A music room door opened, and a man came out, carrying an instrument case. From a distance, he almost looked like her father, just back from his business trip.
The woman in the dark coat waved at him. He waved back, his face aglow with pleasure at the sight of her.
It was Amanda’s father.
Amanda darted into the short hallway where the restrooms were. She couldn’t let her father see her there. She couldn’t let him know that she knew.
And she did know. The woman even had long blond hair and lipstick. So Steffi was right, right about everything. The separation wasn’t their mother’s fault; it was his fault. No wonder she had told him to go, to leave forever and never come back.
“Were you waiting long?” she heard her father ask.
“No, I’ve just been here a few minutes.” The woman’s voice was light and lilting. “How was your sax lesson?”
“Well, let’s just say it’s good I have a patient teacher.”
He laughed, and the woman laughed, too. It had been months since Amanda last heard her parents laugh together.
She didn’t hear what they said next, but she peeked back into the lobby as they were heading out the front door.
He stopped, and turned toward the woman, and cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her on the mouth.
Amanda turned away and gazed at the photo in front of her through a glassy film of tears. It was the thumbtack photograph. Every thumbtack in it was piercing right into her heart.
Amanda’s chest burned as she pedaled the last block home in the darkness. Out of breath from climbing so hard and fast uphill, she gasped for air, but the cold breeze stung her lungs. She parked her bike in the garage and made her way into the kitchen, where her mother was stirring something on the stove.
“Amanda? I was getting worried.”
Then her mother looked up and caught sight of her face. “What happened?”
Amanda couldn’t answer.
“Did you have a close call on your bike?”
It was easier just to nod.
“Oh, honey, what happened?” Her mother drew her into a hug.
“This one car—it didn’t have its lights on—and it came up so fast.”
“Are you sure you’re all right? Did you have your light on? And your helmet?”
Amanda nodded again.
“Did you find James?”
“Uh-huh. I told him I was sorry. I don’t think it helped very much.”
“I’m sure it did. You’re shivering. Go to your room and put on something warmer, and I’ll have supper on the table in fifteen minutes.”
Upstairs, Amanda threw on a sweater and scribbled a Polly diary entry as fast as she could write, the words pouring out of her in a torrent. She had never needed Polly more.
July 30,1861
Dear Diary,
I am so sad, dear Diary.
I am the saddest I have ever been in my life.
Have you ever had a terrible surprise? When something completely unexpected happened, and you had no idea what was coming until it was too late and it hit you smack in the face, like a cannonball blowing up right in front of you?
This is what happened to me.
I was still happy from seeing Mr. Lincoln and having him call me by name, even though he thought my name was Paul, not Polly. Seeing him be so kind to the slave girl, Susan, made me proud that he was my President. When he talked about this terrible war, it almost seemed worth fighting.
But I didn’t think it was worth Jeb’s arm. Was ending slavery worth someone’s arm? Maybe, if you were the person who was the slave. Maybe not, if you were the person who lost the arm.
Jeb wasn’t fighting to end slavery, anyway. He was fighting to keep slavery. Or at least for the South to have the right to decide whether or not to keep slavery. How could my own dear brother be so wrong about something so important? I wished he could have heard Mr. Lincoln speak about Susan. Maybe then he would understand.
“We’d best go now,” Mr. Porter said.
I climbed back into the wagon. Just then a long row of wagons pulled up to the hospital, filled with more wounded soldiers. I watched as some men began carrying the soldiers on their canvas stretchers. What if Jeb was there and I missed seeing him, after coming so far?
“Please, sir, can we wait?” I asked Mr. Porter.
“These are recently wounded men, Polly,” he told me. Sometimes he forgot to call me Paul. “Your brother isn’t going to be here with them. He was wounded over a week ago.”
“Maybe he went back to battle with one arm, and was wounded again, worse this time.” A one-armed man could still fire a gun, I thought. Or hand a gun to someone else to fire.
