The Long Way Home Read online

  Outside, the breeze from the ocean became a wind, a loud wind that roared around the cottage, and suddenly Dana found herself back on the Staten Island Ferry on a frigid night in January. She felt a gust of wind come along. It snatched her father’s hat and she reached out, snatched the hat back, and set it on her father’s head.

  “Bang! Bang! You’re dead!”

  Peter Burley, eleven years old, appeared in the doorway of the kitchen in full cowboy regalia — chaps, boots with tin spurs that spun around, a fringed vest, a ten-gallon hat, and his beloved holster and gun.

  “Peter, you look great,” said Dana from her place at the table.

  “You’ll be the best cowboy at school,” added Julia.

  “Where are your costumes?” Peter wanted to know.

  “We’ll bring them with us,” Dana replied.

  Abby emerged from her tiny bedroom. “All right, my loves. Everybody ready for school? Amy will be here in ten minutes and I don’t want to be late for work.”

  Amy was the babysitter. The new babysitter. The Ipswich babysitter — Ipswich being not the first but the second Maine town to which Abby had moved her family after what had turned out to be a three-month stay in Lewisport. Dana and Julia had just begun to make friends at BP Elementary School when their mother said, yawning, at dinner one night, “This isn’t working out.”

  “What isn’t?” Dana had asked.

  Abby had waved her hand around the kitchen and then in the direction of the living room, where her wrinkled blankets were flung about on the couch. “This. Any of it. I’m not making enough money at my job. I don’t know how much longer I can ask Rose to look after Nell, and I certainly can’t afford a babysitter. Not on this salary.” (Abby was a part-time secretary at a lumber company.) “I’ve looked everywhere in Barnegat Point for a better job, but there just isn’t anything. It’s time to move on. Besides, we can’t live in Pop’s house forever.”

  “But it’s only been three months!” Julia exclaimed.

  “Have you really looked everywhere?” Dana asked.

  Abby had set aside her plate of spaghetti and rested her head on her arms. “Everywhere,” she’d said.

  So the Burleys had packed up their things and moved to Lansdon, Maine, where Abby found a furnished apartment and where she’d sworn there were more and better jobs. She’d worked for six months as a waitress at Lobster Town, which served fried versions of everything anyone could think of, and where she’d worn a name tag that read FIRST MATE ABIGAIL. But the money had been good and Abby had found a decent babysitter for Nell. Then Lobster Town had burned to the ground in a late-night fire and all the waitresses had swarmed Lansdon looking for other waitress jobs. After weeks of being turned down for work, Abby moved her family once again. They’d landed in Ipswich in May, when Abby had discovered that a new Lobster Town had recently been built there. She had reprised her role as First Mate Abigail.

  “Well?” Dana had said to Julia on their first afternoon in Ipswich.

  Julia was sitting outside on the wooden steps that led to their apartment on the second floor of an old house, chin resting in her hands. She’d sighed. “Our third school this year” was all she said.

  Peter had survived each move surprisingly well. He was happy as long as he could go to school and as long as Papa Luther continued to replace the various parts of his cowboy costume as he outgrew them. The boots were the newest arrival. They’d come in a box a week earlier, along with sweaters for the twins and a snowsuit for Nell.

  Now it was Halloween morning and Peter was beside himself with excitement about what the day would bring. “A parade at school, a party in my class, and tonight, trick or treating!”

  “When I was a little girl,” Abby said, “there was no such thing as trick or treating.”

  “Why not?” asked Peter.

  “It hadn’t been invented yet,” Dana whispered to Julia.

  “People didn’t celebrate Halloween the way we do now,” their mother replied.

  “I’m going to get a whole bag full of candy tonight,” said Peter. “A whole bag. Mommy, you will be home tonight to see me?”

  “I will be home. Dana and Julia will take you trick-or-treating, and Nell and I will stay here and hand out candy.”

  “This is the best day ever!” Peter proclaimed.

  * * *

  At school that day Dana sat through her morning classes, doodling in her notebook and occasionally paying attention to her teachers. At lunchtime she and Julia huddled together in the cafeteria. They had an entire half table to themselves.

