Home Is the Place

  “Can you believe it?” Georgia was saying now. “Can you believe she did that? She never listens to me.”

  What Dana believed was that there were two sides to every story, but what she said was, “Have you tried talking to your mother?”

  This was followed by a moment of silence. “What?” Georgia asked finally.

  “Have you tried talking to her?”

  “No! It’s pointless!”

  “Maybe your mother has a reason for not wanting you to —”

  “The reason is that she’s unfair.”

  It was Dana’s turn to sigh.

  Georgia continued talking and Dana found herself recalling the freezing, cramped apartment Abby had moved her children into after Nell, the unexpected baby, had been born. It had been one-sixth the size of their old apartment. Dana’s wealthy father, whom she had loved more than anyone in the world except possibly her brother, Peter, had left no money when he’d died, no cushion to support his family. Yet somehow, Dana had found a way to blame her mother for everything that had happened after the night on the ferry, starting with the move away from their neighborhood.

  The new apartment was like nothing Dana had seen before. Five people living in three tiny rooms. She and her twin sister shared one room, barely big enough to accommodate their beds. Peter’s bed and Nell’s crib were crammed into the other room, and Abby slept on the couch in the remaining room, which also served as living room and kitchen, and was only minimally bigger than either of the bedrooms. Dana remembered peering in at her mother early one morning, seeing her sound asleep, her arm flung over her face to shield it from the sunlight streaming through the window.

  Get a shade, get curtains, get something, Dana remembered thinking, even though she had recently seen her mother counting change from the bottom of her purse, hoping she would have enough money for bus fare so she could ride to her shift at the hospital, instead of walking thirty blocks.

  Then came the move to Maine. When it had become clear that raising four children in Manhattan by herself on the teensy salary of a desk clerk wasn’t going to work, Abby plucked her children out of the city they loved and moved them to the beach cottage in Lewisport, giving away their beloved cat in the process. Dana tried to picture herself in Abby’s shoes. Would she have had the courage to do what her mother had done? To hold her family together, to raise her children on her own, to make it all work — somehow — without asking for any help? She didn’t know.

  They had moved from town to town, from apartment to apartment, and started at one new school after another until one day Dana couldn’t take it any longer. She had looked up and down the bleak streets of whatever town they were currently living in, and thought so longingly of Manhattan — and of the shadow of her father that remained there — that she knew she couldn’t stay in Maine. Outside her bedroom window in New York had been people and activity and cabs and noise. Outside her current bedroom window was a vaguely sandy street with white houses that looked exactly like one another. That was about it. She had written to her aunt Adele in New York and asked if she could live with her.

  The day before Dana had taken the train home — New York had always felt like home, Maine never had — she’d tried once again to explain things to her mother, knowing even as she did so, that she was leaving out the most important thing.

  “I have to leave,” she had said to Abby.

  “I know you do.”

  “I miss New York too much.”

  “I know.”

  What Dana didn’t dare say was that New York was where she could feel her father. The pulse of the city was like her father’s heartbeat. But how to explain that to her mother? How to say that she chose the memory of her father over her entire living family?

  “Nana Dana? Are you there?”

  “Sorry, honey. Yes, I’m here. I’m just wool-gathering. That’s what your great-grandmother would say.”

  “Well, do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Think I should make a list? That’s what Aunt Kaycee told me once. She said making a list would help me organize my thoughts.”

  “Yes, make a list,” Dana replied, even though she had completely lost track of the conversation and wasn’t sure what the list was for.

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll let you know what happens. I’ll have plenty of time, since I’m grounded. And I’ll send you the DVD as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Bye. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Dana pressed the Off button, but continued to hold the phone in her hand. It was time to call her mother, to give her the apology she knew she owed her. But where would she start? With the night on the ferry? And what on earth would she say? “Hi, Mom. It’s me, Dana. You know the night Dad died? Well, I thought it was your fault. I thought you were drunk, which wasn’t true, and that if you’d been sober, you could have saved him, which probably wasn’t true either.”

