“Right,” I say, sticking my chest forward, picturing the boring navy blue one-piece in my drawer from last year. I look at the models in the Hotties catalog. It would take a miracle between now and beach season for me to look like a hottie in one of those bikinis. Maybe I should do more push-ups, eat more broccoli or something.
“Here, Willa.” Tina hands me the catalog. “Take it. We get a bunch of these a month—Mom and I are Gold Club customers. Maybe you’ll see something you like. And don’t be afraid to show off your shape. You have such a cute little shape.”
The word “cute” grates on my ears. I’m sick of being cute. Nobody calls Tina cute. People call Tina gorgeous. She has a face like a movie star’s and long, silky blond white hair, like the angel wig I wore in the kindergarten Christmas pageant.
“Tina, wait till you hear this. I have really big news. Mom and Sam are expecting a baby”
“A little sister?” Tina claps her hands, all excited. “Ooooooooh, how cute!” She bops up and down on the bed. “A little sister? Oooh, I can’t wait. Tell Stella I’ll babysit anytime, all the time, for free. Oh, Willa, we’ll have such fun shopping for her, dressing her up, taking her out to lunch….” Tina leans forward, her big brown eyes sparkling, “Just think about all those tiny baby dresses, shoes, pocket-books … oh my gosh, we’ve got to get her tiny baby ears pierced … and take her to the spa for her first little mani-pedi … in pink, of course—”
“Whoa, Tina, wait. She’s not even born yet. And what if it’s a boy?”
“Hmmmmm.” Tina’s face darkens. “Well, that would rule out the mini mani-pedis….” Then she quickly lights up again. “But baby-boy clothes are fun! Aunt Amber loves buying stuff for her nephew. Little farmer jeans and baseball caps …” Tina stands up. “Anyway, I’m not worried,” she says, flipping her hair back, case closed. “I know it will be a girl.”
Tina looks at me. “But what about the big sister? Are you okay with this?”
“Well, it is a big shock. I couldn’t believe it at first. I had no idea they wanted a baby. I mean, they’re sort of old for it, aren’t they? And I’m in high school. I mean, it would have been nice to have somebody to play with when I was little, but …”
“Oh, Willa, come on. It will be so much fun.”
“I guess you’re right. I’m starting to like the idea a bit….”
Tina claps her hands. “Good. Now, can I be her godmother? I want to be the first to know when she’s born. Okay? The first.”
“Well, I can promise you fourth, maybe. Mom … Sam … me … then you. Deal?”
“Deal.”
We get a bowl of chips and some soda. I tell Tina about this morning on the Spit. About the strange girl on the edge of the jetty who dived off into the fog. “And here I thought she drowned. I was all worried, shouting to her, running to call the police, and then all of a sudden she surfaces like a seal and asks if I’m okay.”
“Wow,” Tina says, “and you didn’t recognize her?”
“No. At first I thought she looked familiar, but no, I’ve never seen her before.”
“That’s weird,” Tina says. “Who goes swimming alone that early in the morning? In April? On Cape Cod? Jamaica, maybe, Canciin, maybe, but Cape Cod, no way. That water’s freezing. She must be an Eskimo.”
“I don’t think she’s from around here.”
“Well, it’s way too early for tourists,” Tina says, “and it’s not a holiday weekend … wait, Willa, hold everything.” Tina’s mouth drops and her eyes go bug wide. “Maybe she’s a mermaid.”
“Tina.” I crack up laughing. “This isn’t a movie.”
“No, really, she could be.”
“Yeah, right. Listen, you mentioned your aunt Amber. How’s her business doing?” Tina’s aunt Amber owns a matchmaking company called the Perfect Ten. Aunt Amber says the secret to love is finding the person you have ten important things in common with—similar views on religion, politics, having a family….
That gave Tina the idea to make up a compatibility questionnaire for our Valentine’s dance. Questions like, what’s your favorite ice cream, sport, pizza topping? Tina insisted that everybody had to answer the questions. Normally, the boys would have bolted, but we had a hook. One of them would win a date with my friend Suzanna Jubilee Blazer, the southern-belle beauty-pageant-winning daughter of the Blazer Buick family I mentioned before.
