The Long Way Home

  “Dana? Hello! This is Orrin Umhay. Hold on. I’ll get your mother.”

  Dana cupped her hand over the receiver. “Orrin answered the phone,” she hissed to Adele. When she heard her mother’s voice on the line, she said, “Hi. How are you? Can I talk to Julia, please?”

  “But —” Abby started to say. And then, “All right. Just a minute.”

  “Hello?” said Julia.

  “Hi. It’s me. What’s Mr. Umhay doing there?”

  “Orrin? He came over for dinner.”

  “Orrin? You call him Orrin? And what do you mean, he came over for dinner?”

  “Just that sometimes he comes over for dinner. Pauling isn’t that far from Ipswich, you know.”

  Dana heard Peter’s voice in the background. “I want to talk to her!”

  “Here’s Peter,” said Julia frostily.

  “Dana! We’re building a bomb shelter in the basement,” exclaimed Peter. “In case there’s a bomb. Mom bought cans of food and Orrin got us a toilet.”

  Dana’s legs felt wobbly. She sat down heavily. “Can I talk to Mom?” she asked.

  “Dana?” said her mother.

  “You’re putting in a bomb shelter?”

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll never need it. Don’t worry, lovey.”

  Dana turned panicked eyes to Adele and realized her aunt was holding out her hand for the phone. She listened to her aunt’s end of the conversation until it veered from President Kennedy, Cuba, missiles, and nuclear blasts to life in Pauling and Abby’s new job as a sales clerk at a clothing store.

  “Want to say good-bye?” Adele whispered eventually, but Dana shook her head. She was seated at her drawing table, a sheet of paper spread in front of her, planning to draw herself, Adele, Julia, Peter, Nell, her mother, and her father, but not Orrin Umhay, gathered inside a basement bomb shelter.

  “Little Grape?” said Dana. “Are you serious? That’s really the name of the town?”

  Adele smiled. “That’s really the name.”

  “Little Grape,” Dana repeated. “Little Grape, Maine.”

  This was the conversation Dana and her aunt had the previous morning, when they had boarded a train in Pennsylvania Station in New York and Adele had handed Dana’s ticket to her, saying, “Keep it safe.”

  Dana had examined the ticket. “How come it says Little Grape?”

  “Because that’s where the wedding will be. And where your family will live as soon as the school year is over.”

  My family, Dana had thought. Adele had meant Julia, Peter, Nell, her mother, and Orrin. Were they her family? Of course they were her family. Well, except for Orrin. Dana had met him a handful of times, but she could hardly consider him part of her family. She knew Mr. Lansky of Empire Dry Cleaning on Fifty-Fifth Street better than she knew Orrin Umhay.

  Yet Mr. Umhay was going to become her stepfather.

  That very day.

  In a few hours, Abigail Nichols Burley was to wed Orrin Umhay and change her name to Abigail Nichols Umhay. She would sweep her name clear of any Burley residue.

  “I’m not changing my name,” Dana had said severely to Adele the evening the news had been announced — via a long-distance phone call from Pauling on Valentine’s Day.

  Valentine’s Day was Adele’s birthday, and Dana had felt it was very callous of her mother and Orrin to mar her aunt’s day with their announcement.

  “No one expects you to change your name, honey,” Adele had replied.

  “Are Julia, Peter, and Nell going to change their names?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Not unless they want to.”

  After the Valentine’s Day phone call, there had been several more calls with Abby. They were brief but mostly upbeat, both because of the wedding and because tensions had eased with Cuba, and the missile crisis was over. But Dana had sensed that her mother’s excitement was curbed by something involving Papa Luther.

  “Your father doesn’t like Mr. Umhay, does he?” Dana had asked Adele one evening.

  “Nope. Never has, as far as I know.”

  “But why?”

  “Well I wasn’t born yet when this happened, but apparently when your mother and Orrin were about twelve, they got into some kind of trouble and Pop forbade your mother to see Orrin again. Pop already hated Orrin, though. He’d scorned him since he was a little kid. I think he didn’t like the Umhays because they’re Irish — one of his parents is anyway —”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Dana had asked.

  Adele had made a face. “Don’t get me started on Pop and his beliefs.”