  “Nobody even talks to us,” Julia muttered to her twin.

  Dana shrugged. She had given up trying to make friends at each new school. “What does it matter? We’ll only be here until Mom decides to move again.”

  “At least she knows someone in this town, unlike in Lansdon. Maybe we won’t be moving again so soon.”

  Dana made a face. She found her mother to be a frustrating, incomprehensible creature. Even Abby’s unexpected reunion with her old friend had been puzzling. Fascinating, but puzzling. Dana vividly remembered the moment that Orrin Umhay, the subject of so many of her mother’s childhood stories, had strode into their lives in Ipswich. It was during their first week there, when Abby had been working at the new Lobster Town for just three days.

  At breakfast that morning she’d said, “So, kids, how would you like to have an early dinner at Lobster Town today? You could come at the end of my shift and meet my new coworkers.”

  “Cool!” Peter had said. “All of us can come?”

  “Well, maybe not Nell. I think she should stay at home with Amy. But you and Julia and Dana could come after school. I get a discount, you know. You can order whatever you want.”

  “Yes! Lobster!” cried Peter, who actually did not like lobster, but liked almost every other fried item at Lobster Town.

  This was how, at four thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, Dana, Julia, and Peter had happened to be sitting grandly in a row at the counter in Lobster Town, heavy white plates before them piled with French fries, fried clams, onion rings, batter-fried fish chips, fried shrimp, and fried chicken. Their mother, in her Lobster Town uniform that made her look a little bit like a pirate and a little bit like a baby doll, had been refilling their milk-shake glasses, when Dana heard the ship’s bell clang, signaling that someone had entered the restaurant. She’d glanced up from her plate and had seen a very tall, very thin, very blond policeman close the door carefully behind him and stride purposefully to the counter.

  He’d chosen a seat next to Julia and spread a paper napkin in his lap.

  Abby had set down the stainless steel milk-shake cup, turned to the policeman, and said, “Ahoy. Welcome to Lobster Town. I’m First Mate Abigail and I’ll be . . .” Her voice trailed to a stop.

  Dana had glanced at her mother. Abby and the cop were gaping at each other.

  At exactly the same moment, Abby exclaimed, “Orrin?!” and the cop exclaimed, “Abby?!”

  Dana stared at the man. Orrin. Orrin Umhay. The grown-up version of the little boy her mother had once played with. The boy Papa Luther had scorned because Orrin’s parents were foreigners (his mother was Irish; his father wasn’t actually foreign at all) and lazy (Papa Luther’s opinion). The boy Papa Luther had eventually forbidden Abby to see, and whom Abby had rarely heard from after she moved to New York.

  An awkward silence had followed, and then Abby dropped her tiny waitress pencil on the floor behind the counter and Orrin lost his balance and slid partway off his stool. When they’d recovered themselves, Abby had said, “What are you doing here?” just as Orrin said, “What are you doing here?”

  Dana and Julia had raised their eyebrows at each other, and Peter had said politely, “Would you like a piece of chicken, Mr. Policeman? I didn’t bite off this one yet. There’s no spit.”

  Orrin had laughed nervously, and Dana’s mother began babbling about leaving New York and moving back to Maine, while Orrin tried to exp
lain that he now lived in Ipswich. The manager of Lobster Town, however, had shot a look at Abby and said pointedly, “You have other customers, Miss Burley.” (Miss Burley.)

  Abby had hurried to help them, her cheeks flushed, her hair escaping from the pins under her pirate hat. Orrin, meanwhile, had eaten his food in a big rush as he tried to answer a string of questions from Peter: “Can I see your gun? Do you have a holster? Does your car have a siren? Where’s your police dog?”

  In the end, Orrin had jumped to his feet, slid a ten-dollar bill under his plate as an enormous tip for Abby, and fled Lobster Town.

  But that night he’d telephoned, and he and Dana’s mother talked for two hours.

  “I heard Mom on the phone with Aunt Rose last night,” Julia told Dana now, leaning conspiratorially across the cafeteria table. “She said something like, ‘It’s good to be seeing Orrin again. He’s the same as ever. Resourceful and —’ And then she stopped talking and started laughing at something Aunt Rose said. So anyway I think maybe we’ll be staying longer.”

