L
ily Mollahan’s bedroom was at the top of the stairs, the only one on the second floor. “The top of the house,” Gram always told her, “the top of the world.”

Lily sank back on her heels to look around at the blue walls and ceiling, and the gold stars pasted on here and there. Then she stretched up again, working with Poppy’s paint scraper, to peel off a star that was almost beyond her reach.

She was hot and sticky, the temperature at least ninety degrees, and Gram, who didn’t have one bit of patience, was calling from the kitchen for the tenth time.

“Your father will be home in just a few minutes, and the table isn’t set.”

As if Lily didn’t know it was dinnertime. Even Mrs. Curley halfway down 200th Street would be able to smell that cabbage cooking. “I thought you wanted me to finish packing,” Lily called back as loudly as she could, to drown out the radio in the kitchen.

She could hardly breathe in that bedroom, Lily thought, glancing around again; she could hardly walk. Things were pulled out all over the floor, waiting to be stuffed into her suitcase: books, papers with stories she had written, bathing suits, and heaps of clothes Gram had put on the bed.

She had even found an old silver mirror of her mother’s she had hidden away in back of the closet last winter. She was going to put it carefully on top of the suitcase in a nest of pajamas. It would be a miracle if she ever got that far, though, if everything got itself sorted out, and packed, and if they made it to the house in Rockaway before her birthday on Monday.

“Rockaway.” She said it aloud, loving the sound of it on her tongue. Rockaway and the ocean were waiting for her. The summer without homework . . . to write stories for herself and not Sister Eileen. The summer without a piano to practice every afternoon. Days and days to sneak into the movies with her best friend, Margaret.

Gram was at the bottom of the stairs now, the six o’clock news blaring from the radio behind her. War news, about D-Day. The invasion of France by the Allies a couple of weeks ago. That was all anybody talked about. No, not quite. Sister Eileen was much more interested in whether the class had rosaries and clean handkerchiefs in their pockets than in who was going to win the war.

Too bad about Sister Eileen. Lily would be out of St. Albans in four days, and Sister Eileen would still be stuck there in St. Pascal’s thinking about everyone’s clean handkerchiefs.

“Lily? You’re not packed yet?” Gram called. “I thought you’d finished an hour ago. And remember we don’t have that much room in the car.”

“Almost finished,” Lily said, and “almost started,” under her breath. And there, with another slide of the paint scraper, the star came off the wall in one piece, drifting into her outstretched palm. It was perfect, the points still as sharp as when they were new. The star she had scraped off last year had torn a little, and . . .

Lily turned it over. A trace of glue was still on the back. She put her mouth against it, a kiss. Her mother had been the last one to touch that spot when she had pasted it up for her years ago. She had still been Baby Elizabeth then . . . no one had called her Lily yet, and her mother had been alive. . . .“playing the piano with you on her lap,” Poppy had told her once, “dancing in the living room with you on her shoulder.” Lily wished she could remember it.

She could hear her father coming now, whistling along 200th Street, just off the Q3A bus, calling hello to Mrs. Bruns. Gram heard him too. “Dinner this minute, Lily,” she said, clumping back toward the kitchen.

Lily stood up and put the star in between two pages of her book,
Evangeline
. By this time, Poppy was in the kitchen; she could hear him talking to Gram. Lily raced down for a hug before Gram started to talk and talk, and no one else could get a word in edgewise.

Poppy was standing at the sink, his straw hat still on but pushed back, drinking a glass of water from the tin measuring cup. Lily loved to drink out of that too. It always made the water taste icy, even on the hottest day.

Her father turned. “Lily Billy,” he said, smiling at her. “All packed? Ready for Rockaway?”

“Ready,” she said.

Gram rolled her eyes in back of Poppy, but Lily didn’t even blink. She slid some plates around the table, the forks and the knives, while Poppy tossed his hat over the hook on the door and washed his hands.

“I have a surprise,” he said over his shoulder. “You won’t believe—”

“Mr. Egan is a Nazi spy,” Lily said at the same minute.

Poppy stopped to listen to what she was saying. He always did that. It was one of his nicest ways. He was biting his lip, though, almost as if he’d laugh.

Gram speared the boiled beef out of the pot and dripped it across the counter to the cutting board. “Mr. Egan is not a spy,” she said. “I’ve told you that about fourteen times. Mr. Egan is—”

“A spy,” Lily said, her eyes narrowed at Gram.

“Well,” said Poppy, “I’ll have to keep my eye on him while you and Gram are in Rockaway.”

“You’ll be with us on some weekends,” Lily said. “He could—”

“And what do you think poor Tom Egan is doing?” Gram asked, slicing into the meat.

“He’s building something in his garage,” Lily said.

“Certainly sounds suspicious,” said Poppy, grinning.

“It could be anything,” Lily said. “When he saw me looking in the window, he said I was into everyone’s business.”

“True,” said Gram.

“You have to be alert,” Poppy said.

Lily slid into her seat, smiling. She knew he was teasing. “You said you had a surprise,” she reminded him.

“The piano,” said Poppy.

Lily took a deep breath. “I’ll miss it this summer.” She crossed her fingers.

Gram turned to look at her quickly over her shoulder.

“I love music.” Lily stared right back. Music, yes, she thought, but not the piano. The damn piano, she called it deep inside her head. If Gram ever thought she even knew that word, she’d be in trouble for a month.

