when she sees I’m not going to budge, she runs behind the house. I sit by myself, my back against Mrs. Osthoff’s house, my chin buried between my knees, not even bothering to wipe away the tears.
A few minutes later I hear the click of heels on the walkway that circles the house. Grandma Kate appears.
“Helen?” she says, standing over me. I stare straight ahead.
“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” she says. “All right then.” She gathers her dress around her legs and lowers herself to the porch beside me. She stretches her legs out straight and looks across the dry front yard, her arms crossed over her chest. The Miller boy rides up and down on his bicycle, waving as he passes, and we watch him in silence. She can wait me out, I know it. She’s done it before. So I give up my pouting and speak.
“Did Janie tell you I was here?”
“She did.”
“Did you know Mrs. Osthoff had gone?” I ask finally.
“Not until this afternoon. Mrs. Fuller told me.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Is it now?”
“I promised I’d check in on her last night, and I didn’t.”
“Oh I think there’s more than enough blame to go around.”
I turn my head to look at her, wiping my tears on the back of my arm. She lays a hand on my knee. “Helen, I spent years trying to get that woman out of her house, and then I guess I just gave up. But things were different lately, and I should have taken note of that. You tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen, did I?”
“We should have done more for her,” I say stubbornly.
Grandma Kate leans her head back against the house and sighs. “You’re right. I’ve just been so tired this summer taking care of the house and the garden and all of you. I didn’t think I had the strength to care for one more person, so I left her to care for herself. So there you have it,” she says, nudging me. “I made a poor decision.”
She reaches into her dress pocket and pulls out a handkerchief that’s folded into a neat square and hands it to me. I unfold it slowly, noticing the sharp creases where she’d ironed it closed and the delicate initials she had stitched into the corner. I open the handkerchief and wipe my eyes.
“Did you think it was only children who made mistakes?” Grandma asks.
I don’t answer immediately. As always, she has guessed exactly what I’m thinking. “Grown-ups make them too,” she goes on. “The only difference between a grown-up’s mistake and a child’s is the size of the consequence. I thought Eva would go on as she always had. I was wrong. A pretty big mistake, and now I’ll have to live with it.”
“I thought it would be easy this summer,” I say. “Making the right decisions. Showing you how responsible I could be. But it all gets so . . .complicated. Life just feels too big sometimes. Like the war. I need one of Grandpa’s maps with pins telling me where to go next.”
Grandma Kate pats my knee. “You’ve no need for a map, Helen. You’re doing just fine on your own, and I’m proud of you.”
The Miller boy comes by again on his bike. He stops and asks us what we’re doing.
“We’re catching flies,” Grandma Kate says. “Run along now. We’re very busy.”
The Miller boy cocks his head and gives us a quizzical look, then shrugs with all his body, as only a child of five can do. I have to laugh as he rides away.
“You’re feeling better then?” Grandma Kate asks.
“A little.”
“Good, then help an old woman up. This floor is much too hard on my bones.”
I stand and stretch out my hand. “You’re not old, Grandma.”
“No? I just feel old then.” She puts her arm around my waist. At the foot of the stairs, I pivot to look back once more at Mrs. Osthoff’s house.
“Where do you think she’s gone, Grandma? She can’t go home to Germany. There’s a war on.”
“I don’t know, Helen. She always talked about California. When Frederick was little, she used to tell him she’d take him swimming in the ocean someday. He used to paint pictures of the sea. He was a fine painter. When he left, I always wondered if he went there. If he set up a life for himself where he could watch the sun set over the water. Maybe he had a place there. Maybe that’s where she went.”
“Do you think she’ll come back?”
“I hope so, dear. I really do.”
13 - The Barn Dance
It’s a Saturday night in late August, and my family is heading across the river for a barn dance. Grandpa ran into Mr. Russell in town the other day. He owns a farm not far from where Grandpa’s land used to be. His son Jimmy is home on leave, and the dance is in his honor. Mr. Russell has invited us to come! Janie’s coming too. I haven’t been this excited for anything since my first day of work at Westclox.
