“Listen,” Margaret said, “there’s enough candy here for the whole army.” She stopped. For a moment she looked worried. “D-Day. I wonder if he was there.”
Lily had a quick flash of Eddie in her mind, his square front teeth, a little separated, resting gently on his lower lip, his nose red. He always had a cold, was always sniffling even on the hottest day of the summer. What Lily liked best about Eddie was that she could make him laugh. He always knew when she was telling Margaret a story; he never gave her away.
One time she had told Margaret she had almost seen a murder on Cross Bay Boulevard. A car had screeched to a stop in front of Bohack’s at closing time, and the Bohack guy wouldn’t let the man in. The man said something about being ready to throttle him, whatever that meant exactly, but he had gone away two seconds later. Lily hadn’t mentioned the going away part to Margaret, though.
“I think I even heard the police sirens,” Eddie had said.
“Yes,” Lily hadn’t stopped for a breath. “About four police cars. They zeroed right in.”
Eddie Dillon with those square teeth, always ready to laugh. Eddie at Normandy beach on D-Day? Everyone had talked about it all through the war . . . the day that the Allies, thousands of Americans and English men, would land in France to fight their way across Europe.
Lily had seen the news at the movies, boats coming close to the shore, the water rough as Rockaway on a stormy morning. The forward flaps of the little square boats had come down, and soldiers had waded through water almost to their waists, while the Germans kept shooting and shooting . . . She shivered.
“What is it?” Margaret asked.
Lily shook her head. “Nothing.”
Margaret fished through the candy. “Take one more thing,” she said. “I’m going to try a couple of Walnettos next, and maybe just one butterscotch.”
Lily finished the Necco wafers and took a butterscotch too. At home Gram would never let her buy butterscotch candies. “They pull the fillings right out of your mouth,” she’d say.
“Now the next thing is really secret,” Margaret said, her mouth full. “We’re moving out of Rockaway until the end of the war. My father has a job in a factory at Willow Run. It’s in Detroit, wherever that is, largest factory in the world. Top secret. We’re going to lock the house, board up the windows, and off we go. My mother, my father, me, and even the cats.” She leaned forward. “He’s going to make those Liberator bombers. B-24’s.”
Margaret had the best luck in the world, Lily thought. But then she thought about the summer without her. “When?”
“Tomorrow,” Margaret said. “The next day at the latest.”
“But we were going to . . .” Lily closed her mouth around another butterscotch. It wasn’t so much that they were going to do anything. But Margaret, who lived at the other end of Queens all winter, had no idea that she was a last-row, last-seat kid in school with terrible marks in everything except reading. Margaret didn’t know she told lies every other minute. No, she didn’t know any of that. That’s what made her such a perfect friend.
“I know we were going to do a ton of stuff,” Margaret said, “but this is important, right? My father has to help win the war. And you could link up with those kids in Broad Channel . . .”
Lily stared out the window. She couldn’t even begin to think about getting herself over to Broad Channel, walking up and down the streets, looking for friends, trying to act like Shirley Temple, the actress, when she saw a kid her age, trying to smile. My name is Lily Mollahan, la la, what’s yours? She shuddered, thinking about it.
“Did you hear something?” Margaret asked, raising one hand.
Lily listened a little nervously. It couldn’t be Nazis on such a sunny day. Maybe Margaret’s mother back from the stores?
Margaret shook her head. “I guess not.” She held the box of Walnettos up to her nose and breathed in. “Of course going to Willow Run isn’t quite as good as having an aunt a spy.”
“No,” Lily said.
“Or a cousin a general in the navy.”
Lily tried to look modest. She couldn’t even remember telling Margaret that.
“I have one more secret. It’s another birthday present. It’ll make you feel better when I’m gone.” Margaret reached under her collar and pulled a key, knotted in a brown shoelace, over her head. “This is for you, the back door key. You can sneak in, come right up to the attic, and write your next five books.”
