I Don't Know How the Story Ends (18 page)

An awful silence prevailed inside me, though Father tried one more time to break it, two days after his arrival. He chose the hour carefully. I was hiding behind a book in the grape arbor when he slipped up and took a seat.

“So, Isobel…” he began, and then awkwardly paused.

I was supposed to say something, but my mouth had gone dry. I swallowed instead.

“Yes, well,” he went on finally. “Seems to me we have some catching up to do. Your mother tells me you know your way around here as well as any native now. Think you could take me on a little tour?”

I tried to smile, even as the bottom dropped out of my composure. How could I go out with him in
public
? I had always been proud of him before—he was so handsome and distinguished-looking—but now everyone would stare at us and pretend they weren't. I was immediately ashamed of myself for thinking these thoughts, but the thoughts came anyway.

“Um… I suppose. Only not today. Sir.”

“All right.” His left hand raised in a very familiar way, pushing forward slightly with his head to one side as though disowning whatever he'd just said. He used this gesture a lot, only with two hands. He caught my involuntary glance at his right side and made a rueful grimace.

“Funny quirk of anatomy—I can still feel this arm. All the nerve patterns set in my brain haven't got the message yet. You and Sylvie had better not do anything naughty since I've lost my spanking hand.”

Just one of his little jokes; he'd never so much as swatted us in our lives. Again I attempted a smile.

“Yes, well.” He looked down, fumbling in his coat pocket for a small, blocky parcel wrapped in white tissue paper. “I…didn't have much time for shopping while I was in France, but before heading to the front, I came across something I thought you might like.”

“Thank you.” I took the parcel from his extended hand and held it uncertainly for a few seconds.

“I'd be pleased if you would open it,” he said with the slightest edge to his gentle voice.

It was a glass globe about three inches across—a paperweight on a lead base. The globe was filled with water and tiny white flecks that whirled about like snow when I turned it upright. Inside the globe was a tall evergreen tree with lacy, sweeping branches.

As I stared, Father leaned toward me with a trace of boyish eagerness. “Do you see what I saw in it? It's like the hemlock tree down at the corner, the magnificent one where you always wanted to stop and pick up cones when you were little—remember?”

I nodded.

“Look at the base,” he prompted me.

An inscription scrolled around the base of the globe:
Et dont les feuilles servent à la guérison des
nations.

“Can you read it?
Parlez-vous français,
mademoiselle
?
”

I nodded. The quotation was a familiar one from the Bible, and I had just enough French to recognize it: “
And the leaves of the tree are for—were for—the healing of the
nations.
”

“Right!” He sat back, smiling. That twist to his mouth made the smile horrible; I had to glance away. “Funny thing—when I bought it, I didn't recognize the quote. I just thought you'd like the tree. Turned out to be rather appropriate, don't you think?”

I closed my hands over the globe and saw that stately hemlock tree of my youth splintered by cannonballs. The work of a moment. If something is destroyed, can it ever be healed? I choked down a surge of bile and said nothing.

After a painful moment he straightened up and cleared his throat. “Yes. Well… I expect it's naptime for me. Still taking a little something for the pain. Keeps the worst of it down, but around this time of day I can barely keep my eyes open.” He stood. “I'm off to the Land o' Nod.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

“You're welcome, Isobel.” He leaned in to touch my shoulder, and I never moved.

• • •

After that I spent more time at the public library with Little Eva and Tom Sawyer, avoiding a house that was either dead silent or ringing with pointless chatter—and Ranger was a wellspring of pointless chatter, as far as I was concerned.

On Monday, he cornered me urgently. “Isobel. There's something about the picture—”

“What picture?”

He blinked at me. “Why, our picture that we've been working on for the last six weeks.”

“You mean that excursion into fantasy we've been amusing ourselves with?”

That brought him up short. “What the heck does
that
mean?”

I couldn't explain how trivial our project looked to me now, so I maintained a stony silence.

