“Who said anything about my getting married?”
“All these people keep asking you.”
“Who?” she demanded, flushing.
“The farmer with the truck you didn’t ride in to the interview, and the lawyer with hairs in his ears.”
“Oh, those,” she said. “Well, there will always be a place in my home for Juliet, whether I marry or not. And I will always have a guest room for you, Helen. Maybe you’ll miss me and want to visit. You could ride down on the train and I’ll take you to all the places your mother knew as a girl. I’ll have my license by then. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even have a car.”
She was obviously looking ahead.
THOUGH WE WEREN’T playing Fifth Grade any longer, I was often upstairs in “my study,” daydreaming about when Finn would live in this room. From here it would have been easy to slip next door into the Willow Fanning room and take away more of Nonie’s letters to read. But here, too, Flora had been looking ahead. The letters were all bound together again and tied tightly with the ribbon, in a hard-to-imitate bow, ready to go back into Flora’s suitcase. Next to them was the smaller pile of Juliet Parker’s weekly missives. Without any ribbon, they would be easy to steal away and read if I wanted to. But I didn’t, not in the least. It was while pondering this one morning, while looking down at the two piles, that I realized I didn’t really need to take the risk of reading more of Nonie’s, either. I had found out some things, been disappointed at not finding other things, and hadn’t been caught. What more was to be found out, and would it be worth getting caught for?
It was sad, in a way. Like our Fifth Grade, the time now felt past for the letters as well. It was like the summer light, which was changing into autumn light around the house. If the Recoverers were still here, they would be leaving the south porch earlier now and carrying their books and blankets and cards over to the west porch to take advantage of the last sun. I was moving over into something else, too. Rather than wanting to dig into old things that had already happened, I was pouring all my time and imagination into preparing a place for the new things that were going to happen after Flora was gone.
Mrs. Jones said the two oriental rugs made the room look more lavish.
“And the bed looks nice by the window. Did you have trouble moving it by yourself?”
“A little. I may have scratched the floor some.”
“Where?”
I lifted up the second rug and prepared to be lectured.
Mrs. Jones knelt down so her nose was practically level with the floor and ran her finger back and forth over the wood. “Well, you did a job, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry. I was just rushing, and that bed was heavier than I thought.”
“Doesn’t pay to rush.” Now she had laid down her cheek on the floor and was inspecting the damage sideways.
“Is it bad?” Would she feel obliged to tell my father?
“Not too bad. As long as it stays under the rug. I’ve seen worse. But we ought to doctor it a little so it can get better while it’s under the rug. Go downstairs to the pantry.”
“Downstairs to the pantry,” I repeated.
“On the lowest left-hand shelf, toward the back, you’ll find a little brown bottle with a handwritten label that says ‘linseed oil.’ “
“Who wrote it?”
“Your father. It’s one of those stick-on labels with a red edge. Linseed oil.”
“Linseed oil,” I repeated. “Will that fix it?”
“We’ll make a start,” said Mrs. Jones, rising cumbersomely to her feet. “In future, though, try not to be in such a rush.” She was breathless and had to steady herself against the wall for a minute, and I felt bad.
I had changed my mind about showing Finn his room. I wanted the circumstances to be as perfect as possible. More important, I had realized I ought to talk it over with my father first. What an awful thing it would have been to have shown Finn the room and invited him to live there and then have to go back and tell him my father had said no. Just the thought of having brought on such a near disaster made me cringe.
So for now I kept the room for myself. I liked lying on the bed Finn might soon be sleeping in, if I could only manage everything in a mature and diplomatic way. I liked reading the new book Mrs. Jones had brought from the library. This one, a book of fairy tales from around the world, she had chosen herself, and had read some of the stories herself before bringing it to me. Her favorite was one from Denmark, “The Princess in the Coffin,” and I had read that one first so we could talk about it when she came next Tuesday, which was my birthday. And I also liked lying there and thinking of my mother, soon to give birth to me, lying in this same spot and wondering what I would be like.
The whole experience of being in Finn’s room was like lying in a hammock with my past, present, and future all tucked around me.
XXV.
Monday morning, the day before my birthday, Flora knocked on my door earlier than usual.
“I thought we’d wash your hair before you get dressed.” She had brought along the saucepan we used for rinsing.
“Why are you up so early?”
“I was lying in bed thinking of all the things I wanted to get done today, and when I couldn’t go back to sleep I decided to just get up and start doing them.”
“We always have breakfast first, then order the groceries
“And you always have to get undressed again. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner. I’m such a numbskull.”
“Well, wait a minute,” I said irritably. “I have to pee first.”
“Don’t you want to take off your pajama top?” she asked, when I was getting ready to kneel on the stack of towels beside the tub.
“I always leave on my undershirt.”
“Well, goodness, Helen, we’re both girls. Oh, what does it matter? I’m in a good mood today.”
“I bet I know why.”
“Why?” She looked guilty.
“Because you’ll be leaving in two weeks and four days.”
“Look who’s counted up the actual days. Don’t be silly, honey. I’ll miss you and I hope you’ll miss me a little. I’ll never forget this summer. I’ve learned so much I feel I ought to pay your father tuition.”
I bowed forward over the tub and thought, as I always did, about the guillotine. Flora ran the water to just the right temperature and poured panfuls over my hair until it hung down in one heavy mass. I groaned with pleasure at her deep, diligent lathering and was always a little sorry when the rinsing was over and every strand squeaked.
“Your hair is the color of wheat,” Flora mused, as she always did when toweling it. “And such a lot of it.”
“I wish I knew what I looked like,” I said.
“Well, have a look.” She turned me around so I could see myself in the full-length mirror: a pink, cranky girl in pajamas wet around the collar. “Finn says all your features are the right distance from each other. You notice things like that when you’re drawing someone, he says.”
“But that doesn’t mean pretty.”
“It’s better than pretty. It means you’ll look good even when you’re old.”
“I don’t care about when I’m old, I care about right now.”
“Well, there is one thing you can do for right now.”
“What?”
