Sirens and Spies Read online

  She had cleaned out her room, old clothes, old stuffed animals, an ugly leftover toy chest she’d been using as a hamper.

  “Want this?” she asked Roo.

  “Okay.”

  They hauled the toy chest into Roo’s side of the room she shared with Heidi.

  Heidi said: “Oh, no! Not that thing. I’m telling Mother. I can’t even breathe in here with all Roo’s stuff”

  But it stayed. Roo worked it out. Mary’s room looked bigger suddenly. And emptier.

  “What should I wear to Miss Fitch’s house?” Mary asked her mother. Strange, but as the hour of the visit drew nearer, that was the question which worried her most.

  “I don’t have anything!” cried Mary.

  “But, here. What’s this? I see a whole closet full of things,” coaxed Mrs. Potter.

  “Everything is too old or too small,” wailed Mary. “And nothing goes together.”

  She was thinking of Miss Fitch’s clothes, wondering suddenly about them. Weren’t they wonderful? Of course they were. Everybody remarked on it. She wore the most amazing dresses: soft, flowing, exotically draped things that announced themselves boldly and were meant to be noticed. (But not the way Elsie said.) Parisian, Mary guessed they were, or Italian; cut from fabrics unknown to the American department stores, in styles born of some wild, foreign imagination. Not that Miss Fitch’s clothes were the latest fashion. They weren’t even new. They were like Miss Fitch herself, charming and a little strange, from sources unexplainable and faintly mysterious.

  “I am fat,” Mary told her mother. “Fat, pure and simple. And getting fatter.”

  “Not a bit,” protested Mrs. Potter, and her own ample form gave the look of truth to it. “Here’s a blouse I’ve always liked,” she said, holding it up.

  “That thing.”

  “And your blue skirt. There!”

  “Horrible,” said Mary. But she put it on.

  “But what shoes?” asked Mary. She could decide nothing. Her mind was in a froth of uncertainty. “Oh, Mother! How can I possibly go in my old …”

  “These shoes,” Mrs. Potter told her gently, drawing out some party pumps from far back in the closet.

  “Well, all right. Not too dressy?”

  “Just perfect. And now hurry! I said we’d be there at four o’clock.”

  Mary combed her hair straight down at the sides, examined herself a final time in the mirror and dashed for her coat.

  Elsie was nowhere to be seen. But Mary had the feeling as she got into the car with her mother that from some dim window in the house, tucked behind some curtain, Elsie was watching.

  10

  MISS FITCH WAS AT THE door to greet them before they were halfway up the steps of her porch.

  “Here you are! Welcome!” She flung the door wide for them to pass.

  “I’ve put some tea in the living room. Tea is what you like, isn’t it? Grace, my love! You’ve brought your famous brownies. What a dear.” She swept her good arm around Mrs. Potter and brought their cheeks together in the hall. Mary stood aside, surprised. She had not thought they knew each other so well.

  “And Mary. Come in. Sit down. I have waited all day for this and now, here you are.” About Elsie, she said nothing. “I am so very happy to see you both!”

  She did not look happy. She looked terrible. Her face was so old and thin that Mary hardly dared to glance at her. She wore a plain, wilted, beige wrapper over some sort of bulky sweater. At first, Mary thought she had shrunk. But it was only that she hadn’t put her high-heeled shoes on. And her hair!

  “There, now. Sit down. Tell me all the news. What a place, that hospital. So full of nurses and … and … of antiseptics.” She chose the word doubtfully, as if she were learning the language again. Her smile wasn’t right.

  “No. Don’t say a word, not a word about this ugly face. I have not dressed. I am a little—what do you say?—under the weather. I am a little under the weather, still.”

  She sank into a chair and gazed bleakly at Mary. “And they have taken my hair. In order to treat the wound. You see!” She gestured toward her head, an apology of sorts.

  Mary did see. The hair was cropped close and, in one place, half hidden by a scarf she’d bound over her head, seemed to be shaved off completely.

  “It is nothing. Nothing!” said Miss Fitch, too loudly. “But bad to look at, I think. The cut is very much better.”

