Julia and the Art of Practical Travel Read online

  Hello, Julia, she said as she hugged me into the front of the coat.

  I breathed into the fur; it still smelled of Grandmother’s perfume and I had such a pang for Windy Ridge that I almost cried. I was very happy to see Aunt Constance, but it was hard, too, because it was like having someone you love visit you in prison and knowing they eventually have to leave you there when they go back into the world again.

  Miss Ellison served us banana bread in her living room, and at first she and Aunt Constance talked about the weather and the school endowment, whatever that was, and then of course the talk turned to the topic of me.

  I’d like to say this delicately, said Miss Ellison, because I think Julia is a special girl. But it is precisely because she is so special and unusual that I bring it up. Have you considered educating her at home?

  Aunt Constance looked very uncomfortable.

  Well, at present, we are in between residences, she told Miss Ellison, and I knew that it embarrassed her to say so. Then she sat up very straight, and asked:

  Is there some question about Julia’s contribution to the Miss Horton’s community?

  Certainly not, said Miss Ellison. It’s nothing like that. But I do not believe that Miss Horton’s is the right place for your niece. She is misunderstood here.

  What can you mean? asked Aunt Constance. She gave me a worried look. Has something happened? Are you all right, Julia?

  Miss Ellison set down her plate.

  Julia, do you mind making us a fresh pot of tea? she asked.

  I wasn’t fooled for a minute; I knew they just wanted to talk about me privately, but I got up and walked out of the room with a teapot anyway. Of course I stationed myself right on the other side of the door.

  Miss Lancaster, I am afraid that six years at this school would destroy Julia’s spirit, Miss Ellison told Aunt Constance. I understand that Julia’s mother is absentee and that you are her de facto caretaker. I personally feel that she would be better off with you than in this very conventional environment. I would be happy to create a special Miss Horton’s lesson plan for her and supervise her education from afar.

  Aunt Constance was silent for a minute.

  Miss Ellison, I’m sure that Julia is an unusual presence here at Miss Horton’s, she said at last. But I’m not sure that I agree with you. I hardly know how to raise her. I don’t have children of my own. I don’t know that I’m … equipped to handle her.

  But you have been raising her, said Miss Ellison. Julia has told me everything.

  Yes, and since she’s been in my care, she’s learned how to shoot a gun and drive a car, said Aunt Constance. She has run away and taken money from my purse. All before she has even officially become a teenager. I’m afraid that she’s running completely wild.

  I honestly don’t think that Julia is a rebel at heart, said Miss Ellison. I certainly think that she’s high-spirited, but she’s also very sweet. She has so much affection to share and no one to share it with.

  She needs a mother, she added. Not necessarily her real mother. But someone who loves her and makes her feel safe.

  I do love Julia, said Aunt Constance in a quavering voice. And she’s all that I have left. But don’t you think she needs normalcy and to be around girls her own age? Especially after all that’s happened?

  I think that Julia needs love and understanding, and she’s not getting enough of either thing here at Miss Horton’s, said Miss Ellison. I can only do so much, but I promise to help you from here, Miss Lancaster. You and Julia will not be alone.

  They were quiet for a minute, and then Miss Ellison called out:

  Julia, how is that tea coming along?

  I scrambled into the kitchen and made the fresh tea, and by the time I went back into the living room I could tell that something had been decided. Aunt Constance dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  Julia, she said. We think that you should leave Miss Horton’s and come live with me in the city. Miss Ellison would mail us your lessons and assignments, and we would mail them back to her to be graded. Is this agreeable to you?

  I get to come live in a hotel with you again? I asked.

  Yes, said Aunt Constance. Until I find us a permanent house.

  But don’t worry, she added. I still have all of our practical-travel things there, of course, to make us feel at home.

  Miss Ellison helped us carry my things to the car.

  Goodbye, Julia, she said as she hugged me. Merry Christmas to you both. Happy New Year too.

