Mariel
Outside she pulled open the green-striped umbrella and started down Midwood Street. Suddenly she knew how she could catch up with Brick. The church bells tolled at six o’clock, and if she was at Jordan’s candy store by then, everything might work out. Might, she told herself, crossing her fingers.
It all depended on Daisy, the ragman’s horse.
Mariel turned the corner and stopped at Jordan’s window, twirling her umbrella, looking at his display. Faded red, white, and blue crepe paper was bunched up around the edges of the glass; dead flies were scattered here and there. In the center was a shiny picture of Mr. Jordan himself in his army uniform from the Great War. Jordan was young in the picture, he had lots of dark curly hair, and best of all, he was shaking hands with President Wilson. Mariel could understand why he wanted that picture there, why he was so proud of it. She thought about the picture of President Roosevelt in his cape that Loretta had cut out of the newspaper for her, and Geraldine Ginty, hands on her hips. “You’re a liar, Mariel. There’s no such thing as a President who can’t walk.”
The six o’clock bells began to ring. Mariel looked up the street as a car went by and then another. Where was Benny? She leaned her head against the wet store window. Suppose he didn’t come?
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” was what the President would say.
Inside, Jordan tapped on his counter with the edge of his ring. “Hey, Mariel, want to break the window?” He shook his head. “It’s pouring rain. You kids are crazy.”
She had always wanted to tell Jordan about President Roosevelt, but now wasn’t the time. He looked hot and irritable. “Sorry,” she said, and went to the edge of the sidewalk.
She leaned against the telephone pole, her package under one arm, holding the umbrella over her head with the other. After a while, the bell tolled again, once this time. It was six-thirty. What would she do if Benny didn’t come?
She was about to give up when she heard Daisy’s bells and Benny’s voice. “Old rags, we buy, we sell.”
Thank you, Daisy, she thought.
Benny pulled up in front of the candy store, his hat streaming rain. Jordan was at the window again, tapping with his ring, motioning to Mariel. “Want a sugar cube for the horse?” he asked. “Want one for yourself?”
She knew he was telling her he felt bad about the window business, so she smiled and put her package down. He reached around the door and handed them to her. “Good girl,” he said.
Benny sat back as she held her hand out flat with both sugar cubes for Daisy to nuzzle. “It’s the princess all dressed up,” Benny said. “On your way to a party in the rain?”
“I need a favor, Benny,” she said, looking at Daisy, afraid to look up, afraid he’d say no.
“Want an old rag? Want a dozen?”
“A ride, please.”
“I’m not going very far,” he said, grinning. “No castles on my route.” He wiped his face with the back of his sleeve.
“I need to go to Manhattan.”
His eyes widened. “That’s far enough. What are you going to do there? Not running away, are you?” She saw him look down at her legs, biting his lip, sorry he had said that.
She picked up the bag. “I have to get this to a friend on Canal Street,” she said, “but Loretta has to work.”
All true, every bit of it.
He shook his head. “After Manhattan, I have to go to the Bronx. I’m doing extra time, extra money for my girl Gracie’s birthday present.” He hesitated. “That’s a long way. Are you sure Loretta wouldn’t mind?”
Mariel smiled. “Loretta says I can do anything. Besides …” She pulled at the elastic under her chin. “I don’t need to come back. My friend …” She let her voice trail off, let him think she had a ride.
“All right then,” he said. “I could drop you near the bridge. Know where that is?”
“Sure.” She had never seen anything more than the top of it poked up when she went shopping with Loretta.
Benny held out his hand, fingers hard, palms callused, and pulled her up next to him. They began to move, the old clothes shifting in back of them, the sleigh bells jingling, and Daisy trotting along in the puddles.
Mariel wondered if she’d really find Brick. Was she making a mistake going to the far end of the bridge? Should she wait on the Brooklyn side instead? She thought about it. It was a long bridge, she remembered that. If Brick started across before she got there, she’d miss him. She hated to think about that, waiting at the bridge all night, never seeing him, wondering what to do.
