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  For Ana

  PROLOGUE

  RUBY DOESN’T KNOW HOW the book came into her possession. Perhaps he brought it to her on one of his visits, along with armfuls of tulips and boxes of chocolates. She shows it to her visitors—the woman with the mop in her hand, the girl who blushes when she speaks—“Look,” Ruby says, pointing to the name on the cover. “My son. Christopher Delaney.”

  It has letters picked out in scarlet, in a raised font, which is pleasing to run her finger over, like braille, or a secret message. It takes her breath away to know that her child is the author of this novel. She reads and rereads his name, his beloved name.

  She opens the book and his words are waiting for her. But it hurts her head to concentrate on such small writing. Squinting at close-packed sentences, the letters break apart, swarming into ants that crawl onto her fingers, marching up her sleeves, tiny mouths ready to bite. She looks away, shutting the book. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t spoil the joy she feels from holding it. She likes to keep it with her, carrying it from room to room, and when it’s time for bed, she slips it under her pillow or cradles it to her breast.

  She misses proper darkness. They won’t let her cover the opening in the door where faces watch. She keeps her eyes closed and listens to the flickering hiss of lights in the corridor and feet going by; she recognizes the quick click, click of someone who’s in charge, and the slow roll and halt of someone who isn’t.

  By the time the screams begin, the muffled, echoing screams, Ruby hopes for night meds to knock her out like a blow to the head. As she falls asleep, she presses her nose into the pages, inhaling the papery scent of Christopher’s words. And it feels as though she’s taking him into her lungs too, holding him inside the hidden rooms of her body. As a child, his breath smelled of apples, mint, and cinnamon chewing gum. Hedy’s did, too.

  Hedy. Her name is a hole to fall down.

  When will he come again? She needs to see him, to touch him and make sure that he’s real. She used to pat him dry after his bath, rubbing cream into the sores on his skin. She was a loving mother. Yes, she was. She must not remember the cage. She must not. It makes her cry, and if she cries they will come with the wires and the straps, and that will never do, because she’s good now, isn’t she? She has privileges, like keeping a novel on the cabinet beside her bed. Like spending the afternoon in the garden when it’s warm. None of them suspects that while she sits on the wooden bench with her eyes closed, fingers linked, her face tilted to catch the breeze, she’s decoding the humming of bees in the roses, tuning in to the whispering of her name over and over: Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. Todd’s voice, telling her that he’ll be here soon to bring her home, back to Iowa. Across the ocean. Back to the two children playing in the yard, blond heads together under the burning sun.

  PART ONE

  THE BASE

  ONE

  1957

  THIS IS HEDY DELANEY’S first stay in a hotel. She was hoping for bellboys in swanky uniforms serving lobster from little trolleys covered in white cloths. She’s never eaten lobster and, to be truthful, she’s not sure she likes the idea; it’s what it stands for that counts: the exotic and unknown. Instead, she’s sitting on a bed with a view of an air-conditioning box, cooped up with the rest of her family. She wants to let out her frustration in a good long howl from the pit of her belly. But you can’t scream in New York City, not unless you’re getting mugged. The cops would come and beat down the door. Her parents might even be hauled off to jail. Instead, she channels her agitation into picking at the sticky Band-Aids on the backs of her arms, peeling them away with the edges of her nails.

  She’s twelve, the age at which most girls in her class are getting training bras and joining Future Homemakers of America. Hedy’s lanky frame gives no hint that she’ll develop curves that will need constraining, and she lacks any desire to learn to hem curtains or make meat loaf. The fact that she’s named after Hedy Lamarr by her father is a small cruelty that only Hedy’s mother dwells on. Hedy hasn’t any use for film stars. Baseball players are more her thing. The Yankees are her favorite team. On this particular evening, she guesses she’s within batting distance of their stadium, although she’ll never get to see Yogi Berra catch, or Joe Collins chase down a ball, because she’s trapped in this room, and tomorrow she’ll be leaving the United States to go to a place where nobody’s heard of baseball.

