“Hi,” I said back. “What are you doing?” I asked, which was really dumb of me because I could see he was reading a book.
He held up the book. “I bet you haven’t read this one yet,” he said.
I went closer to look. The book was Cue for Treason. I shook my head.
“You’ll like it. You can have it when I’m done. And you can take it back to the bookmobile.”
So I girded up my loins again, and I sat down beside him. “Why is it good?” I asked.
“It’s about this boy and this girl and they live in the time of Queen Elizabeth the first and they work in a traveling theater company. It’s really exciting.”
You see? This is why I love David! When we get married, we can talk about books all the time.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” he said.
I was a little surprised he knew. “Thank you,” I said.
“I heard you might move.”
“Who told you that?”
“My mom heard it from someone. Do you? Have to move?”
“Maybe. I think so. But not far away. My mom says I can still go to Green Meadows.”
David looked at his shoes. Then he said, “I was hoping you wouldn’t have to move away. Because … well, there’s no one else to talk to about books.”
I was shocked! And the words tumbled out. “Oh! Oh, I know! I love you … ” I heard the words I had said and was mortified! “I mean … what I meant was … I love books and you … you’re good at it.”
David smiled at me.
And I smiled back.
Bold as brass.
Then he said he had to go home, and I said I did, too, and he said he’d bring the book over when he was done but I said I was going to Cassandra Jovanovich’s cottage and then he said – now I knew he loved me! – he said, “Here. Take the book with you. I’ll finish it when you get back.”
So I took the book and I suddenly had a brainstorm and I gave him my chocolate bar.
Chapter 22
On Saturday morning we left for the Fergus cottage.
It was a long drive and Cassandra and I sat in the back of the car with suitcases and bags of food and pillows. We tried to pretend Mr. Fergus was our chauffeur and Mrs. Fergus our ladies’ maid, but they didn’t want to play along and told us to be quiet. And they wouldn’t put CHUM on the radio either, so we listened to boring old stuff all the way until the radio went static. Then we just looked out the window and watched for cows and horses.
When we were almost there, I saw a sign on the road that read “You are entering the Near North.” It gave me a thrill, and I wondered about it for the rest of the way. It was like we were crossing over into a new world, but not one with a border you could see. It was just a … a mood.
And then we were there. I had never been to a cottage before. Neither had Cassandra. I had seen pictures in magazines, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. I was wrong. They don’t take pictures of cottages that look like the Fergus cottage, let me tell you! It had a name, “Bit O’ Heaven,” but it sure didn’t look like any kind of heaven our minister talks about. It was made all hodgepodge of different kinds of things and it had a screen door that never shut. There was a pump for water in the kitchen sink and a big bump in the living room linoleum where the cottage was sitting on top of a rock. The room I shared with Cassandra was built right up against the hillside. You could put your hand outside the window one inch and touch rock. All in all, I’d have to say the cottage was dank. That’s a new word I learned. It means “disagreeably damp.” Except that Cassandra and I didn’t care. She’d never been to a cottage before, either. We kept pinching ourselves to prove we were really at a cottage, dank or not.
This cottage had been in the Fergus family for years and lots of different relatives used it at different times in the summer. The last relatives there left some food out, so lots of mice and ants were using the cottage, too. Mr. Fergus said some of the bad words my father used to say and so Mrs. Fergus told Cassandra and me to go out and play. Before we got to the cottage, she said we would have to help get settled, but when Mr. Fergus started saying bad words, she changed her mind.
We climbed down the stairs and ran down the path to the water. We kicked off our shoes and waded along the shore, looking for stones and maybe shells. A boat went by and someone waved. We didn’t even know him, but we waved anyway and it was fun and we got wet from the splash the boat made. We ran up to get on our bathing suits and we stayed in the water all afternoon until our fingers looked like prunes.
Later, we walked all around the cottage property and found the diving rock around the other side. Mr. Fergus said he’d teach us how to dive, but we could only go there if he was with us. The water was that deep.
