Lily's Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff

and Paprika was playing with her sneaker lace.
    Lily could feel the perspiration running down her back, the metal scissors sliding in her slippery fingers, when Albert began to talk, grinning. “Hungarians play ‘The Blue Danube’ too,” he said. “It never sounded like that.”
    “Like what?”
    He looked down at the coat. “Like terrible. Like Ruth plays.” He smiled. “Ruth likes to play duets. Loud.”
    Lily swallowed. “I don’t want to play the piano anyway. It takes too much time, and . . .” She’d probably like Ruth. “You should try it,” Lily said. “Hanging around on the bench, trying to . . .”
    “In my grandmother’s restaurant,” Albert said slowly, “I played the violin on Sunday. I played that song, and ‘Vienna Life,’ which is my grandmother’s favorite.” He stopped. “I loved the violin, Lily. If only I could have taken it with me . . .”
    He took a breath. “In Kalocsa’s, Nagymamma’s restaurant, people ate goulash. They had rolls with sweet butter. For dessert they ate
rigojancsi
, and
gesztenyepüre,
or
palacsintas
.”
    “What . . .”
    “
Palacsintas
are pancakes. They’re filled with jam, or chocolate.”
    Lily looked up.
    “Nagymamma gave me plain ones, cold ones, folded over. She put them in my coat pocket when I left.”
    Lily knew he was ready to cry, but she couldn’t think what to say. She just kept snipping at the collar until there was a wide opening in the seam. Without looking, she pushed the coat toward him and watched as he edged his thumb and index finger gently into the seam. He worked the bills out, laying each one on the floor next to them. “These are Magyar money,” he said. “We call them
forints
. And this one is an English pound.”
    He didn’t have to tell her about the next, a fifty-dollar bill, worn and creased. “Nagymamma did not know where we were going. She had to guess about the money.”
    Lily looked at him, thinking about going to another country without Poppy or Gram, without even knowing where she was going. “Where is . . . ,” she began.
    Albert reached down for the cat. He held her up to his face, rubbing her soft fur on his cheek. “Nagymamma might be in her house. She might be in prison. I do not know.”
    Lily thought of her own mother, who had died, but had died of something wrong with her heart, and not in prison, but at home in St. Albans. Lily touched the money on the floor beside her, patted it the way she patted her stars. It was as if she could almost see Albert’s grandmother, who had touched it last.
    The cat put its tiny needle claws into Albert’s shoulder as he reached over to put his fingers into the coat seam again. And now there was a tiny picture with three faces. Albert, of course, with that mop of hair, and an old woman, with a lined face and little round glasses, and a girl. The girl had curls like Albert’s, but they were softer, smoother, and she was laughing.
    “Ruth,” Lily said.
    “Yes.” Albert looked down at the picture again; then put it carefully in his pocket. He folded most of the money and put that in his pocket too. Then he handed her the fifty dollars. “Here, for Eddie’s picture.”
    She looked down at the money. “We can’t—”
    “My grandmother would not mind. She would be glad, I think.”
    Lily shook her head. “Don’t you see? We could never go to the post office with all this money. They’d ask where we’d gotten it. They’d tell my grandmother.”
    Albert raised one shoulder. “It is too much money, then?”
    “More than I’ve ever seen at once,” Lily said.
    Albert scooped up the money and stuffed it back into the coat. He sat back on his heels, and put the cat down on the floor. “I guess we should not use the Hungarian money. That is not so much.”
    Lily grinned. “I don’t think so. Nobody around here has ever seen Hungarian money.”
    “No.” He grinned back.
    But then Lily heard the church bells. Four times. Four o’clock. The