The Girl with Stars in her Hair Read online

  Her voice, usually so calm and sure, shook when she spoke. “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.”

  I looked at the window on the wall across from Jimmy’s crib. It was shut, as always. No matter how hot it got at night, Mother and Father always made sure all the windows were shut and the doors locked, especially at the beach house. Summer at the beach meant strangers around, not like at home in the city where we knew all our neighbors and looked out for one another. I couldn’t fathom why a burglar would steal a toddler.

  The police came—three of them in their long blue coats with silver buttons down the front, a sheen of sweat on all their faces, as the day was already warm. They asked a lot of questions and dumped black powder all over all the windowsills and doorknobs and said they’d be in touch as soon as they knew anything. They told Father to phone Detective O’Malley when we got a call or letter asking for ransom. I didn’t know how they could be so sure a ransom demand would come, but they seemed confident it was just a matter of time—more likely hours than days. Mother and Father seemed to think the same. They pulled up two chairs next to the telephone and waited. Mother was beside herself with worry, her arms pulled tight against her body and her face tense. Father looked ready to kill, his fist balled and his face red. He stared at the telephone, all the while tapping his left heel hard against the floor. I thought I would almost pity the kidnappers if my father got to them before the police. I sat on the floor away from them, my back against the wall, and wondered if I should have told the police about seeing Dr. Gremhahn on the beach yesterday and how the way he’d looked at Jimmy had made my stomach churn.

  Hours passed. No call came and no letter was received. Father took to pacing in the kitchen. Mother refused to leave her chair. The sun had long set, and my hunger could no longer be quelled with water.

  I went to the icebox and took out a roasted chicken. Mother and Father glanced at me. I’m sure they were hungry, too, but Mother turned back to staring at the telephone and Father kept right on pacing and muttering under his breath. I took a loaf from the breadbox and cut six slices. I carved the chicken and made a sandwich for each of us, put them on plates and set them all on the table. I poured three glasses of cold tea and set them beside the plates, then sat down and started eating. Father grabbed his sandwich off the plate and tore at it like an animal while he paced. Mother said, “Thank you, Cassie,” but didn’t touch the food.

  “Mama, you should eat something,” I said. “‘All sorrows are less with bread,’ you always say.”

  She almost smiled and said, “Cervantes.”

  I nodded. “Eat a little at least. Please.”

  Her gaze moved to the plate. She picked up the sandwich and nibbled. It was something, at least.

  *

  Days went by. Moira didn’t come to stay after all. Father went back to work, driving just after sunup from the beach to the hospital downtown and driving back at night, usually so late that Mother and I were both long gone to bed by the time he returned. This had been going on since right after Father’s cure and didn’t surprise me anymore.

  Outside, summer beach life went on. We heard hordes of laughing children, saw smiling families laden down with beach umbrellas and towels, watched teenagers walking arm in arm, girls giggling as they passed stands of boys in bathing costumes. Mother and I sat in the house day after day.

  “What a lovely day,” she’d exclaim to me almost every morning. “Why don’t you change into your bathing clothes and take a swim?”

  And almost every morning I’d look out the window and say, “I don’t really feel like a swim today. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “How about a stroll then?” she’d say. “Maybe at the water’s edge? It’ll be cooler there than in the house.”

  I’d act like she hadn’t made that exact suggestion a dozen times already and say, “I’ll go if you come with me.”

  She’d sigh, look at the phone that rarely rang, then glance toward the front door that she’d run to twice a day when the post arrived, desperate for the ransom note that never came.

  If I went to the beach and swam, who would make her a cup of tea when her heart fell yet again? If it weren’t for Molly needing her twice-daily walk and our weekly forays to Morse and Morse for food, it’s likely neither of us would have ever left the cottage.

  At least she had a more comfortable chair now. I’d moved out the hardback one she’d sat in the day the police came and pulled in a club chair from the front parlor. She’d smiled and thanked me. It was good, I thought, that she’d noticed. Good that she’d smiled.