Lily took a breath. This place, hers. She’d be here by herself, nobody knowing, without Gram telling her to stop reading and get herself outside in the fresh air, without the radio blaring war news in back of her. She’d write a wonderful book, never mind the spelling, never mind Sister Eileen.
She took the key, still warm from Margaret’s neck, and looped it under her blouse. “This is the best present I’ve ever had.”
“I know it.” Margaret glanced at the brown paper bag. “And you got the best candy bar. I love those Milky Ways.”
“You’re right.” Lily reached into her pocket and handed it to Margaret. “Have a bite of this. Have it all.”
Margaret thought a moment. “It’s only fair. You’ve got the attic, an aunt a spy, your father probably going overseas any minute, and you’ve already written thirteen books.”
“Fourteen. . . . ,” Lily began, another lie, and stopped. “Poppy’s not going overseas. He’s not going anywhere.” She shook her head. “You forgot. He’s an engineer. He’s important right where he is, working in the city.”
Margaret peeled the paper back off the rest of the candy bar. “My father said he probably would go this summer.”
Lily scrambled to her feet. “Your father’s wrong.”
Then she saw Margaret’s eyes widen. “Holy mackerel,” Margaret said, “it’s my mother.”
Lily looked over her shoulder. Mrs. Dillon was coming up the attic steps. Lily could see the top of her head first, and then her shoulders.
They scooped the candy back into the bag, Lily trying to swallow the rest of the butterscotch, which was stuck to her back teeth.
And then Mrs. Dillon was right there, standing in front of them, looking as if she would burst into tears. “How could you?” she said, looking at Margaret. “I walked for blocks for that candy, one store after another, this one didn’t have peppermints, the other didn’t have Hershey’s. There’s a war on, no candy . . .” Mrs. Dillon looked out the window. “My poor Eddie,” she said.
Lily edged her way to the stairs, feeling guilty, feeling horrible. “I think I’d better go home now,” she said using her best manners. “It was very nice of you to have me over.”
She rushed down the stairs, and as she let herself out the door, she could hear Mrs. Dillon. “That Mollahan girl is trouble,” she was saying. “And you’re not one bit better.”
Lily stopped to see if Margaret was going to say anything, but she couldn’t hear a thing. She dug the last of the butterscotch off her back teeth and headed for Gram’s. The summer certainly wasn’t starting off very well, not very well at all.
Chapter 4
Gram’s house was the last one on the canal. “Where the ocean swoops in to fight with the bay,” she always said.
Up on stilts, the house hung over the water. In the living room was a deep, soft couch, a radio on legs, and, this year, the damn piano taking up the whole side wall. In back was a square little kitchen. It had so many pots and pans, and bowls, and dishes, and mixers, and mashers, that there wasn’t an inch of room left on the yellow counters. Most of the stuff was dusty. Gram hated to cook.
The two bedrooms were separated from the kitchen by long flowered curtains. One was Gram’s, the other was Poppy’s.
Lily was glad there wasn’t a third bedroom. All summer she slept on the porch that was tacked on the front. She was so close to the water beneath, she could lean over in her bed and watch the silver killies zigzagging along just under the dark surface.
Sometimes she looked up at the Big Di
pper, but most of the time, like tonight, she watched the searchlights crisscrossing overhead. She knew the spotters were looking for enemy planes that might come all the way from Germany to bomb New York.
And suppose she was the one to spot a plane and bombs coming down? She thought about it, diving through bombs to rescue the neighbors. She closed her eyes. Germans parachuting into the canal. She’d have to row like crazy, zigzagging away from the bombs, away from the paratroopers. It made her dizzy to think about it.
She listened. Something was going on. Noise. Lights. At Mrs. Orban’s, four houses down. Yes, lights. Mrs. Orban hadn’t even bothered to pull the blackout curtains, and the Nazis could zero right in with Lily two seconds away.
And right now, a car was driving up on the road side of the Orbans’ house. Lily knelt up in bed and leaned against the screen. Never mind that Gram had told her a hundred times she was going to knock the screen out and go headfirst into the water.
