The Book of One Hundred Truths (11 page)

“Turn it over,” I said.

On the other side was an ad for Port Harbor Realty. Someone had written
available August 15
across the picture of a squat yellow building, then circled it in pen.
Tired of yard work?
the ad asked.
Home maintenance a problem? We’ve got a new home for you in Port Harbor. Convenient, cozy, and comfortable: 21 Bay.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
sat on the edge of my bed in the dark and tried to think. I felt like someone had lifted the top of my head off and inserted an ugly brand-new idea into my brain.

Were Celia and Ellen selling the house? Was that why they’d cleaned out the attic? They were always talking about Granda’s doctor appointments, and about Nenna and Granda both getting old.
Convenient, cozy, and comfortable,
the clipping said. It was probably some kind of nursing home.

“This doesn’t make sense,” I said. “There’s no ‘for sale’ sign on the house.” I tried not to imagine my Nenna and Granda in a place full of old people in wheelchairs, a double line of them in a cafeteria, wearing matching hospital gowns and eating soup.

Jocelyn had folded the clipping and put it away, and now she was rearranging things on her dresser: the lamp, the purse, the clock, the brush and comb, the jewelry box.

Where had Liam and Austin found the clipping? Did they know what it meant? How were we supposed to visit Nenna and Granda when we came to Port Harbor if they didn’t have a house? Where would we stay?

Jocelyn nudged the jewelry box toward the lamp and wiped the clock on her nightgown.

I told her to get back into bed, and she actually listened to me. I tucked in her covers. The wooden floor creaked beneath my feet.

“Is everything all right up there?” It was Celia’s voice, coming from the landing.

I froze and waited.

A few minutes later the light went off downstairs. I lay down in bed and listened to the ocean and to the sound of my cousin scratching in her sleep.

Liam and Austin were already gone when I got up the next morning. I checked their bedroom, which was empty, and remembered what Liam had told me about the approach of a tidal wave—the feeling of something steadily disappearing under your feet.

Truth #42: Water freezes at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit.

Nenna was reading the paper at the kitchen counter, and Granda was watching TV. There was some kind of storm off the southern coast of Argentina. “Would you like some toast, Thea?” Nenna asked. “Or maybe some oatmeal?”

“Toast would be good.” I took the butter and the jam out of the refrigerator and got a plate from the shelf.

“The time has certainly gone fast, hasn’t it?” Nenna asked. “You two will both be leaving before I know it.”

Jocelyn was eating her breakfast. I watched her place a dozen yellow raisins in a perfect circle in her bowl of oatmeal.

“But we’ll be back,” I said. “Because you know I come back every summer.” I waited for Nenna’s reaction. “Since this is a great place to visit.”

“That’s very sweet, and I’m glad to hear it.” Nenna put down her paper. “I hope you’ll come back every year.”

“As long as you have room for me, I will.” I put two slices of bread in the toaster.

Nenna laughed. “How would I not have room for my oldest granddaughter? Or my youngest granddaughter, for that matter?”

We both looked at Jocelyn. She was stirring her oatmeal; the yellow raisins had been sucked into the mixture and had disappeared.

“I have some money for the two of you,” Nenna said, taking a twenty-dollar bill from her bathrobe pocket. “For a haircut, with something left over. You don’t mind, Thea?”

“No, that’s okay.” I studied the greenish portrait on the front of the bill; Andrew Jackson’s hair, I thought, and even his eyebrows could use a trim. The toaster dinged. I stuffed the twenty into my pocket. “Are you going to drive us there?” I asked.

“I wasn’t planning to.” Nenna put my toast on a plate. “It’s only five or six blocks. Do you think you can get there on your own?”

The trike was waiting in the garage. “Sure,” I said. “I guess we can do that.” I turned around and saw my Granda smile.

“Are you mad at me or something?” I asked when Jocelyn and I were on our way to get her hair cut. “You’ve been kind of quiet.”

We rode past the Breakers, where Liam and Austin spent most of their time, slapping sandwiches together behind the carryout window.

“I have a headache.” Jocelyn adjusted her bungee.

“Maybe a haircut will make it feel better.” I steered around a pothole and rode up onto the sidewalk. “This must be it,” I said, slowing down. “The Cut and Curl.”

The women who worked in the beauty shop swiveled toward us when the little bells on the door jingled. They were all wearing smocks printed with pink and yellow scissors.

“Well, take a look at our new customer,” said a woman at the desk. “That appears to me to be a home haircut.” Her mouth was bright red with lipstick and she was overweight, with upper arms the size of hams. She came out from behind the cash register and lifted Jocelyn’s chin with her fingers. “But I know she’ll look sweet when we’re finished with her, won’t she? What’s your name, honey?”

“Jocelyn.”

Truth #43: Gwen’s little sister’s name was Marie.

