Cassie Binegar (9 page)

“Lavender,” said Cassie softly. Lavender, the same color as the doll in Cassie's dollhouse.

“My wedding dress,” said Gran. “And your mother's. Two weddings this dress has seen.” She looked at Cassie. “So far.” She took it out of the box and stood up, slowly unfolding the dress. She walked over to the long mirror propped in the corner and held it in front of her. It was the soft color of old glass, with a high neck and long sleeves with ivory lace edgings that fell away in folds. It reached Gran's feet.

There was a sound behind Gran and Cassie, and they turned to see Cassie's mother, her hair streaming, her face wet with rain. She smiled.

“You found it. Good.” She climbed up the stairs and sat, rolling the long hanks of hair between her hands, trying to dry them. “No leaks, thank goodness.”

Gran turned from the mirror. “Do a favor for an old woman,” she said to Cassie's mother. “Try it on.”

Cassie's mother laughed. “Me? Now, like this?”

“Go on,” said Cassie. “Do it. Try it on.”

Her mother shrugged and got up, stripping off her rain gear and her wet sweater and jeans. Shivering a bit in the attic cold, she stood, while Gran settled the dress over her head, zipping up the back.

“There,” said Gran. “Now, turn around.” She shouldn't have looked so beautiful, thought Cassie, with only the bare light overhead and her hair still wet and beginning to curl. But she did. She looked like a mermaid, come from the sea to try on a human dress.
Whose eyeglasses am I looking through now?
thought Cassie, as the three of them—Gran, Cassie's mother, and Cassie—stood as if enchanted by a long lavender dress.

D
OWN FROM THE ATTIC,
Cassie looked out the windows, watching Gran carry the carefully plastic-wrapped dress to her cottage. Cassie had thought the sky couldn't grow darker, but it had. The sand blew and there were no birds flying.

“Where are the birds?” Cassie whispered to Hat. He stood at the kitchen window in his foul-weather gear, jacket and pants, a blue knitted hat under his rain hood.

“Taken cover,” he said, looking through the binoculars. “When the wind is this bad the birds find somewhere safe.”

“Do you see any boats?” asked Cassie, straining to see.

“No boats,” answered Hat. Then he looked down at her. “Cass, are you worried? About your brothers and your father?”

“No,” said Cassie. “Yes,” she said softly. She was worried. The memory of Papa in the bed, calling to her, had intruded all day. Why was it here now? She had, at last, done the right thing. She had given the doll to James for good luck. To keep him safe. To keep things from changing. Even though she had not told Papa she was sorry about yelling, she had given James the doll. Didn't that make up for it at all?

The door blew open, Cousin Coralinda and the writer grabbing it. They stood dripping by the kitchen door, catching their breath. Slowly, the writer unwrapped Baby Binnie from under his poncho. Cousin Coralinda took off Binnie's hat and sweater.

“Will you watch her, Cass?” Coralinda asked, breathless from running. “We've got to find the rowboat and pull it up.”

“The tide's running high,” said the writer, looking worried.

“I'll come, too,” said Hat, handing his binoculars to Cassie. “Be back.”

Cassie smiled at Binnie, who after a brief look around began to unravel one corner of the rag rug. Cassie went to the window, peering out through the storm. Gran came up the driveway, her head bent low. Cassie saw her stop, only for a moment, and pick something up from the mud. Then she came up the steps and into the kitchen.

“Hi, Binnie dear.” Gran blew a kiss to Binnie and Binnie kissed her own hand in answer.

“Gran, isn't it getting worse?” asked Cassie, watching Gran take off her raincoat and hat.

“It's about the same, I think,” said Gran. “Just about the same. Here. Isn't this yours, Cass?” Gran held out her hand. And there, small and mud covered and soggy with rain, lay the small doll from Cassie's dollhouse.

The doll.

“No!” cried Cassie. “I gave it to James. Why doesn't he have it?”

“Cass. What is it? What is the matter?” Gran put her arm around Cassie, but Cassie pulled away.

“It's just the same!” she shouted, beginning to cry. “I should have told Papa I was sorry I yelled. Maybe he'd be alive now. And now James! He'll have bad luck!”

