The Long Way Home Read online

  “Here’s the Santa Claus music box!” cried Julia.

  “Look! Look! Dolly!” said Peter, holding up the fragile angel that had once belonged to Zander’s mother.

  “When can we get our tree?” asked Dana.

  “Tomorrow,” said her father. “We’ll put out the other decorations now and get the tree tomorrow.”

  “Then I’m going to make ornaments today! And I’m going to ask Marian and Patty to come over. Can I, Daddy? Please? We have paper and glitter and crayons and sequins. We can make all sorts of things.”

  Julia slumped into a chair. “Why do you have to ask Marian and Patty? I’ll make ornaments with you.”

  “All four of us can make ornaments. Peter, too, if he wants. It will be fun.”

  “It would be more fun if it was just for twins,” said Julia, but Dana was already heading for the telephone table in the front hall.

  * * *

  An hour later Marian and Patty arrived, stomping the snow off their boots as they waved good-bye to their mothers.

  “We have the whole kitchen table for our workshop!” Dana said, and soon she and Julia and their friends were busily snipping and gluing. Peter stood at one end of the table and watched.

  “Don’t you want to make something?” Marian asked him.

  Peter rocked from side to side. “Goo,” he said.

  “Yes, glue,” agreed Dana. Then she reminded him, “Glue is for gluing, not for eating.”

  Peter wandered away and the girls returned to their paper ornaments. Dana’s were complicated affairs — folded creations with illustrations on them, or sometimes hidden inside. When a small stack had piled up in the center of the table, Julia said, “I’m tired of making decorations.”

  “Me, too, but I have an idea. Let’s make a mural now,” said Dana. “A Christmas mural. We can all work on it at the same time. We’ll each do different parts. We’re learning about murals in art class,” she added, turning to Julia, who was the only one of the girls not taking art lessons from Mrs. Booth.

  “A mural? But I can’t draw.”

  Marian was already searching through the crayons. “I’m going to make Santa coming down the chimney!” she exclaimed.

  “I’m going to make the manger scene,” said Patty.

  Dana found a length of butcher paper. The mural was half finished before she realized that Julia had left the kitchen.

  * * *

  The snow fell all day long. After Marian and Patty left, Patty carrying not only her ornaments but the mural, since the girls had decided to share it and had drawn straws to see who would get to keep it first, Dana stood in the kitchen and looked at her tin box full of Crayola crayons. Outside it was dark, but the kitchen and the crayons were bright, and Dana liked the contrast. It had been a very good, Christmasy day so far.

  Her father stuck his head around the corner. “How did the ornament making go?”

  Dana pointed to her creations. “We made a mural, too. Patty is keeping it first.”

  Zander examined the ornaments. “Beautiful,” he said finally. “You’re very talented, honey.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Your mother and I had an idea. How about if we go uptown and look at the tree at Rockefeller Center and then have ice cream at Rumpelmayer’s?”

  “Really? Right now?”

  “Right now. Hurry and get ready. Our chariot awaits.”

  The taxi ride to Rockefeller Center was slow and slippery and exciting. Every time the cab slid unstoppably sideways, the driver muttering and pumping the brakes, Peter cried, “Whoo! Whoo!” and sometimes, “Again!”

  Dana’s mother put her hands over her eyes, and her father gripped the strap by the window with one hand and Peter with the other. But when they finally stepped out onto Fifth Avenue, Zander gave the man a large tip and said, “Merry Christmas to you.”

  The tree was dazzling. Dana remembered the year before, when she and Julia had watched the lighting of the tree on The Howdy Doody Show. But they hadn’t seen the tree in person. Now she stood with her back to Fifth Avenue, facing the grandeur of Rockefeller Center, and gazed at the magnificent tree, which was rising up beyond the skating rink, awash in tiny lights.

  “My tree?” said Peter from his father’s arms.

  Zander laughed. “No, this isn’t your tree. Ours will be a lot smaller.”

  “Can we come here every year and see the tree?” asked Julia.

  “I think we should make it a Burley family tradition,” said Abby.