Tonight is our last hurrah in the car. Grandpa George wants to take it out one last time before he donates the tires to the rubber drive and puts the car on blocks for the duration of the war. Grandma tried to talk him out of it, but Grandpa said, “Come, now, Kate. Let an old man do something to help the war effort,” and that took the fight right out of her. We had to borrow gas coupons from the Breys to make it all the way out to the Russells and back, but Grandpa says it’ll be worth it.
So here I sit in the middle of the wide, rear seat of our Oldsmobile with Mother on my left, fussing with her lapel pin, and Janie on my right. Janie borrowed that navy blue dress from Maxine—the one that Mrs. Land said I was too tall to wear—and of course it looks good on her. I’m wearing a hand-me-down dress from my cousin. It’s a little out-of-date now, but it’s actually quite pretty. It’s a misty rose color with two rows of flower buttons down the bodice and a tie-back sash, but the best part is the pleated skirt—perfect for dancing. Janie came over early to help me curl my hair, and a couple of carefully placed barrettes are hiding the spot where it was torn out by the drill. Janie has forbidden me to touch my hair. She keeps grabbing my hand whenever I start to smooth it down out of habit. She says she won’t have all her hard work ruined.
There’s a small, black handbag resting on Janie’s lap, and she’s laid her hands over it protectively. Inside she has a lipstick, a small mirror, some extra hairpins and, most importantly, her latest letter from John. My family has received a few letters from him too, so we now know for certain he’s in Britain. Grandpa says John will be flying some very dangerous missions, and the weather over the English Channel can be treacherous. We are tracking the Air Force movements as best we can on the map, but not even that eases our worry much. His letters help, though, which is why I made Janie swear to tell me as soon as she gets one.
“Okay,” she said. “But I can’t let you read them anymore.”
“Why not!”
“Because they’re personal.”
“That’s silly, Janie. He’s my cousin.”
“Well, he’s my beau now. Sort of. He said the girls in England are very nice, but not nearly as pretty as me. I’m going to send him a picture of me so he can carry it with him when he flies.”
“Oh nausea,” I say.
I can’t begrudge her not sharing her letters, though. I got a letter myself that I haven’t told Janie about. It was from Hal. He sent it just before he shipped out, and he thanked me for not giving away his secret. He said he’d been sure I would try to stop him from leaving, but he was glad I didn’t. “This is where I belong, Lanie,” he wrote. “I know that now more than ever.” I’ll have to tell him someday that I didn’t mean to keep his secret, it just happened. But I won’t do it now. If anything happens to Hal, I want him to know I’m his friend and always will be. I don’t want him to doubt that for a minute.
I’m wondering where in the war Hal will wind up when Janie elbows me and asks, “Hey, how was your last day of work?”
I smile. After Rita found a woman to switch places with me earlier this month, and I got some distance between Martha and Betty, things got better. Martha still made fun of my new pageboy hairstyle one afternoon, bu
t other than that, she kept mostly to herself. Maybe that had something to do with the new supervisor who seemed to be keeping a close eye on those two.
“Rita was sweet,” I say. “She said she was going to miss me. Oh, and she promised to come and see me sing in the school operetta.”
“And what about Martha?”
“Martha puffed up her chest and said, ‘Good riddance, little girl.’”
“What’d you do?”
“I screwed up my courage and looked her straight in the eye. ‘Oh you’re not rid of me yet,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back next year.’ Oh Janie, I wish you could have seen the look on Martha’s face!”
Janie laughs. “Serves her right, the old cow.” She glances at Mother, and mumbles, “Sorry, Mrs. Marshall.”
“Never mind, Janie. From what you girls have told us, ‘old cow’ probably suits that woman quite well. I wouldn’t have minded giving her a piece of my mind this summer, but Helen seemed to have things well under control.” She gives me a squeeze, and it’s good to feel her arms around me again now that the casts have been removed.
“Here we are,” Grandpa says, pulling the car into the field and parking. There are plenty of other cars and pick-up trucks and even a few wagons parked there already, and it’s still early. I bet half the county is coming. I push Janie out of the car ahead of me and start whispering to her about who all we might see inside, until Grandma Kate gives me one of her looks. Whispering is something she cannot abide. “If you’ve got