That night, Mrs. Fergus made macaroni and cheese and let Cassandra and me eat it outside on the dock. Then Mr. Fergus made a fire and we had marshmallows and stayed up late. And when we finally went in, I didn’t care that our bed was lumpy and had a pee stain and that we both rolled to the middle. I lay there listening to the mosquitoes buzzing and the loon calling and was very happy my mother had let me come.
And when I lay there in the dark, I thought about my father. And it was funny, because I knew my father was close by. Not scary close by like a ghost, but somewhere near me. Maybe inside me. This isn’t coming out right. What I mean is, I was afraid when I moved to our apartment my father wouldn’t belong there. I’d start to forget about him. But here I was, way up north at the Fergus cottage and my father had never been here. He didn’t belong here. But I felt like my father was as close to me as could be. I don’t know why. Maybe I can ask Mrs. McMillan.
But without having to ask anybody, I was very sure that my father could see the moon that I could see and hear the loon that I could hear.
Chapter 23
Every day at the cottage was almost the same. We ate and swam and went fishing and learned how to dive off the diving rock. It was called the diving rock because the water was deep there and you wouldn’t get hurt diving down. Cassandra and I tried to touch the bottom, but we never did. I’d stretch out my toes, but just when I thought maybe, maybe I’d touch, the water would push me back up. And every day, Mrs. Fergus gave us some chores to do. We had to pump water and heat it up and do the dishes and sweep the floor.
One day when it was raining, I wanted to start reading Cue for Treason. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t read one bit of one book yet, but Mrs. Fergus told us to clean up our bedroom. We got the broom and went way under our bed. I don’t think anyone had cleaned under there for a long time. We pulled out piles and piles of dust, candy wrappers, a baby bottle, and a pair of someone’s dirty underpants that were dirty both sides like they didn’t have a change and had to wear them inside out.
We showed them to Mrs. Fergus and Mr. Fergus said, “Those are quite the racing stripes!”
Then Mrs. Fergus hit him and said, “Ray! Not in front of the you-know-who!” (By which she meant Cassandra and me.) Then Mr. Fergus pinched his nose and took the underpants from us and held them at arm’s length and marched outside.
Cassandra and I finally figured out what racing stripes were and after we got over the ewie-ness of it, we laughed like a couple of hyenas.
That’s what Mrs. Fergus said. “Really, girls. You sound like a couple of hyenas. Try to behave like young ladies!”
“You sound just like my mother,” I told Mrs. Fergus.
Mrs. Fergus nodded. “Well, of course, Lee. In our day, we knew what was what.”
“See? My mother says that all the time! What does we knew what was what mean?” I asked. “And what is what? I mean, what is what?” I just couldn’t get my question to come out right.
“That’s enough, Lee,” said Mrs. Fergus.
We just laughed even more and went back to our room. We didn’t want to find anything else after the underpants, I can tell you, but we did. On our next sweep, we pulled out a book. It was yellowed and the cover was crumpled and lots of pa
ge corners were folded down. Cassandra Jovanovich straightened out the cover and showed it to me.
It was what my mother calls dirty. And I don’t mean from dust under the bed. It showed a lady with a dress that showed a lot of her chest and a man was touching her there and she was smiling. I was pretty sure my mother would find the strength to wallop my beee-hind if she could see me now.
And then, I suddenly thought of Kathy.
Cassandra and I looked at each other. And then Cassandra put a chair in front of our door and wiped the dust off of the book. I sat on the bed and Cassandra sat in the chair and read in a loud whisper.
The people said lots of stupid things to each other about love. But then Cassandra read a page where the corner was folded down. The man and lady were naked in a swimming pool and he kept talking about her breasts. Big buttery breasts, he said, and they bobbed up on top of the water. Then Mrs. Fergus knocked on our door and wanted to know what we were whispering about. Cassandra shoved the book under the mattress and said we were reading. It was the truth, but it was a lie, too.