  Dana shrugged. But she felt her cheeks start to burn and she wasn’t sure why. At last she said hotly, “We’d better stay here.” (Not that Ipswich was so great.) “Mom can’t keep lugging us around like suitcases. We’re actual human beings, in case she hadn’t noticed.”

  When the last bell of the day had rung, Dana and Julia walked through Valley Road Elementary to the special classroom where they met Peter at the door. His face was sticky with orange frosting and Dana noticed frosting on the handle of his pistol and the top of one cowboy boot as well.

  “We had our party!” Peter exclaimed. “It was great! And we had a parade and everyone got a ribbon. Mine says, Great Costume. See? Where are your costumes? Did you have a party?”

  Peter continued chattering as they walked outside, oblivious to the stares of some of the students. When Alex McDermott, an eighth grader, slapped him on the rump as he walked by and called out, “Git along, little doggie!” Peter grinned. But Dana rounded on Alex and said quietly, “I’m sure Penny will be impressed to hear how you talk to kids from the special class. I’ll tell her about it tomorrow. Girlfriends find that that kind of thing so attractive.”

  “Jeez, settle down. I was only kidding,” said Alex.

  “No, you weren’t,” said Dana, and she ran to catch up with Julia and Peter. “He’s such a jerk.”

  “Who? Alex? He’s the most popular boy in our grade.”

  “Well, it hasn’t made him any nicer.”

  “You know who I like?” Julia whispered as she and Dana and Peter walked across the sandy lot in front of the school.

  Dana smiled. “Who?”

  “Yeah, who?” said Peter.

  “George Creason.”

  “He is cute,” agreed Dana.

  “Yeah, cute,” said Peter.

  “Who do you like, Dana?” Julia wanted to know.

  Dana shrugged.

  “Come on. You have to tell me. I told you.”

  “Okay. I like Travis.”

  “Travis? Travis Berman? From Miss Fine’s?”

  “Yes.”

  Julia said nothing.

  Dana and her brother and sister skirted the edge of Ipswich and turned onto their lane. Dana looked at the weather-beaten wooden houses, one after another, that lined the street. They were tall structures, all of them white, no shutters at the windows, and they had been divided into apartments. Cheap apartments in cheap houses, thought Dana. Sticky linoleum floors, sticky Formica counters.

  “Not a tree in sight,” she said. “And everything is white. White sand, white road, white houses.”

  “I can see the ocean,” said Julia tentatively, standing on her tiptoes. “It’s not white.”

  “There’s Amy and Nell!” exclaimed Peter, pointing. “Hi, Amy! Hi, Nell!”

  Amy Farmer, the babysitter, sat on the bottom step of the stairs outside the apartment. She waved to Peter and the twins, and Nell waved, too, then ran to greet them. “We have cookies!” she said. “Come see.”

  Dana started to follow her sister up the stairs, imagining that flight of outside steps in the winter, slippery with snow. Behind her, a horn honked and she turned around in time to see a police cruiser pull up in front of the house. “What —” she started to say.

  “Yoo-hoo!” called her mother as she stepped out of the cruiser in her First Mate Abigail uniform.

  The door opened on the driver’s side, and Orrin Umhay unfolded himself from behind the wheel and stood looking at the house, at Amy, at Dana and her brother and sisters. Abby linked her arm through his, stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, and then called gaily, “Hello, everyone!”

  “Hi,” said Amy and Julia.

  “Can I turn on the siren?” asked Peter.

  Orrin smiled at him, but shook his head. “Police regulations,” he replied.

  Dana watched from the stairs.

  “Dana?” said her mother. “Come say hi to Orrin.”

  Dana turned and walked up the steps, into the apartment, and through to the room she shared with Julia and Nell. She closed the door quietly. She absolutely did not want to see her mother and Mr. Umhay enter the apartment arm in arm. And she did not want to see her mother kiss Mr. Umhay on the cheek. Or anywhere else.