  “Mama,” I said one morning a month after Jimmy had disappeared, “what about the finder woman? Maybe it’s time to see her.”

  Mother shook her head. I knew she didn’t believe in the finder woman’s abilities, even though our neighbor down the way, Mrs. Jensen, swore the finder woman had known exactly where Mrs. Jensen’s lost brooch had been and she’d named the place their dog was hiding when it had run away. Gypsies, psychics, and the like were not on Mother’s list of people to consult or know.

  “I think it’s time for Molly’s walk,” she said, and rose like a somnambulist to get Molly’s leash.

  Weeks passed. Cabin fever set in, for me if not for Mother. I took to riding the Red Car to the downtown library every few days, just to get out. I spent one night with Moira, but felt guilty leaving Mother and declined my friend’s next invitation.

  I came home from the library one day and found mother dressed in her going-out clothes, her gloves and hat waiting on the mahogany hall-table by the front door. I was glad she was finally leaving the house.

  Then my heartbeat sped up. Why was she going out? Had the ransom call finally come? I hadn’t left the house in days and I go off for an hour to get some books to read and the kidnappers choose that moment to make their demands?

  “Where are you going?” I asked as I dropped my books next to her hat on the hall-table.

  Mama touched my arm. “I’ve decided you were right, Cassie. We’re going to see the finder woman. We’re going to bring Jimmy home.”

  Two

  Hermosa Beach, California

  August 1923

  The finder woman lived on First Street in a small house with a red door. The red door was how people found her. Dabbling with the occult was popular among a certain “smart” set these days, but not with people like us. The wife and daughter of a prominent Los Angeles physician would never go to someone like her—a teller of fortunes, finder of lost things, speaker with the dead. Mother and I probably wouldn’t have gone, but our neighbor down the way, Mrs. Lou, had come by earlier in the week to bring us a loaf of brown bread she’d baked. She’d spoken to Mother about the finder woman, saying that the woman “wasn’t a phony like those fake gypsies in Redondo Beach. She’s not just after your money. She wants to help.” Between Mrs. Jensen and Mrs. Lou, Mother had somehow been persuaded. Or she’d grown desperate enough in her heart to try anything.

  Mrs. Lou had said to bring something of Jimmy’s with us, and something of personal great value as a thank you for her help—so much for the finder woman not being after money. I’d peeked in Mother’s handbag and seen Jimmy’s favorite stuffed toy—a tiger—and one of the pearl-and-diamond rings she’d inherited from her mother. I couldn’t believe Mother would even consider giving away something that valuable or that meaningful. I kept my mouth shut, though.

  It was a good-weather day—neither hot nor cold and with the tiniest breeze blowing. We both wore visiting clothes, as if we were going to see friends—Mother in a white lace dress with a drop waist, white stockings and shoes, white hat with red silk roses on the side, and white lace gloves, and me almost the same, except that my dress was blue and my hat plain. Mother had the taxi driver drop us at the top of the hill, which was past the house with the red door. I suppose she was a little embarrassed about our errand and didn’t want even a stranger knowing where we were really going.

  The homes were sparse here, with nothi
ng but sand dunes between them. After the taxi had gone, we walked down the hill to the house with the red door. Mother took in a great deep breath, marched up the steps and knocked firmly. I stood beside her, my throat dry and my stomach tingling. I’d never seen a magic person before. I wanted the woman to be truly magical—not a charlatan like Dr. Gremhahn, who I still didn’t believe had actually cured Father. Lucky coincidence was all. I wanted the finder woman to be real and to bring Jimmy back to us. Mother knocked again.

  The finder woman opened the door. I knew immediately she was the one, even though she didn’t look the way I’d expected. She was older than me but younger than Mother, tall, with brown eyes and a round, kind face. Her dark hair was bobbed short, with bangs, like Bernice in Mr. Fitzgerald’s story. She wore a green dotted Swiss dress, white stockings, and green shoes, and smiled as though we were expected—even though we weren’t—and that she couldn’t have been more pleased that we’d come.

