Skylark (4 page)

“‘When they were married, my mother, Sarah, wore a dress soft like mist, and a veil. I think Papa cried. . . .’”

Sarah turned to me. “Did he?” she asked, her voice soft. “Did he cry?”

I smiled and Sarah closed her eyes. I covered her with a shawl.

We went over a bridge, the river shining in the sun.

Caleb turned from the window. “Sarah?”

Sarah opened her eyes.

“Is this the way you came?” he asked.

Sarah looked out at the land. “Yes, Caleb,” she said softly. “This is the way I came.”

Maine was green. When we got off the train, Sarah stood still. She looked at the train station, and at the trees, and at the people.

“Sarah?” I said.

“It’s all right, Anna,” said Sarah. “It’s just what you wrote in your book. I’ve come back to what I knew first.”

“Sarah! Sarah Wheaton!”

A man waved to Sarah. He wore a vest and a gold chain across it.

Sarah smiled.

“Chub!” she said. “You’re still here!”

The man hugged Sarah.

“Where would I be?” he said. “Except dead, maybe. Are the hens meeting you?”

Sarah laughed.

“No. And I’m Sarah Witting now. These are my children, Anna and Caleb. Can you take us there?”

“Get in.”

We got in Chub’s car, open all around, with shining brass trim and wood on the side.

“I’ve never been in a car before,” whispered Caleb.

“It’s about time you were,” said Chub. “Want to drive?”

“No,” said Caleb, looking alarmed. Then he smiled at Chub. “I won’t tell the aunts you call them hens, either.”

Chub laughed. He started the car. We passed green grass and green trees and flowers blooming in green gardens as we drove to the house where Sarah had lived.

And then we saw the sea.

“All that water!” said Caleb, running down the lawn of the aunts’ house. Sarah and I looked out over the water: at cliffs that went down to the sea; at birds that flew over us; at boats with white sails like clouds.

“Come on,” said Sarah after a moment. She took our hands. “Let’s go meet the aunts.”

We walked up the lawn to the house. The house was large with shutters on the windows. There were gardens with flowers I had never seen before.

“Will they like us?” asked Caleb.

“They will love you,” said Sarah, laughing. “They will fall upon you with kisses.”

We walked up the steps of the big porch. Sarah put out her hand to open the door, but it swung open, and a woman in a silk dress stood there, her feet bare. Her eyes widened when she saw us. Her hand went up to her mouth. Sarah smiled.

“Hello, Mattie,” she said softly. “We’re home.”

The aunts laughed and cried and fed us.

“I loved your letters,” said Aunt Mattie. “I loved all the pictures you drew.” She kissed Sarah and Caleb and she kissed me. Then she kissed Sarah again.

Aunt Harriet, tall with wire glasses, in bare feet, too, tried to feed us all the food in the kitchen.

“I made these cookies, Anna, Caleb,” she said. “Are you tired? I made the bread, too. And the soup! Do you want a nap? Do you want a bath?”

“Harriet, let them be!” said Aunt Mattie.

Sarah leaned over close to us.

“See?” she said. “I told you.”

And then Aunt Lou, dressed in overalls and high boots, came in the front door with her dog.

“Lou!” said Sarah.

Aunt Lou hugged Sarah. She hugged me.

“Mind that beast,” said Aunt Harriet.

“The beast’s name is Brutus,” said Aunt Lou.

“Lou works with animals,” said Aunt Harriet.

“Lou works with a veterinarian,” said Aunt Lou. She kissed Caleb twice. “Harriet wants me in silk and pearls.”

Brutus jumped up on Caleb’s lap.

“Oh, get away!” scolded Aunt Harriet.

“Dogs like me,” said Caleb, smiling. “We have two dogs at home.”

“This is what we’ve needed all along, a child!” said Aunt Lou, hugging Caleb. “We must get ourselves one.”

“It looks like we have two,” said Aunt
Mattie softly.

“Sarah,” said Aunt Harriet, “will Jacob be coming, too?”

Sarah looked out the window.

“No,” she said softly. “Jacob won’t be coming.”

“Papa’s home,” I said.

Somehow hearing my own words made it worse. I started to cry. Sarah put her arms around me, and I cried harder.