  Just before she closed the car door, she leaned in and said:

  I have a feeling that 1969 will be the year that you find home again.

  Aunt Constance drove slowly down the snow-covered highway back toward New York City, and at first we were very quiet.

  What are you thinking about, Julia? she asked me.

  I was thinking about something that Madame Batilde said down in New Orleans, I told her.

  I knew you were probably eavesdropping, said Aunt Constance. What part?

  The part where she said that you’d find my real mother and that it wasn’t Rosemary Lancaster, I said, and asked her: Do you think she meant that it was you?

  Aunt Constance reached out and took my hand.

  Maybe she did, she said. I’m going to do my best.

  I’ve missed you, Julia, she added. It has been very lonely being the only Lancaster in town.

  Miss Ellison’s mail-in lessons were hard. She asked me to write a lot of essays. A topic would arrive by letter, and I would sit and write each essay in a corner of the Barbizon Hotel lobby, where they’d set up a desk and a chair just for me:

  One of the hardest topics: “What I Learned from My Trip Across America.” I wrote almost ten long pages about all of the practical things I’d learned, such as:

  1. Catching a fish with my bare hands;

  2. Setting up a sun tent from travel trunks and rugs;

  3. Shooting a pistol;

  4. Driving a car;

  5. Excavating gold from a hill;

  6. Outrunning a herd of wild javelina.

  But at the very end of the essay, I added:

  I also learned that you probably shouldn’t tell people (especially Miss Horton’s girls) too much about trips like this, especially when very interesting, out-of-the-ordinary things have happened to you. Because not many people get to experience very interesting, out-of-the-ordinary things, and they don’t believe that such things could happen to other people either. But out-of-the-ordinary things happen all the time, especially to Lancasters.

  In fact, three more very interesting, out-of-the-ordinary things happened to Aunt Constance and me not long after I moved into the Barbizon Hotel with her:

  OUT-OF-THE-ORDINARY HAPPENING #1

  One cold February morning, while I was working on a Miss Ellison lesson and Aunt Constance sat nearby in a lobby chair reading the New York Times and drinking a cup of tea, she suddenly spat that tea back out into her cup. Some of it even came out of her nose, and the concierge rushed over to see if she was choking. She waved him away and said:

  I’m fine, I’m fine, thank you, Rupert—

  And then she went on reading something in the paper with her eyes very wide.

  Julia, she said after a minute. It appears that—well—it appears that Shirley Hicks has passed away.

  Who did what? I asked.

  Shirley Hicks, said Aunt Constance. You recall—Tipsy von Lipp. She passed away. Died.

  Oh, you mean Tipsy Lipps, I said. What happened?

  The obituary says that she fell off a yacht while on holiday in Greece, said Aunt Constance. That poor, wretched woman. And it appears that Windy Ridge is going to be up for sale again, along with all of her other properties.

  Can we try to buy it? I asked, sitting straight up.

  Oh heavens, no, said Aunt Constance. We can’t afford it anymore.

  What about the money she gave us for Windy Ridge in the first place? I asked. Can’t we just give it back? />
  We’ve been living on that money, Julia, said Aunt Constance. A lot of it’s gone. So that’s that. Windy Ridge will finally, truly go to strangers, with all of its ties to the Lancasters cut forever.

  Then she went upstairs to our room and didn’t come down again until the next morning.

  Now it’s time for me to talk about:

  OUT-OF-THE-ORDINARY HAPPENING #2

  Because my desk in the lobby of the Barbizon Hotel was so close to the revolving front door, every time someone came in or went out, a big whoosh of air would come in and blow my papers onto the floor. So I finally got fed up, marched upstairs, went through our travel trunks, and fished out my huge hunk of pyrite from Gold Point. I brought it back down to the lobby and plunked it on top of my papers.