  She ushered us into a small but tidy parlor and invited us, with a nod, to sit on a plush yellow sofa with iron lion-claw feet. I don’t know what I’d expected, but this very ordinary-looking woman in a house that any of my friends might have lived in wasn’t it. It seemed there should be gauzy curtains wafting in an unfelt breeze and mystical signs on the walls, a crystal ball on a side table. Maybe a deck of tarot cards. At least a Ouija board. Instead there was the yellow sofa, a lovely chaise covered in nubby white cotton, two straight-backed wooden chairs with green leather cushions, a pair of walnut side tables, each topped with with a brass lamp with a cut-glass shade, and a large yellow-and-blue floral rug. The fireplace mantel was festooned with what I assumed were family photographs. A wrought-iron plant stand displaying a very healthy Boston fern completed the decor.

  “Can I get you a cool drink?” the woman said.

  Mother said, “No, thank you.” She clutched her purse tight and rested it in her lap.

  “I’m Diana Hasbro,” the woman said, settling into one of the straight-backed chairs opposite the sofa where we were sitting. “You can give me your names or not, as you please.”

  It wasn’t like Mother to be rude, but I could see she was nervous and uncomfortable. Maybe she was thinking this hadn’t been a good idea after all. She didn’t give our names in return.

  Diana smiled as if it were of no matter.

  “How can I help you?” she said.

  Mother opened her handbag and reached inside. She drew out Jimmy’s tiger and handed it to the woman.

  Diana reached for it. She didn’t ask any questions, just clutched the stuffed toy to her chest. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said softly.

  I jumped up from the sofa and yelled, “No! Jimmy’s not dead. He can’t be dead.”

  I looked at Mother. Her face was ashen. She’d thrown her hand over her mouth, as if to stifle a scream. I could see she’d contemplated many times that Jimmy might not be living, but the shock of my saying it out loud had nearly undone her. I sat down quickly and took her hand in mine.

  “Your son isn’t dead,” Diana said to Mother.

  Relief blasted through me, and then my cheeks grew hot. I’d spit out my worst fear and upset my mother—which I’d never meant to do.

  Diana went on as if I’d not said a word.

  “Your son is alive. I feel his life force still in this world, but it’s very strange.” The finder woman pressed the tiger tighter to her chest, then asked, “Do you have anything else of him with you?”

  Mother swallowed deeply and nodded. She went into her handbag again and drew out a small brown-and-white cowry shell. “I found this in his room after he—after he disappeared.”

  Diana put out her hand and flinched slightly when Mother put the shell in her palm. The woman looked at the thing a long moment before closing her fingers around it and shutting her eyes.

  “Gremhahn,” she said after a moment, her eyes still closed.

  I heard Mother’s quick intake of breath and felt my pulse race. Dr. Gremhahn was the man who’d supposedly cured Father. How could the finder woman know about him at all, much less know his name? Were they working together on some elaborate scheme, with my mother as their patsy?

  Diana opened her eyes and handed the shell back to Mother.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said again.

  Mother dropped the shell back in her handbag. “What has Dr. Gremhahn to do with Jimmy’s disappearance?” Her voice was cool, calm, polite. I knew this tone so well. Mother did not suffer fools gladly.

  A shiver ran across Diana’s shoulders. “He’s no doctor. A gremhahn is a sea dweller, a shape-shifting goblin thief who steals children.”

  Mother’s eyes opened wide.

  “But that’s not what’s happened here,” Diana said quickly. She paused then, opening and closing her hands several times rapidly, as if trying to grab knowledge from the air. “The gremhahn has taken your son and kept him alive, but changed,” she said.

  “What do you mean, ‘changed’?” Mother said. “Changed how?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see where he is. What he is. He feels different. Changed. I don’t know the reason why.”

  “Payment,” I whispered. “The doctor said he’d come that night for his payment.”

  Mother heard me and she stared in my direction, her eyes still wide but blind to the room in which she sat.

  “Oh no, no, no,” she muttered. “Did I save my husband at the price of my son?”

