All-Season Edie (2 page)

Breakfast is miserable.

“You forgot the bread,” Dad tells Mom.

“So did you, I guess,” Mom tells Dad, in a way that sounds funny on the surface but doesn't make anyone laugh.

“I hate flakes,” I say. “Isn't there anything else? Is there a muffin? Is there chocolate? Is there cheese? Is there—”

“NO,” Mom and Dad say at the same time, the raisin twins. I eat a few mouthfuls of flakes and a couple of bites of a patchy banana while Mom and Dad carefully don't talk to each other. Dexter and Mean Megan are probably having French toast and strawberries right now. I almost hope Grandpa will get worse again so our holidays will end so we can all just go home.

After breakfast, I sit with my legs hanging over the back of the itchy sofa, reading descriptions of campsites in the Canadian Automobile Association booklet and thinking of running away and living year-round in a tent and eating macaroni and cheese every possible day of my life. I'm very fond of cheese. Some days cheese is the only thing that makes life bearable. We'll have supper and everyone else will have dessert—chocolate pudding or oatmeal cookies—and I'll sit there eating cheese. Dad asks me why I eat cheese for dessert, and I answer that it helps pass the time. Dad asks me why I say that, but I don't know.

Finally Mom gets tired of seeing me lying on the sofa. She says, “There's a lake right there,” her finger jabbing toward the
TV
and beyond to the glint of silver behind the trees, “so will you please go and get into it if you're going to lie around in your bathing suit all day? Why don't you go boating or something?”

Boating?

So I go to the office, padding across the pine needles in my spongy blue flip-flops,
flap-flap-flap
, and ask the old man for a key to a pedal boat. He gives me a key tied to an empty bleach bottle—number seventeen—and a bright red life preserver. He wants to help tie me into it, but I know how from swimming lessons. I pad off down the path through the pine trees,
flap-flap-flap
, to the jetty.

The pedal boats are yellowy orange, like cheese, with a black stripe and steering wheel and black bumpers. They're very beautiful, even though they're meant for two people. Next time I'll bring a book to put on the other seat and possibly even a sandwich. Imaginary Dexter would never come with me anyway; she'd just lie on the jetty, working on her tan. I find number seventeen. Down on the floor it's wet, and there's a daddy-longlegs stuck to one pedal. I scrape it off with my flip-flop and swiddle my foot around in the water, which is pretty warm, and scare some tadpoles. I get in with one wet foot and one dry foot, and then a voice says, “Don't forget your pee eff dee.” At least that's what it sounds like.

I look around, and I see the fat boy. I hadn't seen him before because he's lying in the bottom of a rowboat tied to the jetty, below the gunwale, with a hat over his face and no oars in sight. He's the boy I saw in the parking lot right after we got here. The only other fat boy I know is Timmy Digby from school, who stole my gym bag one time and threw it into the boys' washroom. He giggled frantically until I went in to get it, and then he blocked the door with his bulk and refused to let me out. I stood there, hugging my bag, looking at the blue tiles and the smelly ceramic lavatories and the smear of sunlight on the wall opposite the high window, and Timmy turned strangely sullen, slumped against the door. You have got to be kidding me, I thought. I wouldn't fight him or beg. Eventually a teacher wandered in, and the two of us got detention.

I think about all this for a while and then I say, “What?”

He doesn't move. “Your pee eff dee,” he says. “You should put it on. Otherwise you might fall into the water and sink and drown. They'd have to dredge the lake for your body, and when they found you, you'd be all swollen up and green, with seaweed in your hair and black lips and shells in your eyes. They'd have to bury you in a closed casket because no one would want to look at you, not even your parents.”

I think about all this as well. “What?” I say again.

He sits up suddenly, making the boat bob around a little. He brushes the hat from his face and squints at me. His face is very red. “It's true,” he says simply. “That's what happens. I read it in a book.”

I say, “What's a pee eff dee?”

“Personal flotation device.”

“What's that?”

“There.” He points to the innocent life preserver that I left baking on the wooden jetty.

“What's a casket?”

“The box they bury you in when you're dead.”

“So who's going to die?” I say. “I can swim.”

“That,” the fat boy says mysteriously, lying back down in the rowboat and adjusting the hat over his face, “is what they all say.”

I watch him for a while. “Don't you have a key?”