“It's all coming together!” Ranger insisted. “If we could just do another shot or two…” He trailed off, staring at my face. “Golly, you look like your mother right now.”

For some reason this made me furious, if I wasn't already. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. It's just an observation, for Pete's sake. Listen, we don't have much time. If—”

I slammed my book shut. “
Wake up
, Ranger. Even if the great Mr. Griffith agrees to see your picture, even if he raves about it to your parents, it won't save you from military school or whatever else it takes to make you grow up. Because you have to, you know. Everybody does.”

He sputtered, “That's not—”

“And I'll tell you something else. I think the pictures are just another way to lie.
Hearts of the World
and ‘Over There' and the Lasky Home Guard—cheering and crying and jerking your feelings all over the place—
it's a lie
, and I don't want any more to do with it, ever.”

A boy of his complexion could not be said to turn pale. Rather, he turned dusty—all traces of pink draining from his face to leave a grayish tint.

“Have you talked to your father?” he demanded. “I mean, besides when you have to? I have. And you know what? He's swell, just like you always said. Did I show you the Iron Cross he gave me?” He had, but pulled it out of his pocket again. “The highest German military honor, and a kraut colonel gave it to him in gratitude—gratitude!—for saving his life. That's the kind of man your father is: magnanimous to his enemies. His face—the way it looks now—doesn't change what he is. If you'd come out of your sulk, you'd know that.”

Now
I
was surely pale. Even my voice sounded blood-drained. “I don't need you to tell me about my own father. I knew him before, and you didn't. I am not sulking—I'm mourning.”

“But he's not dead! That's what I… Listen, if you just hear me out about the picture—”

“Ranger Bell, if you say one more word to me on that subject, I'll… I'll set a match to the film, I swear.”

That scared him off. What's more, he made a point of avoiding me for the next two days. Sylvie didn't try to avoid me, partly because Father had brought her a mechanical bank, a painted tin clown who hopped on one foot and juggled three colored balls whenever a coin was dropped into the base. Every waking moment she was begging for pennies. But that night, after the lights went out, she began, “You should talk to Ranger about—”

“The picture is done,” I said. “As far as we're concerned.”

“No, it's not,” she said eagerly. “You see, we've got this idea—” I cut her off again, with a well-aimed pillow this time, and heard no more from her that night.

On Thursday afternoon, I returned from the library to a house oppressively silent, except for the ticking of the alpine cuckoo clock in the entrance hall. A huge vase of yellow roses on the side table grabbed my attention. Unfurled in Byzantine splendor, they splashed gaudy dabs of color all over that dark corner of the room. As I came closer, I noticed the card stuck under the vase. I wriggled it out and read the simple message:
To Matilda: Thinking of you. Hope all ends well,
Charlie
.

Very thoughtful, harmless, and sweet, which can't explain the absolute savagery with which I picked up the entire vase and dashed it to the floor.

That was horrible enough, but then something truly horrible happened.

A monster rose up from the floor in front of the big wing chair at the west end of the room. Trembling, it seemed to swell to half again its normal size. It was my father. “
Isobel
!
” he roared. “What in God's name—” He must have hurled himself to the floor at the sound of breaking glass, taking cover as though he'd heard a shell screaming overhead.

The shell was me. Days of suppressed fury had finally exploded, sparked by bright yellow roses.

Father recovered first, after a fashion. “I'm—I'm so sorry. Forgive me, Isobel. I shouldn't have…”

“
Don't
!
”

I saw him take a deep breath and clench his fingers as he tried to speak calmly. “Dear Isobel… What do you mean? Don't what?”

“Don't come near me. Don't call me ‘dear.'”

He took a step toward me, warily. “Please, Isobel. Get hold of yourself. I've changed, I know. I will take some getting used to. But we'll do this together, won't we? I know I can count on you, my smart, responsible—”

He took another step, and I lost all control.

“Don't touch me!” I backed away. “You didn't have to do it. You didn't have to go away and leave us, but you did it anyway, and now you're back all broken and things will never be the same—and none of it had to happen!”