  “You mean his prejudices.”

  “Well, yes. At any rate, Pop disliked Orrin and forbade your mother to see him, and then he found out, just recently, that Orrin and your mom have been in touch off and on for years anyway.”

  “Wow,” Dana had said, impressed.

  Her mother had been keeping a secret.

  * * *

  Now Dana and Adele sat in the lobby of Kaylene’s Motor On Inn outside of Little Grape.

  “Ready?” Adele asked Dana. “You look beautiful.”

  Dana glanced down at her pink lace shift and the sling-back shoes that had been dyed to match the dress. “Really? Because I feel like a bottle of Pepto Bismol.”

  Her aunt patted her knee. “It’s okay to say things like that to me, but not to your mother or Orrin, okay? This is their special day.”

  Dana heard the toot of a car horn and stood up. “Here they are.”

  “Look happy!” said Adele, and she held the door open for Dana.

  Parked outside the inn, motor running, was a station wagon driven by Dana’s aunt Rose. Waving from the back windows were Julia, Peter, and Nell.

  “Dana! Dana! Look at me! I’m wearing a blue suit and it matches Orrin’s!” cried Peter.

  “I have a pink dress!” called Nell. “It matches yours and Julia’s. We’re samesies.”

  Dana climbed into the car next to Julia, who tried to slide away from her, which was impossible unless she wanted to sit in Peter’s lap. Adele climbed into the front seat.

  “Off we go,” said Aunt Rose gaily. “Next stop, the chapel.”

  * * *

  Dana had to admit that the tiny chapel at the Little Grape Community Church was pretty. The small room was painted white, the carpet running along the aisle was cherry red, and so were the cushions on the pews. On either side of the altar was a tall urn holding white snapdragons and yellow gladioli.

  “We’re the only ones here,” Dana whispered to Julia as they stood in the doorway of the chapel.

  “Mom and Orrin will be here soon. Uncle Harry’s on his way with Emily, William, Lizzie, and Teddy. And Mom’s aunt Betty and uncle Marshall are coming. There’ll be other guests, too.”

  “What about Papa Luther and Helen?”

  Julia shook her head. “Not coming.”

  “Seriously?”

  Julia shrugged.

  “But it’s his own daughter’s wedding!”

  “Dana, you don’t live here. You don’t know what’s been going on. There have been about a thousand conversations between Mom and Papa Luther. He won’t come. Period. And don’t bring it up. Mom doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  Dana turned at the sound of tires crunching over gravel. “There’s Uncle Harry,” she said.

  Nell rushed out of the chapel. “Goody!” she cried. “My cousins are here.” Then she turned back to Dana. “I can’t amember,” she said. “Are you my cousin or my sister?”

  “I’m your sister!” Dana exclaimed.

  But Nell was already running across the church lawn, calling, “Hi, Uncle Harry!”

  Dana stared after her. She watched Nell fly into Harry’s arms, nearly knocking him over. After that, Nell greeted each of her cousins loudly. Julia and Peter ran to the cousins, too, while Adele and Aunt Rose talked quietly.

  Dana stood at the entrance to the chapel. She had the uncomfortable feeling that these peopl
e were complete strangers, that she was looking at them the way she would look at people in a filmstrip at school.

  Then suddenly Nell came running back to her and tugged at her hand, crying, “Come on! Come be with us, Dana.” And just like that, the spell was broken. Dana allowed herself to be led to her family and stood chatting with them until her mother and Orrin arrived.

  * * *

  The ceremony was short and simple and nothing at all like the one service at Papa Luther’s church that the Burleys had attended when Dana was nine. They’d been visiting Barnegat Point and Papa Luther had announced that he wanted to show off his family. In church. The Burleys were unprepared, and Dana and Julia had shown up for the service wearing pedal pushers and sleeveless blouses. Peter had been dressed in shorts and a plaid shirt with a small blue Popsicle stain on the collar.

  Papa Luther had frowned at their clothes, but said nothing while Dana and Julia grasped hands before settling onto one of the hard benches. A hymn had come first, which wasn’t so bad, except that Dana had never heard it before, so while Julia had struggled with the words, Dana had sung softly, “Comet, it makes your mouth turn green! Comet, it tastes like Listerine! Comet, it makes you —” That was when Papa Luther had realized what she was doing and had whacked her hands with his hymnal. Next had come a sermon so long and so scary that Dana had stuck her fingers in her ears. When she was finally released into the sticky warmth of an August Sunday, she found that nearly three hours had gone by.

