Papa said, “What was it?”
I said — I said — but I could not speak because now he had pulled the boat out and given it a push with the oars, and I saw what it was that we had come to see.
There was not just one water lily there on the water, like the one we had run over. They were crowded together so that sometimes one was pushed sideways, like our pears when there are too many on a branch. They were under my hands when I reached out.
“Don’t fall in,” said Papa.
I saw the picture in our Hans Andersen about Peter the child, or was it Peter the stork?
There is a story in our Hans Andersen about a stork and children. The babies like the innocents in our Doré Bible wait there on the water lilies.
It was not that I thought of the picture; it was that something was remembered. There was a water lily, painted on blue velvet, in Mrs. Kent’s house, but she said it was not stylish any more to have painting on velvet. But it was very pretty. There were bulrushes, painted on a blue umbrella-stand. It seemed that the water lilies, painted on the velvet and the blue umbrella-stand with bulrushes painted on it, were not in my mind, any more than the picture of the water lilies lying large and flat-open on the pond or lake in the Hans Andersen story.
They were not at first there, but as the boat turned round and shoved against the bulrushes and then the bulrushes got thinner and you could see through them (like looking through the slats in a fence), you saw what was there, you knew that something was reminded of something. That something remembered something. That something came true in a perspective and a dimension (though those words, of course, had no part in my mind) that was final; nothing could happen after this, as nothing had happened before it, to change the way things were and what people said and “What will you do when you grow up” and “It must be exciting to have so many brothers” or “You’ve torn a great triangle in your new summer dress and the first time you wore it, too” (as if I did not know that) or “That branch of the pear tree is dead, be careful when you children climb that tree,” but it was not us but Teddie Kent who fell out of it, because he said, “The old thing is no deader than the rest of the old tree,” and climbed out, just because we said, “Don’t,” and fell down and broke his arm.
And Jack Kent ran away and was gone a whole night, and when he came back Mrs. Kent cried, and that seemed a funny thing to do, “Why did she cry, Mama?”
“Well, she cried with relief, because she was so happy.”
“Can one cry because one is happy, Mama?”
THE SECRET
The stars?
“Well — there’s a …” and the voice stops, and they all stop talking. This is later in the new house. They are sitting under my window. I am in bed, they are under the window. My garden is under the window was in our first entertainment at the old school; I mean, they were my words to speak. They had made a window at the back of the platform, and we stood together in a row; we were from Kate Greenaway. I was in the middle with two boys, but the boys were in my first class at school and we were all six years old and they were not my brothers.
But this is the new house. They are sitting on the grass. They pulled their chairs out from under the big maple tree. It is summer, and they come to see us; Uncle Fred and Aunt Jennie are staying with us. Mamalie is here too, but she is not a visitor. “My” someone else is there but it does not matter who it is. I think Mamalie has gone to bed, too. I wonder if she hears them say “my,” then I seem to know what they are looking at, why they have stopped talking.
They always have so much to say; Uncle Hartley and Aunt Belle come too, but Aunt Jennie and Mama laugh most. Maybe that is Cousin Ed saying “It reminds me of. …” They always say it reminds them of. Papa is at the transit house, Eric is at the observatory looking for his double stars. The double stars stay together, but they go round one another like big suns; we know this, for he tells the visitors at the observatory Thursday evenings and we tell them to sign their names in the visitor’s book. This is not Thursday. You can almost tell what day of the week it is by the feel of something in the air, but it was easier to tell in the old town because of the church bells and the factory whistles, the other side of the river. Uncle Hartley is going to get a promotion and go to another place than Bethlehem Steel. They will have a new house like our new house when we came here and Papa left his little observatory for this new transit house, which has the only instrument (except in Greenwich, England) like he has. Mr. Evans lives in the wing of the house, and Eric has his room in the wing of the house over the empty library, but they are bringing out maps and books now for the observatory library from the university library.
“The first this year — the first real one, I mean …”
Mamalie is not in bed. She is coming up the stairs. The clock is ticking. It has a loud tick. Maybe she has forgotten her knitting, maybe I will run downstairs and get her knitting for her in the dark. The house is dark because the mosquitoes come in even though we have new screens on all the windows. “Mamalie,” she is at the top of the stairs now.
“Mamalie. …”
“What — what — is that you, Helen?” She calls me “Helen” sometimes and she calls Harold “Hartley,” but we do not say, “My name is not Helen” or “My name is not Hartley,” we just answer.
“Mamalie. …”
“Yes — yes, Helen — what is it?”
“It’s me, Mamalie. …”
“Oh — it’s you.”
“Mamalie. …”
“Yes — yes — Laura, I mean Helen — Oh, Hilda, of course, what is it?”
“Did you forget your knitting?”
“Why — yes — yes, I think I left my knitting on the window seat in the sitting room.”
“Shall I run down for it?” I am out of bed now. I stand by her in the dark in the hall, at the top of the stairs. Their voices go on outside. “… when we hired the old post-coach, for fun — do you remember? We clubbed together for Uncle Sylvester’s birthday treat and drove to the Water Gap and …” They are all there, and what they said “ah” about is a shooting star, and Aunt Jennie says you can make a wish on your first shooting star.
I did ask Eric why it was called a shooting star and he said because it streaks or shoots across the sky—“But would it fall on us?” He said no, there was something about gravity that would keep it from falling, but how do they know that? I did not ask silly questions like the visitors Thursday evenings at the observatory who say, “Are there people on Mars?” but sometimes I wonder if they are able to tell if really a shooting star will not fall down and fall on us and fall on the house and burn us all to death. It is quiet now.
“Mamalie. …”
“Why aren’t you asleep, Laura?”
“Oh, I don’t know — they’re talking outside.”
“That’s no reason not to go to sleep, they always sit on the porch or on the lawn and talk when it’s so hot.”
“Yes — because if they light the lamp the June bugs bump in.”
“… but you’re shivering.”
“It’s only goose-flesh, Mamalie,” I say. I don’t quite know what I mean by goose-flesh, but I just say something to keep her standing in the dark.
“And why do they call it goose-flesh, Mamalie?” though I know that, too; it’s because if you’re cold you get little rough pimples like a goose has when it is in its dish waiting for the oven, but the roughness doesn’t really look much like goose-flesh; it’s like that thing they call your-hair-standing-on-end, but it doesn’t really. But I have asked her one quick question which she hasn’t answered, so if I am able, I will ask her another. I reach out and the wall is there and it is a hot night and I am cold. “Why do they call a shooting star, a shooting star, Mamalie?”