All the Way Home

  Some mistakes he hadn’t made, though, some things he had to give himself credit for.

  No one knew his name.

  Billy Nightingale. All the policemen had had to do was look at the signs over the stores and they would have known.

  But they hadn’t looked up. He had gotten away with it.

  Standing in the hot schoolyard now, one of the boys had pushed him into a boxball game, pitching the ball to him on a bounce. Brick slapped at it with his hand, heading for first base, hardly thinking about what he was doing.

  It had been so noisy in that big room at the police station last night. The clatter of the teletype, one cop calling to another, a phone ringing, made it hard for Brick to think. He wondered how anyone could think. At home the police station was quiet. Only one cop there, one small desk.

  It was late when the cop sat down next to him, dropping his hat on the bench. The hat had left a mark along his forehead. He had blue eyes and a small scar on his cheek. “I’m Ambrose,” he had said.

  Brick was starving by the time Ambrose had cut into a chocolate cake for him, and he ate three slices as he listened to the chiming of a clock somewhere. Nine o’clock. What were Mom and Pop doing now? “Made the cake myself,” Ambrose said, and handed him a Melloroll.

  Brick had taken the ice cream in chunks because his mouth was so dry, then licked the cardboard wrapper until there was nothing left but the taste of ice cream on his tongue. “I have to walk two miles at home for ice cream,” he said, and realized it was a mistake when he saw Ambrose’s eyes.

  “Knew you were a farm boy,” Ambrose said. “I could see it in your face and in your hands. Don’t belong in Brooklyn, do you?”

  It was the last thing he’d tell the policeman. Better not to say anything, not one bit of a clue anyone could put together. When he saw Ambrose glance down at Claude’s book, he had gripped it hard in his hands, but Ambrose hadn’t touched it, hadn’t even asked about it.

  “Listen,” Ambrose had told him. “Your mother and father must be out looking for you.”

  Wrong, Brick thought. They didn’t even know he was gone yet.

  “They’re probably feeling terrible about what went wrong.”

  That was true. He thought of Mom, her freckles, her dark curly hair, her eyes still red when he left. And he thought of Pop. One night after the fire he had heard Pop crying. He had never heard Pop cry before, never even knew a man could cry. He felt so sad for them both, so lonely for them, but he wouldn’t let the cop know that. Instead he reached for another Melloroll.

  “If you’re in trouble,” Ambrose had said, “we’ll try to find a way to make it all right.”

  Brick wanted to tell him he wasn’t in trouble, at least not the kind of trouble Ambrose meant. But Ambrose had a face that made Brick want to tell him everything. And Brick was suddenly so tired he knew he was going to blurt out the whole story: the apple trees, and Claude’s hands, and wanting to get back.

  He had to get back.

  Ambrose must have seen the tears in his eyes. He leaned forward, his hand on Brick’s shoulder. “You’ll feel better if you tell me, a lot better.”

  Brick opened his mouth. The whole story was ready to come out, every bit of it, and if it had, he’d be at the nurse’s house right now with all his plans ruined.

  But before he could begin, “It started on the road from town, the lightning …,” someone had called to Ambrose.

  “I’ll be right back,” Ambrose had said.

  As Ambrose walked away from him, Brick saw it all in his mind: he’d stand on the ladder in Claude’s orchard, with apples coming down into his hands, and baskets filling, and Julia and Claude calling back and forth.

  And even Ambrose knew when he came back. Brick’s face was tight, one hand holding Claude’s book, the other holding the arm of the bench. Ambrose sighed, then patted Brick’s shoulder. “All right. Let me find a place for you to sleep. We won’t send you off to the children’s services just yet. Tomorrow one of the teachers is having a picnic. I’ll see that you get there.”

  Brick nodded, thinking he’d run during that picnic, start back.

  “Just promise me one thing,” Ambrose said. “Don’t run yet. Give it some time, a week. Everything will look different by then.”

  Brick knew what Ambrose was doing. He was buying himself time to find out who Brick was. But the thought of a bed, the thought of stretching out, closing his eyes, made him nod. “All right,” he said. “I guess so.”

