From Willa, With Love

by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

  “And watch the toddlers dance,” Caroline says, laughing.

  “How come just the little kids dance there?” I say.

  “Good question,” Chandler says. “I think we ought to bump those babies off the dance floor and show them how it’s done.”

  We laugh.

  “When are you going to have another dance party in the barn at your inn?” Caroline asks. “Those were so much fun. It’s been a while.”

  “Yeah, they were great,” Chandler says.

  “I don’t know,” I say, “maybe sometime this summer.”

  “Anyway … you should come with us Friday,” Caroline says. “It’ll be good.”

  “Maybe,” I say, thinking of the new clothes I’m holding in the Lammers’ bag. The new outfit I bought for the concert.

  Back at the inn, I get out the tray of letters to change the message on the Bramble Board out front. I take the quote I wrote earlier on a slip of paper from my pocket.

  Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.

  —Martin Luther King

  I arrange the letters, then step back to read it. I smile. Wait until Mum sees this when she drives back home into town this weekend.

  And What can I do? I think to myself again.

  Books. I want to do something with books. But what?

  JFK calls me after dinner. “How’s my girl?” he says.

  I smile. “Fine, but I miss you.”

  “Miss you more,” he says.

  “Really?” I say.

  “I sent you that song I wrote for you,” he says.

  “You’re such a good boyfriend,” I say. “I can’t wait to hear it!”

  “I sent it regular mail,” he says. “You should get it this weekend.”

  I look in the mirror. I touch the locket at my neck. “I love you,” I say.

  “Love you, too,” he says. “Hey, and so what’s with the mermaid? Did you ever see her?”

  It was just before JFK left for Florida that the little tourist girl was insisting she saw a mermaid. JFK, Will, and I were all there together that day on the beach. “No,” I say. “I think she swam off. Warmer water, probably, maybe Jamaica.”

  JFK laughs. “What are you doing for fun? Gotta put those books aside sometimes, you know, give those pretty blue eyes a rest.”

  My stomach tumbles. I feel confused. I’m going to a concert Friday. Jess invited me. “Nothing much.

  Mariel’s in New York. Ruby and Tina are off stalking lifeguards up and down the Cape.”

  JFK laughs. “Tina and Ruby. They never change, do they?”

  “No, they just get Tina-er and Ruby-er.” I think briefly how Ruby used to have a crush on JFK. How she staged this fake contest so that JFK would win Super Bowl tickets to accompany the Sivlers to Florida.

  “I heard Luke and Jess are playing at Poppy Marketplace Friday night,” JFK says.

  My heart beats faster. “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, Luke posted it yesterday. You should go.”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Our whole class should go support them,” JFK says. “They’re doing it for charity.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I say. “I’ll think about it. What about you? What are you doing for fun?”

  “Running after fly balls, hauling sweaty towels, lugging water jugs. My grandparents take me to dinner at their club every night. The food is awesome but it’s so lame there.”

  “Is that Lorna Doone girl still around?”

  JFK laughs. “Her last name isn’t Doone, it’s Duncan.”

  “Whatever,” I say.

  “Yeah, I see her every day at the club. We’re the only two people under seventy in the whole place.”

  My girlfriend radar beep, beep, beeps. “What do you mean you see her every day?”

  “Our grandparents’ favorite tables are right next to each other in the members’ dining room. After dinner, Lorna and I hang out in the game room, play pool, or shoot darts until our grandparents finish their afterdinner drinks.”

  “Oh,” I say, feeling queasy. I wait for JFK to say There’s nothing to worry about, Willa. We’re just passing the time together. Besides she’s ugly and …

  “Oh, sorry, Willa,” he says. “Gotta go. Gram’s calling me. It’s surf and turf night at the club. She doesn’t want to be late.”

  When we hang up I am a sea storm of emotions. I don’t know whether I’m mostly sad or missing him or mad or jealous or guilty or all of these feelings and more.