“Papa had to stay home.”

Maine is green and full of voices and people laughing and talking; the tide going in and going out; the moon rising above the water. Sarah loves it here. The last thing every night she walks by the water, and the first thing in the morning she is there, too. Now I know how much she missed her old home. I miss my home. I miss Lottie and Nick and the land and the big sky.

I miss Papa.

11

I
t took longer for Caleb to miss Papa. Caleb swam every day in the cold water. Aunt Lou wrapped him in blankets when he came out, shivering, his teeth chattering. He went fishing with Aunt Lou and with Sarah’s brother, William, who was so happy when he first saw Sarah that he ran up the hill and whirled her around in his arms. It made me think of Papa and Sarah turning around and around in the prairie wind at night.

William’s wife, Meg, hugged Sarah, too.

“It’s been so long!” she said. “Almost two years since we’ve seen you!”

Two years.
I looked at Sarah and wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking. Would it be two years before we saw Papa?

“William looks like you, Sarah,” said Caleb.

“Plain and tall, I told you so,” said Sarah. “Remember?”

“Did you hear what I just heard?” said Aunt Harriet as we picnicked on a blanket in the grass by the sea. “Seal is going to have kittens!”

“The father is orange,” called Caleb, making the aunts laugh.

“Seal!” exclaimed William. “I remember that Seal was independent. Independent like Sarah.”

William put his arm around Sarah. The sun came out from a cloud, but it wasn’t hot like home. It was cool and green and beautiful. But it didn’t make me happy. I thought about Papa at home by himself, building a barn in the hot sun.

“Where was your dune, Sarah?” asked Caleb.

“Down there,” said Sarah, pointing to an
inlet.

“I remember when Papa made us a dune,” said Caleb softly. He looked up at Sarah. “A dune made of hay. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” said Sarah. “I remember, Caleb.”

Sarah looked over at me as the aunts talked and laughed. She reached out to touch my arm.

“It’s all right, Anna,” she said softly. “It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t.

The next week letters came from Papa. Sarah, Caleb, William, and I rowed out in the bay in William’s rowboat, and Caleb read his letter.

“‘Dear Caleb, Moonbeam is getting bigger every day. I have started building the barn. Still no rain, but yesterday Seal had four kittens!’”

“Four!” said William. Sarah smiled.

“‘Three are gray like Seal,’” Caleb read. “‘One is orange. Nick and Lottie miss you. Every day they sit looking down the road, waiting for you to come home. I love you. Give Sarah a kiss from me. Love, Papa.’”

William rowed to shore, and we pulled the boat up.

“Papa misses us, too,” I said to Sarah. “When he writes about Nick and Lottie waiting for us. Remember you once said that Papa’s letters were full of things between the lines?”

“Yes,” said Sarah.

I leaned over and kissed her.

“That’s Papa’s kiss,” I said.

William leaned over to kiss Sarah, too.

“And that’s mine,” he said.

The aunts played music. Aunt Harriet played a flute that squeaked sometimes. Aunt Lou played the piano in bare feet, and Brutus watched her pedal. Aunt Mattie danced with a long scarf and a serious look that made Caleb laugh.

Sarah took naps in the afternoons and slept late in the mornings.

Chub drove Sarah away and back again one afternoon. Aunt Lou said she had gone to the doctor.

“Are you sick, Sarah?” I asked her that night.

She smiled at me, a small smile at first, then a big smile.

“No, Anna. I’m not sick.”

She was in bed, her long hair down.

“Read me your Papa’s letter again,” she said.

When I did, she smiled more.

“Sarah?”

We looked up. Caleb stood in the door. He was in his pajamas, his hair all messed from sleep.

“Caleb, what’s the matter?” asked Sarah.

“A dream I had,” he said softly. “A dream about Papa.”

“That’s a good dream,” said Sarah.

She lifted the covers and Caleb got in bed with her.

“I dreamed that Papa looked and looked and couldn’t find us,” said Caleb.

“Oh, Caleb,” said Sarah, putting her arm around him. “Your Papa knows where we are. He does.”

Caleb picked up the family picture that Sarah kept on her bed stand.

“I used to dream about rain, remember?” he said.