Tina sent the completed questionnaires to Aunt Amber, who fed the information into her computer. The matching couples were announced at the dance. I never got to go to the dance after all the work of planning it because I broke my foot during a yodeling accident that morning. It’s a long story. Anyway, it all turned out perfectly in the end. JFK left the dance early and came to the inn. He threw a stone up at my bedroom window to get my attention.
When I saw him standing there so beautiful in his tux, I nearly fainted. I changed into my pink gown, spritzed on some perfume, and hobbled down the stairs. We danced in the barn, and he gave me the locket. It was the most romantic night of my life. Now we are officially a couple. We talk every day, go out to dinner and the movies….
But as I’m remembering that night he gave me the locket, I start getting angry again. Ruby Sivler has that effect on me. You see, just when JFK gave me the locket, and I was laughing and crying, so happy, he said, “Guess who my match was for that compatible couple thing?” I said, “I don’t know, who?” all the while screaming hopefully, “Me, me,” inside.
“It was you,” JFK said, “and another girl too.”
Ruby Sivler. I was sure of it. Ruby’s been after Joseph since seventh grade. I just knew she’d find a way to fudge the answers so she’d appear to be his perfect match. I started fuming inside, thinking how I’d get back at Ruby for cheating, when all of a sudden JFK said, “But the eleventh question broke the tie.” JFK and I were the real perfect match after all. Of course. And before I knew it, I kissed him. I kissed him. I kissed him first. And we slow-danced while cupid fluttered above us up in the rafters….
“Willa?” Tina says. “Earth to Willa.”
“Sorry. I was thinking about how Ruby fudged the compatibility test so she could get matched with Joseph at the dance. When is she going to stop being such a sneaky …”
Tina has a weird look on her face. The look she gets when she’s hiding something. “So,” Tina says, picking up the Hotties catalog. “What else should I order?”
“Tina?”
“What?”
“You’re hiding something.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Tina, stop it. Tell me. What?”
Tina’s face scrunches up like, Are you sure you want to know?
My heart is pounding. This can’t be good. “Tell me, Tina, what?”
“Okay.” Tina sits back down on the bed. “Now, don’t start getting all worried, I worry about you worrying so much, but there was this girl at the Valentine’s dance—”
“Who? What girl?”
“I don’t know,” Tina says. “She was wearing this glittery eye mask, you know, like they do at a costume ball, and everybody was wondering who she was. Then Dr. Swammy—oh, he looked handsome in his white tuxedo—”
“Stick to the story, Tina.”
“Okay, sorry So Swammy announced the Compatibly Cupid Dance and started naming the couples. He called out me and Jessie. Oh, I wish you could have seen how hot Jessie looked … okay, sorry, and then Swammy called, ‘Joseph Kennelly and Willa Havisham,’ and then, “Joseph Kennelly and Mariel …’ somebody or other.
“Everybody was like, ‘Mariel who?’ Some guy shouted, ‘Way to go, Joe, two for one.’ And then the girl with the mask in the green gown edged her way forward and stood right next to Joseph. ‘Is that Willa?’ Jessie asked me. And I’m like, ‘Duh, no, Willa’s home with a broken foot.’ And then I reminded Dr. Swammy about the tiebreaker, and he said,
‘Thank you, Tina,’ and he consulted the eleventh question tiebreaker list and announced, ‘Joseph Kennelly and Willa Havisham.’ And the girl in the mask turned and walked out of the room without saying a word. In fact, I don’t think I heard her say a word all night. It was really strange….”
“Tina, why didn’t you tell me?” I feel like I’m under water.
“Oh, Willa, you were so happy about the locket and kissing JFK and your private little prom in the barn that I didn’t want to spoil it for you. I knew you’d start worrying. You worry way too much, honey, and there’s no reason to. Joey Kennelly is obviously crazy about you….”
“Describe her to me, Tina. This Mariel.”
