Summer of the Gypsy Moths (4 page)

George set a jug of bleach down and gathered up the pieces and laid them back on the shelf.

“I broke it,” I said. “And it was so beautiful.”

“Oh, I like the broken ones fine,” George said. He picked up a sand dollar. It was bleached white, at least four inches across, pretty as a sugar cookie. He snapped it in half, and I gasped.

George held the palm of his hand out to me and tapped the broken shell over it. A tiny white chip fell out, and then another. “Look here,” he said. “Inside here, these are the teeth. They look like doves, don't you think? A lot of folks take the sand dollar as a message about God and Jesus and all—the nail holes of the cross on the shell, the little doves inside, you see—and that's all right, I guess. But what I see are the doves being released. Now, I see a broken shell and I remind myself that something might have needed setting free. See, broken things always have a story, don't they?”

I shrugged. I didn't think I agreed with him, but I liked imagining it might be true.

“Place like this, families on vacation—well, you'd better
get used to things getting broken. Why, I keep a stack of bed slats in the shed because five or six get broken every year. Kids just have to jump on beds, I suppose.”

“You could put a sign up,” I said. “No jumping on the beds!”

George laughed hard at that. “Oh, no,” he said. “I wouldn't even want to live in a world where kids don't jump on beds. No, I don't mind any of the broken things. I like to figure out their stories.” He turned away then, as if he was embarrassed he'd said too much, and set the sand dollar halves carefully back on the shelf.

I didn't think he'd said too much. In fact, if things were different, I thought there might be a lot more I would want to ask him about broken things. Or whatever else he wanted to talk about.

T
here sure was a lot to do. We laid out cakes of Ivory in their waxy wrappers by the sinks, hung dish towels on wooden spindles, filled salt and pepper shakers, lined cupboards with fresh shelf paper and garbage pails with trash bags, made beds, and checked lightbulbs. We swept down cobwebs and escorted hundreds of daddy long-legs outside, and set mousetraps under the sinks. “Mice,” George muttered. “They'd walk away with these cottages, you give them half a chance.”

I kept stealing nervous glances at Angel, sure she would just disappear. The funny thing was, she didn't act at all
concerned about losing the morning. She trotted along with George, looking fascinated at whatever he was saying and happy to do whatever he asked. I could barely recognize her as the girl who would sulk and glare her way through a silent weekend. And she sure didn't look at all like a girl who was itching to get onto the Mid-Cape Highway heading west. That girl could lie with her whole self.

Finally, George said, “That does it.” We went outside and he explained the plan. “There are three cottages left, and three of us. You know what to do now. I'll take Gull; Miss Angel, you take Plover; and Sandpiper is yours, Stella by Starlight. Okay?”

We nodded, but I could see Angel didn't like the plan very much. I tried to catch her eye so I could tell her she should just slip away, but she had turned to follow George, who was opening up Plover for her.

I unlocked Sandpiper's door and headed to the kitchen to get started. The oilskin tablecloth sprigged with strawberries struck me first. Then the cat-shaped cookie jar. I spun around. A stack of puzzles centered on the lobster-pot coffee table in front of the gold plaid couch—yes. In the bedroom: a lighthouse lamp—yes. In the bathroom, two brass anchor hooks, a seahorse shower curtain—yes!

I flew over to Plover, yanked open the screen door, and ran inside.

“Oh my God!” I cried.

“What? What?” I could hear Angel calling behind me, but I was already flying over the lawn to Gull and banging open the door. Inside, I went from room to room, still barely believing it.

George was running water into a pail in the kitchen. He turned when he heard me. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“They're all…they're all the same!” I laughed.

“Well, a course they are. It's a cottage colony.”

“No, I mean they're
exactly
the same! Exactly!”

George put his pail down to study me. “And you like that, huh?”

“Yes, sir. I like that a lot.” Which was an understatement.

George broke into a slow smile. “I could use a break, Stella by Starlight,” he said. He sat at the kitchen table and patted the chair beside him. I sat down. He started to pull out his pipe but seemed to have second thoughts about smoking in here and took out a couple of toothpicks instead. He offered me one, and I put it in the corner of my mouth the way he did and tried to act as though I chewed toothpicks all the time.

“All right then,” he said when he had worked the
toothpick to where he wanted it. “My parents built this place before I was born. In the forties, right after the war. The soldiers were back, everybody was getting married and having babies. People wanted to go on vacations again, and they sure loved to go places in their big cars. But things were still scarce after the rationing and all. My mother drew up one set of plans, handed them to my father, and said, ‘Buy four of everything. It's cheaper that way.'

