Cassie Binegar (6 page)

Cassie's ears prickled. Of course she liked him. Baby Binnie liked everyone.

“That is Jason,” said Cassie's mother, peeling potatoes over the kitchen sink. “He's going to write.”

Jason
. Cassie tried the name, silently, only her lips moving. It was a nice name. But to Cassie he was the writer. Would always be
THE WRITER.

“Write what?” asked Coralinda. “Say write, Baby Binnie, write.”

“Schramp,” said Baby Binnie, dropping a piece of toast to the floor. The toast lay close to Cassie, and she moved back waiting for Cousin Cor to reach down and pick it up. Instead, to Cassie's horror, Baby Binnie's fat feet appeared, then Baby Binnie's diapered bottom, then Baby Binnie herself, holding up the tablecloth, peering under.

“Write a novel, I guess,” answered Cassie's mother. “Or short stories. He didn't say much about it. Only that he wanted some time and a place. He
is
nice, isn't he?”

Cassie, slowly inching backward, watched as Baby Binnie lifted the tablecloth up, then down, then up, then down, in a private game of hide-and-seek.

“Cass,” Baby Binnie said very clearly.

“What?” asked Cousin Coralinda. “What did you say? Toast? Say toast, Binnie.”

“Cass,” said Baby Binnie, peering right into Cassie's face as Cassie smiled weakly.

“Good girl,” said Coralinda. And suddenly Baby Binnie disappeared to Coralinda's lap as if whisked up and away on an invisible elevator. Cassie breathed a sigh of relief.

“Cor?” Her mother's voice sounded hesitant.

“Yes?”

“It's not really my business,” she began, “but are you happy alone?”

“Alone?” Cousin Cor said too brightly. “I'm not alone. I've got Hat and Baby Binnie.”

“You know what I mean,” Cassie's mother said softly, sliding into a chair, her feet whispering under the table.

Cousin Cor sighed.

“No, I'm not happy. But who would want me, with a baby who won't speak words. And my feathers. Oh yes,” she went on, “I know how I look. And I know that Baby Binnie doesn't make sense.”

“Oh, Coralinda,” said Cassie's mother. “Binnie will talk in time. Give her time.”

She said ‘Cass,'
cried Cassie silently under the table.
Baby Binnie said ‘Cass' as clear as could be
.

“And Cor, you wear feathers for the same reason Hat wears hats, don't you know? And talks in rhymes.”

There was a silence, then Coralinda's voice so low that Cassie had to turn her head to hear.

“I know,” said Coralinda. “I know.”

But I don't know
, thought Cassie under the table.
Why?
She looked down and saw a feather lying by Cousin Cor's foot, fallen from a shoe. Cassie picked it up and smoothed it.

Then there were only the soft burbling sounds of Baby Binnie. Cassie knew that Cousin Cor was crying. Cassie put the feather next to her cheek for comfort. For hers or Cousin Coralinda's, she wondered. And suddenly, for the first time in her life, Cassie wished that she were somewhere else, far away from her safe space. There were still no answers. And what Margaret Mary had said was true. There were some things not meant for hidden ears.

T
HE FIRST THING
the writer did when he arrived was to put up a small bird feeder. He hung it from the porch hook and filled it with sunflower seeds. Cassie saw this from her perch up a small pine tree nearby. She had not meant to be up the tree when he arrived. It had just happened. And now there was no coming down until he left.

Cassie's mother walked up the path and into the hidden yard where the small cottage stood.

“Is everything all right?” she called to him.

“Fine.” He turned and smiled at her. “First things first. I'm feeding the birds.”

“Come for dinner tonight,” said Cassie's mother. “You can meet everyone. Then we'll leave you on your own.”

Cassie's mother went off again, humming to herself. When she had disappeared, the writer walked over to the tree and looked up.

“You can come down now, little bird.”

Cassie sighed and climbed down the tree.

“I didn't mean it. This time,” she added, red-faced.

The writer smiled at her and held out his hand.

“I'm Jason.”

