The Long Way Home Read online

  “All students report immediately to their homerooms,” said the hollow voice of Mrs. Parson, the principal. “Repeat, all students report immediately to their homerooms.”

  Dana’s heart began to pound. She had never heard such an announcement. Report to their homerooms? Now? At the end of the day, with just a few minutes left in the final period? Mrs. Parson had sounded very grave. Maybe a little panicky, Dana thought.

  She quickened her pace. The halls had been mostly empty, but now doors began to open and students poured out of the classrooms.

  “What is it?” Dana asked somebody.

  “Don’t know.”

  Dana threw the remainder of the potato chips into a trash can and made a dash for Mr. Friedman’s room. Her classmates were already leaving. Dana grabbed her things from her desk. “What’s —” she started to ask her teacher, but he was talking to Miss Rafferty from the adjoining room, and Dana thought — was it possible? — that both of them were crying a little.

  She flew back into the hall and up the stairs to her homeroom. The chatter around her was alarming. “National tragedy,” she heard someone say. “Emergency.” “Disaster.” One girl burst into tears and gripped the arm of her boyfriend. “Is it a nuclear war?” the girl asked him. “Are we supposed to duck and cover?”

  Dana slid behind her desk, the last one to reach her homeroom. Tanya Wen was sitting in front of her. She tapped Tanya’s shoulder. “What happened?” she asked.

  Tanya turned around and Dana saw that her lip was quivering. “I heard something terrible.”

  “What? What did you hear?”

  “I heard that President Ken —”

  “May I have your attention, please?” Mrs. Antonelli, who was Dana’s homeroom teacher as well as her English teacher, clapped her hands, and the class immediately became quiet. Tanya faced front again. “I’m afraid I have some very bad news,” Mrs. Antonelli began. “There’s no easy way to say this. We’ve just heard — and we don’t have many details yet — that President Kennedy has been shot.”

  Dana gasped. In front of her, Tanya’s shoulders shook.

  “Is he going to be okay?” someone asked.

  Mrs. Antonelli stared out the window. “No,” she said. “He’s been assassinated. He died just a little while ago.” She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and held it to her eyes.

  Later — years later, decades later — Dana would recall all sort of things about the rest of this day. She would remember Tanya’s shaking shoulders and Mrs. Parson’s panicky voice on the PA system and news broadcasts and the look of devastation on Loretta’s face when they met at their lockers a few minutes later. But whenever anyone asked her what she remembered about the day President Kennedy was shot, the first thing she always said was, “My teachers were crying.” She had never seen her teachers cry. Well, once, in English class, when Monty Biggs, who was pimply and being raised by his grandmother, had read a poem he’d written about an orphaned chicken, she had seen Mrs. Antonelli’s student teacher tear up, but Dana felt that hardly counted. It was nothing like today.

  Today. November 22nd, 1963.

  Dana knew, almost the instant she heard Mrs. Antonelli say, “He’s been assassinated,” that those words drew a before-and-after line in America’s history, in the same way that the moment her father had reached for his hat on the ferry had created a before-and-after line in her own history.

  Mrs. Antonelli was now so choked up that when Tanya timidly raised her hand and asked, “What happens to our country now?” she could only shake her head.

  For a few moments the room was as still as Manhattan in the soft haze of a snowfall. Then the boy next to Dana said angrily, “Who shot him?”

  Mrs. Antonelli reached for a tissue and blew her nose. “I don’t know. There really isn’t much information yet.”

  “What does happen to our country now?” Tanya asked, this time more forcefully.

  “The vice president —”

  The door to the room opened then and a teacher Dana didn’t know stuck her head inside. “What are we supposed to be doing?” she whispered loudly. “The bell is going to ring soon.”

  “I haven’t heard anything,” Mrs. Antonelli replied. “I don’t know. I guess we just sit tight.”