“Mr. Orban’s Model A Ford,” she said aloud. She knew that because she had helped him paint the top half of the headlights black so they couldn’t be seen from the sky. The light Mr. Orban had painted had turned out much better than the one she had worked on.
Lily reached for her shorts and sneakers. She’d just get herself down there and find out what was going on. She wasn’t one bit sleepy yet, anyway.
Strange that Mr. Orban was using the last drop of his gas. He had sworn he was going to hold on to it until the day when the war was over in Europe. “Then you and I, Lily my love, are going to drive up and down Cross Bay Boulevard,” he had said. “We’ll honk the horn every inch of the way.”
She thought about sneaking out through the kitchen, but Gram would be awake in a flash. Instead she unhooked the screen and pushed it until it swung out.
Noisy, much too noisy. She counted to fifty, then wiggled through the opening and hung on to the window ledge until she felt the piling with her feet. The rowboat was directly underneath. She let go and landed on one of the oars.
For a minute she rocked back and forth holding her leg, feeling the pain shooting down her shin. Tomorrow she’d have a black-and-blue mark the size of a potato.
The boat was rocking too, water sloshing in over the side. She could hear Mrs. Orban’s back door opening, and the sound of voices, but they were too far away for her to know what they were saying.
Lily pulled the thick rope over the hook, setting the boat free. Then she pushed herself along under the porches, moving from piling to piling, not bothering with the oars.
She looked up as she passed slowly under the Colgans’, the Graveses’, the Temples’. Narrow slits of light from the sides of their blackout shades were reflected out onto the water, sliding up and down with the tiny waves.
Under the Orbans’ porch, everything was still except for a gentle swish and the boat bumping against the pilings. The voices had stopped.
Lily sat there shivering, wishing she had brought her sweater. She wondered how long she should stay there. If she boosted herself up on the piling, quietly, carefully, she could grab on to the edge of the porch. The Orbans’ porch was a plain open one, not like hers, which had been made into a bedroom. She could tiptoe across it and see into the kitchen window. She thought about it for a moment.
Gram said her whole trouble was she didn’t think about things long enough. Of course she did. She thought all the time, about writing stories, and about the war, and about coming to Rockaway every summer. And she thought about her mother. Hadn’t she brought a star every year to paste in back of her bed so her mother would be there in Rockaway too? Of course, Gram didn’t know that. That was private stuff; no one knew, not even Poppy. Especially not Poppy. His face would get that soft look, that sad look.
Lily reached for the dripping rope and looped it over the Orbans’ hook. All she needed was for the boat to float away without her. She slid the oars under the seats on one side. One almost broken shin was enough for tonight. Then she pulled herself up, hanging on to the rough floorboards of the porch.
She left a trail of wet sneaker prints going across, but they’d be dry before morning. And then she was under the window, and Mrs. Orban was talking again, talking a blue streak in her high voice, and Mr. Orban was talking too, a rumble of sound.
Lily crouched there, listening, catching bits and pieces. “Budapest . . . so far away,” Mrs. Orban was saying, “but never mind . . . safe and sound . . . the beach swimming . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Maybe you’d like applesauce,” Mr. Orban put in. “Or toast . . . margarine on it, though . . . butter’s gone . . .”
“Andrassy Street,” Mrs. Orban said. “I remember the cobblestones, and Kalocsa’s Restaurant . . .”
“How about toast with applesauce on the side?” Mr. Orban asked. “What do you say, Albert?”
Albert? Who was that, now? Lily leaned back against the house to look at her leg. In the light from the window, she could see it was a mess.
Albert wasn’t talking, not a word. Lily listened to Mr. Orban complaining that you had to be a genius to make the can opener work, while Mrs. Orban kept going on about the beach.
Then Lily heard her own name, clear as a bell. Lily Mollahan. Albert, whoever he was, was supposed to meet her, and they were going to be friends, Mrs. Orban was saying.