“Nope.”

“Where is it?”

“Up at the office.”

I wait a little longer but he doesn't say anything. Then I say, more curious than generous, “Want me to go get it for you?”

“No, thank you,” the hat says gravely. “I don't really feel like rowing at the moment. But thanks for the offer all the same.”

None of this is at all understandable, so I lean way over and grab my life preserver or pee eff dee or whatever and drag it over my head and pull out my hair and tie the straps around my middle. I unlock the bicycle lock chaining the pedal boat to the jetty. I start churning the pedals, shoving the jetty away at the same time while managing the steering wheel with one hand. “See ya, hat-face,” I call cordially. He waves, still lying down.

I zoom up to one end of the lake but there's nothing happening up there, so I start to zoom down to the other end. Pretty soon I realize the lake is bigger than I thought, so I stop pedaling for a while and just float. That's pretty peaceful, and I wish I had brought a book. I stare down into the water, which must be very deep because I can't see the bottom. It just gets darker and darker, sort of see-through on top and velvety underneath. A creepy prickly feeling starts in the small of my back and climbs up to my neck as I think about how deep the water is, how big the lake is, how small I am, how I'm on top of all that water, and how, if I spring a leak, I won't stay on top of it all for long.

“Don't be such a drama queen,” says Imaginary Dex, who it turns out came along after all. She's sitting in the other seat in her halter top and cutoffs, studying her cuticles, not even bothering to look at me. “You're wearing a life preserver, plus you can swim. If you're so scared, just go to where it's shallow. I can't believe you need me to tell you this. What are you, six?”

“What is so fascinating about your fingernails all the time, anyway?” I say.

“At least for me they're not a food group,” she says. “Yours are disgusting.”

“Petal Blush is disgusting,” I say, naming the color of nail polish she's always touching herself up with. It's very light pink, the only color Mom will let her have. “Petal Blush. Look at me, I'm an embarrassed petal. I farted and now I'm embarrassed. You have petal fart on your fingernails.”

“Jealous,” Imaginary Dex says, and then she's gone. I hate it when she gets the last word.

I start pedaling again toward some wafty reeds that poke up through the water at the far end of the lake. It must be shallow where there are reeds. “I'm not afraid,” I say out loud, and the sound of my own voice in the middle of the big lake where no one else can hear it is a strange thing. “La la la,” I sing, listening to myself with great interest and pedaling doggedly. “Shoo-be-doo.” I wonder if there are fish who can hear me. I try to think of a fish song. “What shall we do with a drunken sailor, what shall we do with a drunken sailor,” I sing to the fish, “ear-lie in the morning?” It isn't exactly about fish, but it's close. I'll ask my dad if he knows any fish songs. “Way, hey, and up she rises,” I sing, “ear-lie in the morning.” That's a good idea, come to think of it: I decide to get up really early and take a boat out on the water and—and what? I start thinking about the fish again. Are there really fish down there? The old man at the office will know. I look into the water again and see sand and realize I'm coming up to the reeds.

They're taller than I am in the pedal boat, like a floating forest. They'd make a wonderful place to hide. I imagine hiding in the reeds at night with a flashlight and a chocolate bar or some cheese. I imagine sleeping in a sleeping bag down in the bottom of a boat in the reeds, listening to the lapping tongues of the water and the rustling tongues of the reeds murmuring to each other, hearing the sad bird who only sings at night. I look down at the pedals and think it'll have to be a rowboat, which reminds me of the boy sleeping in the rowboat tied up at the jetty. Strange.

Beyond the reeds chuckles a river that maybe can, maybe can't be navigated in a pedal boat. On the opposite shore, large trees with tangled roots overhang the water, trailing long shawls of moss. All of these things look very interesting, but just then a cloud passes over the sun, and a breeze pushes long wrinkles across the lake. It's cold and maybe it's time for lunch anyway. When I get back to the jetty, the rowboat is still there, but the fat boy is gone. I lock up the pedal boat and return the key and the life preserver to the office and forget to ask about the fish. I only remember when we sit down for lunch, which is cheese sandwiches and dill pickles and grape juice.

“Dad,” I say, “are there fish in the lake?”