  “I am glad the bandages have come off,” put in Mrs. Potter. “That didn’t take long, did it?”

  Miss Fitch smiled at her, a scarecrow grin.

  “Darling, Gracie.” She turned to Mary. “She has been my best customer at the hospital. All those hours lying there, and then this bright face through the door. I haven’t said thank you very well. I know it!”

  “Of course you have!” cried Mrs. Potter.

  But, no. No. Miss Fitch was pressing Mrs. Potter’s hand, smiling out such intense gratitude that her face cracked and buckled like an old piece of rubber.

  Mary looked away, embarrassed. She felt she was intruding on private ground, spying even, like Elsie. Miss Fitch was not meant to be seen this way, without makeup, without her beautiful clothes, and so undignified, thanking Mrs. Potter like a desperate child. Her movements were awkward, too, out of kilter because of the heavy cast on her right arm. It hung across her chest at an odd angle. She hitched herself toward the teapot and attempted to pour tea into a cup.

  “I’ll do that!” sang out Mrs. Potter. “You rest yourself”

  “My second best customer,” Miss Fitch went on, after the tea had been passed around, “was the police.”

  “The police!” Mrs. Potter leaned forward on the couch, all concern. “You haven’t said a word about that!”

  “I was not supposed to say a word,” replied Miss Fitch. She dipped her head to sip unsteadily from the cup in her left hand. “But now, home at last …” She looked up, blank-eyed.

  “Have they,” Mary began, “have they found, you know …”

  “Oh, no,” said Miss Fitch. “The investigation goes on. And me, well, I am not very helpful.” She gazed across at them queerly, her head bent to one side.

  “Well, of course not!” said Mrs. Potter. “The shock of it all. The utter chaos. How can they expect you to remember all at once. I wouldn’t remember myself”

  “Exactly,” said Miss Fitch, with a crack in her voice that brought Mary’s eyes straight to her face. “A terrible shock,” Miss Fitch repeated, as if she had just now thought of it. “And one does not want to remember, so, of course, one doesn’t.”

  “But, you must remember something!” blurted Mary, then put her hand over her mouth to stop herself.

  Miss Fitch’s eyes slid over her and fell to the floor.

  “Yes. Something. I remember … some things.”

  “Hush, Mary,” said her mother, and they sat in silence for a long moment.

  “We were speaking of the police,” said Miss Fitch, at last. “Yes. Those police. They press. They pick for detail. They look for witnesses. My neighbors have been interviewed.” She frowned with her mouth, pushing the lower lip up so that the sides curved down. And suddenly Mary saw what the trouble was. It wasn’t the lack of makeup. It was Miss Fitch’s eyes. For though she smiled and frowned, her eyes never changed. They peered out between their lids with a sort of dull, secretive gaze.

  “I have never liked the police,” muttered Miss Fitch, half to herself, and for a moment, Mary saw her face take on the same horrid dullness as her eyes. It was a covered-up look, watchful. It frightened Mary.

  “Yes, yes!” Mrs. Potter was saying. “I would be worried myself by an investigation.”

  Miss Fitch moved, crablike, toward her cup.

  “Of course, the police are necessary,” said Mrs. Potter. “We all understand that they must do their jobs. And, of course, they must find the person who did this terrible thing. He must be brought in before he does more harm. He was a big man, did you say? You surprised him, mos
t likely, and he lashed out. Are you sure, now you are home again, that nothing was taken?”

  Miss Fitch merely shrugged. Mary stared at her, struck suddenly by her odd way of answering. Well, wasn’t it odd? Most people, Mary thought, would want their attackers caught quickly. They would want justice done, be more frightened, even, if the case were not resolved, lest the criminal come back again.

  Miss Fitch appeared indifferent to this. She looked worn-out suddenly. Her face seemed to grow thinner, paler, as she listened to Mrs. Potter’s bubbling explanations.

  “He must be caught,” Mrs. Potter was saying. “But, naturally, police investigations are upsetting. Not conducive to clear thought. It will all come to you now that you are home, among your own things.”