  Hedy cranes around further to examine the back of her swollen arms, the difficulty of it making her squint as she tears away a second Band-Aid, darkened with a smear of blood. Her parents are huddled in the corner, locked into a whispered discussion. They never once glance in Hedy’s direction. Everyone is ignoring her. Even Chris. He hasn’t stopped scribbling in his notebook since they left home. Anyone would think his made-up words were more important than whatever his sister might have to say. Now he’s burrowed under a blanket on the cot, asleep. How can he sleep with this ache in his arm?

  She picks up his notebook and flicks through to the last pages. But he hasn’t been writing another of his stories. Her brother has drawn himself. She touches the pencil sketch and frowns. It’s a good likeness. He’s included every detail of the Milwaukee Brace he has to wear for twenty-three hours out of each day for his severe scoliosis. The brace is supposed to correct his crooked spine, force his poor twisted bones back into the right places. Mom says that Chris will be cured by it, so keeping him strapped into the contraption is actually being cruel to be kind. When Mom says words like “actually,” Hedy remembers that her mother is English.

  Hedy stares at her brother’s self-portrait. He’s depicted the buckles and straps on the heavy leather corset that encases him from the tops of his thighs up to his waist. For extra discomfort it has a two-inch-wide upright metal bar running from the corset up the middle of his chest, where it joins a metal collar that is fixed around his throat. Two more bars press at his back, either side of his spine. Then there is the chin pad, held up by a thin metal bar attached to the collar. The chin pad forces his head upward so that, like a frightened horse, he must always have his head raised, his eyes rolling with the effort of seeing anything beneath his eyeline.

  She turns the page. Here is another drawing. This time Chris has drawn a boy smiling inside a big puffy space suit. His head is enclosed inside a glass bubble; through it, he looks out at stars twinkling around him. His body floats through space, free falling across planets, higher than the moon. The sketch doesn’t surprise Hedy; her brother is passionate about outer space, science-fiction stories, and especially the idea of aliens. This is who he wants to be, a space explorer, not the kid in the brace with the weird spine. She sighs and shuts the notebook. She goes along with his fantasies of creatures from other planets and space travel because she knows his imagination lets him escape real life, helps him forget his pain.

  Thinking of how it must feel to be stuck in the brace makes her itch with claustrophobia. She tugs at the neckline of her shirt. There’s no air in here; the window is sealed. Their bags and suitcases are piled around them. The rest of their possessions, nailed into boxes like dead bodies, have been sent ahead on a boat. She smells the hot dogs they had for supper, bought from a sidewalk vendor, ketchup and mustard dripping over their fingers as they perched on the bed to eat, Mom fussing about the mess, reminding them to use the napkins she’d handed out and not drop crumbs on the sheets. The hot dogs had been a treat. Like the earlier hurried trip up the Empire State Building. But now the memory of fried onion and rubbery pink makes her queasy. She thinks of home, their yard with the Stars and Stripes flying out front. She wonders if their stuff is floating somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, or maybe it’s already on dry land, at the new house, waiting for them. She wonders what it will be like. She hopes it has a bedroom each for her and Chris, a winding staircase leading to a spooky attic, and a big garden with plenty of room to throw a fastball. She glances at her parents. They still have their faces close, talking quietly. Dad’s got mustard on his shirt.

  When Dad broke the news, months ago, Hedy jumped on and off the sofa and hung on to his arms, both her and Chris asking him questions. Would they eat fish-and-chips out of newspaper? Really? Would the British people understand their accent, would they have to go to school, would they take the Buick? “Sure we’ll take her, Princess.” Dad laughed, swinging Hedy from his biceps. “No way I’d leave her behind. You guys will love England. The base even has its own movie house.” And would he be flying bombers again? He shook his head. “My flying days are over. Your dad’s been promoted, kids. There’s important work on the ground.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Got to keep those Reds at bay.” At dinner, he let them sip from his beer and laughed when a stream of fro
th shot out of Chris’s nostrils. Dad kept laughing while Chris spat the rest on his plate. Hedy waited for Mom to leap up and start cleaning the mess. But she sat chewing her lip, blind to it all. “Come on, Ruby, you’re like Death at a wedding feast,” Dad said. “You’re spoiling the fun.”