“I know. The writer. I'm Cassie.” Cassie took his hand. It was long fingered and cool. Now she loved his fingers, too.

“Ah, of course you know. I'd almost forgotten.”

“It was nice of you not to say anything,” said Cassie.

“You're welcome,” said the writer. “You know, hiding is not always a good thing.”

“You sound like Margaret Mary,” said Cassie.

“And who's Margaret Mary?”

“My friend,” explained Cassie. “She's from England and she has plastic plants that her mother sprays with disinfectant and her favorite word is hair ball.”

The writer laughed for a long time. I suppose, Cassie thought, resigned, I will now love his teeth. And she did.

“Anyway,” said Cassie, “she thinks my hiding is not good. But I'm doing it because I want to be a writer, like you. And hiding is the best way to find out what you want to know.”

“Not so,” said the writer, sitting on the porch steps. “Being a part of it all is the best way.”

“But aren't you hiding?” asked Cassie. She waved her arm. “Here?”

“I don't think so,” said the writer. “No,” he said more positively, “I don't think so at all.”

“Margaret Mary says asking questions is the best way to find out,” said Cassie.

“True,” said the writer.

“Well, sometimes I can't ask questions. Not the right ones.”

The writer thought a moment.

“Well, then, since you are going to be a writer, do the next best thing.”

“What's that?”

“Write the questions,” said the writer.

Write them
.

“But who will write back?”

“I'll bet the most important person will,” said the writer.

“Who's that?”

“The person who knows the answers,” said the writer. He looked closely at Cassie. Finally, he got up and stretched.

“I'm going,” said Cassie, knowing that her time was up. “But before I go, could I ask you one very important and personal question?”

The writer paused, midstretch. “Starting right off? All right.” He finished the stretch. “What?”

Cassie wanted to ask if he was married, with a sharp-chinned wife and horrid children; if he loved the color blue; if he liked sunrises or sunsets.

She took a deep breath.

“Do you write with an outline?” she asked in a hurry.

“An outline, an outline!” mimicked the writer, laughing. “Get off with you while I think about it.” He picked up some sand and tossed it after her legs as she ran down the path.

I first loved his feet, thought Cassie happily as she went home to begin asking questions. Then I loved his face, then his fingers, then his teeth. Now, thought Cassie, as she ran up the front steps to set the table for dinner, I love his mind. Cassie stopped midway up the stairs with a terrible thought. Oh dear God, thought Cassie, using one of Margaret Mary's expressions, I do hope I love his writing as well.

Very quietly, without fuss, Cassie taped up a large sheet of paper on the bathroom wall. It was the place most likely, she thought, for the person who had the answers to take the time to think about them. And write them down.

QUESTIONS       ANSWERS

Cassie stood back and looked at the neat lettering, the tip of her pencil in her mouth. Finally, she leaned over and wrote under “Questions”:

Why don't I have a space of my own?

Then the sounds of the dinner guests below intruded. Cassie stood for a moment on the stairway, watching hidden from above before she went downstairs to become a character in the scene below.

Everyone had brought something for dinner. Gran had baked all day and the kitchen still smelled of homemade bread and cookies. Cassie was overjoyed to see that her mother had roasted a turkey instead of fish. The writer had brought cheese. Uncle Hat brought a kicker.

“What's a kicker?” asked Margaret Mary.

“Wine,” said Coralinda, smiling faintly.

“Seven and four/There's always more,” said Hat, tipping up his wineglass.

“What are the sticks and weeds in the salad?” asked Cassie.

“Sticks and weeds?” Coralinda, flushed from the kitchen, laughed. “Those are herbs and bean sprouts, Cassie.”

“Look like sticks and weeds,” commented Cassie.

Cassie looked closely at Cousin Coralinda. What was it that was different? She still wore feathers, but the only ones in sight were feather earrings, slightly worn, that made her look a bit as if she were molting. There
was
something different. Something else.

The writer took Baby Binnie on his lap, where she sat staring at him for a long time.

“Baby Binnie, Skinny Binnie,” sang the writer, not embarrassed at all. Baby Binnie grinned, her three and a half teeth making her look like a carved pumpkin.