  She couldn’t imagine herself saying this.

  Okay, then apologize for not appreciating what her mother went through to hold their family together. “Hi, Mom. It’s me, Dana. You know the hardest thing you ever did? Well, I was a teenager at the time and a little wrapped up in myself so all I could see was the road back to New York. Sorry.”

  She couldn’t do it. These were not the right words. And maybe this wasn’t the right time.

  Dana set the phone back in its cradle.

  Georgia stood at the front door of the cottage and looked outside at the dreary, dreary morning. She thought of The Cat in the Hat, and of Sally and her brother stuck inside their house on the cold, wet day. Across Blue Harbor Lane the waves pounded the rocky shore, sending up showers of spray that were the exact dull gray color of the sky, the ocean, the world.

  It was Day 7 of spring vacation, and Day 3 of rain. Boredom had set in. Everyone (everyone except Georgia and her family, it seemed) had gone away for spring break, which is what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it?

  “Why can’t we go somewhere?” Richard had asked the previous weekend. “Alex is in Boston, and Austin’s leaving for Jamaica tomorrow.”

  Henry set his fork down tragically. “Dennis is going to Disney World.”

  Their father smiled at them. “Well, we simply can’t afford a trip, that’s all.”

  “Couldn’t we at least go to New York?” Georgia had asked. “We could stay with Nana Dana, or Aunt Kaycee and Uncle Mitch. That wouldn’t cost anything.”

  “The train fare would cost something,” Mr. Noble had replied.

  “But there won’t be anyone around this week,” said Richard with a distinct whine.

  “No one,” added Henry. “Not a single person. The whole week.”

  “What are we supposed to do with ourselves?” asked Georgia.

  “For heaven’s sake, you have a week off from school,” said their mother. “That should count for something.”

  This was met with silence.

  “Maybe we could have a few treats,” Mr. Noble said finally. “We’ll go to the movies tomorrow. And one night we’ll go out for ice cream.”

  The next few days had been more fun than Georgia had predicted. Talia, Penny, and Ava were away, but Georgia found that she liked going into town by herself. She stopped in at the stores and talked to the shopkeepers. One day her mother dropped her off at the Barnegat Point library and she spent four delicious hours there, curled up on a beanbag chair in the children’s room with a stack of books. Another day she and Richard and Henry made kites and sailed them in their yard, watching as they jerked and fluttered their way across the road and out over the ocean.

  Then the rain had arrived.

  On Day 1 Georgia and her brothers had held a Monopoly tournament.

  On Day 2 their mother, desperate to continue working on her current novel, had moved her computer into the kitchen and relaxed her television rule, allowing Georgia, Richard, and Henry to watch an I Love Lucy marathon — hours a
nd hours of the adventures of Lucy, Ricky, Ethel, and Fred.

  Now it was Friday and the rain was still falling. Georgia stood dully at the front door, arms crossed. She couldn’t think of a single thing she wanted to do, and had rejected every suggestion her mother had made over breakfast that morning: write a new song, go back to the library, put on a play with her brothers, help her father at the store.

  Behind her she heard Henry say, “Let’s dress up Noelle.”

  “That’s a girl suggestion,” was Richard’s derisive reply.

  “I’m not a girl!”

  “Well, you sound like one. Like a little baby girl.”

  “I’m seven!”

  “Kids!” their mother called.

  Georgia realized that the clacking of the computer had stopped. She turned to her brothers. “Good one,” she said. “Now Mom’s mad.”

  But instead Mrs. Noble said, “Lunchtime. Come help me make sandwiches.”

  “I don’t want a sandwich,” said Richard.

  “I’m not hungry,” said Henry.

  “Do we have to?” asked Georgia.

  “You’re driving me crazy,” their mother replied. “Just come in here and be positive.”

  “B positive is a blood type,” said Georgia, and she rolled her eyes.

  Richard smirked.