  Normally, Dad can get Mom to laugh with a kiss or a joke, or he’ll grab her in a tango embrace and dip her backward until her head nearly touches the floor, and after he sets her upright she’ll slap his arms, pink-cheeked and giggling, and tell him off for making her dizzy. Not this time. After Hedy and Chris were in bed, it started.

  “What about Christopher?” Mom asked.

  “What about him?” Dad. Low and tired sounding. “There are doctors in England.”

  “They won’t be as good as here. Nothing’s as good as America. Going back to England means giving up so much. The kids don’t understand. They think it’ll be fun.”

  A long sigh from Dad. “You knew we’d get posted again, baby. We don’t get to pick, like some holiday. We’ll be staying on an American base. It’ll have all the amenities you’re used to here. And besides, this is a promotion for me—it could lead to something big, for all of us.”

  Hedy, her ear pressed against the door, was puzzled. Why wouldn’t Mom want to go back? She must have gotten to like Iowa better than her childhood home. She hardly talked about Grandpa, or her brother, or the life she had before she married Dad. England was tiny, hardly bigger than a single state, so although Hedy was hazy as to exactly where her unknown relatives lived, it didn’t matter, because wherever it was, Hedy realized she’d meet them at last. Maybe there would be an aunt too, she thought, cousins even.

  From outside, the city of New York shoves itself up against the glass, full of show-off noise and flashing lights and too many walls. It makes Hedy’s neck ache from looking up. There’s no room for the sky. She maneuvers her arm carefully. It throbs as if she’d stuck it inside a hornet’s nest. Nobody said anything about having to have vaccinations. Chris twitches under the blanket. He’s not asleep after all. He’s crying.

  She climbs in next to him, lying on her good side. He is stuck on his back like a beetle. She rubs his shoulder in consoling circles. “Do you want me to read to you? I’ve got David Starr, Space Ranger in my bag.”

  “No,” he whispers, his voice choked with tears. “Not now.”

  “Least we won’t catch diphtheria or polio,” she says. “Think about nice things. Like ice cream. Tomorrow, we’re going on an airplane.”

  Hedy is ten minutes older than her brother. He needs looking after. Not that he’s stupid or anything. He’s the cleverest person she knows. His main problem—apart from the obvious one—is that he seems to lack an instinct for self-preservation, always leaving himself open to teasing and disappointment.

  Hedy puts her head on the pillow. She slips her arm around his waist, avoiding the leather girdle of his hips, trying to hug the rigid line of his body, pressing her nose into the curve of his neck. She begins to hum, blocking out Mom and Dad’s angry whispers. Chris wipes his nose, sniffs, and wriggles. “You’re making me hot.”

  “Keep still, doodlebug. Scoot over. This bed’s too small.”

  He smiles. She can’t see his face, but she feels his smile, feels it as a softening somewhere inside her chest. He gives a shuddering sigh, and then grows heavy against her. She listens to him slipping away into sleep: breath deepening, the slight asthmatic click of his lungs. Chris is allergic to everything. Milk. Nuts. Pollen. Cat fur. It has taken Hedy a while to forgive him for this. She’s always wanted a cat.

  * * *

  Ruby stands, shoulders hunched, biting her lip.

  “Hey,” Todd says gently, taking a final drag on his cigarette and stubbing it out in the overflowing ashtray on the side table. “Give me a smile, baby. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. Come here.” He holds out his arms.

  Ruby closes her eyes inside his embrace, leaning her cheek against his shirt. She’s already said her piece about not wanting to go back to England. And now it’s too late to make a fuss; nothing can reverse the events unfolding around them. She’s being stupid; Todd wants this posting badly. It’s a promotion for him, and it’s churlish of her to take the shine off it. She softens her body, allowing herself the relief of being properly held. “I’m sorry,” she whispers into his shoulder. “If you want to know the truth, I’m a little afraid of flying. Silly”—she gives a short laugh—“with me married to a pilot.”

