Dicey's Song

by Cynthia Voigt

  “But you have to know,” Dicey said in a little voice.

  Gram shook her head. “Don’t know why I should. Nobody else ever has. Except maybe your grandfather, and he was always wrong.”

  Then Dicey smiled.

  “And even he wasn’t always wrong,” Gram muttered. She tightened her hand around Dicey’s for a minute before withdrawing it. She laughed, briefly. “You couldn’t even count on him to be wrong. I might have learned to enjoy him, if I’d tried. I thought I was trying, but maybe I wasn’t. But I’ve let go of that grief and that anger.”

  “Was that the right thing to do?” Dicey asked.

  “How should I know?” Gram answered. “It feels right, and that’s about all I have to go by. Or any of us have. And we’d better get ourselves ready to get off this machine,” she concluded.

  “But Gram.” Dicey stood beside Gram. Gram reached up to pull down their suitcase.

  “What I mean, girl, is you keep trying. One thing after another. Sometimes just one, sometimes all three, but you have to keep trying. I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”

  “I guess not,” Dicey said unhappily. Gram didn’t look any happier than Dicey felt. They stood in the little metal platform-room, where two cars joined, waiting for the train to slow down and then stop.

  Dicey tried to think about Gram. Gram had let go of everyone, everyone had gone. Then she and James and Maybeth and Sammy had appeared. They had made her reach out and hold on. Or she made herself.

  Not quite everyone had gone, Dicey realized, with a quick sideways glance at her grandmother’s profile. Because there was this one son, John. At least, he was still alive, probably. The idea grew in Dicey like a bubble, swelling out. John had gone away years ago, and — Gram had told Momma that somewhere there was a wedding announcement. If Dicey could find it. If Dicey could write to the address, and even if he wasn’t there somebody might forward it.

  Dicey could guess what Gram would say about that idea. But, she thought, maybe Gram counted John as one of her mistakes, and maybe Dicey could do something about that. The place to begin looking was the attic. But they had given their word not to go up there.

  Dicey chewed on her lip, thinking. There would be another way to start looking. She could think of it.

  The train slowed down. They buttoned up their coats against the wind as the conductor came to open the door. Gram carried the suitcase, Dicey carried the box. “We’ll get right into a cab, I have no idea when buses run,” Gram said when Dicey joined her on the platform. “There’s a lunch counter at the bus station,” Dicey remembered.

  But a small group of people hurtled down the platform toward them.

  “We came to meet you!”Sammy called.

  He threw himself at Dicey, and then burst away to throw himself at Gram. By that time, James and Maybeth came to stand close. Gram put down the suitcase and gave everyone a kiss on the cheek or forehead, depending on which was closest. She hugged each one of them tightly to her. James’s surprised eyes turned to Dicey, but she couldn’t begin to explain.

  Mr. Lingerle drifted up. “I hope you don’t mind?”

  “We’ll never fit all into your car,” Gram declared. But she was smiling.

  “What’s that?” Sammy asked, reaching out for the box. “Is it for me?”

  Dicey shook her head.

  “We’ll explain later,” Gram said. “No questions. We haven’t eaten,” she said.

  “I never rode on a plane,” Sammy said to Dicey. “Or a train either.”

  Dicey sighed. What was she supposed to say to that? “Why aren’t you in school?” she asked.

  “It’s Saturday,” Sammy said. “We had to get up really early.”

  “Everything go all right?” Gram asked Mr. Lingerle.

  “I think so,” he told her. “I may never be the same,” he added, with a little smile, “but that’s an improvement.”

  “You think so?” Gram asked. “Well, you’d know best.”

  “Mrs. Jackson asked if you would talk to her,” Maybeth said. She was walking between Dicey and Gram. James had taken the suitcase.

  Gram’s chin went up. “First thing,” she said to Maybeth. “Don’t worry.”

  “I think it’s for something good,” Maybeth told her.

  Dicey looked around at all of them, and a lump formed in her throat. They were all here, and Momma too. Her hand tightened around the box. She didn’t know if she was sad or glad. She couldn’t sort out the sadness from the gladness.

  Gram sat in the back seat, with Maybeth on her lap, because even Sammy had to admit he couldn’t sit still, even for the short drive to a McDonald’s. James was on one side of her, and Sammy on the other. Dicey sat in front.

  “What is the box for?” James asked Dicey. “I’ve been trying to think.”

  Gram’s eyes met Dicey’s. Dicey nodded her head, to say she thought it was all right to tell, but she didn’t think she could be the one to say it.

  “For your momma,” Gram announced.

  “But Momma’s dead,” Sammy protested.

  “You had her cremated?” James asked.

  “So she could come home with us,” Dicey told him. His face was stiff, but he nodded his head.