  Mrs. Noble stepped into the living room. “All right,” she said in a low voice that Georgia recognized with alarm. “I have had about enough. Come into the kitchen this very minute, all three of you, and don’t say a single word. Not one. You’re acting like spoiled brats. I’m very sorry your friends went away and you had to stay here, but you have a roof over your heads and a refrigerator full of food, which is more than lots of children have. So march yourselves in here — not a word — make your sandwiches, eat them, and then go think about your lives.”

  A sullen, silent lunch followed. As soon as the plates had been cleared, Mrs. Noble set her computer on the table, sat down, and with her back turned, said, “Go. Leave me in peace. If I hear so much as one cross word, believe me, I’ll think up a very creative punishment.”

  Georgia retreated to her room. She sat on her bed and looked into the backyard. She could hear the clackety-clack of her mother at work. She was reaching for her guitar when out of nowhere, Richard appeared, grabbed the guitar, held it above his head, and cried, “I’m a rock star, baby! I am so cool! Notice me! Notice me!” He strummed the strings vigorously.

  “Richard, give it!” cried Georgia. She bounded off the bed and jumped to save her prize possession from her twelve-year-old brother. “You aren’t playing it right. You’re going to break the strings.”

  Richard leaped out of the way.

  “Give! It!” Georgia tackled him and he lost his balance, falling on his hands and knees, the guitar dropping onto the bed.

  “Hey!” exclaimed Richard. “What do you think you’re —”

  “Never touch that again!” Georgia straddled Richard, bouncing on his shoulders, but he flipped her to the floor as easily as if she were a pancake.

  Georgia saw her winter boots beside the dresser and reached for one. Richard was quicker. He snatched it, jumped to his feet, held it above his head, and let it fly. Georgia ducked and the boot hit the wall by her bed, hard.

  Once again the clacking stopped. Georgia stared at her brother.

  A very creative punishment.

  In a flash, Richard was out of her room. Georgia hastily closed the door behind him. Then she turned to look at her wall. The wood paneling, lovingly put up almost a hundred years earlier by her great-great-grandfather, was nearly indestructible, but Georgia didn’t want to see so much as a scuff mark, considering the mood her mother was in.

  What she saw was worse, way worse. A portion of the wall had come away and dropped to the floor. Georgia gasped, and automatically looked toward her door, wishing she could lock it. She paused, listening for sounds from the living room, but heard only Henry’s voice: “I didn’t do anything!”

  She bent over to pick up the paneling, praying that she could jam it back in place, but as she held it in her hands she noticed that it was in the shape of a perfect rectangle. No jagged edges, not so much as a splintered fragment.

  Well, that was weird. How could the boards break apart like that? She got to her feet and examined the wall. To her surprise, she found a rectangular hole by her bed. An actual hole, a space behind the wall. A secret panel, just like in a detective story.

  Georgia laid the section of wall on her dresser and reached for her flashlight. She shined it down into the compartment … and gasped. Gingerly, since surely there were spiders — or worse — in the dark space, she reached inside. Her fingers closed over a book. She pulled it out.

  Not a book, she realized. A journal. A very dusty old journal.

  Georgia blew the dust from the cover, then wiped it with a Kleenex. The cover was leather, black and peeling. In cracked gold letters were the simple words: MY DIARY. Carefully she opened the book. It was bound with three brass rings, and the pages were filled with line after line of spidery blue handwriting.

  Whose?

  Georgia flipped to the front of the journal. Written on the inside cover was the name Eleanor Durbin Nichols.

  Eleanor, Georgia thought. Eleanor Nichols. Nell Nichols? Was this the Eleanor Nichols who was Great-Grandma Abby’s mother? The Eleanor from whom Georgia had gotten one of her middle names? Georgia remembered something her great-grandmother had told her after the Nobles had moved to the cottage. “When I was a little girl,” she had said, “my sister Rose and I slept upstairs where your parents sleep now. Your room belonged to my parents, Georgia. To Nell and Luther.”

  This diary was my great-great-grandmother’s, Georgia thought, and she felt a little breathless. She flipped to a page in the middle of the book and stared at the faded ink. The handwriting was hard to decipher.