  Dana closed her eyes. She tried to imagine someone evil enough to kill President Kennedy. To kill him. Almost everybody Dana knew loved the president. She remembered the night in Maine when her family had heard the news that John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been elected the thirty-fourth president of the United States of America. It had been one of the bright spots in that autumn of adjustments and disappointments. Papa Luther had not voted for Mr. Kennedy, of course, but Dana’s mother had, and when the news came over the radio, she had laughed — actually clapping her hands while she did so — and then burst into happy tears.

  Now Mr. Kennedy was dead. And he hadn’t died naturally, he’d been killed. Murdered.

  Dana heard the buzz of the intercom and jerked to attention. “Everyone is dismissed,” Mrs. Parson said quietly. “You may all go home.”

  An early dismissal, even one that was only a few minutes early, generally caused great cheering and jumping out of seats, chairs being knocked over backward. But when the intercom went quiet, Dana’s classmates got to their feet wordlessly and filed into the hall. The halls, too, were quiet, filled with dazed students and dazed teachers.

  Dana gave Tanya’s hand a squeeze and said, “I’ll call you over the weekend.” She met Loretta at their side-by-side lockers. “Want to come over?” she asked.

  Loretta shook her head. “I have to find Ma. I hope they let her off work. She’ll want to go to church.”

  “Can’t you go to church tomorrow — or Sunday?”

  Loretta stared at her. “This is President Kennedy we’re talking about. President Kennedy. We have to pray for him.”

  Dana left school alone. She walked to the bus stop, saw her bus coming, ignored it, and continued walking. All around her were stunned faces. Women hugged one another on the street. Men cried. People streamed into churches.

  Dana walked. And walked and walked. She walked until at last she was standing in front of the building that housed Bobbie Palombo’s costume shop. Dana had been to the shop before, of course. She’d been there many times. But never unannounced. Now she walked through the lobby to the elevator bank, pressed the brass button, and rode the elevator to the sixth floor. She turned left, then left again, and reached the wooden door with the frosted-glass window and the black letters (peeling slightly) that read simply BOBBIE PALOMBO. She knocked twice and entered.

  Inside she found Adele, Bobbie, and two other women huddled around a radio. Half-finished costumes had been abandoned, and the other workers had apparently already gone home. Adele rose when she saw Dana. “Honey,” she said, arms open.

  Bobbie flicked her hand toward the door. “Go, go,” she said, her voice catching.

  “I walked here,” Dana told her aunt as they rode the elevator back to the street. It was the only thing she could think to say.

  They edged around a crowd of people gathered outside an appliance store, watching a television through the window. The owner of the store had turned up the volume so that the newscaster’s voice could be heard on the street.

  The president was dead.

  He had been shot in Dallas.

  His beautiful wife had been covered with her husband’s blood.

  “Nothing will ever be the same again,” said Adele.

  It had been a long time since Dana had awoken in the beach cottage on Blue Harbor Lane. But now here she was, lying in a sleeping bag between Julia and Nell. Three army-green sleeping bags in a row on the floor, Peter splayed across the couch on the other side of the room, one bare foot sticking out from beneath a blue-and-white afghan that Aunt Rose had crocheted.

  Dana turned over and found herself facing the wide brown eyes of five-year-old Nell.

  “I stared you awake,” Nell whispered. “That’
s how you wake someone up without making a sound. You just stare.”

  Dana had been awake for nearly half an hour while her brother and sisters slept soundly around her, but she said, “That’s pretty smart.”

  “I am a smart person,” Nell agreed. “Very smart. Did you know that I will be in first grade this fall?”

  Dana knew. Of course she knew. Nell was her sister.

  “You live in New York City, right?” said Nell.

  “Yup.”

  “And what do you do in New York?”

  “Well, I go to school —”

  “Have you been to the Empire State Building?”

  “Yes.”

  “To the tippy top?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm. Sometime maybe we can visit you there. Sometime — Hey, look. Peter’s awake — and I wasn’t even staring at him.”

  “I’m awake, too,” said Julia, yawning.