  Later, sitting in Rumpelmayer’s, her favorite restaurant in the world, and sipping a milkshake through two straws, Dana decided that even if Christmas never arrived, this day — this moment with her family — would be just as good.

  * * *

  Dana’s father waited until the twins and Peter had their baths and were in their pajamas before he opened the liquor cabinet in the library and poured his first drink of the evening. By the time Dana was ready to say good night to him, his words sounded mushy, and now he had tripped over Peter’s teddy bear and landed on the floor of the library on his bottom, where he sat laughing.

  “Daddy?” said Dana.

  “Go on to bed,” said her mother from behind her. “Right now.”

  Dana turned and started for the stairs. She could hear her mother say sharply, “Get up.” And “I asked you to wait until the children were asleep, at the very least.”

  Dana paused. “He was laughing,” she told her mother. “He wasn’t —”

  “Bed, Dana. Right this instant.”

  “Good night, Daddy. I love you,” Dana called over her shoulder.

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” said her mother.

  Dana didn’t answer. She stomped to her room and turned off the light. Later, when Abby poked her head around the door, Dana lay still, her face toward the wall. Abby sighed and closed the door softly. After a long time Dana flicked on the lamp beside her bed, tiptoed to her closet, and retrieved a box that she’d hidden at the back. On the top she had written Merry Christmas to Daddy and Mommy. She sat on the floor, opened the box, and looked through the drawings she’d been working on with Mrs. Booth — sketches of everyone in her family, plus one of their house and another of the view of Eleventh Street from the window in the living room.

  She replaced the top on the box, thought for a moment, then found an eraser and slowly rubbed out the words and Mommy.

  “Can you believe that Mommy and Aunt Rose used to wake up in this bed every single morning?” said Julia, rubbing her eyes. She slithered from under the covers, rested her arms on the windowsill, and looked down at Blue Harbor Lane as she breathed in the damp, salty air. “I wonder what Mommy saw when she looked out this window.”

  “The same view you see, silly,” said Dana sleepily.

  “I don’t mean just the view. Mommy would see people outside, people who don’t live here in Lewisport anymore. Or maybe she had a dog, and the dog sat in the front yard and barked at cars. I wonder what cars looked like back then.”

  Dana yawned. “Mom said that when she used to live here, there weren’t even screens on the windows. Think of all the bugs that must have flown inside when the windows were open.”

  “Think of a whole family crammed into this teeny space,” said Julia. “Mommy and Aunt Rose didn’t even have their own beds.”

  “Think of living here with Papa Luther,” said Dana.

  “Think of living anywhere with Papa Luther. He’s scary.”

  “We have to visit him today.”

  “But just for a minute,” said Julia. “And not until later. Come on. Mommy said we were going to take a walk on the beach this morning.”

  Dana, now fully awake, scrambled out of bed and followed Julia down the stairs of the little beach house in Maine. She found her mother and Peter sitting on the front stoop, looking across the street at the ocean.

  “Crash!” announced Peter. “Waves crash! I swim?”

  “Yes, we’ll go swimming today,” said his mothe
r.

  “Where’s Dad?” asked Dana.

  “Still asleep.”

  “Not anymore.” Dana’s father, looking rumpled, joined his family on the stoop. “It’s a treat to be so leisurely,” he said. “Let’s sleep late every morning of our vacation.”

  “Shall we take our walk?” asked Dana’s mother.

  “In pajamas?” asked Peter.

  “No!” Abby laughed. “Everybody, go change. We’ll take a walk and then we’ll have breakfast.”

  Ten minutes later Dana and her family set off in the wet sand. Peter lagged behind with Zander, stopping frequently to examine shells or to sift sand through his fingers, while Abby and the girls marched briskly ahead.

  “The water’s freezing!” cried Julia.

  “It doesn’t ever get very warm,” replied her mother. “Not up here in Maine.”

  “How long did you live in Lewisport?” Julia wanted to know.

  “Until I was ten. I had just turned ten when we moved to the big house in Barnegat Point.”

