’s scarf secretly every chance I got. Every stitch I took, I thought about belonging, belonging, belonging.

Just before Christmas and one day before our performance at the town hall in Bottlebay, I finished the scarf and I put the fringe on the ends of it. I had folded it up and tucked it in red tissue paper. I was sitting on Miami’s bed with her while we wrapped presents and we were handing the scissors and the tape back and forth. The tape was made of brown paper and I had to lick the back to make it sticky.

There was a Glenn Miller big band song playing on the radio downstairs. Derek had turned up the music loud again. “I
must
dance to this one,” Aunt Miami said, and she dropped the scissors on the bed and circled out of the room.

I went to the top of the stairs to watch her and she’d already found a willing partner. My father. They were swirling through the hall and into the parlor and then back through the hall and into the dining room. “We have to live for the moment, Flissy,” called Miami. “After all, America is in the war now. And who knows what will happen.” The saxophones and horns played through the house.
I
was the blessing in disguise. All along it was
me
.

“Do you have any tape?” said Derek, coming out of his room with a piece of wrapping paper and a small box in his hands.

“There is some in here in Auntie’s room,” I said. He followed me into the room.

“So Miami and Gideon are downstairs cutting a rug,” said Derek. “It’s nice.”

The music stopped for a moment and then we could hear an announcement urging civilians to report for volunteer duty. After that, there was an ad for Carter’s Little Liver Pills. Derek sat with me on Miami’s bed and cut off a piece of wrapping paper and started to wrap up the small box with his one hand, which wasn’t terribly easy. “About me not being able to enlist someday, I’ve decided on something. I’ve thought of something interesting, Flissy. Something that’s changed everything.”

“What is it, Derek?” I said.

He didn’t answer me for a minute. “I realized it when I read the letters from your Winnie and Danny. I realized it when I read about the agent with the wooden leg. That’s when I realized it, Fliss. You can have a handicap and still work for the war and the government. If that person with a handicap should want to become an intelligence agent, it would be possible, acceptable, even welcome. I have talked with Gideon about it, and when I am a little older,
that
is what I am going to do, Flissy. That is what my work will be.”

I smiled at him, all the while thinking that he was ever so brave and ever so sweet and ever so lovely. Then he said, “It’s nice to see Miami dancing. It’s nice for Gideon too. You know, Fliss, like I said before, you stirred up the soup around here. In a good way.”

“I did?” I said.

“Yes, you did,” he said. “You know, Flissy …” He paused. “Um. I have a secret too. I didn’t write to the president about it yet, but I might.”

“Oh,
you
have a secret?” I said, looking up at him. “Is it a nice secret or a mean secret?”

“It’s a nice secret,” he said.

“Oh, then tell me,” I said, squeezing my eyes tightly and listening closely.

“If you tell me
your
secret first, I’ll tell you mine,” Derek said.

“When?” I said. “Now?”

“Well, not today and not tomorrow,” he said, “but maybe the next day.”

“Really?” I said.

“Possibly,” he said. “Or the day after the day after tomorrow.”

“Truly?” I said.

“Maybe. Perhaps,” he said, smiling down at me.

Then he handed me the package he had wrapped. “This is for you, Flissy,” he said. “I didn’t want to give it to you on Christmas. I didn’t want the others to see.”

I reached out and took the present. I unwrapped it slowly. I took the lid off carefully. Inside, staring up at me, was the beautiful little tin soldier with the missing arm.

The next morning, the sky was bright and cloudless. We had hot cocoa for breakfast, and the early light that fell through the windows in every room was clear. The air smelled of chocolate and maple syrup and oatmeal. I was standing in the kitchen, I think, when I heard the most beautiful melodic piano music. It rolled out of the library like the ocean rolling up on the shore. It thundered through the house, speaking, singing, calling, sobbing, laughing. Miami and Derek and The Gram and I stood in the hallway listening. My grandmother was crying. She was crouched over, trying not to, but there was nothing she could do about it. She seemed finally to relax, to uncurl, to unwind in tears. Miami shook her head at me and said, “You see, Gideon’s good. He’s good.” Slowly, we opened the library door and went in and listened to the music streaming from my father’s fingers on the piano, and he was looking at each of us, and all of him seemed somehow to be entwined in the music and all of him was pouring from the notes. I felt as if I was seeing him really for the first time. The music grew louder and then softer. It rolled and then it thundered, touching every wall and window, every corner of the Bathburn house. He nodded at me as he played and I knew then that he was going to accompany me on the piano when I sang tomorrow night. He didn’t have to say one word. It was there quite clearly in my father’s smile.