For some reason I knew I had to stay.
Mr. Porter sighed. “All right, Polly.”
I slid off the alfalfa and stood at the side of the wagon, watching as each stretcher passed by. It was like being in the hospital again, seeing men with no arms, no legs, no faces, covered with blood, some of them moaning, some of them screaming. It was so hard to keep looking, but I couldn’t not looh, either.
Another stretcher passed by, and my heart stopped.
It wasn’t jeb.
It was Thomas.
Thomas!
I hadn’t checked the papers for the lists of dead and wounded since the day I saw Jeb’s name. All I had thought of since then was finding Jeb. I had never even thought about Thomas.
“Thomas!”
The man—boy—on the stretcher turned toward me.
“Polly?”
Thomas, my bossy brother, my not-favorite brother, my brother who was fighting to free Susan and all the other slaves—Thomas looked at me. I knew he didn’t know what I was doing there. And how could I tell him that I had searched everywhere to find Jeb, never thinking of him at all?
I reached out and took his hand. He still had a hand, but I didn’t know how badly he was wounded. His face looked the same, though twisted with pain.
“Are you okay?” I asked him. It was a stupid question. Of course he wasn’t okay, or he wouldn’t be lying on a stretcher, being carried into an army hospital.
“No, Polly,” he said. I had forgotten how gentle his voice could be.
“Go along, little boy,” an army man told me. “This man is seriously wounded.”
“I’m his sister,” I said.
The man stared at my trousers and my cap.
“How seriously wounded?” I had to ask.
The army man let Thomas answer. “I don’t think I’m going to make it, Polly.”
“You have to make it!”
The army man pulled me away. “That’s not for us to decide, miss. That’s up to God.”
14
Still grieving for Polly, Amanda forced herself to go back to the kitchen.
“Steffi!” their mother called loudly.
Steffi appeared in the kitchen doorway. “What are we having?”
“Spaghetti. I know it’s not your favorite, but everyone’s going to eat it without complaining. Get Peanut her wet food.”
“Why can’t Amanda do it?”
“Amanda just got home. She had a narrow escape on her bike.”
“No kidding!” Steffi looked interested. “A car? How much did it miss you by?”
“Steffi!”
“Well, it didn’t hit her.” From the cupboard Steffi took out the small china saucer on which they put a heaping spoonful of wet food for Peanut every night. Usually at the clink of the dish, Peanut came running into the kitchen, meowing with eagerness for the first bite.
“Where’s Peanut?” Steffi asked.
“She’s around here somewhere.”
“Peanut! Dinner!”
Even the whir of the electric can opener, Peanut’s favorite sound in the whole world, didn’t produce her.
“Maybe she ate a mouse, and she’s full?” Steffi suggested.
Their mother turned off the burner under the spaghetti sauce. “She’s probably behind a door
somewhere. Girls, go look for her.”
Amanda followed Steffi out of the kitchen.
“You look upstairs, and I’ll look downstairs,” Steffi said.
Amanda walked through every bedroom and opened every closet door, but no little cat was trapped anywhere. Her father’s closet wasn’t empty anymore. Her mother had moved her summer clothes into it. Gone was the framed wedding picture that had once stood on their bureau. Amanda wondered if their mother had just put it away, or if she had ripped it into a thousand tiny pieces and dumped it in the trash.
“I hope she didn’t get outside,” their mother said when both girls returned to the kitchen. “I didn’t have the back door latched before, and the wind blew it open.”
Amanda’s heart clenched within her. Peanut never went outside. She wouldn’t know how dangerous cars were, or foxes, or hostile cats.
Without a word, Amanda and Steffi both headed out into the yard.
“Take your jackets, girls!” their mother called.
The door banged shut behind them.
