Julia and the Art of Practical Travel

Chapter One
Windy Ridge
That's the problem with living in a small town: everyone knows everyone else. So when Belfry and I went to the five-and-dime and told Mr. Jeffreys that we wanted to buy a packet of cigarettes, he told us that we were too young and he wouldn't sell them to us. Belfry told him, No, we're not too young, we're sixteen, and Mr. Jeffreys snorted and said, Like fun you are. You, Belfry, are twelve, he went on, and you, Julia, are only eleven, and don't try to fool me, because I've known you both since you were in diapers. Then he gave us a packet of Beemans gum and told us, Good try, be good, and we trudged outside again.
I don't know why you wanted them so much anyway, I told Belfry and added that Mr. Hopper, who delivered the groceries, smoked cigarettes, and his hands and breath always smelled like a stinky old basement. Belfry sighed and told me that all grown-ups in movies smoked and that you might as well wear a diaper if you didn't.
And now we don't have any other choice, he added as we walked back to my house. I asked him what he meant, and he pulled up a handful of clover from the side of the road and started sucking the nectar out from the buds.
We're just going to have to grow our own tobacco, he said.
How are we going to do that? I asked him. Everyone knows that you have to be given seeds from the Indians and then grow them in a big field in South Carolina. It's 1968, I reminded him, and there haven't been Indians here in the Hudson Valley for a million years.
But Belfry, who never gives up on anything, said that he had a plan, and the very next day he sent away for a catalog and about four weeks after that, the tobacco seeds arrived in a brown paper box tied up with twine.
Now, Belfry said, we have to grow these at your house, because if we grow them at mine, my old man will find them and take them for himself. And I read that you have to grow the seeds in real china cups and we don't have any at home, and your grandma has tons, he told me.
I had never heard this before but knew better than to question Belfry, who reads every magazine in the stand at the grocery store and knows more than me about everything in the world. And it was true about the teacups; we had about a thousand of them lying around in splintery crates that had words like fragile and holiday and heirloom written on the side boards.
So that's what we were doing when Aunt Constance walked in that day, the day that my life at Windy Ridge ended and my life everyplace else began: planting the seeds from the brown box in Grandmother's teacups out in the gardening shed, in a spot where the sun shines through the window all day, so it would be hot and bright like it must be in South Carolina.
Julia, said Aunt Constance as she pushed the door open. What are you doing in here? And then her eyes got really wide and she said, What on earth are you doing with your grandmother's best bone china?
Is it really made from bones? asked Belfry.
No, it's not, but it's very expensive anyway, said Aunt Constance, and then because she's always very polite, she said, Hello, Belfry, and then she peered into the cups. Why have you filled our family's best heirloom china with dirt? she asked.
When Belfry told her that we were planting strawberries, Aunt Constance smiled and her shoulders relaxed and she said it was a lovely idea, but that we should have asked before using the cups. Didn't we know, she said, that this china was a wedding present when Great-great-grandmother Lancaster married Lord Ashley, and that the crown prince of England had been at the ceremony, and that there was very little of the china left after all that time had passed?
No, said Belfry, I hadn't known that, and I just kept quiet, because I actually had known that, and I'd taken the china cups anyway. Here is a picture of one that I took with my Brownie camera, which I carry with me at all times:

Then Aunt Constance got a very grave look on her face.
Julia, she said, I need you to come with me. Your grandmother would like to speak with you.
Belfry wasn't allowed to come along, but Aunt Constance let him bring home a bone china cup filled with tobacco seeds and dirt because she felt rude about not including him.
See you tomorrow, he said, winking at me as he stalked away with the cup in his hands.
Yeah, see you then, I said, with my heart in my throat. Nothing good ever came from being called upstairs to have a talk with Grandmother.

If you live in our town, you know our house, Windy Ridge, already. If you live anywhere in the county, you probably know it, and maybe even if you live in New York City, way down the Hudson River. It's a famous house and a big one, made from gray stones that were dug up out from the Windy Ridge ground a long time ago, and there are lots of tall trees that bend and whisper at night and sometimes get struck by lightning in the summer storms.
The Lancasters--my family--have lived at Windy Ridge forever and my great-great-grandmother Lancaster, who got given the bone teacups at her wedding, once let George Washington live here for a while when we were fighting England. Belfry says that George Washington had wooden teeth, which sounds pretty awful and splintery, if you ask me. One time, in the garden, we found a piece of wood that looked like a tooth. I was sure it had been one of George Washington's teeth. Belfry said, No, don't be stupid: wood rots; there's no way one of George Washington's teeth would have lasted this long. But I kept it anyway and put it inside my silver treasure box, in between some periwinkle sea glass I found on the beach in Newport and my mother's pink pearl necklace that she threw in a bush once, after Grandmother made her go to a stuffy party. Grandmother never could get the dirt off the strings between the pearls, and that's why she gave it to me.
I followed Aunt Constance across the lawns and past the walled garden, which was covered with thorny wild yellow roses. It was a hot day, even for August, and Aunt Constance's neck looked sweaty as she walked in front of me. She always wore her faded red hair in a bun on the top of her head. It was cool inside the house because thick old stone walls don't let in heat, even when all of the windows are open. The tall clock in the hallway rumbled with chimes as we walked past it.
Grandmother's room was right at the top of the stairs, so she could see who was going up and down and know everything that's going on. She used to come downstairs to be served breakfast and take her walk in the gardens. And she would come downstairs later in the day for teatime, and then again for supper, of course wearing different clothes each time. Our housekeeper, Winifred, used to serve Grandmother the breakfasts, teas, and suppers, but she had to get let go a few years ago, and then Aunt Constance did it instead. But lately Grandmother hadn't been coming downstairs for any of these things. She just stayed in her huge oak canopy bed and asked for her jewelry box and put different old rings on her long, fingers.
Today she was wearing her big fire-opal ring that had a bunch of diamonds around it, which to me always looked like stones around a campfire:

