All Manner of Things Read online

  “Second cousin, Mom.” I rolled my eyes. “Everyone around here is your second cousin.”

  “Still.” She went back to digging through her purse. “You don’t have to take it from him. You’d get treated better working in an office somewhere.”

  “You know I’d hate that.” I leaned my elbows on the counter. “I’m horrible at typing.”

  “You’d learn. Besides, there’s more money in it.” She tilted her head. “Or you could go to college.”

  “I don’t mind his moods,” I said. “Besides, I can’t afford college.”

  “We could work something out.” Her hands stilled and she looked up into my eyes. “I could work more hours. Maybe get a second job.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” I slid my book off the counter. “I wouldn’t want to go anyway.”

  She gave me a sharp look—eyes narrowed and mouth puckered—that told me she didn’t believe a word of it. The look didn’t last long, just enough so that I’d see it. Then she turned her attention back to her purse.

  “If you say so. Ah,” she said, pulling an envelope from the depths of her handbag. “This came today.”

  Red and blue stripes colored the edge of the wrinkled envelope and a darker blue rectangle with white letters that read “BY AIR MAIL PAR AVION.” It was addressed to me, the sender was Walter Vanderlaan, Private First Class.

  “Any idea why he’d be writing you?” she asked, tapping his name with her long, red fingernail.

  “No.” I shrugged one shoulder. “I haven’t a clue.”

  “You’re sure?” She turned her head, giving me the side-eye.

  I picked up the envelope, tapping a corner of it against the counter. Walt and his parents had been our neighbors when I was small. Our folks would play cards some Friday evenings, letting us kids stay up late to swim in the shallows of Old Chip or watch Ozzie and Harriet on television.

  Walt had been my friend even though he was Mike’s age. When he knocked on the door to ask for a playmate, he sought me. When we picked teams for a game of tag, he’d call my name first. More than once I’d overheard our mothers talk about writing up papers for an arranged marriage.

  He was my very first friend and I was his.

  But after Frank left and we moved, we didn’t talk much anymore. And the older we got, the more Walt hated me. At least that was how I interpreted his name-calling and dirty looks.

  I tried my hardest not to grimace, looking at my name on the envelope written in Walt’s handwriting. “He’s hardly spoken two words to me since we were little.”

  “Well, apparently he wants to talk to you now.”

  “I can’t imagine why.” I pushed up my glasses. “I’d think he has plenty of other people he could write.”

  “People change. Being at war can make a boy get ideas.” Her eyes widened, she nodded once. “It makes them take notice of things they might otherwise overlook.”

  “Mom, no. He wouldn’t—”

  “Annie, you aren’t getting any younger. You’re eighteen, after all. And I know you are probably in a hurry to get married.” She leaned over the counter toward me. “I’m sure you think he’s a nice boy, but . . .”

  “He’s not nice,” I interrupted. “I already know that. I’ve always known that. Besides, I’m not in a hurry to get married.”

  “Honey, he’s at war. I’m sure he’s lonely.” She sighed. “I guess I just want you to be careful.”

  “Careful of what?”

  “I don’t want you getting your heart broken.”

  “Mom, I harbor no secret affections for Walt Vanderlaan. I promise. Besides, he’s been engaged to Caroline Mann for ages.” I stuffed the letter in between the pages of my book. “Don’t worry. I won’t write him back, if that’s what you want.”

  “You can if you would like.” She let out a breath and leaned her elbows on the counter. “Just don’t keep any secrets from me. Can you promise me that?”

  I nodded, squinting at her, trying to figure out what she was up to. She never sighed that way unless she had something up her sleeve. Then, her blue eyes sharpened, as if she was trying to see through me. I’d never in all my life held up under her X-ray gaze.

  “Is there anything that you’d like to tell me?” she asked. “Any secrets about Michael?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know he’s keeping something from me.”

  “Gosh, Mom, why would you think that?” I widened my eyes, hoping to look puzzled instead of guilty.