“The cottages are sixteen feet square—no bigger than your average living room. Lumber came in sixteen-foot lengths then, so no waste. The bedrooms—now the bedrooms are an architectural marvel, as far as I'm concerned. They're six feet by eight feet. But they've got everything you need: a place to sleep, a place to hang your clothes, a shelf for books, a light to read by. And the bathrooms are only four feet wide. I tell you, my mother was a genius. She insisted everything be plain; you can see that. She knew people wouldn't mind that in a vacation place. Look at this.” George pointed to a cabinet behind him.

I nodded.

“That's knotty pine for you. It's cheap, 'cause the knot-holes bleed sap through forever. Probably ten coats of paint on these cabinets. And it still bleeds through.” He leaned back and gazed around the cottage. “I keep wondering if I should update, put in televisions or internet, modernize.
But everybody who stays here says no, don't change a thing, it's so peaceful. So there you are. Plain and simple, and all exactly the same, since 1946.”

“And then you were born?” I prompted. I wasn't ready to stop listening to him.

George shifted the toothpick to the other side of his mouth, nodding. “Yep. I was one of those babies everybody was having after the war. Boomers. I'm sixty-four—probably too old to be fishing for a living, but too late to learn anything else, I guess.”

I rolled my toothpick to my other cheek. “Sixty-four's not too late to learn things,” I said. “How old was Louise?”

I felt my face drain. “I mean how old
is
she? I mean,
was
she when you met her.”

George didn't notice. “Oh. She's been managing the cottages for…oh, maybe twenty-five years. More. I don't even know. Since my folks died. But I guess you'd better ask
her
that question…. I'm not telling a woman's age on her. I may be old, but I'm not a fool.”

George got up then, and I followed him to the door. And then I realized something important. “My mother stayed here for two years, about twenty years ago. She was about eight or nine. Do you remember her?”

“Twenty years is a long time ago,” George said, leaning against the door frame and squinting into the sun. “I was
lobstering then—gone a lot. Sorry.”

He really did look sorry about that, so I smiled at him again. “That's okay. Well, back to work.” I started across the lawn.

George called out. “Wait, now. Kind of a hellion, always in trouble? But she had a soft heart, always carting around some baby animal she'd rescued. Your mother?”

I turned back. “You remember her?”

“Not much, really. But I do remember complaining to Louise one summer. This kid was supposed to be helping, but she went around with a twig springing every mousetrap I set. I finally gave up.” He laughed at the memory, then cocked his head and eyed me. “Your mother. Yeah. Now I see it.”

I walked back to Sandpiper glowing with the things I could tell my mother when she called. “George remembers you. We opened the cottages—you did that, too. Remember the mousetraps?”

I stood on the step of Sandpiper—my cottage—and squared my shoulders and took a deep breath. And then I got to work. I prepared that little house with affection and all my skill, as if the president of the United States himself was going to pull in here a week from now. When I was finished, I looked around at what I had done and my heart just about burst from pride. The cottage seemed to smile
back at me, as if it was proud, too. I walked around, putting on the final touches: I pushed the kitchen curtains open a little more to give a better view, shifted the kitchen chairs out so they'd seem more welcoming to tired travelers, and turned down the beds. Then I locked the door and left.

In Plover, I found Angel sitting on one of the twin beds, tangled in sheets.

“I can't…. It's all…uuggghhh!” she groaned.

I picked up the knot of sheets. “Do you want to go? George is setting up the grills. He won't know. I could still say you had to visit a friend, and I just found her….”

“No.” Angel stood up and found a pillowcase and stuffed a pillow into it. Sideways. “Just help me.”

 

We were hosing off the picnic tables when George came over. He took out a pocketknife and scraped at some hard green stuff on the boards. “Frass.” The way he said it, it sounded like a swear. “Darned gypsy moths, droppings everywhere.” Then he looked at his watch.

“Almost three,” he said. “I gotta be at the boatyard. We're done for the day anyway. You did a good job, girls. Go get yourselves some lunch and have Louise give me a call tonight.” Then he whistled for Treb, who was napping in Plover's shade, and climbed into his truck. We walked back to the house but didn't go in. We sank to the brick
steps together and watched his pickup grow smaller, until it disappeared.

“I feel bad for him,” I said. “Pretty soon, he'll find out. First he'll be sad, because I think they're sort of friends. And then it'll hit him that he's got nobody to run this place.” I braced myself, realizing I had just committed the giant sin of talking to Angel.

But Angel just leaned over her knees and picked a chip of mortar off the step. She slid a glance at me through her hair. “Or not.”