  Lying on my bed I think about JKF saying how he sits at the table right next to Lorna every night and how they hang out in the game room, the only teenagers in the place, shooting darts and playing pool. I picture Lorna as a gorgeous Taylor Swift–Beyoncé girl leaning across the pool table (Watch this, Joey) to make her next shot.

  And then my jealousy turns to anger. JFK doesn’t have to hang out with a beautiful girl every night. He could tell his grandparents he’d rather take a taxi home. What sort of fool does he think I am? I jump up and open the shopping bag from Lammers’. I try on my new skirt and tank with my pink sneakers. I put on a white hoodie. That looks good. I brush my hair. It’s not mermaid length like Tina’s and Ruby’s but it’s getting long. I put on silver hoop earrings. I take off the locket.

  At my desk I open my journal and write. The life of Willa Havisham is taking a surprising new direction.

  CHAPTER 10

  Maybe You Could Adopt Him!

  Children’s books aren’t textbooks. Their primary purpose isn’t supposed to be “Pick this up and it will teach you this.” It’s not how literature should be. You probably do learn something from every book you pick up, but it might be simply how to laugh.

  — J. K. Rowling

  It’s Thursday, and as Saturday approaches, and the big braviar wedding Mother is counting on to rekindle her reputation for work-of-art weddings, the tension in the kitchen between Stella and Rosie is thick as pea-soup Cape fog.

  “So far I have eighty-nine different miniature cakes,” Rosie says to my mother, who is sitting at the table reviewing the menu for the wedding. “I really do need to head up to Hyde Park today. My friend Tara is letting me borrow her car and she’s going to watch Lilly for me. I’ll be back Friday night. I think maybe I can just alter the decorative frosting on the last eleven a bit, so they look unique, but …”

  “Absolutely not,” Mother says as if Rosie suggested we spike the cakes with arsenic. “Star Bennigan has requested one hundred different cakes and we will not let her down on the most important day of her life. We will not ruin this girl’s special day.”

  I’m at the side counter, slathering butter and minced garlic on the bread to be baked later. I pause with the knife in midair. I bite my tongue. I think that is ridiculous. How could having one hundred different cakes make or break someone’s wedding day? How silly. How shallow. This is the side of my mother I just don’t respect.

  Rosie bursts out in tears. “I’m sorry, Stella. I’m trying my best. I’ve got so much on my mind….”

  “Let it go, Mom, please,” I say.

  “That’s easy for you to say, Willa. You don’t have to pay the bills….”

  I turn and leave the kitchen so I don’t have to listen to her anymore and so I won’t say something I will later regret. When my mother leaves, I’ll go back and help Rosie finish those last eleven cakes, but right now I can’t stand the sight of my mother.

  Will is waiting for me outside to boat out to the Vineyard on the wild goose chase for our father. “Ready to go yet?” he says.

  “No, Will, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ve got to help Rosie invent eleven more one-of-a-kind original cakes before my mother chops her head off and dumps her in the chowder.”

  Will doesn’t laugh. He looks hurt. He shrugs his shoulders. “Please yourself.”

  “Wait, Will, I’m sorry. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Off he goes. I feel horrible.

  Sam is coming up the steps with a ro
lled-up mat under his arm, back from his new yoga class. His sister, Ruthie, who was here earlier this summer, inspired him to “make friends with the mat,” the yoga mat, that is, and he just registered for a class in Falmouth. Yoga fits Sam’s calm, poet-writer-gardener-cook personality perfectly. Sam’s already in touch with his “inner OOOOOmmmmm.” It’s my mother who could really use yoga’s purported calming effects.

  I give Sam a heads-up on what’s going on in the kitchen. Sam smiles. “You’ve got to love her for caring so much,” he says.

  “Who?” I say, although I know he’s talking about my mother.

  “Stella,” Sam says. “She didn’t want to concern you, but we’re having some cash flow problems; business is down. Stella wants to work harder to bring in more high-end weddings….”

