Secret Summers. Glynda Shaw
Mom?”
“I love you.”
“I know, Mom. I love you too.”
“Give me Aunt Claire.”
I handed over the pink receiver, and my aunt spoke for a couple of minutes, answering, it sounded to me, like all of the same questions I’d been asked.
“I know it’s after midnight where you are,” Claire said. ”Yes, we’re doing just fine together. Ninian’s been a lamb! Yes. Goodbye, Sis.” She hung up.
Claire, beckoning, led the way back toward the tower-top bedroom. ”Here are clean towels and washcloths,” she told me, “and here’s a good flashlight.” She handed me an eight-cell monster, which I set up-ended on the dresser. ”Just in case you should have need of it. Call out if you want anything else. Now I shall leave you to your bathroom and your bed.”
“Thanks!”
Claire gave me a quick hug, then retreated into the depths of the house.
I peed, washed sketchily, hearing Mother’s remonstrance in my ears, then took out Mrs. Falahee’s little notebook, and sat down at the writing desk opposite my bed.
I’m sleeping in a tower. It must be sixty feet to the ocean below, and it’s my own room for the whole summer!
It being a bit close in my little room, I swung my window open and was greeted by the full force of the ocean pounding, like what I had heard over the phone, but several times magnified. ”I’ll pretend I’m in a ship,” I decided aloud. Maybe this summer would turn out to be a good one after all.
Things in the Night
My pajamas were packed in the suitcase, but I didn’t feel like bothering with them, so I tumbled into bed in my underwear and was asleep before a dozen waves had struck the cliff below. They were still striking when, I knew not how much later, I woke suddenly. It was as if I’d heard a door opening and closing, not a big door like a room or a closet door, but a little door more like a cupboard or chest. I thought I also heard little gasping noises, not sobs or cries, but sounds of effort like somebody was trying to move something, open or close something, and finding it difficult. At first I thought Aunt Claire was either in my room or nearby, finishing a last minute chore, which idea surprised me since I thought she’d been as tired as I. Then I wondered if someone else could be staying in the house with us. Nobody had stated explicitly that my aunt lived by herself. I wasn’t really frightened, maybe a bit irritated. Then a stroke of thunder echoed off the cliff below me, and the room was, for a moment, daylight bright, and when it was quiet again, it was really quiet. I wasn’t disturbed again that night, but I lay awake quite a while and finally dropped off only to be greeted almost immediately by a chorusing of sea birds, gulls, and cormorants, I would find out later, and several sorts of crows all vying with the surf and the waves.
I crept out of bed, careful not to disturb anyone else who might be in the house and looked about for the pants and shirt I’d taken off. Though I’d placed them on the chair right next to my bed, I now saw only the chair and nothing else. Thinking again the sounds I remembered hearing from last night might have been a midnight tidying foray on my aunt’s part, I opened the closet feeling a little chill go up my back as I did. There were hangers with a few dresses and sweaters looking sort of old and way too small for my aunt, hanging at one end and a ladder mounting the wall at the other, leading up to a yawning hole into the attic. On the floor was a shoe rack with a couple pairs of girls’ shoes and that was all. Nothing on the shelf overhead, nothing hidden among the hanging dresses. Shutting the closet, still feeling a little spooked, I turned to the dresser. The chest of drawers—same story: some old paperback books, a few sewing things, an old brass compass and spy glass, some candles, a letter-opener, a little mallet with a corkscrew on it, nothing of mine.
Could be, I supposed, that Aunt Claire had taken stuff to be washed. I heard no machine going anywhere. In fact, I heard only my own breathing and the bird and ocean sounds from outside. Since Mother had packed all of the things she thought I should have in my suitcase, I’d taken only the things I thought I needed in my satchel. Those were five science fiction books, my drawing things, my diary notebook with two entries in it so far, a strip of Double Bubble gums, my transistor radio and the silver whistle, a flute really, which Vivian had sent me from Vancouver, B.C. Short of painting pants on myself with watercolors or contriving a breechclout out of book pages, I had nothing to wear.
I opened the door as quietly as I could and slipped into the bathroom, finding a towel hanging above the tub. I needed to use the bathroom anyway, and the towel at least was something if I had to go looking for my aunt.
“Oh, there you are,” Aunt Claire said from behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my shorts. I pulled the towel close around me.
“Where are my clothes?”
Her face grew genuinely puzzled. ”I haven’t the foggiest,” she said sincerely. ”Where’d you leave them last?”
Pictures on the Wall
I explained how they’d seemingly vanished into thin air.
“Things seem to do that in this house now and again,” she mused. ”Well, no great harm done. I’ll bring in your suitcase.” Now good common sense would blame the whole thing on Aunt Claire, and I was certainly inclined to at the time, but I felt she was as flabbergasted as I was when we’d fetched and opened the old, black case.
“My heavens,” Claire said, “How did this happen, I wonder?”
Though I’d taken no great interest in the packing of my clothes, I’d seen what Mom had put in it, more or less. I knew there were some jeans, some shirts, some cutoffs, a good pair of pants, and a couple nice sweaters. (“In case your aunt takes you somewhere special.”) Some of the items in the suitcase now resembled things I’d expected to find there, but only somewhat. The colors were all wrong and so were most of the things.
“Tags must’ve been switched,” Aunt Claire observed, holding up a light blue pleated skirt. ”Can’t say that’s happened to me before though you hear about it all the time.” She riffled through the other stuff in the case, and I saw neatly folded sweaters, blouses, a couple of other skirts, pants too, shorts, something that might be a dress, socks, undershirts with straps instead of sleeves, several pair of underpants, most of them flowered in various colors, a pair of sandals, some other items.
“Well,” Claire looked at me sort of sidelong, her fingers still exploring the folded clothes in what should have been my suitcase. ”We’ll report the mistake. Probably be sorted out in a day or two. For the time being I guess we’ll just have to make do.” She pulled out a pair of green shorts with an elastic waist, not much to set it apart from something a boy might wear, and a white cotton tee shirt with a black duck having a green head and yellow bill.
“But I can’t wear these!” I protested. ”They’re girls’ stuff.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Claire said calmly like this happens everyday. ”Growing up in a house full of females, you mean to tell me you’ve never worn something that belonged to one of your sisters?”
I decided not to argue that point but said, “They belong to somebody else.”
“So,” she answered reasonably, “who knows who’s wearing your clothes right now? Did you have anything in your suitcase that couldn’t be replaced?”
“I guess not,” I admitted.
“I suspect the same is true for miss.” She studied the tag of the suitcase again. ”N. Halley. That combination must be commoner than I’d have thought. When we find her, we’ll just launder the things we’ve borrowed, and everything will be as it should be. Meanwhile …” She pushed the things at me again, along with a pair of white socks.
Still I hesitated.
“Oh, come on.” She winked at me as if we were sharing some great secret.