  Was that it? Was it that she couldn’t remember? Or did she remember everything, all too well. Was she protecting someone? Mary watched the older woman’s face.

  Miss Fitch was different, Mary decided. It was not just that she looked different, but inside something had changed. Or had the difference always been there? “The old fraud,” Elsie had said. Was she?

  Then, just as Mary’s doubt rose up and reached out wildly for an answer (Elsie’s answer!)—just as she felt herself swing away from this queer, secretive Miss Fitch and set foot on an opposite shore—just then, Miss Fitch sat up abruptly and smiled her own smile. It was warm, confiding and utterly open.

  “Ah, well. What can you do?” Miss Fitch shrugged again, but this time it was a philosophical, good-natured gesture.

  “One does one’s best.” She reached across the table and took Mary’s clammy hand in hers.

  “Life!” she announced, smiling wryly. “One moment you think you have it all rolled up safely in the palm of your hand.” She rolled Mary’s hand inside her own.

  “One minute you understand and can make order from it, and the next—poof! Something like this happens and all is head over heels. Then you must start again to make sense of yourself. Oh, yes. I’ve been through it before. You must try not to be afraid, try not to be bitter. You go forward as best as you can. Well! It is wonderful in a way, isn’t it? You learn and learn.”

  Miss Fitch glanced over at Mrs. Potter and gave her an impish wink.

  “I have learned, for instance, never to open my door to a rampaging attacker in the night!”

  There was a pause. Then they all burst out laughing. Miss Fitch rocked back and forth giggling, and Mrs. Potter nearly spilled her tea, and Mary laughed—she couldn’t help it—until the tears came to her eyes. And as she laughed, the strange woman across the table from her blurred and wobbled through the tears, and finally came into focus again as Miss Fitch. The same, wonderful Miss Fitch. Clothes or no clothes. Makeup or none. There was not a bit of difference after all. Elsie was wrong, so very wrong! Mary laughed harder when she thought how wrong her sister was, and she was still laughing a little as she drove home from Miss Fitch’s house with her mother.

  “What an extraordinary woman!” Mrs. Potter exclaimed. “What a wise and thoroughly marvelous person she is. She makes me glad to be living along with her. Perhaps it’s that she’s French and can see from different sides, through two languages, when we have only one to interpret the world.”

  “Maybe,” said Mary.

  “Or was it the war?” mused Mrs. Potter.

  “The war?”

  “I was looking at her and thinking over tea. She distrusts the police. She is afraid of investigations. It made me remember where she came from. I don’t know anything about it, really. One hears things, you know, and in connection with her I have heard that she was right there, living near Paris, during the worst of the war. I was thinking. To have gone through that and come away whole, well, it would make a person extraordinary just to have done it.”

  “But that was so long ago,” said Mary. “Everybody has forgotten about it now.”

  “Maybe not,” her mother said. “Miss Fitch was a young woman during the war, a teenager not much older than you. I imagine she remembers many things.”

  “Has she told you anything?”

  “No. People talk. I’ve heard that the war was hard on her. Someone said she had a brother who died in a concentration camp.”

  “Miss Fitch had a brother?”

  “Or he was killed fighting. I’m not sure.”

  Mary looked sharply at her mother.

  “Killed fighting?” she repeated. The phrase rang a bell in her head.

  “Elsie is studying the war,” Mary said, after a minute.

  “Is she?” Mrs. Potter was drifting off to her own thoughts.

  “At the library,” Mary added. “There are books about it in the library. Elsie said you could find out what some people were doing while other people were …” Mary stopped.

  “Find out what?” asked Mrs. Potter, absently.

  But Mary didn’t answer. Outside the car window, the houses of Grove Street flickered past her eyes like an old-time movie.

  11

  MARY DID NOT LIKE LIBRARIES. Their silence and whispers unsettled her. The rooms were too big, too full of corners, like a maze. Mary could never tell who might be watching her from behind some shelf. Or maybe it was the books themselves that watched, heavy with knowledge and knowing. In the library, Mary spent as much time glancing over her shoulder, peering down shadowy aisles, as she did reading. She couldn’t study there the way Elsie did. But she knew how to use the catalogs, how to get around. The World War II books were in the 940s section. There were hundreds.