Sarah nodded.

“Now I dream about Papa.”

There was silence in the room, and then Caleb looked at Sarah.

“Is this our new home, Sarah?” he asked softly.

Sarah didn’t answer. She put her arms around him and looked at me over his head. She began to sing very softly.

I thought of Joshua, the photographer, who had told us about his grandfather leaving the prairie.

“Did he come back?” Caleb had asked him.

No, he never came back
.

And that night I dreamed Caleb’s dream: Papa looking for us. He could hear Sarah’s song and our voices, and he searched the fields and the house and the barn. But we weren’t there.

12

W
e woke to a new sound. A sound I hadn’t heard for months. I ran to the window. Rain.

“Anna!”

I turned, and Caleb and I grinned at each other. We dressed quickly and ran downstairs to the porch. Rain came down, filling the rain gutters. It sent little rivers down the driveway. Everything smelled sweet. Caleb spread his arms and ran out into the rain in his clothes, racing around the yard. I laughed and ran after him. We jumped and ran, feeling the cool water run down our faces. We looked up, and Sarah stood on the porch. She smiled, and, very slowly, she walked down the steps and lifted her face to the rain. Then she ran down the lawn to take our hands and dance with us. The aunts came out on the porch to watch.

“Rain!” Sarah called to them. “It’s been so long!”

William came up from the water in his yellow slicker and hat to watch, too. Then, laughing, he took off his slicker to dance with us until the aunts made us come up and dry off with towels. We were sorry to see the sun come out.

“I remember you when you were little,” William said to Sarah. “Running, climbing. You were always in the trees; out on the rocks. You never stayed still.”

Suddenly Sarah looked at William.

“Do you remember a song Papa used to sing about a skylark?” she asked.

William smiled.

“A poem. I only remember the first line: ‘Like a skylark Sarah sings!’ Papa said you’d never come to earth.”

Sarah looked out over the sea, and I knew she was thinking of Maggie’s words to her on the dry prairie. Words I wasn’t supposed to hear. “You’re like the prairie lark, Sarah. You have not come to earth.”

That night I wrote Papa a letter.

I didn’t tell Papa about the rain.

The aunts had tea in the moonlight. The light lay like a blanket over the water below.

“Have you ever been married, Aunt Harriet?” asked Caleb.

“Caleb! That’s private,” I said.

But Aunt Harriet smiled. She took Caleb on her lap.

“Private, maybe,” she said. “But like everything else, it’s history. No, I was never married. Almost, but not quite. I never met a dashing man like your father.”

“What’s dashing?” asked Caleb.

“That’s what I’m doing,” said Aunt Lou, coming down the path. She was dressed in
a bathrobe. “I’m dashing into the water. Do you want to come? I’m going skinny-dipping.”

“Do you mean you’re going to swim all naked?!” asked Caleb.

Caleb followed Aunt Lou down the path. And then his voice came up the hill.

“Anna! Come here! In the moonlight she looks like a big fish!”

Aunt Harriet and Aunt Mattie laughed, Aunt Mattie so hard she spilled her tea. And then it was quiet again.

“Everyone goes skinny-dipping,” said Sarah. Her voice was soft with memory.

I thought about the pond at home when the moon came up so big and close it seemed you could touch it. Far off a loon cried on the water. The bell buoy made a lonely, sad sound.

That night, under the same moon that Papa saw, we could see fireworks from the faraway town. Splashes of color in the sky, red and silver and green.

“They’re like the dandelions that bloom in the fields at home in summer,” I told Sarah.

Sarah reached over and took my hand.

“Do you think the drought’s over yet?” asked Caleb, leaning against Sarah.

“No,” said Sarah. “It’s not over, Caleb. It may be a long time.”

Her voice was low, her eyes dark and sad. She looked at me.

A long time.
I didn’t like those words,
a long time
.

13

M
ore letters came from Papa. The dogs missed us.
Papa missed us.
All our days were long days filled with green all around us, and the sea. The rain should have made us happy, but it didn’t. It made us think about Papa. Even Caleb looked sad now. One day Sarah showed him the woolly ragwort that grew in Maine, but it didn’t make Caleb laugh the way it used to.