She closed her eyes and listened to Benny click his tongue against his teeth to spur Daisy on. He began to sing then, “Daisy, Daisy, I’m half crazy, all for the love of you …”
After a minute, she began to hum with him. Daisy went faster now, and they turned down a cobblestone street with the wagon rocking from side to side. “Daisy moves right along when she thinks she’s going home,” Benny said. “She has her own way of getting to the bridge.”
Mariel nodded, holding on to the seat with both hands. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she found Brick? Wouldn’t he be surprised?
19
Brick
He had found it. After circling blocks, going past the same vegetable store more than once, he glanced up to see the sign in front of him. FLATBUSH AVENUE!
He looked down at the paper: Take Flatbush Avenue all the way to the bridge and cross into Manhattan.
Easy directions, a long walk in the pouring rain. At first he jogged along the street, not minding it. He even stopped for a moment to watch the cars. He had seen more cars in the last few days than he had in his whole life: Model A Fords, and even a Packard or two.
He’d tell Claude all about them when he got there. He felt a quick stab of pain in his chest. Mariel had to be wrong about how long it would take. If only she were wrong! Giant buildings appeared in the distance, hazy against the clouds, the buildings of Manhattan, he was sure. But after walking blocks, they didn’t seem closer.
He began to listen to the sound of his footsteps. The wet sidewalk was so much harder than the packed dirt of the Windy Hill road. He couldn’t stop thinking of the cement against his feet. His sock kept pulling down inside his right shoe, rubbing against the skin of his heel. He was going to have a blister soon, and how could he walk all those miles with a sore foot?
He stopped in front of a barber shop, closed now, and slid down against the slippery red-and-white pole. He took off his shoes and tied them together to hang around his neck, then rolled up his socks, one for each shoe.
The street in front of him was filthy with torn-up papers, broken bottles, even a squashed box that some kids had made into a house for themselves, everything sopping wet. He’d have to be careful not to step on something sharp.
He stood up then, thinking to reach down for Claude’s book, but it wasn’t there.
Claude’s book gone?
He sank down again, hunched over, his head bent. What had happened to it? Where had he had it last? He remembered having it in the park, sitting under that bushy little tree. He reached into his pocket to feel the softness of the leaf. How could he ever tell Claude?
“Something the matter?” A woman stood in front of him, her hair tied up in a babushka, her face lined. She held a newspaper over her head for an umbrella.
He shook his head. “Just …,” he began, rubbing his chest, feeling the pain of losing the book.
“Too much candy,” she said, making a shhh-shhh sound with her tongue. “Too much to eat. It will go away.”
He nodded, then stood up with his shoes over his shoulder and moved away from her. How far to the bridge? Too far. Too many blocks barefooted. Not a cent in his pocket. No food. Certainly no food today, not until he got into the country and there’d be fruit on the trees and fields of vegetables. How long? He needed the taste of water in his mouth, on his tongue, in his throat. An orange soda, a root beer, cold and frosty. He held up his fac
e, his mouth open to catch the drops of water.
Feeling sorry for himself, that was what it was. What would Pop say? He straightened up, walking on the outside edges of the soles of his feet. He could turn around, ask anyone where the nearest station house was, ask for Ambrose the cop, and he’d be back in the house on Midwood Street in time for supper.
But he wasn’t going to do that. He had to put one foot in front of the other, step by step. He wasn’t going to think about eating, or his feet. This was just the beginning of the trip.
The sidewalk was divided into cement blocks. He’d count to fifty and then another fifty, and then another. Sooner or later, all those blocks of cement would get him to the bridge.
He wouldn’t let himself think about what would happen after that, unless it was to picture himself sitting in Julia’s kitchen, telling her and Claude about the long walk, telling them about Brooklyn.