  “Please, may we never, ever come here again?” she had begged her father.

  But the chapel in the community church was nothing like Papa Luther’s church, and the wedding ceremony brought tears to Dana’s eyes, even though she didn’t want a new father and was fairly certain she would never think of Orrin as anything other than Mr. Umhay, the man who happened to marry her mother.

  The service started at noon. The guests — there were twenty-three of them — sat close to the front of the chapel, while Dana, Peter, Julia, Nell, and Abby gathered nervously in the vestibule. When the organ began to play, Orrin stepped to the front of the chapel. At the other end of the aisle, the vestibule doors opened and first Julia, then Dana, matching Pepto Bismol girls, walked slowly down the aisle and came to a halt opposite Orrin in his blue suit, yellow hair gleaming. The doors opened again and Nell, carrying a basket of rose petals, stood uncertainly at the end of the aisle. Behind her, Abby gave her shoulder a gentle nudge, and suddenly Nell sprinted down the aisle to her sisters, tossing the entire basket to Adele as she flew by. The laughter was just subsiding when the doors opened for a third time, and Peter and his mother, arm in arm, began the walk to the front of the chapel. Nell was disappointed that her mother didn’t look like a “real bride,” with a veil over her face and a white train trailing behind her, but Dana (secretly) approved of Abby’s beige suit. At the altar, Peter, smiling and very calm, gave Abby a kiss on the cheek, unlinked his arm from hers, handed her to Orrin, and sat down next to Adele, all as rehearsed the evening before. (This was the first time Dana’s eyes filled.)

  The minister spoke briefly about marriage and what it means, and then the vows were exchanged, Orrin kissed Abby lightly, and Nell covered her eyes and said, “Ew!” at the top of her lungs. For some reason, this was the second time that Dana felt herself go teary.

  Later everyone stood outside the church holding handfuls of rice and waiting for the bride and groom to appear.

  “There they are! There they are!” shrieked Nell. She was the first to toss her rice at Abby and Orrin, and it landed ten feet in front of them. “That should do it,” she said, dusting her hands off.

  The reception was held in the fellowship room at the church — the bride, groom, and guests circling around to the back entrance and climbing a flight of stairs, following the smell of coffee and pastries.

  Dana lost track of Adele and stood uncertainly by herself for several moments. Then she poured a cup of coffee and began to circle the room in search of Peter.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” A hand gripped her elbow.

  “Julia? I’m looking for Peter. What’s the matter?”

  Julia pointed to the cup in Dana’s hand. “That will stunt your growth, you know.”

  “Oh, it will not. That’s an old wives’ tale. Anyway, how much more do I need to grow?”

  Julia shrugged.

  “So,” said Dana. “We never really get to talk. How was school this year?”

  “The same as when you asked me in December.”

  “Do you have to go to a new school in the fall?”

  Julia made a face at her. “Duh. Unless I want to travel thirty miles to Pauling every day.”

  “How come you’re moving again anyway?”

  “Because,” said Julia, sighing loudly as if she were talking to a two-year-old, “Orrin quit the police force and he’s opening his own automobile repair shop here. Plus, he found a nice house for us in Little Grape. There’s no reason for him to travel back and forth from —”

  “Okay, okay. Jeez, Julia, I’m just trying to make conversation.”

  “Then you could at least have stayed with us last night instead of in the motel with Adele. We would have had plenty of time to talk.”

  “But Mom said there wasn’t enough room at the house! She said Aunt Betty and Uncle Marshall were staying with you.”

  Julia shrugged again.

  “Besides, if you wanted me to stay with you so badly, you could have asked me. I’m not a mind reader.”

  “You’re my twin. I shouldn’t have to ask you stuff like that.”

  Dana sighed loudly. “Well, I’m here now. And I’m trying to talk to you.”

  Julia looked at her watch. “You’ll have to talk fast. The reception ends in an hour.”