  “Let’s all take a walk on the beach,” said Dana. “Before the grown-ups get up.”

  The four Burleys were on their feet in a flash. They threw on their clothes and winter coats.

  “Can we go barefoot?” asked Peter.

  “Nope,” said Julia firmly. “It’s only April. Way too cold. Wear your sneakers. We can walk along the sand, but not in the water.”

  Dana looped her elbow through Peter’s as they crossed Blue Harbor Lane. “Look how tall you are,” she said. “Almost as tall as me.”

  Peter grinned at her. “I’m fourteen. That’s a teenager.”

  It had been Orrin’s idea to spend spring break at the cottage. “Wouldn’t it be fun?” Abby had said when she’d phoned Adele and Dana one night in March. “A family vacation. All of us at the cottage. Orrin suggested it.”

  Somehow it had worked out. Dana’s school vacation had coincided with Little Grape’s spring break. Adele had asked Bobbie Palombo for a week off from work. Orrin had arranged for two of the mechanics from his auto repair shop to run the business while he was away. Abby had begun packing and planning.

  Dana had been eager for the vacation to start. She missed her family. And she had to admit that, like him or not, Orrin seemed . . . good. When Dana had visited Little Grape at Christmastime, she’d found a mother who no longer had to arrange for endless babysitters and who could sit at the table and enjoy breakfast with her family. She’d found a twin who laughed easily and who, at last, had made friends of her own. Peter and Nell called Orrin Dad, which had startled Dana, but she’d said nothing about it. After the phone call from her mother, she’d begun counting the days until April 10th, when she and Adele would take the train north to Maine.

  Then four days before the official start of spring vacation, Mr. Radnor had sent a note to Dana, asking her to schedule an appointment with him.

  “This can’t be good,” Dana had said ruefully to Loretta. She’d held the note out to her friend. “When is a note from your guidance counselor ever good?”

  “You never know,” Loretta replied dubiously.

  Dana had scheduled the appointment for the next afternoon and had waited in the orange plastic chair outside Mr. Radnor’s office, jiggling her foot and biting her nails.

  When the door to his office had opened, she jumped.

  “Dana,” Mr. Radnor said warmly. “Come in.”

  Dana perched on the edge of the chair opposite his desk and looked at the photos tacked to his bulletin board. Mr. Radnor and a dark-haired woman sitting side by side on a sofa, smiling self-consciously. Three pigtailed little girls in identical two-piece bathing suits, holding up red sand shovels. A sheepish-looking cocker spaniel wearing a necktie.

  Mr. Radnor pulled a sheet of paper out of a folder. “I have good news for you,” he said, and Dana felt herself go limp with relief.

  “You do?” she said weakly.

  “Yes. Excellent news, as a matter of fact. Have you heard of the Prescott School of Design in Massachusetts?”

  “Sure,” Dana replied. “It’s one of the best art and design colleges in the country.”

  “What would you say if I told you that they’ve invited you to apply for a scholarship?”

  Dana had hesitated. “Is that good? I mean, I was going to apply to Prescott next year anyway.”

  Mr. Radnor smiled at her. “It’s very good. When Prescott invites you to apply, it means they already want you. And the invitation almost guarantees you a scholarship. A full scholarship.”

  “You’re — are you serious?”

  “Absolutely. This is quite an honor, Dana.”

  “I can’t believe it. I’ve been dying to go to Prescott, but I didn’t know how I was going to afford the tuition. I have a twin sister and she wants to go to college, too, and there just isn’t enough money. I was going to ask you about scholarships next year.”

  “I think you can relax a little, then. I mean, if Prescott is where you’d like to —”

  “Oh, it is!”

  “All right. You still have to go through the application process and get your portfolio together. And of course you have to keep up your grades, which are excellent. But if you can do those things, then I think you’ll be going to Prescott on a full scholarship.”

  Dana had left the office feeling dazed, and had immediately run into Loretta, whom she suspected had been waiting for her.