“Like your mother.” Poppy pulled a chair out across from her. “Well, you won’t have to be without the piano this summer.”

Lily looked down at the damp beef Gram was putting on her plate, the pale cabbage, the boiled potatoes with a sprig of parsley from the Victory garden in back. “But how . . .”

Poppy was nodding. “Not only the piano, but an extra suitcase full of stuff if you like. I’ve hired a truck—”

“A truck?” Gram said. “What will that cost?”

Poppy waved his hand around. “Lily has a birthday coming up,” he said. “I just couldn’t resist.”

Lily looked down at her plate, three piles of stuff, cabbage, and beef, and potatoes. She knew Poppy was waiting for her to say something. He was waiting for her to throw her arms around him and tell him how wonderful it was. She could hardly talk, though. She picked up her knife and cut her beef into a bunch of little pieces. “Amazing,” she said at last.

“Yes, it is,” said Gram.

Chapter 2

I
t was Friday afternoon. School was over. Goodbye, St. Pascal’s, goodbye, Sister Eileen, goodbye, report card. Lily had put the report card in Gram’s hand at the front door, walked right past her and up to her bedroom. Forty things were left to jam into a cardboard box.

Lily put the first one in, a bottle of lily-of-the-valley perfume, used up except for a little darkish stuff at the bottom. It smelled delicious, though. She waited to put the next thing in; she could hear Gram’s footsteps on the stairs. She kept her back stiff, staring down at the bottle. She knew what was coming. “D in music,” Gram would say. “How could you possibly . . .” And she would have spotted that effort mark, B–, too. In fact, she’d say the whole thing was a disgrace.

Lily took a breath. Someone was knocking at the front door, banging on the door. She could hear Gram’s footsteps stop, could picture her turning . . .

Lily rushed to the window. Downstairs was the truck, gray, rusty:
M
C
HUGH’S—WE’LL TREAT YOUR FURNITURE LIKE OUR OWN
. Their own furniture must be some mess, Lily thought. And then, worse, what would everyone in Rockaway think when they saw the Mollahans arriving for the summer in a truck that was falling apart, an upright piano lashed to the back with rope, and Lily and Gram sitting squashed in the front seat? Lily closed her eyes. Horrible.

At least Gram had forgotten about the report card. Lily went downstairs to watch the two white-haired men in the living room. They were talking to Gram, joking a little, one of them singing, “ ‘They’re either too young or too old,’ ” while the other was telling Gram that both their sons were in the service and that they were keeping the business going for the duration of the war.

Gram was frowning, watching them hoist up the piano with a bowl of flowers still on top. Lily could see they’d be stuck at the door; the piano wouldn’t go through in a million years. Alleluia. And better yet, her report card was on the bottom step of the stairs. Gram wasn’t paying attention to it. Lily knew she was worrying about the piano scratching the wall as the men worked on shoving it through the door.

Lily reached down for the report card, backed up the stairs. She could see herself in the truck, Gram suddenly saying, “I never did look at your report card, Lily. Do you know where . . .”

Perfect. Lily wouldn’t say a word. Gram had lost the thing herself. Not Lily’s fault, certainly not.

Up in her bedroom, she looked around. Her book,
Evangeline
, was still on the dresser. Lily moved the star to the front page and put the blue report card in the back as far away from the star as possible. Her mother would never have cared for report cards.

And ten minutes later, finally, Lily was packed. She picked up the last carton, listening to the perfume bottle clinking into her lipstick samples from Gertz Department Store in Jamaica,
FREE TAKE ONE
. Lily had taken a bunch, you never knew when stuff like that would come in handy.

She started down the stairs with the carton, and
Evangeline
tucked carefully under her arm. At the other end of the hall was the wrenching sound of wood splitting, the molding hanging loose. Still in the living room, Gram made an angry sound, but one of the men was telling her not to worry, molding was nothing, they could fix it up in a jiffy. “Tell Mr. Mollahan we’ll come back next week and . . .”

The piano. They had gotten it through. It stood there in the hall, huge, with round glass stains on the top and two of the keys missing the ivory. And then the men lifted it again and started out the door. Lily followed them, circling around Gram still powdering her nose at the hall mirror.

The piano was in the truck now, with one of the men looping great pieces of rope around it, telling the other one, “I’ll stay back here, just to make sure the thing doesn’t roll out.” He winked at Lily, thinking it was a great joke.

Some joke. Gram came out the door wearing her blue summer hat with the cherries. She climbed up into the passenger seat, leaving a spot next to the window for Lily. “We’re off,” she told Lily, “at last. I never thought we’d make it this year.”

Gram was smiling; she loved Rockaway too. Lily closed her eyes as the truck started off. She didn’t want to look at the neighbors, who were waving at them and the piano and the rusty truck, probably thinking they were crazy.

But then they turned the corner, heading for the Belt Parkway, heading for Cross Bay Boulevard, and the bridge, and Lily could feel the excitement of it, the ocean waiting, the sound of it, the roll of it, and it was hers for the whole summer.

She didn’t open her eyes when Gram began about the report card. She could feel the vibration of the motor, and hear the man in front singing, “ ‘They’re either too young or too old,’ ” and Gram humming along. And the next thing she heard was the sound of the tires hitting the planks of the bridge. They were there.

Rockaway . . .

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