  “ ‘… sunny day,’ ” Georgia read aloud, starting at the top of the left-hand page. She squinted. “ ‘Abby and Rose took Adele all morning. So hard to get out of bed. I’m a terrible example. Abby is more a mother than I.’ ”

  Georgia frowned. She flipped to the next page, looking for a date. June 5th, 1938. How old would Nell Nichols have been then? It seemed to Georgia that Great-Grandma Abby’s mother had died young. She thought for a moment and recalled a conversation with Great-Grandma from … how long ago? Three years? Four? She’d been sitting in Great-Grandma’s lap at a picnic, leaning against her chest and idly asking questions. How old were you when you moved to the big house in town? Have you ever seen a snake? When did your mother die? The answers to these questions were: About eleven; Once; and When I was a teenager. Mama had always been frail, and then one summer she got sick, and grew weaker and weaker, and finally died in her sleep.

  Georgia turned pages rapidly and discovered that the journal entries ended abruptly just a few weeks later, at the end of July, and were followed by many blank pages.

  Georgia set the journal on her bed and shined the flashlight into the hole again, pausing briefly to listen for sounds from the living room. Nothing. In the weak light she could see more hidden books. She pulled them out one by one. There were four, in different sizes with different covers: a small red one that fastened with a brass clasp; two larger black journals, one of which was tied with a white ribbon; and a dark blue one with the spine dangling, its clasp broken. They all belonged to Nell, although in the front of the blue one her name appeared as Eleanor Richmond Durbin.

  Georgia looked at the dates each journal covered, and arranged the books in chronological order. The blue one was the oldest. It began at the end of 1917. The two black ones covered the 1920s, and the small red one began in 1930. The one Georgia had discovered first was actually the last. Had it ended with Nell’s death?

  Georgia returned the four older journals to their hiding place and leaned the panel against the wall. Then she settled on her bed with the final journal. She discovered that there were many gaps in time, bec
ause Nell hadn’t written in the journal every day. Sometimes she wrote every few days, then skipped several months. At one point a year went by.

  Georgia stopped at an entry dated February 14th, 1938.

  Adele’s birthday today. Three years old. So many presents, and her favorite is a sucker, funny girl. She asked if Fred could come to her party. I can’t explain, can’t explain.

  Who’s Fred? Georgia wondered. She flipped backward and read about a little boy — the only boy in the family. Great-Grandma Abby’s brother. Born “wrong” and — was he sent away? It seemed so. Sent away by Nell’s husband, Luther, without her permission or even her knowledge.

  My heart hurts, Nell wrote. My heart is broken.

  Georgia skipped ahead again. The entries became even bleaker. She found herself reading about a woman in pain. Not physical pain, she realized, but emotional pain.

  Anguish, Nell wrote. It’s anguish. How can I explain how much this hurts? “Carry on!” says Ellen. So brightly. I can’t simply carry on. It isn’t that easy.

  I’m a burden.

  Another entry: What kind of mother am I? Some days I don’t want to see my children.

  My heart hurts, she wrote over and over again.

  Georgia’s own heart began to flip-flop. She felt that she was beginning to know a horrible truth, one that Great-Grandma Abby probably didn’t know. One that perhaps no one knew.

  On the final pages Nell wrote: It just hurts so much. I’m a coward. So much pain. I can’t stop crying. This is too hard, too hard. I can’t do it anymore.

  In that instant Georgia knew exactly what do it meant. It meant live. Nell couldn’t live any longer. What had happened? She had ended her life, Georgia was certain of that. She had ended it shortly after her last journal entry.

  Georgia longed to share the journals with her great-grandmother. But she couldn’t, could she? All these years, these decades, her great-grandmother had lived without the horrible truth that Georgia had discovered. And perhaps that was as it should be.

  Georgia opened her door silently and peeked into the living room. Richard and Henry were lying feet-to-feet on the couch, reading comic books. Noelle dozed on the floor beneath them. The clacking of the computer had resumed.