  “Braviar weddings,” I say. “Uggh!”

  “Say again?” Sam says, confused.

  “Mom’s new word for bridezillas,” I say. “Never mind. She doesn’t have to be so hard on Rosie.”

  “I know, Willa. It’s just your mother’s way. She’s hard on everybody, especially herself.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I say, crossing my arms.

  “Want to walk with me?” Sam says. “I need to fill the feeders.”

  The bird feeders, Sam means. “Sure,” I say.

  As we walk, I think back to the BS days, the “Before Sam” days, about how my mother used to be so incredibly strict with me. She had a rule book as thick as Moby Dick, and that has to be the longest book ever written. Mom has relaxed and softened up a bit now that she’s married to Sam, but she still knows how to drive me crazy.

  “Are you still happy here?” I blurt out. “Running the inn?” My heart is beating faster. What if he says no?

  “Of course,” Sam says. “What makes you ask?” He scoops a green plastic funnel full of seeds and pours them into a tall clear column feeder with tiny holes just the right size for bird beaks, and silver ledges just the right size for birds’ claws to clamp on while they are nibbling.

  “No reason,” I say, shrugging my shoulders. I know Sam’s real loves are writing and teaching. He gave up his job teaching English at Bramble Academy to help Mom manage the inn. There would be way more money in that, my mother said. Renovating the inn with expensive designer everything was my mother’s idea; the only thing I recall Sam being excited about was creating the Labyrinth out back and restoring the flower gardens and vegetable gardens and adding bird feeders, none of which cost very much.

  It was Mom who went bonkers spending a fortune on top-of-the-line furniture and window treatments and expensive new china, new silver, new everything. No wonder we’re having money troubles.

  Sam doesn’t pry further. He lets me have my mental space. He knows I’ll say what’s on my mind when I am ready.

  “I couldn’t be happier,” Sam says. “Getting to spend all of this time with my two favorite people on the planet.”

  “Mom and me?”

  “Who else?” Sam says.

  “But what about your book, Sam … Dad?” For Father’s Day last month, I told Sam that I was ready to start calling him “Dad,” but the old familiar “Sam” still slips out.

  “The first time Mom and I had dinner with you, you told us you were working on a book, and I used to see you jotting down notes in that little black notebook you always carried around, but lately, I never hear you mention it.”

  “All in good time, Willa,” he says.

  Every once in a while I’ll pass by Sam’s sunflower-yellow painted office upstairs, the one with the passageway up to the widow’s walk, and see him at the old sea captain’s desk writing away. If he notices me, he covers up the tablet, which of course makes me even more curious.

  “That reminds me,” Sam says, “I was in a bookstore over in Brewster yesterday …”

  “A rival bookstore?” I say. “You better not let Nana get wind of that.”

  Sam laughs. “You’re right about that,” he says. “I went to Brewster to check out a chef who might be willing to make a move here and couldn’t resist the bookstore. I picked up a slim volume I think you will enjoy. It’s called The Golden Book on Writing. I’ll leave it outside your door.”

  “Thanks, Dad. That was thoughtful of you. What are you reading these days?”

  Sam tells me and we finish filling the feeders, then start back inside.

  “And what about the baby you and Mom were going to adopt?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Sam says with a laugh. “Who said anything about a baby? Yes, your mother and I were talking about possibly adopting, but we weren’t thinking about a baby. There are so many older children who have a much harder chance of ever getting placed in a home. If anything, we’d adopt a child closer to your age so you would have a companion.”

  “How about Will?” I blurt out. “Maybe you could adopt him!”

  Mrs. Noonan is passing by us. She says, “You tell him, honey.”

  Sam smiles. “Your chaise is all ready by the pond, Mrs. Noonan. I put a reserved sign on it for you.”

  “Oh, thank you, dear,” Mrs. Noonan says.