“Well, you couldn’t really see her face because of the mask. But her skin was dark and beautiful, and she had this amazing black, ringlety hair….”
CHAPTER 4
My Town
Very ordinary town, if you ask me…. But our young people here seem to like it well enough.
—Our Town
My stomach is a tide pool swirling. Why can’t anything stay perfect for two seconds? On the way home from Tina’s, I stop at Mum’s. I always feel better when I talk to Mum.
Sulamina Mum is the minister of Bramble United Community, “a home for every heart.” You don’t have to be any certain religion to belong. Mum says we’re all connected back to the very same one and only god and that the only prayer we need is two words, “thank you.”
I love Mum. She’s like another mother to me. Except she’s my friend.
“Hello, Willa,” Mum calls, happy to see me. She’s sweeping her porch steps. “How’s it going?”
“Okay.”
Mum stops sweeping and looks at me, hard. She lowers herself down on the top step and pats the spot next to her. “Sit and spill, little sister, sit and spill.”
I tell Mum about the masked mystery girl, Mariel, and how she was a perfect match for JFK at the Dream dance and how I have this awful suspicion that she was the girl I saw swimming in the fog this morning and what does that all mean … and on top of that, all of a sudden after fourteen years my mother has decided to have a baby and how embarrassing, since I’m a freshman in high school and …
Mum listens without saying a word. I love that about Mum. She’s the best listener I know. When I finish, she takes a deep breath and lets it out slow. “Hmmmph. I agree. That sure is a lot to hold in your heart.”
“Well, what should I do?”
Mum takes another deep breath and lets it out more slowly than the last. “The way I see it, Willa, nothing much you can do, about either situation.”
We sit there quiet for a minute. The wind chimes tinkle softly. A bee buzzes by.
“So, what’s your new cause going to be?” Mum says.
“My new cause?”
“For Community Service. You’re still the leader, right?”
“Right.”
“And you’re done saving the library, right?”
“Right.” I see where this conversation is headed.
“And it’s only, what, April first, and you’ve got nearly three months left of school … hmmmph …” Mum raises her eyebrows, shrugs, and then stares off straight ahead.
I never knew a person who could say so much without saying a single word.
“Okay, okay I get it.” I laugh. “We should find another good cause, another way to make a difference, right?” I stand up and shake my head. “Anybody ever told you you’d make a good spiritual director, Mum, like say a minister or something?”
“Seems to me I’ve been told that once or twice in my lifetime.”
Mum’s front door opens, and cane first, foot second, Riley Truth steps out. Riley is Mum’s long-lost high school sweetheart. They just reconnected at Christmas. I sort of played cupid, since I was the one who kept encouraging Mum to try and track him down. And she did. And he came. And they’ve been happy as honey ever since. I just hope they won’t move back down South. I’d be so sad if Mum left Bramble. It would be like the sun leaving the—
“Join us for a walk, Willa?” Riley says. “I promised this pretty lady the first ice cream cone of the season. Although it’s sure stone colder up here than home, isn’t it, Sully?”
Mum laughs and holds out her hand. Riley helps her up. Mum wraps her big, black, pillowy arms around Riley and kisses him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, old man,” she says. “I’ll keep you warm.” Riley laughs and winks at me.
I giggle. “See you lovebirds later.”
There’s still some time before dinner, so I head to Sweet Bramble Books. It’s the book and candy shop my grandmother owns, my favorite place in Bramble. Give me a good book and a bag of candy and I’m a happy camper.
The sun has long since burned away the fog. Smiley-face pansies—purple, red, and yellow—nod at me from the window boxes along Main Street. Bramble is one of Cape Cod’s original sea-port villages. We still have some cobblestone streets. Most of the buildings are brick or white with clapboard shutters, some have plaques that read, NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES. Bramble United Community, we call it BUC, stands tall at one end of Main Street. Bramble Free Library, all covered with ivy, waves back from the other end. In between are clothing shops and restaurants; a two-screen movie theater; some tacky tourist shops; the Town Green, where we have concerts in the summer; Fancy’s Fish Market; Earl’s Hardware; the new Sea Spa, where Tina and Ruby get their beauty treatments; two art galleries; Wickstrom’s Jewelers, where JFK bought my heart locket; the post office; the bank; Hairs to You, where my hairdresser, Jo, designed my new one-side-curly, one-side-straight hair; Miller’s Pharmacy; Cohen’s Card Shop; Delilah’s Florist; Bloomin’ Jean’s Ice Cream Parlor; a two-for-one T-shirt store; and … ahhhhh … my favorite store in the world, Sweet Bramble Books.
