Dicey's Song Page 7

  When Dicey was saying good night to Sammy, her brother said to her: “I didn’t know he was like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Nice.”

  “What did you think he was like?”

  “Funny.” Sammy rolled over and looked at her with hazel eyes. “The kids all laugh at him.”

  “Because he’s fat?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you?”

  Sammy shrugged. “I’ve never been in trouble yet,” he said.

  DICEY FINISHED her work apron the earliest of anyone in the home ec class. She spent the rest of the days assigned to this project pretending she still had work to do (so that Miss Eversleigh would keep off her back) and getting her other homework finished. On the day the project was due, Miss Eversleigh told every girl to put on her apron. Dicey stuck a marker in the story she was reading for English and jerked her apron over her head. She sat down again and opened her book.

  But everybody had to stand up. Dicey wasn’t sorry she’d done as bad a job as she’d done, but she wished she didn’t have to stand up so everybody else could see. She made her face stony.

  There was silence for a few minutes, while everybody looked at what everybody else had made (everybody except Dicey, who kept on reading), and Miss Eversleigh went around to everyone, like a general reviewing the troops, Dicey thought, acting as if the aprons mattered. When the first ripple of laughter began, Dicey looked up.

  They were looking at her, at her apron. Well, she knew the hem rippled up and down, and the neckband pulled one side of the bib up to her shoulder, and the two big red buttons she’d used for decoration on the bib sat at just the wrong places. She knew that and she didn’t care. She glared at the laughing faces, her chin high. Wilhemina was trying not to laugh, but her cheeks puffed out with holding it in, and her eyes glistened. Dicey just stared at her. The only other angry person in the room was Miss Eversleigh, and she was staring anger at Dicey. Dicey was thinking of what to say, and she kept her chin up high like Gram’s, when the bell rang. Ending class.

  Dicey whipped her apron up over her head and rolled it into a ball. She grabbed her books, fast, because Miss Eversleigh was moving toward her. She rushed out of the room, slamming the apron into the trash basket by the door.

  In the hall she collided with Mina. “What do you want,” she demanded.

  “It was funny-looking,” Mina said.

  “I wanted to take mechanical drawing,” Dicey said. “If I were a boy, they’d have found room for me in that class.” She heard the anger in her own voice.

  “Don’t take it out on me,” Mina said, angry herself now. “Boy. I thought I could count on you not to be — ordinary.”

  “I never asked you to count on me for anything,” Dicey said. She stormed down the hall, riding the waves of her own anger. At least it was Friday and she wouldn’t have to go to school again until two days later.

  When Dicey got home on Fridays, she usually had the house to herself for a few minutes. Gram picked Sammy up at school, and they did grocery shopping before returning together in the outboard. James was off delivering papers. Maybeth had her second piano lesson on Fridays.

  Dicey slammed around the house, taking her books up to her room, pouring a glass of milk. She swept out the downstairs with quick strokes of the broom. She began to feel all right again. She was about to go out to the barn and get down to work, when Sammy and Gram arrived; so she went down through the marsh to the boat, to get the last bags of groceries.

  “We’re having steak tonight,” Sammy announced. “Gram got it.”

  “Got the steak, and a check from Welfare,” Gram said. Her mouth was tight. “They paid us everything from the time we first filed. So I thought — something to celebrate. If it deserves celebration.”

  Gram didn’t like taking charity, Dicey knew that because Gram said so. For that matter, neither did she. But Gram had said, when she finally agreed to take them in, that that might be what they had to do.

  “I must say,” Gram said, moving from table to refrigerator, “I’ve never gotten money back on taxes before. It ought to feel good.”

  Dicey finished the sentence for her: But it doesn’t. She felt like she ought to apologize to Gram. After all, it had been her idea to come down here and see if they could stay. The words I’m sorry started to form themselves on her lips. But nobody made Gram do things. If she didn’t want the children, all she had to do was say so.

  “Steak’ll be good,” was all Dicey said.

  “It better be,” Gram answered.

  “I wanna play catch,” Sammy said. “Dicey?”