“Cass!” Gran spoke sharply. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Because of me!” shouted Cassie. “It'll be just like Papa. My fault for not doing the right thing. I yelled!” Cassie stopped suddenly and looked at Gran. “Just like now! I'm yelling at you!”

Cassie put her hand over her mouth, staring at Gran. Then she grabbed her raincoat, hanging by the door. She nearly ripped it from its hook as she ran outside.

“Cass!” shouted her Gran.

But Cassie slammed the door behind her, the wind whipping her hair against her face. She ran down the steps and, pausing a moment, scrambled under the porch between the broken slats. She lay in the dry sand in the darkness, crying.

“Cass.” A hand pushed her. Her Gran's hand. “Move over. Now!” Gran said sharply.

“Go away!” shouted Cassie.

But Gran crawled under, pulling Binnie with her, wide-eyed, wrapped in a large raincoat.

“Now, what is this.” Gran sat Binnie up in the sand. Binnie looked overhead and around. “What about Papa? And yelling?”

The wind had died a bit, and Gran's voice sounded loud in Cassie's ear.

“I yelled at him,” Cassie cried, rubbing her eyes now filled with tears and sand. “I didn't say I was sorry.” She looked up at Gran. “And he died.” The words, the first time ever spoken by Cassie, seemed to fill the place beneath the porch.

“So,” said Gran, taking out her handkerchief and rubbing Cassie's eyes. “So you yelled. And Papa yelled. Yes?”

Cassie looked up. “I don't know. I don't remember if Papa yelled.” She began to cry again. “It doesn't matter.”

“Then why does it matter that you yelled?” Gran's voice was soft and sad.

Cassie sat up. “I don't know. I don't know anything.”

Gran pulled Cassie close to her.

“And you kept this to yourself all this time? Cass, that makes it so much harder for you. Don't you know that?” Gran sighed. “I'll tell you something, Cass. Papa died because he was sick. And Papa yelled, too. He yelled just before he died, Cass. He sat up in bed and yelled ‘Where in hell are my green socks!' Then he died. That was all.”

Cassie stared at Gran. Gran smiled, and they began to laugh and cry at the same time, holding on to each other, Baby Binnie watching them.

“You've got to let it go, Cass,” whispered Gran. “You know, after Papa died I came on a footprint of his in the garden. It was so perfect, so clear, just as if he'd passed that way a moment before. I would go out and look at it, day after day. Once I even put a wooden carton over it so it would stay. But it didn't. The rain began to wash it away, slowly, and one day it wasn't there anymore.”

There was silence.

“Like catching snow,” said Cassie in Gran's ear.

Gran nodded. “Yes, like catching snow.”

It was quiet then. Baby Binnie, staring solemnly at Cassie and Gran, reached over to touch a tear on Gran's cheek. But she said nothing. The wind and rain had died. The storm was gone. And the only sound was the dripping of water off the roof to the porch below.

T
HE AFTERNOON WAS CLEAR
and sharp. “It's always this way after a storm,” Cassie's father told Cassie and Margaret Mary on the porch, later when all the scenes of the day had flickered out. Cassie smiled at him, then lifted her face to smell the clean smells of earth and rain. The scent of roses hung about, though the flowers on her mother's rosebush lay on the ground, stripped from the limbs by the rain. Everything smelled different to Cassie. When she and her mother had driven to the fish pier to watch for her father's boat, the old wood planks of the wharf had smelled sweet and new. When the boat came, Cassie and her mother watching excitedly through binoculars, the boat had not smelled of fish to Cassie. Or if it had, Cassie had not noticed. She didn't wrinkle her nose or frown. “It should be decorated,” she remembered saying. “It brought them back.” And she had stared at the boat, shining and beautiful in the late afternoon light.

When they returned in the truck, Uncle Hat had run down the hill to greet them, followed by Bumble Bee who thought it was a game. Hat was, for the first time Cassie could ever remember, hatless, and his rain hood flopped behind him.

“Uncle Hat!” Cassie had blurted when the truck stopped. “You've got hair!”

Hat had stopped to smile at Cassie. “So've you,” he had announced. “And so have you,” he'd said to James. “And you. And you!”

Cassie grinned. She might never know just why Hat wore hats or spoke in rhymes sometimes. But it didn't matter anymore. It wasn't important. Cassie put her hand in her jacket pocket and took out the doll, now grimy with dried mud. Silently, she reached out and gave it to James.