  “There are my girls!” boomed a voice, and Uncle Marshall appeared between the twins. “So, how is life in the Big Apple, Dana? Is it good to be back?”

  Dana smiled. She began to describe her classes at MHSA. She was draining her coffee when she realized that Julia was no longer there.

  * * *

  That evening, tired, their feet aching, Dana and Adele fell into their beds at Kaylene’s Motor On Inn.

  “Did you have fun?” Adele asked sleepily.

  Dana hesitated, and then burst into tears.

  “What’s the matter?” said Adele, alarmed.

  “I don’t fit in here anymore. It’s like I’m not part of my own family.”

  Adele slid out of her bed and drew Dana into her arms. “Do you want to stay here, then?”

  A fresh sob. “No! I can’t wait to get back to New York.”

  Dana kissed her aunt good night and turned out the light.

  “Dana.” Her aunt shook her shoulder.

  “Five more minutes,” mumbled Dana.

  “I gave you five more minutes ten minutes ago. And ten minutes before that.”

  Dana wrestled herself to a sitting position. “Really? What time is it? I don’t want to be late.”

  “It’s seven o’clock.”

  “Seven!” Dana shot out of bed, grabbed a handful of clothes out of her dresser, and made a dash for the bathroom.

  “Are you going to have time for breakfast?” Adele called through the closed bathroom door.

  “No.”

  “You can eat a bagel on the way to school, then.”

  “That’s okay. I have lunch at ten forty-five, remember?”

  This was true. When Dana and her guidance counselor had worked out Dana’s schedule of classes for her sophomore year at MHSA, the counselor, Mr. Radnor, had looked up cheerfully from his desk and said to her, “Well, you’re going to be busy. It looks like the only period you’ll have free for lunch is fourth. Ten forty-five. Okay?”

  Dana had shrugged. What choice did she have? Besides, she might come home from school starving every day, but she felt that was a small price to pay in exchange for being able to take photography and architecture.

  “Did you stay u
p too late?” asked Adele when Dana eventually emerged from the bathroom.

  She shook her head. “I just couldn’t sleep.”

  “Anything wrong?”

  “Not really. I was thinking about our phone call last night. It was nice to talk to Mom and everyone, instead of reading letters, but it was weird, too. It’s funny to think of them in Little Grape — a family with a dad — and I’m not really part of it. Nell doesn’t even know me anymore. She wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “She’s only four, honey.”

  “I know, but she used to want to get on the phone and say hi. Now she acts like Mom is asking her to talk to Helen.”

  Adele watched Dana gather her books. “You can always change your mind, you know. You can always go back.”

  Dana shook her head. “No. I can’t. I wouldn’t be happy there. And I am definitely happy here.” She gave her aunt a hug. “Let’s go. Today’s important. I have to give a report in first period. And last period is — sigh, gasp — life drawing with Mr. Friedman.”

  Adele frowned. “You have a crush on Mr. Friedman?”

  “No! On Randall Goodman. He sits next to me in life drawing.”

  Adele’s frown was replaced with a grin. She opened the door. “Off we go,” she said. “Another day.”

  And that was how November 22nd, 1963, began. Dana and Adele hurried to Seventh Avenue. Adele’s bus arrived first and she called over her shoulder, “Stop at the market on your way home!” before she boarded.

  Dana’s bus chuffed along a few minutes later and she struggled up the steps with her belongings and actually managed to find a seat. She pulled off her gloves and blew on her cold fingers, while mentally rehearsing the report she’d had to memorize for first period.

  The report went fine and the morning went fine. Dana was starving by ten forty-five and ate her lunch so fast that Loretta, who had also gotten stuck in fourth-period lunch, said, “Slow down, Hoover.” Dana did slow down, but by the last period of the day, she was famished again. She was so hungry, in fact, that she decided she needed to tell a little lie to Mr. Friedman. Not a lie, she corrected herself as she hurried through the corridors a few moments later; she had just needed to misdirect him. So she’d asked for a pass to the bathroom, but instead had run to the lunchroom, where she’d bought a bag of potato chips just as the cafeteria was closing for the day. She was on her way back to Mr. Friedman’s room, Hoovering down the chips, when she heard the buzz that meant an announcement was about to come over the PA system.