“Ratch,” said Baby Binnie to the writer.

“Ratch is right,” said the writer, smiling back at Binnie.

“Whatever is that in the bathroom?” asked James, coming into the kitchen.

“What do you mean? What's there?” asked Cassie's mother.

“It looks to me,” said Gran, “like a sheet for questions and answers. Put there, I suppose, by someone who wishes to know more. A good idea, I might say.”

Cassie grinned at Gran.

“You know I put it there,” she said.

“It did look like your handwriting,” said James, smiling.

“And I was very tired of writing answers on toilet paper,” joked John Thomas.

The writer said nothing, but smiled at Cassie from across the table. He turned to Cassie's father.

“Your boat is beautiful,” he said.

Cassie saw that her father was pleased.

“You've seen her? Yes, she is beautiful. You like boats?”

The writer nodded. “Never had much of a chance to use them. I grew up in the west, where there is not much water.”

Beautiful? Cassie thought about her father's boat, solid and gray with painted decks, the smell of fish never washed away, the windows of the wheelhouse blurred and sticky with salt spray.

Cassie's father sat back and took a sip of his wine. He looked past everyone there, as if reaching for something far away. “I've loved boats forever,” he said softly. “When I was seven, I built a raft out of building boards and old nails. Launched it on the river.”

Cassie studied him. She had hardly ever thought of him as a boy of seven. What did he look like then? Was he tall or short, curly haired, fair, sad, happy? Was he the same person as now?

After dinner they had cookies and raisin cake on the porch, the fading sunlight turning the sky the old gold color of late afternoon. It touched the faces of everyone, making them seem unreal, like old photographs: Gran, leaning back in a wicker chair, sipping tea from a china cup; Cassie's brothers arguing gently over the last piece of cake; her mother and father, sitting close together on the couch, the backs of their hands touching; Baby Binnie, sitting at the foot of the steps, eating sand with a spoon. The writer leaned over to say something to Coralinda, and she bent forward eagerly, her hair loose, brushing her cheek. It was then that Cassie saw just what it was that was different about Coralinda. She looked at Margaret Mary and knew, by her look, that Margaret Mary had seen too. Looking more closely, Cassie saw what it was. Cousin Coralinda looked much less like a horse than usual tonight. Cassie wondered if the writer noticed.

After dinner, everyone gone to bed, the writer gone home to his very own sheets and towels, Cassie walked quietly into the upstairs bathroom and turned on the light. There, on the sheet of paper, was something written that had not been there before. The writing was new, tall and straight. Cassie smiled. She knew who had written it. She came closer to read:

Cassie's smiled faded. What did that mean? It was just like the writer to answer a question with another question, thought Cassie.

“He must have been a teacher once,” she announced right out loud in the bathroom. No quick answers after all, thought Cassie unhappily. And she turned off the light, leaving herself and the questions in the dark.

C
ASSIE PASSED BY
the writer's cottage often, sometimes with real errands, most times with imaginary ones. Some days she could see him at his typewriter by the window, punching away in a two-fingered assault. Other days he was pacing and speaking out loud, gesturing, to no one. But sometimes his listeners were real. Once, Cassie had peered in the window to a scene of littered papers, Baby Binnie in the middle with a pan and a wooden spoon, the writer reading something to Cousin Coralinda. Peering closer, Cassie could see Coralinda, leaning forward as she had at the family dinner, chin in hand, looking rapt—one of Cassie's new words. There were few feathers to be seen, except on Coralinda's shoes. But, looking at the writer, Cassie saw with a prickling sense of dread that he had a feather stuck behind his ear where a pencil might be. Should be. Cassie waited a long time, standing behind a tree, then sitting, until at long last the writer emerged, holding Baby Binnie easily in one arm, his other arm resting gently across Coralinda's shoulders. They had walked along the path, passing whisper near to Cassie.

“It's the character I'm worried about, Cor . . .”

“But there's no need . . .” Cousin Coralinda's voice came, soft.