Bad things always come in threes, Amanda had heard it said. The scene with Lance and James was the first bad thing; seeing her father at the Arts Center was the second bad thing; now, if Peanut was gone forever, that would be the third bad thing. She had visions of biking through the neighborhood, tacking up signs on every lamppost: LOST CAT. ORANGE WITH TAN STRIPES. VERY SOFT AND CUDDLY AND AFFECTIONATE. THE SWEETEST CAT IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.
Anxiously, Amanda peered into the darkness for a glimpse of light-colored fur, or a pair of glowing green eyes. Beth wouldn’t even be helping her put up the signs, because Beth would be too busy Irish dancing with Meghan. Maybe losing Beth was the first bad thing. Then she’d have three bad things already, and Peanut would be found.
“Do you think bad things come in threes?” she asked Steffi as they circled the yard, crouching to look under each bordering bush. A small animal darted across the grass, but it was a squirrel, not a cat.
“No, bad things just come. I guess people say they come in threes because after they get three bad things, they stop counting. By that point, it’s just all bad.”
It wasn’t a comforting answer.
“Peanut!” Amanda called. “Peanut!”
“I have an idea,” Steffi said. “I’ll run back inside and get a plate and spoon and tap against it.”
She took longer than Amanda expected.
“I brought two plates. When they clink against each other—that’s the sound she likes. Oh, and I called Ben to see if he had any other ideas. He said cats who aren’t used to going outside can get so frightened and overwhelmed that they just freeze. He said they usually don’t go very far.”
Several times Steffi clinked the plates and tapped the spoon against them. “Peanut! Wet food!”
If Peanut hadn’t gone very far, where was she? “Maybe she got hit by a car,” Amanda said dully.
Steffi gave her shoulder an angry poke. “Let’s look on the bright side, why don’t we? You have car accidents on the brain tonight.”
But Steffi led the way to the front of the house. Amanda could hardly bear to look at the road, for fear of seeing a small furry body lying there. When she did look, the pavement was bare under the circle of brightness from the street-lamp.
“What was your second bad thing?” Steffi asked. “Your almost bike accident, and what else?”
Amanda was surprised that Steffi had figured out why she had asked the question.
“I didn’t really have an almost accident.” She paused, to let Steffi know that what she had to say next was important. “I saw her.”
“Who?”
“Her.”
Steffi dropped down on the curb. Amanda sat beside her, their shoulders touching. Dead leaves had drifted against the concrete, where the wind had blown them.
“She was just like you said she would be.” Amanda picked up a leaf and crumbled it between her fingers. “Long blond hair. Lipstick. Everything.”
“Where did you see her? Are you sure it was really her?”
“I was at the Arts Center after school, and I saw him coming out of a sax lesson—”
“He doesn’t take sax lessons.”
“He does now. And she was there to meet him.”
“How old did she look?”
“I don’t know. Younger than Mom.”
“Was she pretty?”
“I guess so. In sort of a fancy way. Steffi …” Amanda could hardly get the words out. “He kissed her.”
“On the cheek? Or on the lips?”
Amanda didn’t even bother to reply.
“Did you say anything to Mom?”
“No! But—she knows, doesn’t she? I mean, that would explain why …”
“People usually know.” Amanda waited to see if Steffi would tell her about different movie stars and how they found out that their husbands or wives were involved with other movie stars. Maybe they read it in the fan magazines, just like everybody else. But all Steffi said was, “Mom knows.”
Amanda felt something brush against her leg and heard a piteous meow.
“Peanut!” She snatched the cat up and cuddled her. “Oh, Peanut Butter!”
Steffi reached over and petted Peanut’s head and stroked her small, quivering nose.
Peanut tried to wriggle out of Amanda’s arms, but Amanda held her close as the two girls silently went back inside to the welcoming warmth and light of the kitchen.
“There she is!” Their mother’s voice was full of relief; she must have been more worried about Peanut than she had let on. “Steffi, Ben called while you two were outside looking. He said to call him back as soon as you found her, even if it was late. Go ahead, call him now. The spaghetti might as well wait a little bit longer.”