After a while he noticed that it wasn’t raining so hard; now there was only a soft drizzle. Windows opened along the avenue, and he could hear people’s radios as he walked: the news, war in Europe, the Dodgers game in Chicago called because of rain.
It was getting dark. Lights came on in the houses, and in the backs of stores, and he was alone, hobbling down the street in the dark, his breath sounding loud in his ears. There was something he was beginning to realize. He would never be able to walk two hundred miles, not in time for the harvest, not unless he hitched a ride, or sneaked up into the back of a truck on its way to the country.
But suddenly, out of nowhere, he saw the lights of the bridge. They curved up over the span in front of him, a tall bridge with a few cars going back and forth.
Just get to the other side, he thought, just get that far. He would have done something then, gotten somewhere. He went up on the footpath and looked down into the shimmering black of the water below. He walked more quickly now. No one else was on the path in front of him.
In the traffic lane going toward Manhattan, a car went by, its wheels splashing water against the metal floor of the bridge. Its headlights threw large blocks of light that zigzagged across the footpath and left patches of darkness between the stanchions. As the car crossed the bridge in front of him, its lights lit up the end of the footpath. In the sudden gleam he noticed someone down at the other end, leaning against the railing under the light, a green-striped umbrella over his head.
He told himself it wasn’t that far to the end, all he had to do was count the steps to that person and he’d be off the bridge, there on Canal Street.
He was halfway across and the person hadn’t moved. He saw then that it was a girl. Under the umbrella she looked as if she were going to a party with her straw hat and a dress with a sash, and a purse looped over her arm.
He stopped because the girl looked so much like Mariel that he didn’t want to go close enough to see it was a stranger. Mariel, who had become his best friend in just two days. And then he heard her call. “Billy … Billy Nightingale …”
He began to run toward her, seeing her smile as he came closer. He watched her pull Claude’s book out of a bag and hold it in the air.
20
Mariel
The Canal Street subway had two sets of stairs to the trains. So many steps! She took them slowly, but still no one would believe she had done this, she thought as she dropped a nickel into the turnstile. No one but Loretta. “You can do anything, Mariel. I really believe that.”
Loretta would be home by now, dropping her cap on the kitchen table, calling them. “How about some root beer and a couple of cookies while we listen to the radio?”
How would Loretta feel? she wondered.
And what about Ambrose the cop? Would he be angry when he found out she had run away? Run home? she thought. Strange, she had never seen Ambrose angry. He just showed up when he caught her playing hookey, and walked her back to school. It was like a game. The truth was, she thought in surprise, she liked Ambrose almost more than anyone she knew.
Now she and Brick rocked along in a subway train, and her two-dollar bill was gone, changed into coins by the ticket seller, stuffed into the cash register like all the other money people used.
The two-dollar bill! She’d never see it again. Would that make Loretta sad? As sad as Mariel felt? She opened her purse to feel the change the bill had made, all of it there except for the two nickels she and Brick had used for the subway.
She watched the stations flash by; they were headed for midtown Manhattan and the Shortline bus, Brick reaching into the bag of food for another sandwich, another piece of fruit.
She thought of Loretta again: “I’d never been out of Brooklyn, but I had no family, and it was an adventure. There I was with my friend Mimi, both of us new nurses, on the eight o’clock Shortline to Windy Hill. I didn’t even know I was on the way to you.”
“We won’t be there until the middle of the night,” Mariel told Brick, holding on to the strap and shouting over the noise of the train.
“We?” Brick asked. “We?”
She patted her patent leather pocketbook. “I have enough money for us both, and a tiny little bit left over just in case.”
“We?”
“I’m going with you.”
He didn’t look as happy as she thought he might, he looked worried.
“What will Loretta say?” he asked. “What will Ambrose say?” But after a moment he grinned at her. “I know what Julia will say. She’ll be glad to see you and so will Claude.”