  Ambrose touched his shoulder. “Word of honor?” Brick hesitated, but it was hard to look away from Ambrose’s eyes. “Word of honor,” he said.

  9

  Mariel

  The picnic was over, and Mariel didn’t have to think about school for another six days. Besides, she had something else to think about, the company that had never come yesterday.

  Loretta had worried about it this morning. After ironing the dirndl skirt, she had taken her breakfast coffee into the living room to look out the window at Midwood Street. “Maybe I had the wrong date.” She had rattled her cup in her saucer. “I was sure it was Monday. If only they had a phone.”

  “Tell me who …,” Mariel began.

  “It was supposed to be such a nice surprise,” Loretta said.

  Strange for Loretta to worry. Loretta never worried. “We’ve got each other,” she’d say, tapping her pink nails on Mariel’s arm.

  And Mariel wasn’t worried, of course not. How could she worry when she didn’t even know who was coming? She was curious, though. The guest bedroom off the kitchen, the size of a skinny closet, was all fixed up with the blue chenille bedspread, two pillows, and the extra radio.

  But Loretta wasn’t even home when Mariel opened the door after the picnic. Mariel threaded her way along the killer vines rug into the kitchen. There was no company in sight either.

  Mariel was starving; she hadn’t bothered with any of the food at the picnic. She thought about what she’d eat now. One of Loretta’s nursing caps was drying off on a towel. She gave the pointy top a little poke, then peered into the cabinet. How about Saltine crackers, and strawberry jam with fat red strawberries and interesting seeds to roll around her teeth?

  She took a plateful into her bedroom. Small and dark, the room reminded her of a chipmunk nest she had seen in the Brooklyn Museum. The nest was there in a window: a chunk of earth with tunnels and tiny rooms for food and birthing for a chipmunk family. Safe, just as her room was.

  She set her plate on the windowsill and turned on her little radio to listen to Lorenzo Jones as she looked over the things on her everything table. There were score-cards from the Dodgers games, a picture of Pete Reiser and Dixie Walker, and one of Cookie Lavagetto. Up on the wall over her bed was her world’s best thing.

  That was what Loretta called it, and that was what she called it, too. It was a two-dollar bill, brand new, never been used, in a frame just as if it were a picture.

  She sat there looking up at it, remembering. “I’ll never get out of here,” she had said, talking in between the breaths the iron lung took for her because the insect army was fighting her breathing muscles. “I’ll never walk. Never stand up. Never even breathe on my own.”

  “Betcha.” Loretta, starched and white in her nursing uniform, smelling of spring flowers, had leaned over so close her cap slid down over her forehead. “Betcha two bucks.”

  Mariel pulled her chair up to the bedroom window to look out at the apple tree with its small white fence and the baseball diamond. Mariel loved to look down at the leaves as they quivered in the least bit of breeze. They reminded her of something, but she didn’t know what, something happy, something safe like her chipmunk room.

  She was waiting for apples. This year she had spotted a couple of tiny green ones in July, but they were gone now, maybe for a squirrel’s breakfast.

  She spread a thick dollop of jam on a Saltine and put the whole thing in her mouth. On the radio, Lorenzo Jones was driving his wife razy cray with the inve
ntions he was fiddling with in his garage.

  Downstairs the door opened. Mariel chewed quietly, listening. Footsteps. Loretta’s quick voice, and a deeper voice …

  She sat up. Ambrose? Ambrose the cop in her house?

  She went to the door and opened it a crack. She could see a piece of the stairs, the broad banister, the hall below. And the top of a boy’s head. Red hair.

  Was that Billy Nightingale? She swallowed the Saltine in a rush, feeling the soft mush of it in her throat.

  Yes. The three of them were standing, almost in a circle, looking at each other: Billy Nightingale, Loretta, smiling a bit, her hand on Billy’s shoulder, and Ambrose leaning against the wall. Loretta and Ambrose were talking, as Billy turned and looked up, straight at her.

  She shut the door again and leaned against it.

  Billy Nightingale was the company?