  “What’s this appointment of his?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Mothers always find out,” she answered. “What’s this appointment?”

  The door to the diner opened, letting in a handful of girls who wandered to the window booth, whispering to each other about this or that. I let them know that I’d be right with them, and they nodded as if they were in no hurry.

  “You know, don’t you?” Mom asked. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “Mom.”

  “It’s not about a girl, is it?” She touched my hand. “Please tell me it isn’t.”

  “Mother.”

  “I understand, times are different than when I was his age.” She stood upright, smoothing her blouse. “With the music and the movies now, I know that it can all be so confusing . . .”

  “Mom, I swear to you it has nothing to do with a girl,” I said, trying to stop her from saying something that would make me blush.

  “All right,” she said, putting her hands up in surrender. “I’m just worried is all.”

  “It would be better if he told you.”

  “Okay.” She snapped her purse shut. “I should get back to work anyway.”

  I nodded.

  She touched my cheek with her fingertips. “You’re getting so grown up.”

  “If only I looked it.” I pushed up my glasses. “I’m tired of people thinking I’m twelve.”

  “Someday you’ll be glad you look younger.” She winked at me.

  “Maybe.”

  “Trust me, you will.” She turned her attention to the pastry case, where we kept the desserts from the Dutch bakery down the road. “See if Bernie will let you bring home some leftover banket for dessert. Tell him I’ll pay him back next week, all right?”

  “Sure.”

  “And your oma is coming for supper. She might like it if you walked with her.”

  She picked up her purse, putting it back over her arm, and walked out of the diner, hips swaying with each step.

  Mike reminded her of Frank. She never said it in so many words; still I knew. The way his brown eyes were unable to hide his mood, how his dark hair curled when he let it get long, his deep voice, his dimple-cheeked smile. All of Mike was all of Frank.

  The girls at the booth ordered a glass of Coke each and a plate of french fries to share. The whole time they stayed, they watched everyone walk past on the other side of the window, giggling and gossiping.

  While they ate, I sat behind the counter, my book unopened with the envelope peeking out, begging me to find out what was inside. I told myself I’d toss it in the mailbox at the end of the street with a big “RETURN TO SENDER” scrawled across it.

  But stuffing the book into my purse, I knew I’d do no such thing.

  Dear Annie,

  I’ll bet I was the last one you expected to get a letter from. I hope it was a good surprise, seeing my name on the envelope. No doubt the only reason you opened it was to find out why in the world I would be writing you.

  Anyway, I found this feather on the ground over here in Vietnam and thought I’d send it to you. I hope you still like birds. Don’t worry, I cleaned it really well. Isn’t it pretty?

  Wish you could see the birds here. They’re like nothing at home. I tried taking a picture of one of them for you, but the darn thing flew away just as I snapped the shot.

  Do you remember when we were kids and we’d watch the hummingbirds flit around the feeder in my front y
ard? You said they were magic and I wouldn’t believe you. You cried, remember, when we found the one that died after it flew into the window. I think about that sometimes, you know. I felt bad that you cried that day. It was so small—impossibly small—and weighed almost nothing at all.

  I never told you, but I buried it under my mother’s hydrangea tree and marked the grave with a fieldstone. It’s still there. When I get home, I can show you if you want.

  Your friend,

  Walt Vanderlaan

  PS: You can write back to me if you’d like. I hope you will.

  2

  My oma lived in a small cottage on Sunny Side Avenue, just a block or so away from our house. She and my opa moved into it soon after immigrating to Fort Colson from Amsterdam. They had little more than what could fit into their steamer trunk. But what they lacked in material possessions they made up for in hope.

  Hers was a house of yellow siding and white shutters. There was hardly a porch to speak of, and the two bedrooms were barely big enough for the beds and small dressers they contained. The stove in the kitchen was narrow and the counters short. If one wanted to take a bath, one would have to fold in half to fit into the tub.