By then the rain had stopped and we put on our bathing suits. Mrs. Fergus came down with us, but then said she was too hot to stay out and went up to lie down. But soon she came marching back waving something in the air. It was our book. She said that Mr. Fergus was sleeping in their bed so she went to lie down on our bed and found this. And when she said THIS, it was in capital letters, and she waved the book in the air.
“Well?” she demanded.
I was going to ask how she found it because it was shoved way under the mattress and it didn’t even make a bump and I didn’t think Mrs. Fergus was like the princess and the pea and could feel things under the mattress to prove she was fancy. So I think she was snooping on purpose. But before I could say anything, Cassandra said, “What is it?”
And Mrs. Fergus said, “I beg your pardon?” and sounded just like my mother when I know I’m going to get it.
Cassandra shoved her hair over her face and said again, “What is it?” and reached out to take the book. Mrs. Fergus snatched her arm back and held the book up and behind her head like she was going to swat a mosquito.
“Are you telling me you’ve never seen this book?” she asked.
“I can’t even see it now,” Cassandra answered.
Mrs. Fergus looked back and forth at both of us. Then she put her arm down behind her back.
“This is a piece of filth,” she said. Then again, “FILTH!” in capital letters. “It’s going in the fire.” She marched off and Cassandra and I swam out to the raft.
“She snooped,” I said.
“All adults snoop,” said Cassandra. “They pretend they’re doing it to help you, but they just want to catch you doing something wrong.”
I thought about this and nodded. It had never occurred to me before that my mother snooped. But suddenly, I knew how she knew I loved David. She had looked in my underwear drawer and found the letter I wrote him, but never sent to him. And even though this happened way back last year, I felt suddenly angry as if it just happened now. I was planning out a better hiding place when I wondered about something else.
“Why is it filth?” I asked. “Lots of people touch each other and get married and have babies. Why does she say FILTH like that?”
“Because the people in this book aren’t married.”
And then I suddenly had a brainstorm. So-called Mrs. Harris! And I knew! The mothers always said “so-called Mrs. Harris.” They meant she wasn’t a “Mrs.” They meant she wasn’t married. I felt a wonderful sense of satisfaction. I had just solved one of those perplexing adult puzzles.
Cassandra was still talking. “Or maybe Doris is mad because Ray won’t touch her like that and that’s why they don’t have any babies,” she said.
And then we both thought about Mr. and Mrs. Fergus touching and saying dirty things like in the book and we laughed like a couple of hyenas until we hiccupped.
“I wonder what it would be like to have big buttery breasts?” Cassandra asked.
I looked down at my chest and I wondered too.
Chapter 24
The people at the cottage next door came over one night and asked us to join them later for a sauna. A sauna is what the wooden shack is that they have right down on the water. They heat it up really hot and sit in it and sweat. Then when they’re so hot they can’t stand it, they run outside and jump in the lake naked.
Mr. and Mrs. Pedersson were very nice. She made lots of desserts and called Cassandra and me over to eat them. Mrs. Fergus bought store-bought desserts because she said she was at the cottage and didn’t want to work. But Mrs. Pedersson said it wasn’t work to bake desserts, and so we got to eat all kinds of different things I’d never had before. I especially liked the little buns she made with cardamom seed. Mrs. Fergus said she never used cardamom seed and it must be something foreigners use.
One day they let us see inside their sauna. It was all wood and the wood was almost white and very shiny. There was a big bucket they filled with water and then poured it on the burner when the burner got very hot. They had something called a loofah that they used to rub their skin before they got all sweaty. They said it rubbed all the old skin off and then your skin was soft as a baby’s bum. Everything smelled nice, like you were in the middle of a wet forest.
Mr. Pedersson said it was very healthy to take a sauna. He said it got poisons out of your body. He said it made you relax and then it made you sleep very deeply.
Mrs. Fergus said that was all hogwash. She said there were no poisons in her body and how she slept was her own business. But I liked listening to the Pederssons talk about the sauna. It reminded me of all the things I had learned in school in social studies about other lands and people. And when they showed us pictures of where they grew up, it was different from the pictures that were in our books at school. Maybe I will go to Sweden one day when I’m older.
