And here’s the part that really stings: I know that many years in the future, when Teddy brings his college girlfriend home for Thanksgiving dinner, my name will be a punchline around the dinner table. I’ll be remembered as the crazy babysitter who drew all over the walls, the one who believed Teddy’s imaginary friend was real.
He and I lie back on the raft and watch the gorgeous sunset. All the clouds are tinted pink and purple; the sky looks like a painting you’d see in a museum. “We can definitely be pen pals,” I promise. “You can send me pictures and I’ll write you letters.”
“I would like that.”
He points up to an airplane soaring across the horizon, trailing long streaks of white vapor. “Do people take airplanes to Norristown?”
“No, buddy, there’s no airport.”
He’s disappointed.
“Someday I’m going to ride on a plane,” he says. “My daddy says the big ones go five hundred miles an hour.”
I laugh and remind Teddy that he’s already been on a plane. “When you came home from Barcelona.”
He shakes his head. “We drove from Barcelona.”
“No, you drove to the airport. But then you got on an airplane. No one drives from Barcelona to New Jersey.”
“We did. It took us all night.”
“It’s a different continent. There’s a giant ocean in the way.”
“They built an underwater tunnel,” he says. “With super-thick walls to protect you from sea monsters.”
“Now you’re just being silly.”
“Ask my dad, Mallory! It’s true!”
And then over on the pool deck, I can hear my telephone ringing. I have the volume turned all the way up, so I won’t miss Adrian’s call. “Be right back,” I tell Teddy. I flip off the raft and swim to the side of the pool, but I’m not fast enough. By the time I reach my phone, the call has already gone to voice mail.
I see that Adrian has texted me a photograph. It’s an elderly black woman, wearing a thin red cardigan and sitting in a wheelchair. Her eyes have a vacant stare but her hair is neat and trim. She looks well kept and well cared for.
Then a second photo arrives—the same woman posing next to a black man in his fifties. He has his arm around the woman and he’s directing her attention toward the camera, encouraging her to look at the lens.
Adrian calls again.
“Did you get my pictures?”
“Who are these people?”
“That’s Dolores Jean Campbell and her son, Curtis. Annie Barrett’s daughter and grandson. I just spent two hours with them. Curtis comes every Sunday to visit his mom. And we got everything wrong.”
This seems impossible.
“Annie Barrett was black?”
“No, but she’s definitely not Hungarian. She was born in England.”
“She’s British?”
“I’ve got her grandson standing right next to me. I’m going to put Curtis on the line, let him tell you firsthand, okay?”
Teddy stares at me from the swimming pool, bored, anxious for me to come back and play. I mouth the words “five minutes” and he climbs aboard the raft and starts kicking with his tiny feet, propelling himself around the water.
“Hey, Mallory, it’s Curtis. Are you really living in Granny Annie’s cottage?”
“I—I think so?”
“Spring Brook, New Jersey. In back of Hayden’s Glen, right? Your friend Adrian showed me some pictures. But you don’t have to worry, my granny’s not haunting you.”
I’m so confused. “How do you know?”
“Here’s what happened. She moved from England to Spring Brook after World War II, okay? To live with her cousin George. They were on the east side of Hayden’s Glen, which back then was very white and well-to-do. Now my Pop-Pop Willie, he lived on the west side of Hayden’s Glen. In a neighborhood called Corrigan. The colored section. He pumped gas at a Texaco, and after work he would walk down to the creek to catch his supper. Pop-Pop loved to fish. He ate trout and perch every day if they were biting. One day he sees this pretty white girl walking barefoot. Carrying a sketch pad. She calls out hello and Pop-Pop said he was too afraid to look at her. Because again, this is 1948, remember? If you’re a black man and a white woman smiles at you? You look the other way. But Granny Annie comes from Cresscombe, in the UK. A seaside town full of Caribbean migrants. She’s not afraid of black people. She says hello to Pop-Pop every afternoon. Over the next year they get friendly, and soon they’re more than friendly. Soon Pop-Pop is creeping through the forest in the middle of the night, so he can visit Granny in your cottage. Do you follow what I’m saying?”