  “And who were your friends when you lived here?” Dana asked. She already knew the answer to this question. She and Julia asked their mother the same questions every time they visited the beach house in Maine. They liked hearing her answers.

  “Well, I suppose Rose was my best friend, but I didn’t know it. Back then she was just my little sister. My best friend who was my own age was Sarah.”

  “The one who drowned,” said Julia.

  “Yes, the one who drowned. And then there was Orrin.”

  “The boy your father didn’t like,” said Dana. She stooped to examine a clam shell, rinsed the sand off it in a whoosh of seawater, and stuck it in the pocket of her shorts.

  “What about Daddy?” asked Julia.

  “I didn’t meet your daddy until we moved.”

  “And what did you and Rose and Sarah and Orrin used to do together?”

  “We picked blueberries and went clamming. And Sarah and I made paper dolls and skipped rope and read mystery stories.”

  “Did you ever go to New York City?” asked Dana.

  “Never. Not until I was a grown-up. New York seemed like a faraway country.”

  The Burleys walked along until Julia said her feet were turning to ice, and then they returned to the cottage for breakfast.

  * * *

  After breakfast they climbed into the car that Papa Luther, Abby’s father, had lent them. The Burleys didn’t own a car — they didn’t need one in New York — and Dana was always fascinated to watch her father behind the wheel. “Drive like a cabbie!” she called from the backseat, and Zander laughed.

  “Not on your life,” he said as he steered the car slowly down Blue Harbor Lane and turned onto the road to Barnegat Point.

  The Burleys rode through town and then out of town and then along a bumpy street with only a handful of houses on it, set so far back that Dana couldn’t get a good look at them. Her sketch pad was in her lap and she wanted to see the houses, but settled on studying the birds and trees they passed, and the little lanes leading back to the ocean, brilliant in the morning sun and glitter of white sand.

  “Here we are,” Dana’s mother said presently.

  “Aunt Rose?” asked Peter.

  “That’s right. This is Aunt Rose’s house.”

  The house, much bigger than the beach cottage, but not nearly as big as the enormous house in Barnegat Point that Dana’s mother had moved to when she was ten, looked friendly to Dana. She thought so every single time she saw it. The wood shingles were fading in a pleasant manner, and gingham curtains, handmade by Rose, hung in each window.

  Before the Burleys had even stepped out of the car, the front door of the house opened and out bounded Dana’s cousins, followed by her aunt Rose and her uncle Harry.

  “We got a badminton set!” announced Emily, who was seven.

  “And we’re all going to play,” added William, who was five.

  “Except I’m too short,” said Lizzie, who was three.

  “Come around back,” added Teddy, the oldest cousin. He was so much older than the other cousins that he was already a teenager. Thirteen years old, an age Dana aspired to be. She was slightly jealous of Teddy, just because of his age.

  “I play?” Peter wanted to know.

  “We’ll teach you,” said Teddy.

  Dana and Julia and the cousins did try very patiently to teach Peter to play badminton. But he couldn’t hit the birdie and eventually he threw his racket on the ground and screeched.

  “Peter,” said Lizzie, “don’t cry. I can’t hit that bird either.”

  “It’s a birdie,” said Emily.

  “I don’t care,” said Lizzie.

  “Mean game!” shouted Peter.

  “What’s going on out there?” an adult voice called through an open window at the back of the house.

  “Is it lunchtime yet?” asked Dana.

  Luckily it was.

  Peter sputtered and cried and kicked at stones on his way to the house, but when he found that lunch was to be a picnic at the beach, a real picnic on a blanket in the sand, he brightened. “Central Park!” he announced.

  “What?” said William.

  “We had a picnic in Central Park last week,” Dana told her cousin. “That’s a big park in New York City.”

  “I wish I could go to New York,” said Emily.

  “So do I,” said Aunt Rose. She knelt on the picnic blanket and handed plates around.

  Dana studied her aunt, who wore her hair wound up on her head, a blue-flowered blouse that she had made herself, and a look of longing for all the things Dana saw every day in New York. “You should visit us sometime,” said Dana. “All of you. Uncle Harry, have you ever been to New York?”