  She shook her head.

  “Please?”

  “James’Il be home in a while. Ask him.”

  “Gram? Will you?”

  “Not today.” Gram was slamming around the kitchen. Dicey guessed she knew about how her grandmother felt.

  “I’m gonna go meet James,” Sammy decided. He ran out the door, letting it slam behind him. Gram had taken off her shoes and was putting eggs and butter out on the table. She hauled down her big mixing bowl. “What are you making?” Dicey asked.

  “Chocolate cake and I don’t want any help, nor need it,” Gram said.

  The last time they had Gram’s chocolate cake was for Sammy’s birthday; but then Gram seemed happy about making it.

  Dicey went out to the barn. While she scraped, she thought about the English assignment. She’d show them she could write something good. She began thinking of how she would write about Momma, how to say enough for it to tell what had happened, but not as if she was talking about her own mother. After a while, she put down the scraper and went upstairs to the desk in her bedroom. She had thought of a way to begin that would give her a good ending too. She began to write.

  Downstairs, she heard the boys come in, with raised voices as if they were quarreling. Vaguely, she wondered what they could be quarreling about. Gram would settle it. Dicey continued writing, until a question that had been hovering around the back of her head, away behind her ideas, sneaked around to the front: wasn’t Maybeth supposed to be home by now?

  Outside, the sun was going down. Time to get to the kitchen, probably past time. Clouds crowded the sky, heavy and dark. The marsh lay under a pale mist, and in the distance, the Bay was dark purple.

  lames and Sammy sat over a game of checkers. Dicey said hello before turning down the hall to the kitchen. “I’d steer clear,” James advised her. “Something’s eating Gram.”

  “She got a welfare check today,” Dicey explained.

  “I don’t know,” James said.

  Gram had set the table and put out glasses on the counter. She had put potatoes into the oven to bake. She had a stick of butter ready on the table. The cake she had made stood on the sideboard, tall and frosted. The steak waited beside a huge iron frying pan, beside the stove. Gram sat at the head of the table, in her usual place. Under the yellow kitchen light, her face looked pale and tired.

  “And what do you want?” Gram demanded.

  “I was going to set the table,” Dicey said. Why was Gram angry at her? “Where’s Maybeth?”

  “Late,” Gram said. Her face closed off.

  “What were Sammy and James fighting about?” Dicey asked.

  “The place of a perfectionist in this world,” Gram said. Whatever that meant. “Ask ’em yourself.”

  Dicey went back down to the living room. “What were you two quarreling about?” she demanded.

  “Are you angry?” Sammy asked. “Why is everyone angry at me?”

  “Nothing really,” James told her. His hazel eyes were worried. “We shouldn’t have bothered Gram. Sammy just said I wasn’t being careful where I threw the papers, it wasn’t even important.”

  “Were you?” Dicey asked him.

  James shook his head.

  “I told him,” Sammy said.

  “Do you think something’s happened to Maybeth?” James asked.

  “What could happen to Maybeth
,” Dicey said to soothe him. But, of course, anything could happen to Maybeth, or any of them, or anyone. James was too smart to be fooled about that, but he let himself believe her. She could see in his eyes how he was making himself believe her, and her tone of voice.

  “Is that why Gram’s angry?” Sammy asked.

  Dicey began to understand. She looked out the front windows, past the wide porch and down to where the driveway disappeared into the narrow stand of pines. Nothing except growing darkness. “She really is late.”

  “I’m hungry,” Sammy said.

  Dicey wandered back down to the kitchen. Worry was like the mist along the marsh, it rose up from the floors of the house.

  “What time does she usually get in?” Dicey asked Gram.

  “An hour and more,” Gram answered. “If you haven’t got anything to do in here, why don’t you just leave me alone.”

  Dicey obeyed. She was halfway down the hall when she met James and Sammy coming at her, both running. “The car’s here!” Sammy called, as if Dicey were miles away.

  Maybeth had burst into the kitchen and was explaining. Gram had a smile on her face that didn’t flash away the way her smiles usually did. Mr. Lingerle climbed heavily up the steps and waited in the doorway, with the darkness behind him. He had a bandage on his right hand.