There were only a couple of days of our week left when the Pederssons asked us over to the sauna. Mr. Fergus said maybe they would be over later, but Mrs. Fergus looked like a mouse had run up her leg and her mouth puckered up and she said “Certainly not.” Then when the neighbors were gone, she yelled at Mr. Fergus and said he’d had too much beer and sitting around naked was disgusting.
“But they don’t sit around naked,” I told her. “Mr. Pedersson says they wrap themselves in towels while they sit in the sauna and then they drop them right when they go in the water. And it’s at night so nobody sees you.”
Mrs. Fergus looked at me like I was a bug. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion, Miss Mets,” she said. And her voice sounded all frozen.
It was a warning, I could tell, but Cassandra ignored it. “It sounds like fun being naked underwater,” she said.
Mrs. Fergus banged a spoon down on the counter. “That’s enough!” she said. “I’m sure with your background it would seem like fun. Any more of this talk and Lee will be sent home and you will be packed off now, instead of in two weeks. I won’t have it, do you hear me?”
Cassandra’s eyes were flashing, but she didn’t say anything.
“Do you hear me?” Mrs. Fergus said again.
“Yes.” She spit out the word.
“And furthermore, I don’t want you girls spending any more time with those Pederssons. Is that clear?”
We both nodded.
Then Mrs. Fergus marched into her bedroom and slammed the door. Cassandra started to cry and ran outside. I ran after her, but I didn’t see where she had gone. I called her name but she didn’t answer.
I went inside and Mr. Fergus was asleep on the couch, so I cleaned up the supper dishes. Cassandra Jovanovich came back, but she wouldn’t talk to me. We went to bed still not talking and I lay there for a long time wide awake. I was pretty sure there were poisons in my body.
Chapter 25
It didn’t rain at all the next two days and we spent every minute outside. Mrs. Fergus seemed to forget about yelling at all of us and jus
t acted like the whole thing had never happened. She even made a cake from scratch. But I knew Cassandra hadn’t forgotten.
“Whenever I do something someone doesn’t like, they threaten to pack me off,” she said. “See Leanna? That’s what happens if you’re not ‘owned.’ No one has to care about you long term. They just … just borrow you – like a book – for a while.”
Cassandra had become all sulky and kept her hair over her face, so I couldn’t get a good look at her, and I knew she was thinking about packing and leaving the cottage and then packing and leaving the Fergus’s. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be having too much fun anymore.
And then before we knew it, it was the last day at the cottage. Cassandra was all jumpy and prickly, like a thunderstorm was coming. Well, it was more like Cassandra was a thunderstorm, just waiting to start. And after Mr. and Mrs. Fergus took the little boat and went to visit the Smiths up the lake for the evening, Cassandra let out all the thunder and lightning that was inside her.
This is what happened.
I started talking about Anne of Green Gables again and told her she had to read it.
“I know what I said about orphans and that it’s not as fun as I thought, but you know Anne’s my favorite book and you still haven’t read it. And now that I’m half an orphan, I like Anne even more. So please, please, please – ”
Cassandra Jovanovich jumped out of the chair and screamed, “You and your stupid orphans! I hate your stupid orphans! And I hate you for being so stupid!” She was crying and screaming and waving her arms up and down. “I’m not an orphan! Do you hear me? I’m not an orphan. I never was! I just pretend because my mother didn’t … DOES not want me! Present tense. Everybody’s embarrassed because I’m not wanted by my mother! She wasn’t married and nobody knows who my father is. She wouldn’t ever tell. Rita got pregnant when she was fifteen. Fifteen! And here I am. And nobody wants to talk about it. I’m not allowed to tell anyone. And she just ran away. Nobody knows where she is. Everybody takes me for a while and then passes me along. I don’t belong to anybody! I’m not an orphan! I’m just not wanted! You don’t want to be owned. Well I am owned and my owner doesn’t want me!”
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