Two days before Christmas was the night of our performance. For dinner, The Gram made winter vegetable soup. Miami chopped the onions. Derek measured out the rice. And yes, I stirred the soup. Then after dinner, we got into the Packard, which almost didn’t start, and we drove just after dark to the town hall. It was a bumpy, slippery ride, and the windscreen was icy and the back window couldn’t be rolled up, so the wind was blowing in all over the place, but the cold didn’t seem to bother me. I was holding a nice, fat hot water bottle that The Gram had filled for me before we left.

When we got to the town hall, there was a light snow falling. The sky was dark, and looking up through the snowflakes, I could see the little lights of stars shining so far away. Gideon said it was an unusual combination of snow and the Big and Little Dipper.

“Maybe it’s a sign,” said Gideon, putting his arm over The Gram’s shoulder and squeezing Aunt Miami’s hand for a minute. “Maybe we’re going to win this war after all.”

When we got to the town hall, there was an enormous Christmas wreath on the front door, covered with hundreds of tiny burning candles, and I felt suddenly nervous and scared to get up and sing the last song of the evening.

Already, there were many people sitting in the folding chairs, waiting for the show to begin. Derek and I and Gideon and The Gram sat in the front row while Auntie Miami went backstage. She had put her hair in bobby pin curlers the night before and now her hair fell in dark ringlets specially created for the part. As she waved to me, I thought she looked ever so full of grace and ease.

Soon the curtains parted and the scene from
Romeo and Juliet
began. Miami said those lines yet one more time, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” And the code came into my mind again and the journey my Winnie and Danny had gone on in France. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet.” Those words yet again carrying with them all that sadness and loveliness. Gideon had said, “It doesn’t have to mean the worst. It could be many things.”

And then, like a mirage, Mr. Henley appeared onstage and he looked at Juliet with such tenderness and love, it was hard to believe it was a play. It was so real. Mr. Henley almost seemed to tremble when he swore his love to Juliet. And my aunt Miami bloomed that night like a flower, like a rose, like a beautiful wild rose on a scrubby bush along the ocean.

At the end of the scene, Romeo and Juliet kissed and the crowd cheered and clapped and they stomped on the old wooden floor with their feet and asked for an encore. Then Aunt Miami and Mr. Henley seemed to be flying, lifting off the stage and sailing above us, rinsed in a dazzling moment, holding hands.

After that, Mrs. Paula Martin got onstage and played the ukulele, followed by the acrobatic Balancing Bottlebay Boys. Mrs. Fudge and her parrot sang, and then the Four Voices did “Say Au Revoir But Not Goodbye.” And soon enough, the variety show was almost over and my turn was coming up. Derek touched my hand and said, “Break a leg, Flissy.”

Then I went round to the backstage with my father and waited in the wings. I knew I was going to sing “I Think of You” for Winnie and Danny. I had been planning that. I also knew that I would be singing it for Derek. The makeup crew came by and put real lipstick on my lips and added rouge to my cheeks and the whole time they were working on me, I was making up my mind about something again.

I decided that night that I was going to send my Wink to Lily’s little brother, Albert, in England. I knew he loved Wink dearly and needed him more than I did now, and besides, Wink had been neglected recently. How easy it was to get so busy with important things and neglect someone. But it didn’t mean that you didn’t love them. And after all, I was going to be twelve years old this January, and girls of twelve in the United States
never
carry bears around.

Thinking about all that made my being nervous go away and it made something else happen. Suddenly, as I was about to go onstage, suddenly like a wind washing over the ocean, suddenly I felt like a real part of Bottlebay, Maine. I felt like I was in a circle with everybody in the room near me, with Derek, Auntie Miami, The Gram, and my father, Gideon, AKA Mr. Bathtub, who would now need another new name altogether. Another new name. As The Gram had said, “A person can call their father by any name they like. It’s your choice, Flissy.”

Suddenly as I stood there, I sensed all the Bathburns close around me and I felt like I might be becoming a real true American and it felt super and warm and good. Then I remembered Danny saying to Winnie as she cried, “The Bathburns of Bottlebay will be a great gift for her, Winnie. The best gift you could give a child. The very best.” And he was ever so right.

Then I went out and stood under the lights and sang “I Think of You,” and my father played the piano. I sang,

When the clouds roll by

and the moon drifts through

When the haze is high

I think of you.

I think of you.

When the mist is sheer

and the shadows too

When the moon is spare

I think of you.

I think of you.

And all I could do was wait and hope and hope and hope that one day when the skies were clear of fighter planes and bombers, and the sea was free of U-boats and aircraft carriers and warships, that one day, I would see my Winnie and my Danny running towards me on the beach, stopped in midair, the sky hot and blue and quiet and the sea barely moving, like a beautiful still photograph.