  “Nope.”

  Aunt Rose let out a small laugh. “I guess I don’t really want to go anyway. I’m not a city girl. It’s nice to dream about New York, that’s all.”

  Uncle Harry, who never said much (“He’s a man of few words,” Dana’s father liked to say), smiled and rubbed the spot between Aunt Rose’s shoulder blades, the spot that always hurt at the end of a day’s work.

  * * *

  The visit was over too soon, with Dana and her family climbing back into their borrowed car, and Aunt Rose and Dana’s mother hugging each other through the open window.

  “Why are we crying?” said Abby, wiping away tears. “We’re going to see each other again tomorrow.”

  Aunt Rose fanned the air in front of her face, Uncle Harry put his arm around her, and soon the car was headed back to Barnegat Point.

  “Do we have to visit Papa Luther and Helen?” asked Julia as the car neared the big house on Haddon Road. A whine had crept into her voice.

  “Yes,” replied Abby. “And no whining.”

  “I don’t like Papa Lufer,” said Peter from the backseat.

  “I know, lovey,” replied Abby. “But he’s my father. He’s part of our family.”

  The visit was wonderfully short. The Burleys stood uneasily on Papa Luther’s front porch after Abby rang the bell.

  “Aren’t they expecting us?” asked Dana, recalling the enthusiastic greeting they’d gotten at Aunt Rose’s house.

  “Shh,” said Abby. She swatted at Dana from behind her back.

  Presently the door was opened by a maid who Dana didn’t recall meeting the last time her family had visited Maine. She ushered the Burleys inside and soon Papa Luther and his wife, who was not Dana’s grandmother, met them in the hallway and kissed them on their cheeks — everyone except Peter, for whom, Dana soon realized, Helen had set out “a special chair.”

  “It’s just his size,” she said as she led the way into the parlor.

  Dana noticed that the chair was positioned far from the couch where Helen and Papa Luther sat. Peter looked very alone in it.

  Dana’s mother ended the visit quickly, even before Miles, who was Helen and Papa Luther’s son, showed up. She scooped Peter into her arms and carried him outside,
and the moment the door had closed behind them, she muttered, “Well, that’s over with.”

  Dana let out her breath and took her father’s hand.

  “Let’s walk into town,” said Abby, setting Peter down.

  “Daddy, that’s where you grew up in, isn’t it?” asked Julia, indicating the house next to Papa Luther’s.

  Zander nodded. “Yup. My bedroom was right up there.” He pointed to a window on the side of the house.

  “And why did your parents move?” asked Dana, who had never gotten a satisfying answer to the question.

  “It was just time,” her father replied.

  Dana and her family spent the next hour walking through Barnegat Point, Abby and Zander stopping frequently to say, “There’s where we went to school,” or “See that movie theatre? It was the only one in town for years,” or “That used to be a toy store.”

  “All right. Time to get our car and go back to the cottage,” said Zander at last.

  “Can’t we stay in town just a little longer?” asked Julia.

  “Nope,” replied her mother. “Did you forget? Aunt Adele is coming for dinner tonight.”

  * * *

  By the time Adele Nichols arrived at the beach cottage, Dana and Julia had made a WELCOME sign for her, which they’d strung above the front door. Dana thought her aunt Adele might be her favorite person in the world, apart from her parents and her brother and sister. She loved Aunt Rose and Uncle Harry and her cousins, and all of the Burley relatives, too. But Aunt Adele was special. She was young, much younger than Dana’s parents, and she sat on the floor and played games with Dana and Julia and Peter, listened closely to whatever they had to say, hugged Peter, and laughed at her own jokes with her head thrown back. She still lived at home with Papa Luther and Helen, even though she was twenty-one years old. Papa Luther said she couldn’t leave until she got married, but Aunt Adele wasn’t interested in getting married. To make matters worse, Papa Luther wouldn’t let her do any kind of work either, except help Mrs. Cabot, the seamstress in town.

  Aunt Adele was stuck. That’s what she told the Burleys at dinner that night.