  “But it’s too small!” Sammy cried, and burst into tears.

  “Poor Momma,” Maybeth said.

  Gram pulled Sammy’s head onto her crowded shoulder and let him cry there.

  CHAPTER 12

  THEY BURIED MOMMA beneath the old paper mulberry tree at the front of the house. James and Sammy dug down into the earth at a place where two big roots forked apart. Gram, Dicey and Maybeth stood and watched. The boys took turns lifting shovelfuls of the dark, soft earth. All around, the ground was carpeted with yellow leaves. A cold wind blew at their backs, from the east. In the west, the sun was setting, behind long streamers of clouds that lay like bars along the line of its descent.

  Nobody said anything. Dicey could hear the wind soughing in the distant pines and creaking through the paper mulberry. She looked up into its bare branches.

  Clearly visible now were the thick wires that the leaves hid during the summer. The tree had four main trunks, growing out of one base, spreading apart as it grew taller. The clumsy wire ran like a fence between these branches, about fifteen yards up. If the wire weren’t there, Gram had told Dicey, the tree would spread out and split, broken apart by the weight of its own growth. Gram told Dicey that the first day Dicey ever came to the farm. “That tree is like families,” Gram had said, and Dicey, looking up now at its branches, wondered what, in that case, the wire was like.

  Up beyond the branches and over the roof of the house, the sky was a pale, remote blue, across which long clouds drifted.

  But on the ground, the sunlight still painted the bare trees and the dry grass with light. When she looked across to the west, she could see the splash of the sun’s colors, pink and red, and the brightness that burned behind the long clouds and made them glow around the edges. Dicey knew how the surface of the Bay would look under this early winter sunset, like cloth-of-gold.

  The last shovelful of dirt plopped onto the ground. James put the spade down. Gram took the wooden box out of Dicey’s cold hands and knelt to place it in the hole. Then she stood up.

  Dicey wondered if they should speak words or sing something. She looked at the faces of her family, trying to decide. Maybeth and Sammy stood shoulder to shoulder, with identical wide, hazel eyes, watching Gram. James, like Dicey, stood away. His eyes met Dicey’s, as if he, too, was wondering if they should speak or sing.

  But Gram, with her curly hair wild and her mouth stiff, bent over. She picked up a handful of dirt and dropped it back into the hole. It sounded almost like rain falling. James followed Gram’s example, then Sammy, Maybeth, and at last Dicey.

  It was Maybeth who took up the shovel to refill the hole. Dicey took the shovel from her when the job was about halfway done.

  Dicey patted the last shovelfuls of dirt with the back of
the spade. Then she picked up a few of the faded yellow mulberry leaves. She scattered them on top of the bare place, as if they were flowers. She stood there, in the cold shadowy wind, holding onto the shovel. The last light of the day flowed around them.

  “She’s really gone now,” James said.

  “You might say that,” Gram answered slowly. “Or,” she said, “you might say she’s come home now. Maybe it’s both. I don’t know.”

  James took the shovel from Dicey and walked back toward the barn to put it away.

  “I still love her,” Sammy said.

  “I should think so,” Gram answered him briskly.

  Maybeth moved over to stand beside Gram. She reached out to take her grandmother’s hand. Gram reached out for Sammy, resting her free hand on his shoulder. They went slowly around behind the house, following the path that led to the back door, and inside.

  Dicey stood alone and unmoving. But inside her head her own voice spoke clearly: “Gone and home.” Those were all the words to speak over Momma, all the songs to sing.

  Home and gone. It didn’t seem possible that both of those words could be true, but they were. Dicey shivered in the wind and went inside.

  She found the kitchen empty, but the sound of music from the piano drew her to the living room. James was poking at the fire with a long piece of kindling, stirring up the flames. Sammy lumbered into the room, staggering under an armload of logs. He and James put a couple onto the fire and piled the rest beside the hearth. The flames leaped up.

  Dicey went to stand behind Maybeth. The music came out under Maybeth’s fingers, strong and orderly, the notes mingling, the melodies winding together. It was that Bach again, Dicey saw. When Maybeth finished, she put her hands in her lap and turned around to look at Dicey. “I wanted to sing something, but I didn’t know what.”

  “I know,” Dicey said. “Where’s Gram?”

  “She went upstairs,” Sammy said. “She said to wait here. I heard her pulling down the stairs to the attic,” he announced. “James says it wasn’t but it was.”

  James didn’t look around to contradict this. He just shrugged his shoulders. James, Dicey thought, said it wasn’t because he hoped it was.

  They heard Gram’s footsteps coming down the stairs. When she entered the living room, she carried a pile of thick leather albums, a pile so tall she had to peer over the top to see where she was going. She put them down beside her usual chair.