“Ah.” James turned the doll over in his hand. “I wondered where it was.”

Cassie reached out to brush some of the dried mud away. “Gran found it,” she said. “Outside.”

Smiling, James put the doll in his jacket pocket and buttoned the pocket.

“Cassie Binegar had a hard day of it,” he said, his hand lingering over the pocket for a moment. “But,” he added softly, “she weathered the storm.”

Inside the house, Gran had made hot tea, and Coralinda had baked things that resembled biscuits. Baby Binnie had thrown one across the room in a sudden burst of energy, and it had bounced and skidded along the floor.

“They are wonderful,” the writer had murmured, managing to look adoring while trying to bite into one. “Really, Cor.”

Cor. His soft voice wrapped itself around the name. Cassie and Margaret Mary had looked at each other, then Cassie had sighed and leaned over to her Gran.

“I suppose,” she whispered, “this means no more pain and anguish for Cousin Coralinda. They'll probably get married and swim naked in the sea.”

Gran had looked at Cassie for a moment. She had not laughed, but had reached over to take Cassie's hand and to whisper back, “Oh, dear Cass, I do believe you are right.”

Margaret Mary, sitting on the other side of Gran, leaned over. “I've seen it coming, too. I ran across them, clapped quite close together, kissing in the pathway day before yesterday.”

“I hope,” said Cassie, frowning, “that it doesn't interfere with his writing.”

Gran smiled broadly at Cassie. “It may help,” she said, staring straight ahead again as if they had not been talking at all.

After dinner, when it was dark, they sat quietly on the half-lighted porch. James and John Thomas had gone to bed, weary from a hard day at sea. Cassie's mother and father had gone swimming wearing their bathing suits. Cousin Coralinda and the writer were inside, gazing at each other over cold cups of tea. Uncle Hat, looking through his telescope, was counting birds as they passed the moon while Baby Binnie sat close behind him, making buildings out of pots and pans. They would fall, from time to time, the clatter making Gran and Margaret Mary and Cassie jump. But Uncle Hat counted on. “One hundred and seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four and five . . .”

“School starts soon,” said Margaret Mary, leaning back in her chair. “Won't it be sad to have the summer over?”

“Seventy-seven, seventy-eight . . .”

“There's always next summer,” said Cassie. “New people to meet. New things happening.” She turned to Gran with a sudden thought. “That's what Papa told me.”

Gran nodded.

“Eighty-three, one hundred and eighty-four,” Uncle Hat went on.

“I've got something for you, Gran,” Cassie said suddenly. “But right now it's in my head. Not finished yet.”

Gran smiled and slowly got up.

“I've got something for
you
.” She walked inside the house. “And not in my head,” she called.

“Eighty-seven, eighty-eight . . .”

The building fell, and Baby Binnie grinned.

Cassie and Margaret Mary looked up as Gran stood there.

“The painting!” Cassie got up quickly.

“Remember,” said Gran, “you said to paint something beautiful. And I did. It's for you.” She handed the painting to Cassie.

The painting was not of the sea or the dunes or a bush of sea roses as Cassie had thought it might be. It was a woman, seated, her hair swept up on her head. She was wearing the lavender dress.

“Is it you?” Margaret Mary asked Gran. “You in your wedding dress?” She looked closer. “Or Cassie's mum?”

“No,” said Cassie, her voice sounding breathless to her. She looked more closely at the painting. On the smallest finger of the woman's right hand was a small gold ring. The ring from down under. Cassie looked at Gran. “It's me, isn't it?”

Gran put her arm around Cassie. “It is Cassie Binegar,” she said smiling at Cassie.

Cassie shook her head slowly. “It's beautiful, Gran. It really is.”

“I wanted to paint you in the wedding dress, Cass,” said Gran softly. “I may never get to see you at your own wedding, you know.”

“Eighty-nine, ninety, one hundred and ninety-one, one hundred and ninety-two . . .” Hat's voice was clear in the still night. Cassie looked at him, then back at Gran.

“Gran,” she began, handing the picture back to her. “I think you should have it. For a while, at least. Later it can be mine.”

Gran smiled. “Looking through my eyeglasses, now, aren't you Cassie?” She went inside, putting the painting on the mantel, standing to look at it for a moment.