All these accusations seemed to register on his face, as though I were punching him again and again. He took a deep breath. “All that may be true. But what will make it better?”

“Nothing. It can't be fixed, and I can't stand it! I hate all this”—waving wildly at the spilled flowers and china shards. “I
hate
it!” were my last words before bolting for my room. I could not bring myself to say
I hate you
, a small mercy. Because in that moment, I did—almost as much as I hated myself.

• • •

Unfortunately, the vase was rather valuable, a relic of the Chin Dynasty and a favorite of Aunt Buzzy's. She was inclined to go easy on me, given the strain we were all under, but Mother made me go out and cut a willow switch, then stand with my hands out while she rained blows upon them.

It was almost a relief, after weeks of half-truths and dodges, and about time for me to stand up and take punishment for something. It hurt like coals of fire, but I almost wished it could hurt more, in between Mother's short, tight statements: “Regarding Mr. Chaplin (
whap!
), I think you are behaving in a very (
whap!
) childish manner. He made a thoughtful gesture (
whap!
), which I accept in grateful spirit (
whap!
) and expect you to do the same (
whap, whap!
). Is that understood?”

It was, and it wasn't. Mr. Chaplin flickered like his image on the screen, barely real. The real problem was buried deep in my own family—what if Father's face now was his true face and all of our placid life in Seattle was just us pretending to be a happy family?

He kept out of sight for the rest of the day, pleading a peckish stomach at suppertime and declining the round of bridge Aunt Buzzy tried to set up afterward. My conscience was telling me to apologize, but I just couldn't.

• • •

The next morning at breakfast, the tension sputtered like a fuse.

Forks clinked on china plates and spoons rattled in coffee cups and conversation faltered like fledgling sparrows. Ranger got permission to take Sylvie to Griffith Park for the afternoon—
a likely story
, thought I. The glances they kept sending each other told me something was up, but I would never ask. Father mentioned an appointment with a doctor, and Titus Bell made a joke about doctors seeing doctors. Father attempted to play along, and I put both palms on the table to push my chair back.

“No, you may not be excused,” Mother said abruptly. She'd been staring darts at me all through breakfast. “Not before you apologize.”

“I'm very sorry about the vase,” I muttered, staring down at my hands where the welts she had laid on yesterday still showed. “I already—”

“That's not what I mean, and you know it.”

Father mumbled something, and she snapped back, “Why
isn't
this the time? It's a perfect time, as far as I'm concerned.”

Aunt Buzzy started to speak up and then thought better of it. Mr. Bell folded his napkin, took her hand, and escorted her from the room—leaving the battlefield clear, so to speak.

I stared across the table, our no-man's-land, fixing my gaze on the right sleeve of Father's jacket, pinned to the breast pocket with a tie clasp. The clasp was a little crooked because he hadn't yet mastered the trick of one-handed pinning. How would he manage a camera now? Drive his Model T? Do surgery?

“Isobel, I think it's high time you dropped this tragic heroine mien,” my mother said.

Father sighed. “Go easy on her, Matilda. We all need more time—”

“It's past time. She's indulging herself.” Mother picked up a piece of toast and began slapping on butter like a bricklayer. She plopped the toast on his plate, and he stared down at it as though it had magically leaped out of thin air.

Her words hurt. “I'm not indulging. I'm just…feeling. I can't help how I feel.”

“Of course you can't,” Father said. “They've been a lot of wild feelings ricocheting off the walls lately, but that's only to be—”

“Bobby, please stop acting the peacemaker. All that does is paper over problems that must be dealt with.”

“And you're a fine one to talk about indulgence!” I burst out. “What have you been doing the last few weeks, all chummy with Mack Sennett and silly Keystone comedies, and flirting with Mr. Chaplin. I saw you with him one day, strolling on Talmadge Avenue, so wrapped up in each other you didn't even notice me.”