  Gram had taken off her stockings and loafers and was wearing a pair of heavy socks on her feet. Her cheeks were streaked with dust.

  “I found these,” she said, wiping her hands on her skirt. “I thought you might be interested.”

  “Pictures!”cried Sammy, jumping up.

  “There’s some other stuff up there — toys and I don’t know what-all. You ought to take a look, some day when it’s sunny. It’s cold enough up there now to freeze off a mouse’s ears. You hear me?” Gram demanded, as if they were all in trouble.

  “I hear you,” James answered. Dicey smiled.

  “That’s settled then,” Gram said. “I thought you might like to look through these, while I get us some dinner. Won’t be much. I haven’t looked in the refrigerator.”

  “But Mr. Lingerle said he was going to get some pizza for us,” James protested. “He’s going to bring it by, in a little while.”

  “Why would he do a thing like that?” Gram asked.

  “Because we never had it,” Sammy said. “We told him and he was surprised. Did you ever?” he asked Gram.

  “Never wanted to. Who could want to eat something that looks so oozy?”

  “I could,” Sammy told her.

  “Because he’s our friend,” Maybeth answered Gram. Gram nodded.

  “It’s not oozy,” Dicey argued.

  Gram snorted.

  “It’s succulent,” James suggested.

  Gram snorted again.

  “And he’s going to have things on it,” Sammy told her.

  “Things on it?” Gram asked. “Things?” she repeated, as if the word squirmed in her mouth.

  Dicey giggled.

  “Pepperoni and sausages, he said, and mushrooms and onions,” James told her. He was trying not to smile. “Smothered in melted cheese. Succulent,” he said again, with satisfaction.

  “Oozy,” Gram repeated. “Oozy with things on it.”

  “Tell you what,” Dicey offered. “I’ll make you a couple of scrambled eggs, there must be eggs in the ice box. And a nice piece of toast.”

  Gram’s mouth twitched.

  “And there’ll be more pizza for me to eat!” Sammy cried, clapping his hands.

  At that, Gram laughed aloud. “Then let’s look at these pictures. Where shall we start?”

  “With the oldest,” James suggested.

  “With Momma,” Sammy said.

  “You choose,” Maybeth said.

  “The big brown one, second from the top,” Gram said. Sammy rushed over to get it. He joined his brother and sisters on the floor. Gram sat behind them. They crowded their heads together, to see better. James opened the album.

  The first photograph showed three children, dressed up for the picture. The girl was in the center, wearing a dress with a sailor top and a pleated skirt. Her yellow hair showed up pale in the black-and-white picture. She was a happy little girl, with round cheeks and a shy smile. On one side of her stood a boy who was wearing a suit. He looked about ten, and big for his age. He had short, light-colored hair, and his hands were held behind his back. His dark, angry eyes looked at the camera. On the other side of the girl was a boy younger than she was, dressed in a sailor suit that had short trousers. This boy was dark and slender, and he looked as if he had trouble standing still for the camera. His eyes had mischief in them.

  “Where’s Bullet?” Sammy asked.

  “There,” Dicey pointed to the little boy.

  “But he’s supposed to look like me,” Sammy protested. “And he looks more like James.”

  “There are other kinds of resemblances,” Gram said from behind them. “Like wanting to get his own way and not giving up, ever.”

  The children thought about this, studying the pictures. Dicey considered her Uncle John. She wasn’t sure, any more, about what she ought to do, if she ought to try to do anything, to find him. She wasn’t even sure about what she wanted to do. She let her eyes fall from the page and rested them on her hands, as if — she was a boat and dropping anchor to let the storm blow itself out. The confusion was like a windy storm. And then she smiled to herself, because she had a suspicion that the confusion wasn’t a storm that would blow itself out, it was going to be a permanent condition. Well, she guessed she could get used to it. She guessed she might even get to like it. She might as well try to like it, she thought, since it wasn’t going to go away. About Uncle John, she would wait and see — wait a week, a month, a year, and see what she thought then.

  It was Sammy who broke the silence and answered his grandmother’s remark: “Does that mean,” he asked solemnly, “that I’m going to get chickens?”

  Gram snorted.

  “Are they going to a party?” Maybeth asked. “Momma looks like she’s going to a party.”

  “Yes, they were,” Gram said. “Bullet — he didn’t want to go. He wanted to do some fishing or crabbing or anything that would prevent him from spending the afternoon indoors being polite. Now I notice, John doesn’t seem too happy about it either, does he? Did I ever tell you how Bullet didn’t go to that party?” she asked.

  Well, of course she hadn’t, and she knew that as well as they did.

  So Gram began the story.

 

 

 
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