I expected Jocelyn to charm the women with her perfect politeness and her queen-among-the-peasants smile. But she picked at her glove.

“And who is this?” the ham-armed woman asked.

“My cousin Thea. She’s taking care of me right now.”

“Well, isn’t
that
nice!” I knew what she was thinking: what kind of job was
Cousin Thea
doing if poor little Jocelyn had rashy skin and a prisoner’s haircut?

“Scoot back in that chair, sweet pea.” The woman—her name tag said
Lou
—tied a plastic apron around Jocelyn’s neck and spritzed her hair with water.

I sat in a chair in the waiting area. The smell of hair dye and strawberry shampoo drifted up my nose. The table in front of me held a dozen different copies of
Spaniel.
One of the beauticians must have owned a show dog.

“There now! Doesn’t she look precious!” All the women in the shop oohed and aahed when the haircut was done. I stood up to see how things had worked out. Jocelyn’s hair
was
kind of cute. She had a fuzzy blond inch-long bubble around her head. It looked like a dandelion puff.

Lou refused to charge us. “Not a single red cent,” she said when I asked what we owed her. “You just take care of your little cousin. And I mean
good
care of her,” she added.

“Okay, thanks,” I mumbled. “I will.”

Truth #44: At Three Mile Creek there’s a bend in the stream near a willow tree, and past the bend there’s a sort of drainpipe that funnels the rain and snowmelt from a nearby suburb. Everyone knows about the pipe.

“Where are we going?” In the basket in front of me, Jocelyn opened her purse and put on a pair of pink sunglasses. She looked like a bug, I thought. Like a pink mosquito.

Truth #45: When my mother asked me where I’d been that afternoon back in February, I told her I’d been working on a research paper. “I was at the library,” I said. Then I cupped my hands over my mouth because I thought I was going to be sick.

“Thea?” Jocelyn asked.

“Oh,” I said. “We’re going to the boardwalk.”

We cruised past the post office and past DiCamillo’s Deep-Fried Donuts and the big old rooming houses (
ROOMS TO LET
) with the old women rocking in the shade of their second-floor porches.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to be riding around town,” Jocelyn said.

I looked at her back while I pedaled, at the bony vertebrae like a row of marbles at the top of her spine. “Nenna basically told us to,” I said. “She gave us money. We could get some pizza. And I thought we could stop by that realty office and ask for a map. Maybe we can find out where twenty-one Bay is.”

Jocelyn didn’t answer. We had reached the ramp. I could tell that my legs had gotten stronger; instead of getting off the trike to push, I kept pedaling. Two women stepped out of the way when I rang the bell.

It was a perfect beach day for midsummer: the sky was wide and flat and blue, dotted with parasailors who lifted off awkwardly from the water like enormous birds. Jocelyn and I rode past the house of mirrors, where a line of people clutching yellow tickets waited their turns to stumble toward each other’s reflections. We rode past a caricature artist—a man who turned ordinary-looking people into strange-looking creatures with eyebrows like forests and teeth the size of playing cards. We rode past the taffy-pulling machine, the thick loops of candy like smooth sweet yarn, and into the revolving shadow of the Ferris wheel.

“There it is,” I said. I stopped and tied up the trike.

“Port Harbor Realty.” I helped Jocelyn climb out of the basket (she was moving almost as slowly as Granda), then steered her through the human traffic on the boardwalk. The office was closed. A paper clock hanging in the window said,
WILL RETURN AFTER LUNCH AT
1
P.M
.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” I shaded my eyes and peered into the office through the glass. “What time is it now? I think it’s just after eleven-thirty. How long can it take them to eat lunch?”

Jocelyn ran a gloved finger along the window.

“I guess we’ll have to come back later,” I said. “Do you want something to eat?”

“No.”

“Should we play Skee-Ball?”

Jocelyn turned toward the booth where the turbaned man was painting rice. What was the point of having a grain of white rice with your name written on it? “I want to ask for something,” she said.

I noticed the wrinkle on her smooth pale forehead and realized that she wasn’t looking at the name-on-rice man but at Madam Carla, whose tiny booth was next to his. “Let’s not waste Nenna’s money,” I said. “Wouldn’t you rather get a piece of pizza? Or ride the bumper cars?”

“I’m not hungry.” The silver coins on Madam Carla’s sign were shivering their message:
KNOW YOUR FUTURE
. “I need to ask her something,” Jocelyn said.

It was strange, I thought: from a distance, Madam Carla had seemed unusual and mysterious. But once we were seated at her table, she looked like an ordinary tired person, with a narrow face and plain dark hair in a ponytail. She wore a long-sleeved black T-shirt that was tattered at the wrists. Without the rings on her fingers and the heavy makeup around her eyes, she would have looked like my math teacher, Mrs. Sullivan. I almost expected her to ask me how to multiply fractions.