Freddie got off work early on Friday to drive Mama to the doctor.
“They’ll be taking this cast off today,” Mama told Martha.
“I thought you had to wear it for six weeks.”
“Nonsense. I told them, it’s not like it was all the way broken.”
Mama kept saying that as she put on her hat, sorted out her purse, went down the porch steps with Freddie. “It’s not like it was all the way broken! I told them it wouldn’t take so long!”
After Freddie’s car pulled away, I noticed Martha went straight to the pantry and took down a box of lemon filling mix. Lemon meringue pie was Mama’s favourite. The meringue part I could do without, but Mama liked the lemon, the pastry, and the meringue. It was the only thing she would sit down and eat with the rest of us until her whole piece was finished. Martha must have thought we’d be celebrating Mama’s cast coming off that night.
I’d had my eye on my sister, as Uncle Jim would say. Something had given her the idea to go to the shipyard. Had Mama and Norman told her that Johnny’d run off? Did she know Norman had been at the shipyard earlier that day? Did she know about the John who was working down there? David and I were going to find out. We had a signal. If Martha decided to go out, whoever saw first would sing (me) or whistle (David) so as to alert the other person. Then David would follow Martha and I’d tell Norman later that David had left early to take care of a “cemetery emergency.”
“That’s all you have to say,” said David. “Don’t keep talking.”
His eyes had followed mine to where he gripped my hand to make the point. He let go and mumbled how he had to get to the weeding. I wished there was an easy way to tell him that, actually, I was just thinking about how much cleaner his hands—his whole person, really—had been lately. Sometimes he even brought his overalls or a shirt for Martha to add to the wash. It made me wonder what would happen if Marcy came up the walk on the first day of school and this nice young feller David was sitting on the Normans’ porch. Would she still see the Gravedigger?
I hung around the kitchen for a while watching Martha make the pie. She was her usual Martha-self, humming softly as she beat the egg whites, but the air felt different between us, as if we’d fought and forgiven each other but the memory of what we’d said hadn’t worn off yet. And I couldn’t get it out of my head how David had gone on about her seeming sad. He put it on her face like pair of glasses. Or the opposite, maybe. Like when someone who wears glasses takes them off and it’s hard to keep up the conversation because you can’t stop thinking about how different they look without their glasses on.
When I went upstairs for my new comics, I stood for a moment in the doorway of Martha’s room. Her bed was neatly made and there were photos of her best friends, Susan and Amy, on her desk. Now that they both had boyfriends, they didn’t come around like they used to. Far as I knew, Martha hadn’t had a boyfriend yet. I thought about what she’d said about not getting married any time soon. What if Freddie was wrong? Maybe she would stay behind and take care of Norman and Mama, the way Mama had taken care of the aunties. Maybe she’d spend her whole life in this old house. Made me wonder all of a sudden if that was the reason Mama was always pushing us outdoors.
I could feel the summer winding down with each tick of the grandfather clock. Mama’s ankle was almost better. My birthday was on Sunday, and Marcy was coming home on Monday. Then school would start. And David, he’d go off to Alexander McKay. What if I didn’t need to worry about him being at my house in September? What if he never planned to stay on?
I imagined what it might be like in a couple of weeks if me and the girls met up with David on Agricola Street. Marcy would for sure be wanting to get away, but I’d ask politely after David’s brothers and his schoolwork, and I’d explain about Norman hiring David for the summer, you know, because of Mama. I’d probably smile in a knowing sort of way, a smile that says you’re rolling your eyes but are too kind to do it, and the other girls’ faces would melt into the same smile, and I’d try not to notice that David knew what that smile meant too.
But the thing about David is, if he ever came upon me walking with my school friends, he’d probably cross over to the other side of the street. Not because he’s that rude—because he’d know what would happen, and that was almost worse.
Another thing about David: he was wrong about Johnny coming home soon. And he was the only one who could help me find him. I needed . . . a clue.
Across the hall, the faint smell of mothballs and Noxema drifted from Mama and Norman’s bedroom. I tiptoed in. From the window, I could see David in the backyard below. He was pulling up weeds, cartoon-style. He pulled and pulled as though the weeds were planted in cement. As though there was some little critter burrowed under the lawn pulling on the roots and the little critter was winning. Whenever he got a weed out, he tumbled backwards, and his feet flew into the air. It was pretty clear he didn’t know anyone was watching.