  “One step at a time, Willa,” Sam says. “One step at a time. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s your mom who runs the ship around here. For now, let’s see about helping Rosie with those last eleven cakes so she can get on the road. I saw there’s a patch of raspberries ready to pick. I bet Rosie can work magic with those.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Just Like a Family

  ’Tis the good reader that makes the good book;… in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear.

  — Ralph Waldo Emerson

  When the mail comes, there’s a letter from Mariel—a four-page long, handwritten letter—what a lovely thing, like a long lost art form.

  Mare is the only teenager I know in America who doesn’t have a cell phone.

  So far she has been to the Statue of Liberty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Guggenheim, the New York Public Library (“There are so many great inexpensive things to do here!”), and friends of her mother’s gave them free tickets to two off-Broadway plays and the musical Wicked (“It’s divine!”). She loves having this time with her mother, but she misses me and Bramble and especially her father and the twins, Nico and Sofia (they got evicted from their crummy motel-room home at the scummy rundown Oceanview Inn, and her dad and the twins are staying with relatives in Springfield, but her father says he had a call from a woman named Mrs. Barrett with an organization called Come Home Cape Cod, and they may be building a house for Mariel’s family!). Oh, how wonderful! Her father is still insisting that he’s going to throw “a proper quinceañera” for Mare when she returns and turns fifteen in August, although “he cannot possibly afford a quince and we both know how I hate to shop…. Love you and miss you, till soon, friend…. Mariel.”

  When I finish reading, I decide to reciprocate. A real letter deserves a real letter.

  I sit down at my desk, grab a yellow tablet, and start writing, filling Mare in on all that’s going on in my life. “Oh, how I wish you were here!”

  Later, when I hear Will come home, I go to his room, Captain Ahab. Sam and I named rooms after characters from famous books or authors we particularly like.

  I knock and wait.

  No answer.

  I think about how Captain Ahab was obsessed with finding that great white whale, sort of like how Will is obsessed with finding Billy Havisham.

  I knock again, louder this time.

  “I’m here,” Will says.

  I open the door.

  Will is looking out the window, his back to me. He doesn’t turn around.

  “Are you okay?” I say.

  He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move.

  I walk closer until I am standing next to him. I steal a side-glance at his face. There are tears rolling down his cheeks.

  “You were right,” Will s
ays. “It wasn’t him.” He makes a whimpering sound, then coughs it off, embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry, Will.” I reach out to touch his arm. He flinches.

  I wrap both arms around him and hug my brother. He doesn’t pull away. He shudders, makes a crying sound.

  His mother is dead, his father is dead, his grandparents are stone-cold heartless gargoyles who sent him off to boarding school so they wouldn’t have to deal with a real-life flesh and blood teenager. I am his only sister, even if I am only a half sister, and right now in this moment, I decide—half or whole, whatever—I’m going to be a better one.

  “Come out with me tomorrow night,” I say. “A bunch of my friends from school are going out for mini-golf and pizza over at this place called Poppy Marketplace in New Seabury. Our friends, Jess and Luke, have a band called the Buoy Boys and they’re playing a benefit concert. It’s an all-Beatles tribute.”

  Will smiles. “In my honor?”

  I laugh. “Yes, you got it. They’re doing the Beatles in honor of Willa’s British brother. See how famous you are?”

  “Don’t laugh,” he says. “When you come visit me at my grandparents’ castle one day you’ll see just what a gov’nor I am.”

  “That reminds me,” I say. “If Ruby and Tina are at the concert tomorrow night and they ask you about dating a duke’s daughter, just go along with it, okay?”

  “Not a problem,” Will says with a serious expression. “I’ve dated many a duke’s daughter, a few princesses, too.”

  I laugh.

  “My love life is no joking matter,” Will says. “You could write a book about it.”

  Sam knocks on the door. “Dinner, you two.”

  As we turn to leave, I notice a book on Will’s nightstand. I pick it up and read the title. The Fire-Eaters. “You like this David Almond guy, huh?”