  “ . . . a flat tire,” Maybeth was saying.

  “That’s all right,” Gram said.

  “And the jack slipped, and it caught his fingers, and somebody stopped to help us. We went to the Emergency Room.”

  Gram looked up. “Come on in, what’s this Maybeth’s telling me?”

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Tillerman, I know you must have been worried. I tried to call from the hospital — ”

  “I don’t have a phone,” Gram told him.

  “It wasn’t even that serious, only a couple of stitches,” he apologized.

  “I don’t have a phone and I should. With children in the house it’s irresponsible not to have a phone,” Gram said angrily.

  “It’s all right, Gram,” Mavbeth said. Gram reached out and hugged Maybeth close. Then she let her go and took a deep breath.

  “Yes, it is, and I’ll get a phone put in. You’ll stay for supper,” she asked. “We’re having steak.”

  “Gram,” Sammy protested. “Gram.”

  She ignored him and waited for Mr. Lingerle’s answer. Dicey understood, just then, and wished she didn’t, just what the Tillermans had done to Gram by coming to live with her. Because she did love them, and that meant not only the good parts, but also the worry and fear. Until the children came along, nothing could hurt Gram. And now . . . but Gram must have known that, she’d had children of her own, she must have known that when she said they could live with her. Dicey wished she didn’t understand. She wished she could still be like Sammy, concerned only about whether or not he’d have as much steak as he wanted, already forgetting the worry since everything was all right again.

  “Thank you, I’d enjoy that,” Mr. Lingerle said.

  “Good,” Gram said, with a quick glance at Sammy.

  Sammy looked up at Mr. Lingerie. “Are you still nervous when you eat here?” he asked. His eyes shone hopefully.

  Mr. Lingerie burst out laughing, and the Tillermans joined him.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE DAY that Gram had to go in for conferences was also Halloween, and a Wednesday, and the day Dicey’s English paper was due. She hadn’t told any of her family what she was doing; she wanted to astound them, when it was handed back. She was the only one going to school that day. Because of the conferences, the little kids had a day off and were staying home, under James’s care. Dicey offered to stay home and look out for them, but Gram refused, saying it would only be for three hours or so. She looked like there was something else she wanted to say, so Dicey waited. But Gram didn’t say anything. Dicey, too, didn’t say what she was thinking, that she was worried about giving James all the responsibility.

  When she got home after a day at school and an hour working with Millie on the distributor’s order sheets, Gram was alone at the kitchen table. Dicey didn’t hear any noise from anywhere.

  “Where are they?” she asked.

  “In their rooms,” Gram said. “James is riding his route.”

  “What did their teachers say?” Dicey asked.

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  Dicey looked at her grandmother. Gram did not look back at her. Dicey shrugged, took a banana, and went out to the barn.

  James’s bike was gone but the others were there. She hoped Sammy would stay up in his room, that he wouldn’t come hang around her. Now that they were back on Eastern Standard Time, she couldn’t even get an hour’s work in. And she was just getting to the end of the first half of the boat.

  The Tillermans weren’t celebrating Halloween. They never had, in fact. Their house in Provincetown was set way away, so no kids came to the door. Nobody ever came, anyway. That was lucky, Momma always said, because they couldn’t afford to buy a bowl of candy. A couple of those years they had all, even Momma, gotten into costumes (sheets for ghosts, or paper-bag armor) and had their own party, making popcorn on the gas stove, bobbing for apples in the dishpan. They ended up, as they usually did, singing.

  Dicey sighed — for what, she didn’t know. Maybeth had been asked to a Halloween party, but she said she didn’t want to go. Dicey hadn’t asked her why not, because they couldn’t have gone to get her when the party was over. The girl lived inland, not on the water, and too far away for a late bike ride.

  James walked his bicycle into the barn and set it against the side of an empty stall. He stood behind Dicey, watching.

  “Did she tell you?”

  “Tell me what? Who?”