  * * *

  As soon as darkness fell that night, which was well before supper time (and well after Mr. Umhay had folded himself back into the cruiser and driven off), Peter, still in his cowboy outfit, began jumping up and down in the kitchen. “Time for trick or treating!” he cried.

  Dana looked up from the table, where she was trying to write ten sentences about Ipswich in French. “Julia, could you please take him?” she said. “I think I’m going to stay here.”

  “But —”

  “I know I said I’d go with you, but I have a lot of homework.”

  “Are you sure?” Abby asked Dana. “Your costume —”

  Dana shook her head. Her hobo costume was okay, but she felt too old for trick or treating. “I’ll stay here.”

  When Julia and Peter had left, and Abby had stationed herself by the top of the steps with Nell and a bowl of Hershey’s Kisses, Dana slipped into her bedroom and closed the door. She reached under her mattress (the only possible hiding place in this room, which was crowded with two dressers, a pair of bunk beds, and a cot) and pulled out a packet of letters. On the upper left-hand corner of each envelope was an address on West Fifty-Third Street in New York.

  Dana scrunched herself into a sitting position on the bottom bunk, selected the most recent letter from Adele, and read it for the fourth time. Then she balanced a pad of paper against her knees and stuck a pen between her teeth. She gazed out the window at the lights of Ipswich before she finally began to write.

  Dear Adele,

  How are you? Thank you for your letter. Things here are the same. No, that’s not true. Mom has a boyfriend and I think you might know him, his name is Orrin Umhay. I’ll tell you more about this in another letter.

  I have to ask you something. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. This is a very serious question but it’s important to me, so here goes. Could I come live with you in New York? I haven’t asked Mom about this yet. I wanted to ask you first, to see if it would even be possible.

  I don’t think I can live here anymore. I really don’t. I miss you. I miss New York. Maine isn’t home. I want to go home. Please, could I live with you? I hope you’ll think about this.

  Love, Dana

  “I don’t understand how you could do this to us, Dana. I really don’t understand.”

  “I’m not doing anything to you.” Dana closed her suitcase, sat on it, and looked into the reproachful face of her twin.

  “What do you mean you’re not doing anything to us? You’re abandoning us.”

  “Think of it this way. When I’m gone, you and Nell can get rid of the cot and have more space in here.”

  “You think this is all a joke, don’t you?” Julia, disgusted, turned and
left the bedroom.

  “Hey!” Dana called after her. “I do not think this is a joke. I took it very seriously. This was a big deal and a big decision. Come back here, Julia.”

  “Are you fighting?” asked Nell as Julia stormed into the room. She was sitting on the cot, feet swinging back and forth. Cradled in her arms was their mother’s old fairy queen doll.

  “No,” said Dana.

  “Yes,” said Julia.

  Nell looked uncertainly from one twin to the other.

  “Nell?” Abby called from the kitchen. “Come here for a minute and let the girls work things out for themselves.”

  “See, it is a fight,” said Nell triumphantly as she exited the bedroom, holding the doll upside down by one foot.

  Dana got up from the suitcase and sat on Nell’s cot. “Julia,” she said, “I’m really sorry you feel this way. I thought you knew how important this was to me. We’ve been talking about it for months.”

  “I know.” Julia’s lower lip trembled. “I guess I didn’t think you would actually go through with it.”

  “How could you think —” Dana began to say, exasperation building in her like steam in a pressure cooker.

  “It’s just that I don’t want you to leave,” Julia rushed on. “What am I going to do without you? It was one thing when it looked like we were staying in Ipswich. But now that we’re moving to Pauling, I’m going to have to start all over again at a new school — at high school — without you. I’ll be alone. I’ll spend lunchtime surrounded by empty seats.”

  Dana looked at the floor. “Do you want to come to New York and live with Adele and me?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! My family is important to me.”

  “Julia, it’s important to me, too.”

  “You don’t act like it is.”

  “Well, it is. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Say that you’ll stay here with us.”

  “I can’t. I’m miserable here. I hate Maine. It isn’t home. New York City is home. That’s just how I feel. I miss everything about it — the excitement, the skyscrapers, the museums —”