Mariel let out her breath with a whoosh. She smiled back and then she watched the train slide into Forty-second Street, and pulled him out the door with her.
They went up another set of stairs, slowly now. She didn’t have enough breath to answer the questions he kept asking about what Loretta would say. And why would she want to go all the way to Windy Hill, anyway?
She couldn’t pay attention to the questions. The next part was tricky, getting them from the subway to the bus terminal. But then she remembered.
The movie was Dumbo. She and Loretta had sat in the balcony eating popcorn and peanut chews. They passed the terminal on the way back to the subway.
“Poor elephant with his big ears,” she had said.
Loretta grinned. “But didn’t he do just fine?”
The lights in the bus terminal were far apart; there weren’t enough of them to brighten the huge room; the exhaust from the buses hung in the air, thick in Mariel’s nose and throat. But she was so glad to be there, she didn’t care. It seemed, though, as if it must be the middle of the night, even though it wasn’t even time to listen to The Cisco Kid.
The ticket seller looked doubtful as she slid the money toward him. “We’re visiting our grandmother,” Mariel said, snapping the elastic band under her chin.
He hesitated.
“You were a good brother to take me,” Mariel said, trying to sound as if Brick were almost grown-up, trying not to look at him because they’d both laugh.
The man punched out two tickets, and they climbed onto the bus, sitting back against the smooth brown leather seats. Mariel sat at the window side, leaning against the pane as they pulled out of the terminal. The streetlights made the buildings around them hazy, but it had stopped raining at last.
She wanted to tell Brick why she was really there. Her fingers began that bit of trembling. She tightened them against the paper bag with the pieces of fruit that were left. “I had to bring you Claude’s book,” she began. “I knew you had to have it.”
He nodded. “I’m really glad.”
She shook her head. “But there’s something else. I think I lived in Windy Hill once,” she said. “Before Good Samaritan.”
“On a farm? In the town?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“The room with the green lace curtains is there?”
“I don’t even know that.” She looked down at her hands clutching the bag, still now as she began. “It starts with the ambulance. No one remembers anything else. And I was only
four.”
“Someone has to remember,” he said.
“Loretta tried to find out.” She lifted her shoulders. “But there were so many kids with polio, and there were no records about me. Only the date I came, September third, 1934, and a torn piece of paper that said ‘Mariel …’ ”
Her voice trailed off. Even the paper was gone by the time they had left the hospital. Loretta had shaken her head. “Try to understand, honey. The hospital rooms were filled, the halls jammed with beds, and the nurses running around, working day and night. No time to bother with papers, no time for anything.”
Mariel sighed. She could see that Brick wanted to hear more, but there was such a little bit to tell: Green lace curtains, when the wind blows … red sweater and a gold bracelet.
He was thinking about it, feeling sorry for her, but it wasn’t the way Frankie McHugh felt sorry. It was different, somehow, all right for him to look that way. “I’ll help,” he said.
“I know that,” she told him.
They sat there, feeling the motion of the bus, and she told him about Benny the ragman, and Daisy in her straw hat, and perching up on top of the wagon, and then she saw that his eyes were drooping, closing, and he was asleep. But she was still wide awake, that feeling of excitement in her throat and chest.
She pressed her nose against the window as the lights cast an orange glow on the factories they passed, and then rows of stores. She wondered what Loretta was doing. A window was open next to the empty seat in front of her, and the air felt cool on her arms, almost too cool now. She squinted and the lights ran together in a line; she felt herself shiver.
“I like to be cold,” she had told Loretta. The steaming packs Loretta plastered to the useless muscles of her legs were blistering hot. “I’d like to be in a blizzard, in a mountain of snow.” She was angry. “If my mother was here …”
“There’s a nurse from Australia named Sister Kenny,” Loretta said. “She taught the world to loosen up these muscles with heat. Before that, legs stayed stiff and had to be braced.” Loretta reached for another hot pack. “But you’ll walk right out of here, Mariel.”