  Everything about the home was tiny. But Oma didn’t mind.

  “It’s just me here now,” she’d said. “What do I need a bigger house for? Just to clean it all day long?”

  I couldn’t imagine her being happy anywhere else.

  I rounded the corner to her road, not in a hurry and glad to be outside. The neighborhood was a peaceful kind of quiet that afternoon. The breeze rustled through the leaves, and a cardinal made a chip-chip-chipping sound from across the street. I turned to see its bright red feathers where it rested on the branch of a maple.

  The creaking of a screen door opening and the clunk of its closing stole my attention. Oma stepped onto her porch, two halves of an orange in her hand. She put the fruit on the small railing and rubbed her hands together.

  When she noticed me, she waved me over and I walked along the edge of her yard, breathing in the subtle sweetness of the flowers that grew in well-maintained beds, wishing the tulips would last more than just a few more weeks before they’d be done for the year.

  “How are you, Annie?” Oma said, stepping off her porch and meeting me in the yard. “Did you have a good day?”

  “I did,” I answered, bending to kiss her cheek. “How about you?”

  “I can’t complain,” she said, smiling. “Did you hear that Mrs. Martinez had her baby?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “A little girl. They named her Donna,” she said, looping her hand through the bend of my elbow. “I haven’t seen her yet, of course. But Mr. Martinez told me she has a headful of black hair. Can you imagine? What do you have there?”

  She nodded to the paper bag dangling from my hand.

  “Some banket from Bernie’s.”

  “I could have baked.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. Then pointing at the oranges, “Are the orioles still visiting you?”

  “Oh yes. I have to put out an orange almost every day.” She smiled. “They strip it perfectly clean.”

  “Maybe they’ll stick around a little longer this year if you keep spoiling them.”

  “I do hope so.”

  A neighbor, Mrs. DeJong, walked by, a paper bag of groceries on her hip. Oma gave her the news about the Martinez baby and then the two of them exchanged pleasantries in Dutch. I caught bits and pieces of what they said. But my grasp of the language was embarrassingly bad, despite Oma’s efforts to teach me.

  “I told Mr. Martinez I’d bring some saucijzebroodjes just as soon as they bring the babe home,” Oma told Mrs. DeJong. “But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what you call them.”

  “Pigs in a blanket,” I answered.

  “That’s it. Do you think they’ll like them?” she asked.

  “I should think so,” Mrs. DeJong answered. “Whoever wouldn’t?”

  “That, I don’t know.” Oma smiled at Mrs. DeJong. “And will you bring a meal to them too?”

  “Of course.” Mrs. DeJong nodded and smiled. “I would love to.”

  Oma had a brand of kindness that involved pure butter, almond paste, and hours of baking in the kitchen. Not a sickness overtook a family in Fort Colson that didn’t find its cure in a bowl of her chicken soup. No celebration met a family without a plateful of her cookies wrapped up on the porch. A funeral didn’t pass without her arriving in the church before anyone else to cook and leaving last to ensure that all the pans had been scrubbed and put away.

  If there was to be crowned a queen of benevolence, it would be my Dutch grandmother, Tess Pipping.

  The ladies said their good-byes and Mrs. DeJong asked me to give her love to my mother. Oma took my arm again and whispered to me.

  “She has come around,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I don’t like to be a gossip, but I will now,” she said. “When the Martinez family moved into the neighborhood, Mrs. DeJong was against it. I’ll let you guess why.”

  “Because they’re Mexican?” I asked.

  She opened her eyes wide and raised her eyebrows to let me know that I was right.

  “But I told her that we would welcome them.” Oma nodded. “I was a stranger in this land once. It is not easy, being new in this country.”

  My oma was a good woman. But I didn’t tell her that because I knew it would have embarrassed her. Besides, she would have turned it around, reminding me that she could do no good thing without God.

  So, instead, I put my hand on top of her fingers that were curled around my arm.

  “Should we go?” I asked. “Mom will be waiting for us.”