Sit down and stop taking photographs with that thing, Julia, Aunt Constance told me in her powdery voice. In fact, give it to me, she added.
I put the camera on the floor instead of giving it to her. I never liked anyone else to touch my camera; in fact, I even slept with it next to my bed at night. My mother gave it to me for my seventh birthday and it was the last present she ever gave to me. Aunt Constance's forehead crinkled into a frown when I disobeyed her, but she didn't ask for the camera again. Instead she took a deep breath and said:
Grandmother has something to tell you.
What is it, Grandmother? I asked, sitting in a chair next to her bed.
Grandmother looked at me very hard, and after a minute, she said: Joooooolia (she always made my name sound like it had a hundred letters in it). And I said, Yes? And then she said something that I will never forget if I live to be a thousand years old.
Joooooolia, Grandmother said. I have decided that by noon tomorrow, I will be dead.
I didn't know what to say. I knew that I was supposed to find the polite thing to say, because manners are very important to Grandmother. So after a minute, I replied: I am very sorry to hear that. And then I added, Why have you decided this?
Grandmother looked very grave. Because I have outlived my times, she told me.
Aunt Constance moved around in her chair and started to say, That's not true, Mother--but Grandmother raised her hand and Aunt Constance stopped talking right away. Words always dry up in the air when Grandmother raises her hand, especially when she's wearing the fireopal ring.
From now on, you shall have to take care of each other, she told us, and went on: I suspect, Constance, that you will have to sell Windy Ridge and all of its contents.
I didn't say anything, because I knew that Grandmother was joking and you shouldn't interrupt someone when they're telling a joke, even a not-funny one. As I've said, the Lancasters have lived at Windy Ridge for hundreds of years. But Aunt Constance seemed to be missing the joke. She looked like someone had sucked her breath right out of her body.
Will that be necessary? she asked when she could talk again.
I'm afraid so, said Grandmother. Unfortunately, the Lancasters haven't been particularly financially prudent in recent generations, she added.
I didn't know what this meant and it sounded a bit boring, so I tuned out this part of the conversation until Grandmother said something that caught my attention:
And I think it's time to send Joooooolia to Miss Horton's. I'm certain that they will accept her when she turns twelve--and on scholarship too--just to have a Lancaster there again.
Now I thought that Grandmother was taking the joke a little bit too far. Miss Horton's was a snobby boarding school for teenage girls from good families. She had gone there and so had Aunt Constance and my mother too, until she got kicked out for being a bad influence on the other girls.
And then I suddenly remembered something: Grandmother actually never tells jokes and thinks that jokes are vulgar. I started to feel how you feel on a summer day when you've just gotten out of a pool and a cloud comes out of nowhere and covers up the sun. You've gone from being warm and happy to shivery and damp, and have to huddle up with your arms around your knees until the sun comes back out.
All right, Mother, said Aunt Constance slowly. If that's what you think is best.
No one ever says no to Grandmother.
Joooooolia, said Grandmother.
Yes? I said.
It would be a grave disappointment to me if you turned out like your mother, wherever she may be at this moment, she said.
But after noon tomorrow, you'll be gone, I pointed out. So how can you be disappointed?
Grandmother glared at me. You will always know when I'm disappointed, no matter where I am, she told me. Now run along. Constance, stay with me.
So I picked up my camera, left the room, and did what any girl in her right mind would do: I left the door open just a crack and eavesdropped. I wanted to know if Grandmother really intended to die by noon, and whether they really were going to sell Windy Ridge and send me off to Miss Horton's. But Aunt Constance was on to me: she came and shut the door firmly, and she and Grandmother kept talking in their discreet church voices. I gave up then and walked downstairs and tried to imagine what the world looked like when you didn't live at Windy Ridge. I wanted to take pictures of every single thing in the house, because it was all starting to fade in front of my very eyes and I worried that it all might just disappear completely before the sun rose again. Things were always disappearing from Windy Ridge. Like my mother, for example. So if you wanted to remember anything clearly, you had to take a picture of it quick.
But it was too dark by then; all of the pictures would have come out black and it would be a waste of film, which cost a lot of money, so I just ambled around with a funny, hollow feeling in my stomach. I ran my hands over the cool marble walk-in dining-hall fireplaces, and ran up and down the splintery secret staircase at the back of the house, and finally went outside and sat next to the dovecote, which had pale, dirty white paint peeling off the sides. I listened to the doves cooing their sad twilight songs and stared at Grandmother's window. The yellow light stayed on all night behind the drawn lace curtains, until it went out at around five in the morning, just before dawn.
When Aunt Constance came to find me a little while later, she was wearing a black dress, so I knew that Grandmother was gone.
Lancasters always keep their word.

Chapter Two
The Grand Sale
It rained on the day of Grandmother's funeral, but practically the whole town came to the church anyway. And after telling Aunt Constance and me how sorry they were about the tragic news and how Grandmother had been a pillar of the community, some of the women said in very low voices to Aunt Constance that they'd heard an intriguing rumor that we were going to have a house sale--did this happen to be true? And then when Aunt Constance said that yes, it was true; we were planning on selling Windy Ridge and all of its contents, those women looked very excited and not at all funeral-sad and promised that they'd be there, bright and early.