War and Millie McGonigle Page 15

  Big and getting bigger. He ran back out to show the rest of Mission Beach his terrific tooth. I’d miss this gap-toothed wise guy with his little-boy smell and big grin when he was all grown up.

  I walked over to the Fribbles’ to see if they knew anything about Rosie. I sure missed her. I couldn’t think of anything worse than having and then losing a friend.

  There was no one home, but a gold star hung in the front window. Not blue. Gold. My face froze. It meant Dwayne Fribble had died in the war.

  Lots of soldiers died, of course, but Dwayne was someone I knew, someone only seventeen. And he was permanently gone. I’d never see him goofing off and being a nuisance again. There obviously were worse things than Rosie leaving. Shame on me.

  I felt sorry for being so flip about wanting to add him to my Book of Dead Things last year. I didn’t know he would really die. Goodbye, Dwayne, I thought. You were a pain and a thug, but I didn’t wish you dead. I wondered how Mrs. Fribble was managing. She was probably the only one who loved and mourned the dreadful Dwayne.

  I thought I should write a few preventive McGONIGLEs in the mud, but I didn’t feel like it. This had been happening lately. Too much on my mind, I supposed. I headed home.

  Edna was there. I followed the trail of gardenia perfume into the bedroom and dropped onto the bed. Edna had a funny sort of smile on her face as she pulled things out of the dresser drawers and stuffed them into a carryall. What wouldn’t fit—perfumes and creams, old Photoplay magazines, her scuffed slippers—went into a grocery bag.

  “What’s up?” I asked her.

  “I’m leaving. Albert and I just got married.”

  I jumped to my feet. “What??”

  “Married. Albert made all the arrangements. He’s good at arrangements.”

  “But you’ll be Mrs. Wizzleskerkifizzlewitz!”

  “I’ll get used to it.”

  “Does Mama know? Is this okay with her?”

  “It’s my decision, not your mama’s,” Edna said. “Albert is good to me. He wanted to marry me, and I couldn’t think of a reason not to.”

  I took a pink brassiere from Edna’s bag and held it up to my chest. Nope, still some time before I needed one. “Do you love him?”

  Edna grabbed back her bra. “I’m tired of living in other people’s houses. I want my own house, my own rules.” She chewed on her lip. “I forget things and mix things up, but Albert doesn’t mind that I have a screw loose. He says that’s why I need him.” The edges of her mouth began to turn up a little.

  “What about the war? Won’t he be drafted?”

  “His family has a farm up near Bakersfield. He said people who grow food are too important to the U.S. to be drafted.” She looked in the mirror and patted her hair. “I’ll get me a straw hat and be a farmerette.”

  “Why didn’t you invite us to the wedding? Lily and I could have been flower girls.”

  “Phooey. It’s wartime. No time for frilly weddings.” She closed her empty drawer with a slam. “Now help me find my glasses.”

  I found them. “Edna, they’re on top of your head.”

  She patted her head. “So they are.” She looked around the room. “I’m almost ready. When Albert gets here, we’ll drive right on up to Bakersfield. Maybe have a wedding supper at the counter at Woolworth’s on the way.”

  It didn’t sound very romantic to me, but then Edna and Albert were pretty old. I couldn’t imagine what Mama would think of it all.

  Pete and Lily came home hungry. I was cutting apple slices and Velveeta cheese for a quick lunch when Albert came to fetch Edna. Pete bounded over to him, but Lily hid herself behind me.

  Albert took off his hat. “Hiya, kids,” he said. “How’s things?”

  “Fine. We’re all fine,” I told him. “Edna says she’ll be ready in a minute.”

  “Good, then I’ll have time to try the beach jokes I’ve been working on for you.” He cleared his throat, tightened his tie, and said, “It’s a good day. I just drove past the ocean, and it waved at me.”

  I grinned and Lily giggled behind her fingers, but Pete just shrugged.

  “Not funny, Pete? Well, then, how about this one. Why can’t you starve on the beach? Because of the sand which is there.”

  Pete shrugged again. “Mostly I don’t get jokes. Will you pull a quarter from my ear again?”