  And then, a few days after we found out about Tipsy Lipps falling off the yacht in Greece, I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when a woman with a big fox-fur stole and bright green eye shadow swept out of the hotel elevators and into the lobby. She glanced over at me and my desk as she marched toward the door. Then she stopped in her tracks and looked again.

  Darlin’, what is that? she asked me, pointing at the pyrite.

  It’s pyrite, I told her, and added: Also known as fool’s gold. I found it in the Nevada hills last summer. And now it’s my paperweight.

  The woman leaned forward and squinted at it.

  May I pick it up? she asked, and to my surprise, she not only picked it up and turned it from side to side and felt its weight, she also sniffed it and then licked the side of it. I didn’t know what to say. She put it back down very gently.

  That ain’t fool’s gold, honey, the woman told me. That’s the real deal. And I ought to know. My husband, Archibald Crest of Crest Minerals, Incorporated—rest his soul—mined half the gold out of South America. So if I were you, I’d cash that chunk in pronto and move into the Barbizon presidential suite.

  Then she sailed out the revolving door.

  It turns out that Archibald Crest’s widow with the bright green eye shadow was right. I told Aunt Constance what she had said and that very afternoon we had the hunk appraised by a bank. It was real gold after all, every ounce of it. So the bank gave us a lot of money for it, which Aunt Constance put into a savings account, and I was going to have to find a new paperweight.

  Now do we have enough to buy back Windy Ridge? I asked Aunt Constance in the taxi on the way home.

  Aunt Constance smiled sadly and shook her head.

  No, Julia, she said. Unfortunately not. But we have more than we did this morning, enough to keep us at the Barbizon for a good long time, and maybe buy a different house. We have to try to stop thinking about Windy Ridge. Let’s count our other blessings instead.

  That night before I went to sleep, I wrote Sheriff Stone a letter and informed him that there was still real gold after all in Gold Point and told him exactly where I found my hunk, and said that I hoped there was more where it came from and that it would make him very rich. I also told him about my desk in the Barbizon lobby and about Tipsy Lipps’s accident and how Windy Ridge was for sale again and a few other updates. Then I sealed the envelope and licked the stamp and mailed it off.

  This now brings me to:

  OUT-OF-THE-ORDINARY HAPPENING #3

  About two months later, in April, the weather started to warm up, so Aunt Constance switched from her fur hat back to the straw one and we started to take walks in Central Park in the afternoons. Aunt Constance said that park walks were very healthy for the body and soul, and that in the old days, walking in the park was called promenading and ladies would carry frilly little umbrellas called parasols to protect their skin from the sun.

  One afternoon we came back from our daily promenade and Gerald, who worked behind the Barbizon’s front desk, said that a big envelope had arrived for me. I thought it was another lesson from Miss Ellison, but the postmark was from Nevada. I knew it must be from Sheriff Stone and ripped it open right away.

  This is what his letter said:

  Dear Deadeye,

  Well you have no idea how happy I was to get your letter all those weeks ago, and sure enough, you were right and I was wrong. That isn’t fool’s gold in that hill at all, hallelujah. It’s the yellow, the real deal, and there sure is plenty of it. I’m rich now, you bet, and I have you to thank for it.

  And here in Gold Point, we find ways to thank our friends who do nice things for us. Look in this envelope to find a present from me, and please do come back to Gold Point as soon as you can. I’ll have a pickax waiting for you, and you can take as much yellow back with you as you can carry in one of those old Lancaster travel trunks.

  Your friend,

  Sheriff Stone

  I dug deep into the envelope like he told me to do and at the bottom was another piece of paper with a gold border, which looked very fancy and official. I handed it over to Aunt Constance and asked her what it was.

  Suddenly she grasped her throat with her hand and I thought she might faint, but instead she exclaimed:

  God in heaven. It’s the deed to Windy Ridge. It looks like Sheriff Stone has bought it for us. He put it in your name, Julia.

  What does that mean? I asked her.