  “Girl?” Loretta had said.

  Dana burst into tears. “I’m going to Prescott.”

  * * *

  Somehow Dana had managed to keep this news a secret. Four days had passed since her meeting with Mr. Radnor, and Loretta was the only person Dana had shared her news with. She felt a little guilty about her windfall. Loretta needed a scholarship just as much as Dana did. There were only two kids in Loretta’s family, but her parents earned less money than Orrin.

  “I’ll bet Prescott gives out lots of scholarships,” Dana had said, although she had absolutely no idea how many scholarships Prescott offered each year.

  “Sure,” Loretta replied. “But anyway, I’m applying to Rizzdee.”

  “What?”

  “Rhode Island School of Design. RISD. Everyone just says Rizzdee.”

  That was the last either one of them had said about scholarships before they’d parted ways for spring break.

  On Saturday, Dana and Adele had boarded the train for Maine and somehow, during the long hours of that endless ride, Dana said not one word about Prescott. She thought about it constantly, though. While Adele read and worked crossword puzzles and drew designs for a flapper costume, Dana thought about going to college and about whatever would come after that.

  Prescott was her dream. She planned to soak up everything she could while she was there and then embark on a career as an illustrator. Or maybe a designer. But probably an illustrator. In any case, she wanted a career. Her mother could have had a career. Papa Luther hadn’t let her go to college, but that didn’t mean anything. After all, Adele hadn’t been allowed to go to college either, and she had a career. Dana’s mother was a good writer. She could have been a writer like Zander. Or maybe she could have worked for a magazine or for a book publishing company. Something. But she had gotten married and stopped writing and started having kids, and when Zander died, she’d had no way to support them.

  Dana was not going to let that happen to her. She had a firm plan: go to Prescott, establish a career in the art world — a good career that would pay lots of money — and later get married and have a baby. Maybe. But she did not plan to find herself in the position in which her mother had found herself after Zander had died, toting her children from place to place, counting out change from the bottom of her pocketbook.

  * * *

  Now, as Dana tromped along the beach with her sisters and brother, the words Guess what — I’m going to Prescott were on her lips. “Guess —” she started to say. She felt Julia’s hand on her elbow and looked into her twin’s smiling face. Ahead of them, Peter was loping across the sand, calling, “Bet you can’t catch me, Nell,” and Nell ran after him, bu
t not, Dana noted, at her top speed.

  “What?” Dana said to Julia.

  “Nothing. This is just . . . nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So how is everything in New York?”

  “Great. I still love my school.”

  “Me, too. I mean, mine isn’t a special school like yours, but I really like it.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “How’s Loretta?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “She’s the one who’s black?”

  Dana frowned and Julia blushed.

  “Sorry. Don’t worry,” Julia rushed on. “I’m not turning into Papa Luther. I’m just trying to keep your friends straight. I have a best friend now, too.” She hesitated. “You don’t mind, do you, Dana?”

  “Of course I don’t mind!”

  “And,” said Julia, lowering her voice to a whisper, “I have a boyfriend.”

  “Really? That’s great.” Dana thought Randall Goodman and a few other guys at school were cute, but the last thing she wanted was an actual boyfriend. She could see that Julia was happy, though.

  “His name is Royce.”

  “Is he cute?”

  “He’s the cutest boy in our whole grade. He’s taking me to a dance in a few weeks. But that’s a secret for now, okay? I don’t feel like telling Mom yet.”

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  Dana waited until her family was assembled for breakfast that morning and then, at last, she divulged her own secret. “I’ve known this for a few days, but I wanted to tell you when we were all together.” She glanced at Adele. “Boy, was it hard to wait.” Adele smiled at her. “I have really good news. Prescott invited me to apply for a scholarship. My guidance counselor said that means I’m practically guaranteed one.”

  “Prescott?” asked Orrin.

  “It’s a college for art and design,” Dana told him. “It’s an honor to be asked to apply.”