  “Ears don’t always have quarters in them, you know.” Albert took his handkerchief and sneezed loudly. “But lookee here, I managed to sneeze out a quarter.” I thought it pretty gross, but a laughing Pete snatched the quarter from the handkerchief.

  Lily, coming out from behind me, whispered, “And me?”

  “Well, little lady, do you want a joke or a quarter?”

  “Both.”

  “I can tell you live near the ocean,” Albert said, “because of your wavy hair.” He reached out and pulled a quarter from the curls escaping from Lily’s braids. She squeaked again but smiled.

  I wished I were young enough to have quarters in my hair—I could use some spending money.

  “I guess you kids hate to see Edna go,” Albert said.

  I pinched Pete’s arm before he could answer and said, “Though I look forward to having my bed back, of course we’ll miss her.” But not, I said to myself, the overpowering scent of Jungle Gardenia.

  “So long, kids,” Edna said as she entered, pinning her best hat on her head. “Don’t feel too sad to see me go. I’ve sprinkled perfume inside the dresser drawers to remind you of me.”

  Yikes! I’d be washing everything in that dresser as soon as I could. Can one fit a dresser in a washing machine?

  Albert patted Lily and Pete on their heads, shook my hand, and left a quarter in my palm. He picked up Edna’s bags and hurried out. Edna gave each of us a quick gardenia-scented hug and followed him out. “Tell your mama and pop thanks for me and goodbye,” she said, and with that she was gone.

  “I’m so happy to see Edna leave,” Lily said. “She won’t be telling me scary fairy stories anymore.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I get my bed back. Let’s have a celebration dance.” I turned on the radio, looking for music, and Lily started twirling and swaying.

  Instead of music, I found news headlines: “The Battle of Singapore has ended in a decisive Japanese victory. All Allied military forces were forced to surrender unconditionally. Prime Minister Winston Churchill called it ‘the worst disaster in British military history.’ ”

  Lily stopped dancing. Her shoulders slumped and her lower lip trembled. “Is the celebration over? Do you have to go and write their names in your dead book now, Millie?”

  Holy cow, now I’d gotten Lily disappointed, gloomy, and worried. She thought I liked dead things more than living things. And Pete had brought me a dead dog! How many more people would I infect with my morbid preoccupation? Lily and Pete were too young and alive to have to be involved with dreadful, sad things like I did.

  Or did I? Oh, Gram, I wish you were here to talk to. Tears prickled my eyes. Why did you give me the book and then leave?

  It was the middle of the night when I woke and heard Mama come in. Wrapped up in my blanket like a corn dog, I pattered into the kitchen and found her pouring a cup of coffee.

  “Millie, what are you doing up?”

  “I have to tell you about Edna.” So I did.

  “I hope she’ll be okay,” Mama said as she slurped. “Albert told me he had been thinking about asking her to marry him for a while, but he was worried she wouldn’t want to leave us.” She poured another cup of coffee. Two whole cups. We must be rich.

  “Are you sad that she’s gone?”

  Mama shook her head with a smile. “No. I’m a little concerned, but life will be easier for us without her. Albert will care for her and she won’t be too far away.” She snuffled. “I just hope this would be okay with my mama.”

 
And suddenly Gram was right there in the room with us, beaming like a little light. It was okay that Edna left, I thought she was saying. She wanted us all to be happy. Happy. Of course she did. I took Mama’s hand.

  In the early morning I was out by the bay skipping stones, hoping to clear my head. It had rained a little in the night, so the air was clean and crisp, and the shadow of a crescent moon still hung in the sky. I kicked through the sand, singing my rain song. Most people sang, “Rain, rain, go away,” but I wrote mine this way: “Rain, rain, won’t you stay? And come again any day.”

  The song didn’t work. It never does. The sun came out and began to warm the beach, so more and more folks turned up to enjoy it. Some kids were splashing through the shallows followed by a woman, her frothy gray hair dancing in the sea breeze. A small girl in a pink sweater called to her, “C’mon, Granny. Play with us.”

  The grandma said, “You kids go have fun. Have a good time. I’ll watch you.”