  She could feel the Saltine grow thicker in her chest, making it hard to breathe. It was like the yeast bread Mrs. Stahl made in the bakery, the lump of it growing, spreading, until it took up the whole baking pan.

  Mariel had spent the afternoon hiding her legs from Billy Nightingale. She had stood in back of the table forever while the class played Kick the Can and Walking Up the Green Grass. She had stood there pouring lemonade, taking small glimpses of Billy Nightingale when she thought he wasn’t looking.

  But how could she stay in her bedroom forever?

  The outside door closed again. Ambrose was gone. He’d be strolling down Midwood, turning onto Bedford, his hat down over those blue eyes that saw everything. He’d be whistling, a soft whistle with his tongue in back of his closed teeth.

  But she couldn’t think about Ambrose. What was Billy Nightingale doing?

  Loretta was calling. “Mariel?”

  She put her hands tight over her ears. Can’t hear you. Can’t hear a word. Sounds like the water at Coney Island. Please go away, Billy Nightingale.

  She leaned against the door, hardly breathing as she heard Loretta. “Don’t even think about this little mix-up,” she was saying. “Everything’s all right now. We’ll go to a Dodgers game as soon as we can and root for Pete Reiser and Cookie Lavagetto. School will be fine, you’ll see.”

  Billy Nightingale wasn’t saying a word.

  Mariel went from the door to stand at the window. She stared at the apple tree and shoved Saltines and strawberry jam with seeds into her mouth, Saltines that were going to fill up her whole chest.

  10

  Brick

  Loretta’s kitchen was a mess, Brick thought, a great mess. Magazines were piled everywhere, one opened on the countertop. There were other things, too: flowers in jelly glasses, ivy in cups, and knitting needles stuck in a ball of wool the color of apples on Claude’s trees.

  And over the table Brick saw pictures of his own family: Mom in her nursing uniform, her head tilted. He knew that picture. Mom loved it because her freckles didn’t show. There was another of her, too, with Pop, and even one of himself as a baby.

  It was the strangest thing to sit there under those pictures, eating melted cheese sandwiches with thick slices of tomato for supper. His mother had never made them … warm yellow cheese running onto the plate, buttery toast. They were as messy looking as the rest of the kitchen, but they were terrific even though the crusts were burned.

  Across from him was Mom’s friend, Loretta. He should be angry at her. After all, she was the one who had figured out who he was. Ambrose had walked him back to the station house after the picnic, sat him down with a pile of food, and she had tapped in with her platform shoes and a face full of worry.

  He could have run then; the station house door was open and Ambrose was looking down at Loretta, smiling at her as if she were that movie star, Hedy Lamarr.

  He could have run, but there was the promise he had made. A week. And he knew Mom was right about Loretta. He liked her. And there was the girl. He bit at the inside of his cheek. He had nearly cried this morning at the picnic, came so close to it, seeing all those kids looking at him, the teacher standing there, the cop. He’d felt as if he’d burst with it when he saw the girl raise her hand. It was almost as if she knew what he was feeling.

  All afternoon he’d thought about the girl waving. She must be a quiet girl; she hadn’t said a word, hadn’t moved away from the picnic table.

  And here in the house he had seen her peeking out of an upstairs door at him. It almost made him smile when he and Loretta had gone into the kitchen, Loretta rolling her eyes. “Where did Mariel get herself to?” He wanted to see her, wanted to hear her say something.

  And then she was there in back of him, sliding onto the chair at the table so fast it was hard to believe something was wrong with her legs. But he knew it, of course. She had been sick with what everyone in the world was afraid of, the sickness that killed people in just a day, or paralyzed them so that sometimes they couldn’t walk again, or even move their arms.

  Polio.

  Brick looked across at her, glad to see her. He felt a little shy, though, wondering what to say to her.

  She didn’t even look at him.

  He waited for a moment, but she fiddled with her knife and fork, staring down at them.

  Maybe he had made a mistake. He had gotten through the afternoon because of her wave, but maybe she hadn’t waved at him after all. Maybe she hadn’t even been paying attention to him.