“Of course he'll find out. The police will call him first thing.”

“No, I mean…” Angel tucked her hair behind her ear to look at me hard, as if she was trying to decide something. “What if we did it? Took care of things here for a while?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You heard him. Fifteen or twenty dollars each cottage, each week. I need money. I need three hundred fifty dollars for…well, I just need it. I could earn it here. And I wouldn't have to go to another dumb foster home while my aunt's getting a place….”

I couldn't say the obvious, but I didn't have to.

“I know,” said Angel. “We couldn't do it. I was just wishing.” She flicked the mortar chip into the roses and wrapped her arms around her knees.

I looked over at the horseshoe of cottages, thinking about how welcoming we'd left them, how happy the families arriving next Saturday were going to be. And suddenly I found myself wishing we could stay, too. Not for the money, but because I wanted to see those families pile in. And because I wanted to spend a little more time where my mother had been.

But then I remembered what was in the den. “No,” I said, “we couldn't do it.”

“Never,” Angel agreed. “Stupid idea.”

We sat there for a minute, looking down the empty road. Angel was probably thinking, In a few minutes I'm on my way. I was thinking that I kind of liked this new Angel, the girl who talked to me. And that in a few minutes I would be left alone. With…

“Because it would be too hard,” Angel said.

“Impossible.”

“I mean, I didn't even
understand
half of what he was saying, never mind be able to do it.”

I turned to Angel. “Who? Do what?”

Angel stared at me. “George! Run the cottages. Do all that changeover stuff he was talking about?”

It was my turn to stare. “No, Angel, that part would be easy. It's…” I waved my hands behind me.

“Louise? Oh, Louise just needs to be buried. We had
to bury a goat once. It wasn't even ours—it just wandered into our yard and died. Are you serious about us being able to do it, run things?”

“She's not a goat, Angel! She's my great-aunt!”

“I know that. I'm just saying, you dig a big hole…”

I jumped up and brushed the brick grit from the backs of my thighs. “You're crazy. It's time. I'm going to call the police, so you'd better get going.”

Angel got up, too. “Right, okay. I'll get my stuff.”

Angel went in, but I didn't follow her. I didn't like watching people leave.

I fingered the master key in my pocket, and then I walked back over to the cottages. One by one, I opened them up. In each, I took a knife from the silverware drawer, crawled under the kitchen and the bathroom sinks, and sprang the mousetraps.

And then I closed up all the cottages, each lock snapping shut with a satisfying double clink: “There,
yes
.” “There,
yes
.” As I walked down the driveway, I noticed what a nice sound that was, too: the bleached white shells crunching under my sandals. I stopped. I had been here only eight weeks, but I suddenly knew that I would miss this place. Louise's house, a little worn-down maybe, but always clean and orderly, like my grandmother's had been. The four Lucky Charms cottages, nestled under the oaks
and pines. Through the trees, in the distance, the Mill River winding like a silver ribbon through the marsh that had turned so green in the past month, it could hurt your eyes. Beyond that, the ocean, dark blue as rinsed jeans today. The air was salty and sweet—seaweed and honeysuckle. How had I never noticed all this before? I locked it all into place so I could visit it whenever I needed to, like my icebergs.

I let myself in the kitchen door, but before I picked up the phone to call the police, I sat down at the table with a sheet of paper, a ruler, and a pencil. Another few minutes wouldn't matter, I figured. I drew an eight-inch square. At a half inch to a foot, I copied the floor plan of those cottages: the two-inch-wide bathroom lying snugly against the three-inch-wide bedrooms, the kitchen area on the right, the living room on the left.

Everything fitted.

I brought the drawing up to my room and tucked it into my Hints folder. As I was about to go back downstairs to make the call, I heard a crash from Louise's bedroom. The door was open. Angel was pulling things down from the closet shelf.

“I thought you were gone.”

“Almost. I'm looking for something.” She tossed out a stuffed garbage bag.

I stepped into the room. I'd never been inside before, only stood in the doorway a few times, talking to Louise. It was dark—the curtains were drawn—and too flowery: flowered drapes, flowered bedspread, flowered robe on the hook. The flowers looked wilted somehow—as if without Louise to tend them, they were dying.

Another garbage bag went sailing out. “Two bags of old panty hose,” Angel's voice followed. “Gross.”

I ran my fingers over the photographs lined up on the bureau. Louise at different ages, posing with different people. One in a worn silver frame showed her at about ten, with her arms around a little girl in red shorts sitting beside her. The little girl was holding a book on her lap, a finger slipped inside to hold a page. I picked up the photo. It was my grandmother, I knew.