Dad, who has spent the morning in a deck chair under the pines reading the newspaper and drinking coffee from a green ceramic mug, looks a little dazed. “Fish?” he says, looking over the tops of his reading glasses. “Oh, I imagine.” Which is a silly answer, since I can imagine them perfectly well on my own. What I want to know is whether they're really there. Hopeless.

After lunch, I decide to go for a swim. Dad gives me a long lecture about the dangers of going swimming right after a heavy meal, which I listen to impatiently. By the time he finishes, enough time has elapsed that I won't get a cramp and drown or whatever it is that's supposed to happen. “Everyone expects me to drown today,” I inform Mom testily, digging through my bag for my towel. It's a nice big scratchy towel with orange and white stripes. I don't like soft cushy towels: They get the water off, but they don't make you feel dry.

I race for the door, but Mom stops me. “Edie,” Mom says, and I do a squirmy little impatient dance. Mom has a blue plastic bottle in her hand. “Just stand still while I put some sunblock on you,” she says. “It's dangerous to get too much sun.”

“Why?” Mom pours the coconut-smelling white lotion onto her hands and rubs them together. “Cold, cold,” I add, dancing up and down as Mom rubs the lotion briskly into my back.

“You could get sunburnt. You could get headaches. You could get skin cancer. Too Much Sun Is A Bad Thing.” Mom makes it sound very official, like Are Those Hands Clean? and How Many Times, Young Lady? and Not Until You've Eaten Your Vegetables. “What about your sunhat?” Mom's voice pursues me down the path. Whew—got away just in time.

Down by the jetty I find a big stick, which becomes my trident since I'm Neptune, God of the Sea. I stab at the little tadpoles and scatter them. “Ha ha ha,” I laugh in my deepest God of the Sea voice, until it occurs to me that I don't really want to spike a tadpole. So I throw the stick away and float on my back and spit mouthfuls of water into the air like the beluga whales at the aquarium. Then I spend the rest of the afternoon lying on my towel under the trees, reading my book as the shadows slowly lengthen, until Mom calls me in for supper.

“Come on,” I say to Imaginary Dex, who's lying on a towel beside me, reading one of her teen magazines.

“Five more minutes,” she says. “I'm taking a popularity quiz. So far I'm nine out of ten.” I walk back up to the cabin alone.

In the evening, we walk over to the office so that Mom can phone Dexter and Dad can phone Grandpa. Dad says it's too expensive to call long-distance on the cell phone from here. I look at a rack of tourist brochures while Mom and Dad pass the phone back and forth and the lady who checked us in, who's older than Mom, prods at a Game Boy with her thumbs. “Fudge,” she says every now and then.

“I know, honey,” Mom is saying. “I know. I know. I know. I know.” She listens for a long minute. “I know, honey,” she says. “Me too.” Then she says to me, “Want to talk to your sister?”

“No!” I say.

I swear I can hear Dexter's little mosquito voice, at the precise same instant, saying, “No!”

“Homesick,” Mom mouths to Dad as she hangs up, making an isn't-that-cute face.

“Aw,” Dad says. Then it's his turn to dial. “Mom?” he says. Mom—my Mom, not Grandma—looks over my shoulder at the brochure I'm holding. It's for houseboat rentals on a different lake. “No, it's great!” Dad says. “It reminds me of that place you used to take me when I was a kid, that fishing camp up past Hundred Mile House, you remember? Kind of sleepy and basic, but in a good way. Edie's loving it. I wanted to tell Dad about it, to see if he would remember. Oh, he is?”

Mom looks up from the brochure.

“No!” Dad says. He sounds extra-hearty, like he's disappointed and doesn't want Grandma to know. “No, we'll call later. He should sleep if he's tired. Give him our love.” He hangs up.

“Grandma!” I say.

“Oh, sorry, sweetie,” Dad says. He's frowning and tapping his mouth with his fingers. “You can talk next time. Do you think I should have reminded her about Dad's medications?”

This last bit is for Mom. “I think she'll have it under control,” Mom says, linking her arm through Dad's. I follow them back to the cottage. Dad has his glasses off and is rubbing his forehead again. It's dark now, and the lights we left on make the cottage look almost as cosy and inviting as a houseboat. That'll be good to pretend in bed tonight: that we're in a floating house, rocking gently on deep, dark water, and if the cable breaks we might wake up far from shore and have to figure out how to get back.