  His plate was in front of him, a blue plate with brown horses runing around after each other, little chips on the edges. He tried not to think about yellow movie dishes, or Mom in the kitchen, or Pop grinning at him in the orchard. “Our own trees, and we’ll stay here forever.” He tried not to think about Claude and Julia.

  “This is Mimi’s son from Windy Hill,” Loretta said.

  The girl looked up, not at him but at Loretta. “Windy Hill?” Her voice had a nice sound, high and a little breathy. “The place where—” She broke off, her mouth closed. And now she did glance at him, the quickest peek, but still he saw it before she went back to moving her knife and fork around.

  Loretta nodded. “Good Samaritan, honey, and outside of that, there are orchards and a little town.” Loretta began to talk about Mimi and about St. Catherine’s Hospital right there in Brooklyn, where they had met at nursing school. She talked about Windy Hill, where they had gone to take care of kids with polio. “I was a little girl when I first learned about polio,” she said. “It was 1916. Nine thousand kids in New York had polio that summer. Everyone was afraid; no one knew how it started.” She sighed. “No one knows now.” She shook her head and smiled at Mariel. “I found you right there in an iron lung twice your size and knew you were going to be my family.”

  Then Loretta began to talk about baseball. “We’ll go to the game on Saturday and see the Dodgers take on the Giants.” Her head was to one side, and she tapped his shoulder. “Your mom wrote that you like the way Pete Reiser plays.” She shook her head. “That kid throws himself into everything, walls, balls, bats.”

  Brick took another look at the girl across from him. Her head was bent over her cheese sandwich now, so that all he could see was her fine hair. It was the color of sand, and the part in the middle was slightly crooked.

  He had watched the girl in between playing boxball and wolfing down a couple of brownies. He had stared out the gate, too: not a field, not a dirt path, not even a tree in sight, just a row of brown houses on the other side of the street.

  “You should have seen the Dodgers play the Giants,” Loretta said. “Right, Mariel? Wonderful.”

  He could see she wanted Mariel to talk, but the girl wasn’t having any of it. She pushed her cheese sandwich around her plate, her fingers fluttering a little, her eyes on the radio on the counter as if she were listening, except that the radio wasn’t on.

  He had to get out of there, he told himself for the hundredth time. He took a huge bite of his sandwich, wondering about his promise to Ambrose the cop. A week. And would Ambrose be there at the end of that time,
watching him, making sure he didn’t run?

  Loretta went on. “The next couple of days will make all the difference. We’ve got three games with the Giants coming up next weekend. Our enemies. And then the Dodgers will be on the road. Wouldn’t it be something if they won enough to get the pennant? The first one in twenty years.”

  Before he could stop himself, he blurted out, “How far is it from Brooklyn to Windy Hill?”

  Loretta stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Oh, Brick. It must seem so far away,” she said.

  Across the table the girl’s head came up. “Brick?”

  He knew what she was thinking. The teacher had called him Billy Nightingale a hundred times. “Everyone, this is Billy Nightingale. Want some more lemonade, Billy? Cupcakes, Billy Nightingale?”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Brick,” said Loretta. “His nickname.”

  Mariel looked at him for just a moment more. An angry look? A look as if she thought he was crazy? Then she bent her head over her plate again.

  And even though Loretta talked for the rest of the meal, and over her shoulder while she did the dishes, Brick didn’t hear one word she was saying.

  11

  Mariel

  The rest of the week was terrible. Loretta had taken time off, and every morning she stuffed cream-cheese-and-jelly sandwiches and cookies into brown paper bags for them to take to Breezy Point or Coney Island. The trips should have been wonderful, but Mariel lagged behind, not saying a word to Brick.

  On Saturday, before Brick came down for breakfast, Loretta showed Mariel the tickets for the game at Ebbets Field. Then she put them down on the table. There were spots of color in her cheeks. “What’s the matter with you anyway, Mariel? Good grief!” Ordinarily Mariel might have laughed. It was funny to see Loretta angry about a spot on her nursing cap, or a pot that burned, or rain on a day for a picnic. But Loretta was never angry at her.