My hand rested near the long cedar jewellery box on Mama’s dresser. Mama never wore jewellery, except for the thin, pink-gold wedding band that was her mother’s. The hinges creaked a little when I opened the lid and released a cedar-y smell into the air.
It was full of letters. The printing on the envelopes was like a little kid’s, some words bigger than others, sloping off the paper. It brought to mind Christmas cards and birthday wishes.
To: Mrs. Lillian Norman.
Return to: E. Kellock.
Elizabeth Kellock.
Aunt Izzie.
The envelopes had been carefully slit open and the letters refolded and put back inside. The clock ticked. My heart thumped. I couldn’t read them right there. If Martha came upstairs I might not have time to get everything back the way I found it. I tucked one into the top of my shorts and pulled my shirt down over it. I’d read it in my room with the door shut. Wait—what if Mama came home early? How would I get it back into the jewellery box? I took the letter out of my shorts. The main thing was that I knew they were here. I’d have to find a way to get everyone out of the house so I could have a proper look.
I counted the letters. Six. All from Aunt Izzie. Underneath the letters was a jumble of little things: an old ticket stub from a movie called The General, a dime, a mussel shell, a dried rosebud, junk, junk, junk . . . a silver chain. I nudged the dry stem of the rosebud so I could slide the chain along the bottom of the jewellery box. On the end was a little heart-shaped locket that was bent out of shape, folded into itself.
That’s when I remembered about the locket. I’d been sucking on it when Uncle Ezra was setting up the family photograph at Margaret’s wedding. Johnny was telling me to hold on a minute, just wait it out, when Ezra came over and sort of pushed him back because he said I was getting mussed up. I felt my sister Doris stiffen beside me. Then Ezra’s damp hands were in my hair trying to smooth it down and his funny-smelling breath was all over me, and I started to count. Afterwards, I looked down at the heart, nestled in the pink ruffles of my dress. I had almost bit it in two. So I tucked the locket beneath my collar and hid it under my pillow when I got home. When Margaret asked me later where it was, I told her I’d lost it, which seemed better somehow than saying I’d ruined it, and she got so mad.
I thought I remembered that day so clearly, but somehow I’d forgotten that. And this, too: when I woke up in the morning, the locket wasn’t under my pillow any more. I really had lost it. Except that I hadn’t. Mama must have found it and kept it.
Rrrrring!
Mama’s telephone went off like it knew I was back in the room. Stupid blue frog. I heard Martha running to the downstairs phone. Too close. I quickly put everything back into the jewellery box, closed the lid, and slipped out of the room. Martha’s voice echoed up the stairwell: “Hello? . . . Hello?” The receiver clattered back onto its cradle.
“I thought you were going to get your comic books?” Martha asked me, as we passed each other on the stairs.
“Oh . . . I read them already.”
“That’s funny. I put out a little snack for you and David.”
David was sitting at the kitchen table, shoving potato chips into his mouth.
“Sisters writing letters to each other,” he said when I told him what I’d found. “That’s a puzzler.”
A couple of crumbs fell onto his shirt. I reached over and brushed them away and he gave me a look that would melt kryptonite.
“Excuse me, Captain Sarcasmo. Mama said she hadn’t got any letters from Aunt Izzie in a while, and this proves she was lying.”
“How old were those letters?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do we know they aren’t more than a while old?”
“I don’t know.”
“The one that went to my house by mistake, it was there?”
I’d pushed that day as far back into my memory as I could. Now I tried to coax it out, like a stray cat. I thought of the smudge the Gravedigger’s fingers had left on the envelope, the weight of the letter, the neat, loopy handwriting.
“It wasn’t there!”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure of it! The handwriting’s different on these ones!”
“Lord jumpin’!” David clapped a hand to his forehead. “The letter that came to my house wasn’t addressed to your mother. It said Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Norman. Meaning Fred Senior,” he added.
“I know. Norman Norman. I get it.”
“Nah, you don’t. If that letter didn’t come from your aunt then it must have come from someone else in Ship Harbour, like your uncle or . . .”
We heard Martha’s feet padding down the stairs.
“I’m going out for a bit,” she said, as she came into the kitchen. She pulled her sunhat on. “Stay out of trouble.”
Neither of us moved. The screen door bounced on its hinges. Martha’s footsteps faded away.
“We been following the wrong person,” David said. “Your father knows where Johnny is. I bet he’s known since that letter arrived.”