“I thought you might like to have Courtney’s room. What do you think?”
“Anything is all right.” But when she got to the door of Courtney’s room, she hung back. Everything was pink with a four-poster canopied bed complete with stuffed animals and dolls. She couldn’t make herself go in.
“It’s all right, my dear. It’s a big house. You may choose.”
The room which she found most to her liking had a bunk bed with brown corduroy spreads and models of airplanes hanging on delicate wires from the ceiling. In a metal-wire wastebasket was a basketball and a football and a baseball mitt still cradling a stained and scruffed-up ball. The grandmother explained quietly without her having to ask that it was the room of Chadwell, Courtney’s older brother, a pilot who had one day crashed into the steaming jungles of Vietnam. Nonetheless, his room seemed less haunted than his sister’s.
“Would you like me to help you unpack?”
Inside her head, she was screaming, “I don’t need any help!” but for Trotter’s sake, she said only, “No, I can do it.”
They ate lunch in the dining room with real monogrammed silver off silver-rimmed china set on lace mats.
The woman caught Gilly eying the layout. “I hope you don’t mind my celebrating a little.” She seemed to be apologizing. “I usually eat in the kitchen since I’ve been alone.”
The word “alone” twanged in Gilly’s head. She knew what it meant to be alone. But only since Thompson Park did she understan
d a little what it meant to have people and then lose them. She looked at the person who was smiling shyly at her, who had lost husband, son, daughter. That was alone.
As lunch progressed, the woman began almost to chatter, as though she were overcoming her shyness, or forcing herself to. “I feel very silly saying to you, Tell me all about yourself, but I wish you would. I want to get to know you.”
That’s not how you get to know people. Don’t you know? You can’t talk it out, you got to live into their lives, bad and good. You’ll know me soon enough. What I want you to know.
“Miss Ellis says you’re very bright.”
“I guess so.”
“Do you want to see about school right away? Or would you rather settle in here first?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m afraid you’ll get bored just sitting around with me all day. I want you to make friends your own age. I’m sure there are some nice girls your age somewhere around.”
I have never in my life been friends with a “nice girl.”
“What kinds of things do you enjoy doing?”
Please shut up. I can’t stand your trying so hard. “I don’t know. Anything.”
“If you like to read, I still have Chadwell and Courtney’s books. There may even be a bicycle in the shed. Do you suppose it’s any good after all these years? Would you like a bicycle? I’m sure we could find the money for a bicycle if you’d like one.”
Stop hovering over me. I’ll smother.
They did the dishes. Gilly wiped silently while her grandmother nervously put-putted on and on. It didn’t seem necessary to answer her questions. She went right on whether or not Gilly bothered to reply. What had happened to the quiet little lady in the car? It was as though someone had turned on a long-unused faucet. The problem was how in the world to get it shut off again. Gilly had to try. She yawned elaborately and stretched.
“Are you tired, dear?”
Gilly nodded. “I guess I haven’t caught up on my sleep. I had to be up a lot last week with everyone sick and all.”
“Oh, my dear. How thoughtless of me! Here I go on and on…”
“No. It’s all right. I think I’ll just go up and lie down, though, if you don’t mind.”
“What a good idea. I often lie down a little in the afternoon myself.”
In the quiet of Chadwell’s room, Gilly lay back and gazed out the window at the blue expanse of sky. If she lifted up on her elbow she could see the rolling fields beyond the margin of the tiny town, and beyond the hills, the mountains dark and strong. She felt herself loosening. Had Chadwell been homesick for this sight as he dropped his bombs into the jungle? Why would anyone leave such peace for war? Maybe he had to go. Maybe they didn’t give him any choice. But Courtney had had a choice. Why had she left? You don’t just leave your mother because she talks too much. Why should she leave and not look back a single time—until now?
She must care about me, at least a little. She wrote her mother to come and get me because she was worried about me. Doesn’t that prove she cares? Gilly got up and took Courtney’s picture out from underneath her T-shirts. How silly. She was in Courtney’s house now. Courtney didn’t have to hide in a drawer any longer. She propped the picture up against the bureau lamp. Maybe her grandmother would let her buy a frame for it. She sat down on the bed and looked back at Courtney on the bureau. Beautiful, smiling Courtney of the perfect teeth and lovely hair.