  Mary gazed uncertainly at the shelves and wondered where to begin. A week had passed since Miss Fitch’s tea party, a week in which Mary had labored over an English essay on “The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne—Morality Tale or Psychological Romance?” It was a dreadful assignment from beginning to end. (“First, we must define our terms, mustn’t we?” her English teacher had informed the class smugly.)

  “I don’t believe that stories like this should be made to have terms,” Mary had told her mother one night, after two hours of struggling with the writing. “Everything in them is so slippery, you can’t figure out what the author meant. Do you think that Hawthorne really knew himself?”

  “I must have read that book,” Mrs. Potter replied. “But I can’t remember a thing about it.”

  Now, for better or worse, Mary’s composition was turned in and she had time to think again. That afternoon, she was in the library to look into Miss Fitch’s war, or was it Elsie’s war?, and she found that she was more curious about it than ever. What had Elsie been reading to start her spying on Miss Fitch and making up stories about her?

  Mary examined a brimming book rack. She glanced nervously up and down the aisle. Finally, she chose the largest volume she could see, with some idea that larger might be better for a first stab at information. The book seemed to be composed mostly of photographs. A piece of lined notepaper stuck out from between the pages, a welcoming sight, somehow.

  Mary carried the book to a library table, sat down, and began to turn the pages. Around her, the library sighed and echoed sighs, creaked and echoed. Somewhere out of sight, a pen clattered on the floor, a drawer shut. Mary put her elbows on the table and bent low over the photograph book, reading captions.

  “German armored divisions enter Belgium,” she read. “British naval vessels off Dunkirk begin troop evacuation.” “In Paris, a French family prepares for flight as news of the invasion spreads.”

  Invasion! Which invasion was that, exactly? And how would it feel, Mary wondered, to be invaded? And what was this piece of notepaper poked out inconveniently from between the pages so that one’s hand kept running into it? And why not pull it out, clear it out of the way? Except the handwriting on it looked familiar to her suddenly, and what place in the book was it marking? Or was it marking anything? She peeked quickly to see.

  Mary pounded on Elsie’s door.

  “Elsie?” she called. “Elsie!” Inside the room, a chair leg squeaked. Light footsteps came across the r
ug. Elsie opened the door and looked out warily. She had been writing. The fierce bronze pen was in her hand.

  “Elsie?”

  “Well, what?!”

  “You have something. I want to see it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think it’s a picture,” said Mary. She was out of breath and panting. Her hair had the washed-back look of a long-distance runner. She leaned against the door frame and gasped for air.

  “Sorry,” panted Mary. She mopped her upper lip with her hand. “I’ve been running.”

  Elsie watched her coolly. “You sure are in great shape.”

  “It was mostly uphill.”

  Mary had been carrying her school books, too. Now she bent and let them fall in a jumble outside the door.

  “I’ve been to the library,” she told Elsie.

  “Come in, please,” Elsie said, strange formality in her voice.

  Mary walked past. She sat on the bed.

  “Miss Fitch is in it, isn’t she?”

  “In what?”

  “You know.”

  Elsie crossed the room slowly. She sat down at her desk.

  “Yes,” she answered. “She’s in it.”

  “Can I see?”

  “Okay.” Elsie didn’t seem angry. She opened her desk drawer.

  “Wait a minute.” Mary got up again and went to look through the books outside the door. She held up a piece of paper.

  “Your writing,” she said. “I found it in the photo book. It’s from science, I think.”

  “Thanks.” Elsie checked it over. “Was there anything else?”

  “Nope.”

  Elsie felt around inside her drawer.

  “You didn’t tear out the caption,” Mary said. “That’s how I—”

  “Here it is,” Elsie said, suddenly. She didn’t hand the photograph over, though. She sat at her desk and stared at it until Mary came and looked over her shoulder.

  “She’s here,” said Elsie, pointing. They examined the figure in the wooden cart together silently.

  “It’s her, all right,” Mary said at last.