  It means that you own Windy Ridge, cried Aunt Constance. That is, you’ll get it when you’re eighteen. Until then I’m your guardian.

  She burst into tears.

  We’re going home, Julia. Home.

  I wished that we had sparklers and firecrackers like the ones Belfry and I set off on Independence Day. The next best thing: to help us celebrate, the Barbizon concierge and the bellboys went into the hotel kitchen and came back out with a cake covered in candles, like it was our birthday instead of our home-going day:

  Aunt Constance’s face was filled with light. She got on the telephone and told a florist to send over a big passel of yellow roses for us to wear in our hair when we went to dinner. Then we ate at a gilded supper club wearing those roses, and Aunt Constance even let me have a half glass of champagne. There was a big band playing on a stage, and the bandleader noticed us sitting there happily at our table with our champagne; he came over and asked us what the occasion was. And when I told him what the occasion was, he said that he was dedicating the next song to us:

  “Oh, you can go to the east,

  Go to the west,

  But someday you’ll come

  Back where you started from.”

  Aunt Constance and I got up and danced, and even though she only knew how to waltz and it was the wrong dance for the song, everyone in the room clapped anyway, and it was the best night of my whole life.

  I just wished that Sheriff Stone could have been there. Something tells me that he would have liked dancing too.

  I forgot how hot Windy Ridge summers were. But when we got there, Aunt Constance said that I was now old enough to go swimming in the Hudson River to cool off. Not the main part of the river, of course, with its fast currents, but in a new little side pool that swirled just at the bottom of the cliff stairs leading down from the house. The river had decided to make the side pool while Aunt Constance and I were driving across America looking for my mother.

  It was nearly ninety degrees the day that Aunt Constance and I moved back home to Windy Ridge. The house was empty inside except for dust, and so we opened up every window and let the wind blow through the house to wake it up again after its yearlong sleep.

  How does it feel to be back, Julia? said Aunt Constance.

  It feels strange, I told her. But familiar too. Like being in a dream where you’re at your house, but everything is just a little different than it is in real life.

  It’s not quite the same, I agree, said Aunt Constance. But that’s all right. You and I are different now after all that’s happened. Why shouldn’t Windy Ridge be different too?

  It still feels wonderful to be back, though, she said softly, and wandered off into the living room, running her hands along the walls, which were empty except for the
marks where Lancaster paintings and portraits had once hung.

  Later that day, we spread one of the Oriental carpets from our stash of practical-travel things on one of the back lawns and sat on it and looked out across the grounds. Everything was very overgrown and brambly and wild. That was another way that Windy Ridge had decided to change while we were gone.

  I like it this way, I told Aunt Constance.

  So do I, she said. We’ll keep it wild. It’s a new era here at Windy Ridge.

  Just then we heard the faint sound of the doorbell ringing inside the house.

  I’ll go, I told Aunt Constance, and I ran up the stone stairs to the slate-floored back terrace and into the house, through the main hallway where the grandfather clock used to stand. The front door had swollen in its frame and I had to pull hard with my whole body weight to get it open.

  There on the other side stood Belfry, holding a small cardboard box.

  Hi, I said.

  Hi, he said back.

  We stood there for a minute, staring at each other. He looked taller and older and had a fresh haircut. He smelled minty, like he’d just brushed his teeth, and suddenly I wondered how I looked to him. Pretty, I hoped. Even though I knew from the tarot cards that I wasn’t going to marry him someday.

  Did you get all of my postcards? I asked him.

  Belfry reached into his back pocket and pulled out a stack of them.

  You sure went to a lot of places, he said. Around the whole world, it seemed like.

  We were quiet again until I remembered my Lancaster manners and asked him to come in out of the sun.

  It sure looks different in here without all of the Lancaster stuff, he said as we walked through the house, and he added: Are you going to get it back?

  We can’t, I said. It’s all sold. But we still have a few things from before. Our practical-travel things. Aunt Constance says it’s all we need these days.