  I remembered the many times Gram with her big laugh and her sunburned nose had joined us on the beach. I felt heavy with missing her. “Go have fun,” she’d say, just like this grandma. “Have a good time.”

  I headed to the south end of Mission Beach, to the channel where the peaceful bay became ocean and the ocean filled the bay. Walking carefully on the rocks, I went out to the end of the jetty, where the channel was deep and dangerous. I was not on land anymore but almost standing in the ocean, feeling its power. It was a good place for thinking.

  And I needed to think. I was more and more confused about Gram’s book idea. If she wanted me to have fun and be happy, why did she urge me to keep track of dead things? Is that truly what she wanted? The Book of Dead Things—that wasn’t even Gram’s title. It was mine.

  A cool wind rose and drove me off the jetty and back to the bay. The beach was lively. A bunch of kids were playing baseball. Someone flew a kite. A swarm of seagulls had found the remains of an abandoned lunch and were attacking it and each other, screeching like a whole army of Mrs. Fribbles.

  I plopped down on the beach. I picked up a sand dollar and sat still for a minute, examining its soft and sandy surface. It weighed very little and was starting to smell, so I knew it was dead—but newly dead, for its velvety bristles were a soft purple, not yet dry and bleached. I hadn’t ever seen one so almost alive.

  “What’s that?” asked a small voice. It was the little girl in the pink sweater.

  “It’s a sand dollar. A kind of flat sea urchin.”

  “It’s pretty.”

  “It’s dead.”

  “I don’t care. It’s pretty.” She took it and examined it closely before handing it back to me and running to her family.

  I studied the sand dollar. There was a flowerlike pattern embossed on its top side that was the violet you sometimes see in the sky at sunset. On the underside was the tracing of a star. The little girl was right. It was pretty. That’s what she’d remember. Not that it was dead, but that it was pretty.

  Could that be what Gram wanted me to do? Not to collect dead things just because they were dead but to notice and remember what was good or pretty or meaningful even if it was gone? The sand dollar. Pete’s terrific tooth. Rosie’s nose all white and shiny with zinc oxide. Rocky and his board in the sunshine.

  I held my breath, then jumped up and splashed frantically through the shallows before flinging the sand dollar deep into the bay. My chest grew tight and my thoughts swirled around my head like smoke from Pop’s pipe.

  Whatever is lost stays alive if we remember it, Gram had said. Of course. How could I have thought she meant I should draw dead crabs and make lists of dead people?

  Oh, Gram, I miss you. But a spot of something—anger, maybe—still hung on. How could Gram have left me to carry on without her? It was partly her fault I misread her. Wasn’t it?

  I knew she didn’t choose to leave me. It was like Pete blaming the Lone Ranger for dying. And that spot in me that might have been anger eased a bit.

  Gram was alive in my heart and my memory, but she was dead for real. The image of her in a box in the ground made the sadness in my chest swell like her Irish soda bread rising. Death was real. The war was real. People dying was real. Florence and Rosie were gone for real. So much loss. My eyes stung. I had a heavy load of mourning to do.

  And I had plenty of tears for all of them: for Gram, for dead soldiers and sailors and all the others killed by bombs and guns all over the world, for the little girl with the floppy bunny, for the poor dead sea creatures I found on the beach, and the pitiful dead dog who was once loved by someone.

  I wailed, shedding enough tears to fill another bay. I stomped and kicked, threw stones into the water, and a dead jellyfish and a live crab. If I’d had my book with me, I’d have thrown it in, too. The book that I thought would please my gram, keep me safe, keep the war away.

  The tears eventually dried up. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I thought I finally understood why Gram suggested the book, but I’d had enough. No more. I was done with the Book of Dead Things. What should I do to finish it? Not just throw it away. A ceremony was called for, but what? Burial on the beach? Burial at sea? A bonfire?

  I remembered what Skippy Morrison had said about Viking funerals. “That’s the ticket!” I shouted to the gulls. I’d fold the book’s pages into little paper boats, set fire to them, and sail them out to sea, like Skippy said the Vikings did to honor their dead. Or at least out into the bay. It seemed a grand plan, exotic, elegant, full of drama, and definitely final. I hurried home to start.