  “We’re in trouble.”

  Dicey turned to look at him. “What do you mean? James, what happened?”

  “We went up in the attic,” he told her, daring her to be angry with him.

  “And?” What was the matter with going up in the attic?

  “And she came home. Gram. She said we had no business. She sent us to our rooms. She only let me come out for my paper route.”

  Dicey thought about that. “She’s right, we hadn’t asked.”

  “I thought we lived here,” James complained.

  “We do,” Dicey said, “but — ”

  James waited for her to finish her sentence.

  “That wasn’t a very smart thing to do, James.”

  “I know. I was just curious. We apologized and told her we wouldn’t do it again. Maybeth cried. Sammy didn’t.”

  It all seemed fair enough to Dicey.

  “We weren’t even up there long enough to really look around,” James said. “There are boxes of stuff and trunks and a couple of old toys. And a cradle. Do you ever wonder, Dicey, why she doesn’t have any pictures of her children?”

  Dicey shook her head.

  “And she doesn’t talk about anything before,” James went on. “And we know where Momma is, and that Bullet is dead, but there was a third name, remember? Don’t you wonder?”

  “Nope,” Dicey said.

  “I do,” James finished, unnecessarily. “I wonder about Momma, what she was like then. I promised we wouldn’t go up there again, but I wish I hadn’t. I bet there’s an album up there.”

  “Momma never had one,” Dicey argued.

  “Gram could have afforded it,” James argued back. It was a stupid argument and Dicey didn’t continue with it.

  “Did you get your report on the pilgrims back?”

  “He kept them to show the parents. But he said I got an A. The kids thought it was super, they said so.” James smiled at the memory.

  Dicey envied him. But it was getting too dark to work any more, and her bare legs were chilly, and she was going to have to go inside and see if she could straighten out things between Gram and the little kids.

  It turned out that Gram didn’t think anything needed straightening out. She looked ar
ound the dinner table at the three subdued faces and the one wary one. “I believe in closing the book on things,” she announced.

  “Does that mean you aren’t angry any more?” Sammy asked.

  Gram nodded.

  Sammy smiled and looked relieved. “Good-o,” he said. “I didn’t like being in trouble.”

  “Neither did I,” Gram agreed.

  “And if we do it again,” Sammy went on.

  Gram interrupted. “If you do it again — I’ll take your hands and sew them over your ears.”

  Sammy giggled. “How could I eat?”

  “We’ll get you a dog dish,” Dicey offered. “We’ll put it on the floor and your food will be all mushed together, so that you can get it out with your tongue.”

  “Ugh,” Sammy said happily.

  “What about the conferences?” James asked. Maybeth looked down at her plate.

  Gram put down her fork and waited until they were all, even Maybeth, looking at her. “About the conferences,” she said. “I want to wait to talk about them until I’ve talked to Dicey.”

  Dicey looked up, surprised. What was wrong now?

  “When, tomorrow?” James insisted.

  Gram shook her head. “I have a plan. This Saturday, Dicey and I are going to take a day away.”

  “What about me?” asked Sammy.

  “You and Maybeth and James are going to stay home. I called Mr. Lingerie, to give him our number.” The black telephone had been sitting on the living room desk for two days by then. Nobody had used it to call them, although the little kids had all dialed the weather and time. “And I asked him if he would come out to take care of you.”

  The three faces went down to the three plates again. “We’re sorry, Gram,” Maybeth said softly.

  “I know you are and I know you won’t do it again, but —” She hesitated, then went on. “There was a lesson for me in this. I’d forgotten that when you leave children alone they have a natural tendency to get into trouble.”

  “Did your children do that?” James asked.

  “I also spoke to Millie, who said you could take the morning off,” Gram said to Dicey.

  “But —” Dicey said.

  “No buts, girl,” Gram said. “Besides, it won’t be much fun. We’re going shopping. I don’t know if you have noticed the cold coming on, but I have. While we’ve got the money from this welfare check, there are things you have to have, things I can’t make myself. So Dicey and I will have a day off, after which we will talk about the conferences.”