  He smiles, as she knew he would, and begins to reassure her earnestly about how safe commercial flight is. She lets him. She can’t untangle her real fears, let alone explain them. Her main concern is for Christopher. They’re leaving the hospital in Iowa with all its up-to-date equipment and knowledge, and she worries about keeping him safe in England, where people haven’t recovered from the war yet, and there’ll be hardship and poverty surrounding them. She imagines a muttering crowd of resentful locals, faces pressed against a perimeter fence, looking hungrily at the privileged Yanks in their midst. It feels strange to be going back to a place that she ran from, that she thought she’d never see again. She’s certain that being in East Anglia, so close to the farm where she grew up, will remind her of her childhood: all the unhappiness, dirt, and drudgery that she’s tried to forget. She doesn’t want to be that girl again. She could never get rid of the filth under her nails, inside the cracks in her skin. There’d been no love in that house, no kindness, no forgiveness. All she did was dream of escape. But her brother can’t reclaim her now, she reminds herself. She’ll get on that plane tomorrow in her new blue suit, nylons sleek against her showered skin; she’ll make Todd proud. She might be going back, but she’s a different person now. A married woman. An American.

  Ruby rubs her finger over the oily yellow stain on Todd’s collar. It’ll need a hot wash to get it out. She brushes her lips against his chin before she detaches herself and goes over to the cot, where her children lie entwined like babes in the wood, milky skinned, blue veined, easily bruised; an identical rash of freckles appearing every summer. Viking blood. Her side of the family is full of tall people, heavy with bone, eyes pale as water.

  Hedy’s and Christopher’s hair mingles on the pillow, the same flaxen shade. Ruby leans down, touching her son’s forehead, smoothing it with her fingertip. They’ll have to find an English doctor who understands his condition. His parted lips tremble with each intake of air. His skin is flushed, his pale lashes darkened and spiky with tears. He sobs more than a boy should, his eyes welling up if he sees roadkill, or if she and Todd argue, or if any living creature is cruel to another. Watching him, she’s filled with a familiar fear, and a fierce need to protect him from life’s innumerable hurts. Ruby suspects that there was a mix-up at conception, that the little cells that bestow male and female attributes somehow got confused about which twin was which and ended up in the wrong babies. She doesn’t know if Todd shares her suspicions, because it’s not the sort of thing a man would admit out loud about his only son.

  * * *

  The room is alive with the sleeping breath of her children, the openmouthed snoring of her husband. But Ruby, her face slick with Pond’s Cold Cream, spiky curlers skewered in place, can’t sleep. Outside the window, New York is restless, too. The room pulses with lights flickering through the drawn curtains. She hears unknown voices, sounds of passing traffic, and the snap and clip of heels rising relentlessly from the sidewalk below. Where are they going, all these strangers? What mysterious needs and desires have set them pacing the city till the early hours?

  She thinks of her little house in Sioux City, the ranch-style porch lost in shadows, the rooms standing empty, stripped of the furniture she painted herself, and the curtains she ran up on her machine like a modern pioneer. At night, the only sound was Pete next door reversing his Chevrolet into the drive, or the cry of a coyote. Claremont Avenue was a place where everyone knew their neighbors, and strangers were a rarity. So it had seemed like a mirage when a whole crowd passed by her house weeks before, most of them in cars, but some traveling on foot like refugees, carrying cases done up with straps, pushing strollers loaded with bric-a-brac: the inhabitants of downtown forced to evacuate before the dam broke. The water came, just as predicted, tearing down telephone wires, washing away whole houses, cars, dogs. They said it was the March snows that had caused the Missouri to rise so high. There had been pictures of the disaster on the news, but Ruby had seen it for herself, standing in her own front yard, looking into the valley. Drowned trees holding up supplicating branches. Birds wheeling in circles above. It was biblical, as if she were witnessing the words of the Old Testament come to life, and inside her head she could hear her father: Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before me.