  Mama had gone to work but she left me a dollar bill and a grocery list for Bell’s, which was open every day now. Mr. Bell said it was his way of serving our fighting men. I was to get two cans of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti, bread, milk, oranges, and eggs. You may keep the change, she wrote. Yes! I’d be a careful shopper to make sure there was change.

  I left Bell’s, tucking a dime into my pocket, just as an old woman leaning on a cane was leaving. I held the door open for her. “You’re Mrs. Dunsmore, aren’t you? I’m Millie McGonigle. You know my mama.”

  “Yes, the nice woman and the curly-haired little girl. Tell them I enjoyed the casserole and the brownies. Especially the brownies.”

  “How’s your broken leg?”

  “Mending,” she said, shifting her cane and a bag of groceries from one arm to the other. “Mending slowly, but mending.”

  We walked together from Mission Boulevard to Bayside Walk, where she’d head north and I south. Her grocery bag changed arms again and again, and she slouched over, panting, her face red from effort.

  I shifted my own bags. “Mrs. D, let me carry that home for you.”

  “No. I need to do this, dear. To move, tough it out, push myself to live like a person and not an old broken thing.” She lifted her chin and set her jaw.

  She wouldn’t let me have the grocery bag, but I walked with her a way to make sure she was okay before I turned back for home. She sure was stubborn. And brave. A kind of hero. Not just soldiers in the war were heroes but also this very old woman with a broken leg who refused to lie down and die.

  I was putting the groceries away when Pop came home to take Pete for a haircut and a hamburger bribe. Pete hated haircuts but Pop said, “You look like Prince Valiant from the comics, which is not a good look for a five-and-a-half-year-old boy.”

  “Almost six” was the last I heard as Pop took Pete’s hand and they headed for the barber’s.

  I made tuna sandwiches with the crusts cut off and warm watery tea. “Come on, Lily. We’re going to have a tea party like in Alice in Wonderland.”

  “Can my doll Butterscotch come?”

  “Of course. It wouldn’t be a party without her.” We sat at the table and I poured Lily’s tea. “Now listen, I’ve decided that I’ll no longer have a Book of Dead Things. It’s too mournful and I don’t want it anymore.”

 
Lily nodded solemnly but curiously.

  “Help me tear out the pages,” I said, “and we’ll send them away to sea.” I felt a twinge as I saw the lists of dead people and the sea-creature drawings pile up, but I decided my ceremony would be a way of honoring all of them. Then I could let them go. I showed Lily how to fold paper boats like Gram had taught me. I smiled. I love you, Gram, I thought.

  I took a box of matches from the kitchen drawer. Good thing Mama was at work and Pop and Pete weren’t home yet. They’d have kittens at the thought of their girls and fire. If I was old enough to take charge of Lily and Pete and take them marching to Mission Boulevard and fish for food for dinner, I thought, I was old enough to do this.

  “We should be dressed for a celebration,” I said, so Lily and I draped ourselves in scarves and ribbons and shared Mama’s bangle bracelets between us. We waved our arms and jingled our bracelets and twirled our scarves. “We are”—I remembered a spelling word—“resplendent!”

  “Respend it!” Lily crowed.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Then, with our boats in a grocery bag, we hurried over to the point to launch them.

  The first few matches blew out before getting near the boats. “Well, crumb, where did this breeze come from?” I lifted the boats out of the water and waited for calm. Finally, with their paper sails on fire, we sent the boats bobbing in the gently lapping water.

  As we watched them drift, I twirled and chanted, “I send my fears to the sea. They’ll no longer trouble me. No more worry, no more dread. Millie and Lily like living instead!”

  Lily laughed and said, “That’s as good as Mama’s jingles.” She danced and twirled, shouting, “No more dead. Living instead!”

  “Lily, you’re a poet, too!”

  She grinned at the praise. Such a little thing from me made her so happy.

  The burning boats crumpled softly into the water. I exhaled deeply. To my surprise, I started to laugh. Christopher Columbus! All that time and all that effort and it was a mistake, a gigantic misunderstanding! I felt foolish and embarrassed but also relieved. Light. Alive. Even hopeful. Joe Btfsplk would have to live under his rain cloud all by himself.