This time Steffi didn’t take the phone upstairs; she stood by the stove, punching Ben’s number in by memory.
“Hi, Ben, it’s Steffi. We found her!” The story came pouring out, punctuated by pauses where Ben must have been saying, “Uh-huh,” or “That’s great.” Amanda couldn’t tell if Steffi was happier that Peanut was found or that she had an excuse for talking to Ben.
There was a longer pause on Steffi’s side of the conversation.
“Sure!” Steffi said. “Anytime.”
She mouthed to Amanda, “He wants to come by and see Peanut!”
“After your game on Saturday? That would be great. I’m planning to go.”
Steffi was beaming when she came to the table. Their mother set a filled plate of spaghetti in front of her.
“I love spaghetti!” Steffi said. She gazed down at her plate with a smile of rapturous appreciation. Amanda knew it wasn’t spaghetti that Steffi was so thrilled about.
“Steffi,” their mother said in a low, serious voice.
“What?” Steffi already had her mouth full.
“Ben is in high school, honey.”
Steffi gulped down her spaghetti. “I know that. I’m the one who told you he was in high school.”
“It’s just that … maybe Ben is being nice, taking such an interest in Peanut and how she’s adjusting, worrying with us when we thought she was lost.”
“What’s wrong with being nice?” Now Steffi’s eyes were glittering with suspicious anger.
“There’s nothing wrong with being nice. I just don’t want you to read more into this than is there.”
“So you don’t think Ben could really like me. You don’t think your own daughter is likable enough that a boy could want to call her on the phone and want her to come to his soccer game.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s what you meant, though, isn’t it? ‘Don’t read more into this than is there.’ Just because you’re not nice, you think it’s odd when anybody’s nice.”
“Steffi! I can’t let you talk to me like this.”
But Amanda knew that once Steffi started, she was impossible to stop.
“You think nobody would want to go out with me because
you’re not likable enough that Dad would want to stay with you.”
Steffi herself seemed to realize that she had gone too far. She shot an anguished glance at Amanda.
“Your father and I have our own reasons for separating,” their mother said in a frighteningly quiet voice, “and I don’t intend to discuss them with you. Steffi, I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all. Am I such a terrible mother because I don’t want you to get hurt?”
She was starting to cry now, and Steffi was crying, too.
“No,” Steffi said between gulping sobs. “You’re not a terrible mother. I shouldn’t have said those things. I shouldn’t have said them.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” their mother said again.
“But maybe I won’t get hurt. And maybe it’s worth it, getting hurt. Maybe getting hurt once in a while isn’t the end of the world.”
Their mother reached for a tissue, blew her nose, and then passed the tissue box to Steffi. She forced a shaky smile, and Steffi returned it.
Amanda hadn’t finished her spaghetti, but she wasn’t hungry anymore. She patted her lap, and Peanut jumped onto it, kneaded her sweatshirt a few times with sharp little claws, and then settled down against her chest and started to purr.
Amanda knew that Steffi was right. If Peanut had been lost forever, it would have broken her heart, but she would still have been glad to have had Peanut in her life.
And Peanut had been found. Amanda stroked the soft, soft fur on Peanut’s neck, and Peanut kept on purring.
July 30,1861
Dear Diary,
I told Mr. Porter I had to stay and wait to see what happened to Thomas.
“Well, Polly,” he said, “do you reckon it’s time to send a telegram to your folks to let them know what’s been goin’ on? I don’t want to leave you here all alone, but I have crops to tend and a family of my own. Do you have any kin you can stay with here in the city?”
I knew he was right. “My Aunt Sally and Uncle William.”
“I’ll take you there, and they can take care of sending a telegram for you.”
I gave him their address and climbed back into the wagon and settled into Mr. Porter’s alfalfa for the last time. He had been so good to me. A complete stranger going from hospital to hospital with a scared, lonely girl dressed as a boy who was searching for one wounded brother and ended up finding two.
The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish Page 11