The bells on the door jingle as I open it. Scamp runs, happy to greet me. “Good dog,” I say, giving him a hug. Scamp licks my face. Nana looks up from the candy counter.
“Willa, good, you’re just in time. Come have a chocolate-covered strawberry. The berries aren’t in season yet, but my produce supplier gave me a crate this morning.”
I bite into the warm milk-chocolate jacket. “Delicious, Nana.” Sweet strawberry juice dribbles down my chin.
“Remember when you used to love chocolate-covered cherries?” Nana says. “You always told me to leave the pits in the center for good luck.”
“Then I ate so many I got sick of them.”
Nana laughs. “That’s okay. Tastes change. Now you’re my chief saltwater taffy tester.”
Cape Cod is famous for its saltwater taffy, in every flavor you could wish for.
Over on the book side of the store Muffles meows and leaps down from her sunny window perch. When Gramp Tweed was alive, every Friday he would leave a new book for me on that window ledge. Muffles would sit on it until I came.
It was just this past December that Gramp died of a heart attack. We all miss him like crazy, Nana especially. She still has some really bad days. Though she is never the one to feel sorry for her-self, never wants us to worry about her. But I do. Nana has had heart trouble of her own. I keep reminding her to take a walk every day.
Muffles meows, rubs her gray coat against my leg, circles around me, and meows again. I pick her up and scratch under her neck the way Gramp did. I rub my nose against her tiny wet nose. I bet Muff misses Gramp too.
“Did you hear Mom and Sam’s news?” I ask.
“About the baby?” Nana says, looking at me over the bridge of her glasses.
I nod.
“Yes. Stella called me this morning.” Nana doesn’t sound pleased. She shakes her head and sighs. “That daughter of mine never ceases to surprise me. What is she thinking of? A baby at her age?”
“But Nana, Mom only just turned forty. Lots of women have—”
“I know, I know, but the older you are, the greater the risks of something going wrong and …”
“Nothing will go wrong,” I say. “My mother
is the healthiest person I know. She’s strictly vegetarian now, and she jogs five—”
“Jogs blogs,” Nana says. “Stella better slow down. And forget the vegetables. She better start eating some good American Angus beef, or she won’t be getting enough protein. And how is she going to run an inn and take care of an infant and…”
I walk away so Nana can rant and rave in peace. Let’s just say Nana and Mom don’t always see the world through the same pair of sunglasses.
There’s a new display of books on the main table. Our Town by Thornton Wilder. I pick up a copy and read the back jacket:
Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the small village of Grover’s Comers, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic.
Sounds good.
You are holding in your hands a great American play. Possibly the great American play.—Donald Margulies
It touches the soul like a miracle.—Albert Einstein
The Albert Einstein? Wow.
I grab two more chocolate-covered strawberries and plop down on the old tweed couch. Gramp and I used to sit here and “book-talk” every Friday afternoon after school. I open Our Town to act 1:
“This play is called ‘Our Town.’ …”
A long while later I’m still reading. There are chocolate smudges on the pages. I don’t want to put the book down.
“You should try out,” Nana says.
“Try what out?”
“The play. Our Town. Upper Cape Repertory is holding auditions—a week from next Friday, I think it is. My friend Gail George dropped off those flyers on the counter. That’s why I ordered in the books.”
“Mmmmm, maybe. Can I keep this copy?”
“Of course. Any book you ever want. Gramp always said you were his best customer.”
I give Nana a hug. She smells like lavender. “Are you doing okay, Nana?”
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