  “Yes, I think that’s a good idea, dear.”

  We made our way down the sidewalk, Oma holding on to me not because she needed the support but just because she liked to be near. I didn’t mind it at all.

  “Now, what’s this I hear about you getting a letter?” she asked. “Don’t look so surprised. The mailman isn’t good at keeping secrets, is he?”

  I sighed, conceding that she was right. “It was nothing, really.”

  “Is it from a sweetheart of yours?”

  “No. Just Walt Vanderlaan.”

  “Oh, him?”

  I nodded.

  “When I was a girl in Amsterdam, I had a boy at school who wrote me letters. He’d put them in my coat pocket for me to find.” She shook her head and laughed softly. “I cannot seem to remember his name at the moment. Old age is the thief of certain memories.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Do you know that I kept those silly notes tied in a red bow for years? I would take them out and read them sometimes when I was feeling down.” She sighed. “Of course, I threw them out when Ruben came along.”

  “Didn’t Opa ever write you love letters?” I asked.

  “He wasn’t one for such things.” She patted my arm. “Your opa was a practical man. He wasn’t much of a romantic.”

  “Did you ever wish he was?” I asked.

  “In the early years, perhaps. I wanted proof of his love, I suppose,” she said. “Over time I learned. All I needed was to open my eyes. He lived his love for me every day we were together.”

  In quiet we walked past the flowers that grew wild against the white picket fence of the house at the corner. Stopping, she touched a sprig of spiky green with little purple blossoms among the nettles that grew up wild beside the whitewashed slats.

  “Rosemary,” she told me.

  “‘That’s for remembrance,’” I said.

  “Shakespeare, eh?”

  I leaned over to smell of the plant, its piney-mint aroma tickling my nose. My book toppled out of my purse, the envelope still peeking out from between the pages, the top edge ragged from where I’d torn it.

  Oma noticed and gave me a smile that said she understood.

  3

  Less than a month after Frank left, M
om put a “for sale” sign in the front yard of the house that backed up to Chippewa Lake. Three days later she signed the papers with the new owners. A week later she had all our things boxed up and packed in the back of our station wagon. Mike and I sat with her in the front bench seat, Joel squeezed in between us.

  Three minutes after that, she pulled into a neighborhood across town and told us we were home.

  It was a smaller house. Mom called it “cozy.” It needed a bit of fixing up. Mom said it had “charm.” It was set in closer to the other houses than we were used to. Mom said it was “neighborly.”

  The day we moved our belongings into that house was the first she’d smiled in too long.

  There was little trace of Frank there and only new memories to be made. Memories that wouldn’t include him.

  The only trouble was that the old days weren’t so easy to forget. Still, she did her best.

  Oma and I hadn’t even reached the front walk before my little brother Joel rushed to the screen door to hold it open for us. At thirteen, he’d grown nearly as tall as me, and I tried to think of when that had happened. It seemed he’d sprouted up overnight.

  “Thank you, lieve,” Oma said, reaching up and patting Joel on the arm.

  “Well, you’re welcome, Oma.” He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. Then he turned his attention to me. “Did Walt Vanderlaan really send you a letter?”

  “How did you hear about that?” I climbed the steps, handing him the paper bag. “That’s for dessert, by the way. Don’t eat it yet.”

  “I won’t.” He tried peeking into the bag to see what I’d brought home. “Is it true? Did he?”

  “None of your beeswax,” I said. “And try not to tell half the town, all right?”

  “Jeepers, Annie. You know I’m good at keeping secrets.”

  “Don’t let Mom hear you say ‘jeepers.’ She’ll make you bite a bar of soap for cursing.”

  My kid brother was like a tall, lanky teddy bear. A bit of heaven’s mercy for Mom. He did not possess an ill-tempered bone in his body. If ever he did get himself into trouble, it wasn’t out of mean-spiritedness. Usually, it was more that he was one part naive and another part goofball.