Lily knelt up slowly, so slowly it was as if she were swimming underwater. She gripped the edge of the windowsill with the tips of her fingers, then raised her head just high enough to see inside, and to hear clearly. And what she heard was Albert saying he didn’t have time to be friends with any Lily Mollahan, saying her name in a strange, soft way, with an accent. “I have to find Ruth,” he said.
What was he doing there, she wondered, sitting at the table directly across from her, a dish of applesauce in front of him, the skinniest kid she had ever seen in her life. His hair was curly and thick, but it looked as if he hadn’t combed it in a hundred years. She stared at him, his face down in the shadows. A nice face, she thought, even though he didn’t want to be friends. Too bad for him. She didn’t want to be friends either.
He was wearing shorts, and his knees were big and knobby under the table, his legs like sticks. Then he looked up. His eyes were blue, the bluest she had ever seen, and he was looking straight into her eyes. He picked up his spoon, a little applesauce dripping off the edge, and, still staring, pointed it at her.
She could feel the heat in her face, and in her neck. Mr. and Mrs. Orban were turning toward the window, trying to see what he was looking at outside. Lily scrambled across the porch on her knees, and down over the edge, hanging on for a second, landing in the boat, grabbing the rope off the hook as fast as she could. She pushed herself back down under the porches so quickly she could hear the water churning up in back of her.
She didn’t stop until she was in her bed with the red quilt pulled up to her chin. She lay there thinking about Albert—his blue eyes staring at her—and wondering who Ruth was. She couldn’t believe she had been caught like that, sneaking around on the Orbans’ porch in the middle of the night.
Chapter 5
Lily had been wandering around all of yesterday and today, trying to get another look at Albert. She wore the sailor hat Eddie Dillon had given her last summer, her sunglasses, and a thick layer of Victory Red lipstick from Gertz Department Store, FREE TAKE ONE. Albert wouldn’t recognize her in a hundred years.
It didn’t make any difference. Once she thought she saw him climbing around on the rock jetties at the beach, and once on Cross Bay Boulevard. But both times he was gone by the time she got close enough for a good look.
Right now it was Friday afternoon, late, and Poppy was finally coming for a weekend. In the rowboat, Lily dipped the oars into the water as quietly as she could. Any minute Gram would be after her to practice the piano, Etude in Something or Other, set the table for dinner, and who knew what else.
“Lil-y.”
Too late.
Above her, the screen door open
ed.
Lily began to row, singing, “ ‘Mairzy doats . . . ,’ ” pretending she hadn’t heard.
Gram wasn’t fooled. “You could set the table, Lily,” she called, “get everything ready before your father comes.”
“Going to pick him up in the boat right now,” Lily said over her shoulder. “Then he won’t have to walk around the long way.”
“And what about the piano?”
Gram was in love with that piano.
“Did you practice?” Gram began.
“This morning.” She hadn’t bothered much with the étude, she’d done the C scale twice, two minutes, and that was that. She began to sing again, “ ‘A kiddley divy too,’ ” listening for the sound of the door, but it didn’t close. Gram was still standing there, waiting for her to turn around and come back.
Lily raised the oars, water plinking off the ends, but Gram didn’t say anything.
“Going to get Poppy,” she said again.
In back of her the screen door closed.
Lily dipped the oars into the water again, veering toward the railway station, hurrying now, anxious to see him.
The railroad trestle looped across the bay, flat against the water. Lily bent over the oars, wondering what Poppy would tell her about on the way back . . . probably how hot it was in St. Albans and how much he missed her. She smiled to herself, thinking about it.
She saw the smoke from the engine before she spotted the train. A moment later, it pulled into the station, and a knot of people piled out the doors. And there was her father, waving his newspaper at her. She waved back, rowing fast toward the dock, watching the distance narrow, angling around another boat that was coming in to meet the train. Then finally she rammed into the rough wood of the piling. She held the boat steady, stroking, until Poppy untied his shoes, pulled them off, and hopped in.
“Want to row?” she asked, leaning across for his kiss.
He shook his head, smiling, the lines around his eyes crinkling. She reached out to touch them with her fingers.