  *

  “Have you lost your mind completely?” Father yelled.

  He and Mother were downstairs in the kitchen. His voice was so loud it carried up to me as though we were in the same room. Molly lifted her head and growled lightly. I scratched behind her ears and made soothing noises to calm her. Then I did something terrible. I tiptoed to the window and opened it wider, the better to hear what they were arguing about.

  Mother’s voice was quieter than Father’s, but I heard her say, “I can’t stand the not knowing, Charles. I can’t stand thinking I see him in every little blond boy on the beach, on the trolley, in the market. I had to find the truth.”

  “That a sea goblin had stolen our child?”

  Father’s voice was so mean it made me wince. He never used to yell. He used to be kindness itself. Mother had said that maybe the war had changed him, but I was pretty sure she didn’t really believe that. I was pretty sure we both knew it was losing Jimmy that had done it—that pain and guilt had taken away my kind father and Mother’s loving husband.

  Except that Father had changed before that, before Jimmy was even born. Maybe it was the illness that had done it; the flu had hurt his brain and hardened his heart. He was never the same after he recovered.

  If Mother answered him, I couldn’t hear her words. But I heard Father yell, “Get away from me. You let that man into the house, that so-called doctor. If not for you, Jimmy never would have been kidnapped. I can’t look at your face.”

  Molly raised her head and growled again, harder this time.

  I held my breath, rubbing gently between Molly’s shoulders. Usually that soothed her, but she jumped away from where we sat by the window and pawed at my closed door. I heard the kitchen door slam shut and hard, angry footsteps pound down the hall toward their bedroom.

  Then the kitchen door slammed again and more footsteps sounded. It must have been the other one chasing whoever had left first. I heard the awful sound of flesh hitting flesh, heard Mother cry out, and then feet running and another door slam.

  I walked to the door and sat on the floor beside Molly. My throat felt tight and as dry as beach sand, but my eyes were too open. I wanted to run to Mother and comfort her, but I knew her pride needed me to pretend I hadn’t heard a thing. I cried into Molly’s soft fur with tears that felt like they would never stop.

  *

  When Father packed up his clothes but told Mother to stay at the beach house I wasn’t surprised. After last night, I thought they both felt too gui
lty to face the other—Father because he’d gone off to war when he didn’t have to, only to come home and get sick. If it weren’t for the flu, Dr. Gremhahn never would have come to our house. Mother because she blamed herself for letting the doctor in, even serving him tea. And Father had hit her, and that was a thing neither could forgive.

  Father came to my room and shut the door softly behind him.

  “I think you know your mother and I won’t be living together anymore,” he said.

  I swallowed hard and nodded.

  He sat on the edge of my bed. “Would you like to come back with me? We can bring Molly, if you like.”

  My mouth was as dry as paper. My throat felt like rock was lodged inside. I was more than half afraid of the thing that lived in Father’s skin now, and I couldn’t leave Mother alone in her grief and misery. I was the one who took Jimmy to the beach that day. If Dr. Gremhahn was the kidnapper, then I was the one who’d showed him my brother.

  “I think I’d like to stay here, with Mother,” I said softly, hardly able to make the words come out.

  Father sighed, and the sadness in his eyes almost made me believe he was his own self again, almost changed my mind. Even if this had brought my real father back, it was Mother who needed me most.

  *

  That Sunday I went to church alone—Mother had said she wasn’t feeling well. When I came into the house, I saw Mother’s wide-brimmed sunhat, white gloves, pocketbook, and a largish carpetbag in the foyer. I stared at them, my stomach feeling a bit nervous—she seemed to have had a quick recovery from whatever had ailed her. I pulled off my own lace church gloves and removed my hat. Mother barely left the house anymore. Why were her traveling things out?

  “Mama?” I called, because I couldn’t see her in the parlor, dining room, or kitchen, though Molly looked up at me from beneath the kitchen table and thumped her tail three or four times.

  Hey, girl,” I said to her softly. She was getting on in years. The days when she jumped up to greet me when I walked into the house were long gone.