Bittersweet Summer (4 page)

“We like watermelon,” I said.

“Tell your dad we’ll bring the cutlery,” she said. “We want things to match.”

“What’s cuttle ree?”

“Cut-ler-ee. Forks and knives and spoons,” she said. “Really, Katie. When you don’t have a mother at home, you have to learn about things like cutlery.”

I hung up. Almost immediately, the phone rang again.

“I wasn’t done,” Claire said. “I’m sure Ms. Morgan would like to ride in our car. I noticed your dad’s car was a little messy.”

I slammed the phone down.

T
HE TELEPHONE WAS STILL
bouncing on the counter when Dad walked by. “Whoa,” he said. “That’s not the way to handle the phone.”

“Claire says our car is messy.” I stomped behind him into the kitchen. “And she doesn’t think watermelon is fancy enough.”

Dad raised his hands. “She’s right about the car. But watermelon sounds great to me.”

“Watermelon is very great,” Tyler said as he carried all his library books into the kitchen. He set his books down in the middle of the floor and opened one. “Read to me, Katie.”

“Not now,” I said. I rubbed my forehead. It was sore from too many worries.

Dad put the peanut butter sandwiches onto paper napkins and took them to the table.

“I want Ms. Morgan to ride with us,” I said. “It’s our picnic. Not Claire’s.”

He poured milk for us and water for him. “I’ll vacuum the car.”

“You should spruce it,” Tyler said.

“Okay,” Dad said. “I’ll spruce it. Wash your hands, Katie and Tyler.”

“There’s too much to think about,” I said as we sat down at the table. “We’re supposed to be kids on summer vacation. Having fun.” I sniffed at the peanut butter in my sandwich.

Dad leaned back in his chair. “The picnic will be a nice break from fixing up our house. According to Sadie, we really need to clear things out. If we end up not moving, at least our house will feel bigger.”

“I hope that company doesn’t want you.” I ripped my sandwich into little pieces and counted them. Ten little peanut butter sandwiches.

“That’s not supportive,” Dad said. He chewed and swallowed. “I’d like to have you kids rooting for me instead of making it harder.” Tyler was squeezing his sandwich and licking the peanut butter that oozed out.

I thought about rooting for Dad. I touched his arm. “Mr. Flagstaff likes you. He’ll be sad if you get a different job.”

“I need to have a talk with him before I make any decisions. He gets back Tuesday.” He smiled at me. “But that’s my girl. That’s the kind of help I need.”

I popped one of my little sandwiches into my mouth and chewed. “The picnic was your idea,” I said. “Why is Claire in charge of it now?”

Tyler zoomed a piece of his sandwich across his plate, making sounds like squealing tires. “The winner!” he announced, and popped the piece of sandwich into his mouth.

Dad reached across the table to touch my hand. “The picnic will be fine,” he said. “We can eat, take some walks to see the falls, and then come home.” He grinned at me. “A picnic is a picnic.”

After Tyler was down for his nap, Dad started stacking newspapers in the utility room. I wandered down the hall and into my room. My orange polka-dot bedspreads glowed on the twin beds. My shell collection looked pretty on top of my bookcase. Real Estate Sadie would say my room had plenty of lines. It was perfect.

Maybe my closet had some extra stuff. I looked in. Pants and shirts lay in heaps on the floor; papers and puzzles and games spilled across the shelves. Sadie would not like my closet, but I did. Everything was right where I could find it.

Next to the closet door, my poster of Mom holding her guitar filled the whole wall. She and Dad had been divorced for more than three years. We spent time with her at Christmas and in the summer, but I missed her, especially at night after Dad tucked me in. “I’ll turn the light off myself,” I always said. “I have to look at Mom first.”

He would nod and get a sad look on his face before he went out and closed my door.

I knew she was only a poster, but I told her everything. I pretended she could whisper back to me.

I traced her smile with my finger. “Do we have to move to Portland?” I asked her.

She didn’t answer. She hardly ever spoke to me in the daytime.

I flopped onto my bed and stared at her. “What about Claire’s summer project?” I asked. Mom still didn’t say anything, but her smile reminded me that she was still there for me. I still had a mom. We could talk on the phone. I could listen to her CDs. When we got together, she would read to us and hug us. Claire’s mom couldn’t do any of that. She could never step out of the old photo Claire had showed me once.

I sat up on the bed; my mind was made up. Claire needed a new mom much more than I did. Ms. Morgan should live across the street. Claire was going to be the perfect daughter for her.

T
HAT NIGHT AFTER SUPPER
, Dad went to the store to buy the watermelon. “Back in ten minutes,” he said.

I got out the family photo album. Tyler curled up beside me in the green chair. “This is Mom when you were still inside her,” I told him.

He touched Mom’s big belly with his finger. “I want her back with us,” Tyler said. He pushed the album away and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

“Dad says she’s too famous now,” I told him. “She can’t come back.”

“She could sing ‘Down in the Valley’ when I go to bed,” he said around his thumb. “She sings that when we’re at Grandma’s house.”

“She sings it to me, too,” I said. Mom was also good at rubbing my back to help me fall asleep.

Tyler pulled the album back and turned the page to a photo of Mom sitting in a circle of people playing guitars. “Who are those people?” Tyler poked at the photos with his wet thumb.

“They came every Thursday night.” I wiped thumb juice off the photo. “They played music in the family room.”

“If Mom was here, I would be in my bed listening to that.” He turned another page. “There!” he said. “She got me out of her stomach.”

Mom was holding Tyler, a tiny baby, in her arms. Her face looked soft as she bent over him. She looked really happy, being a mother.

I remembered her in the kitchen, sprinkling cinnamon on my French toast. I remembered her picking me up at school, leaning out of the car and saying, “Hurry up, Katie bug.”

Beside me, Tyler sucked harder on his thumb. I was going to have to tell Dad about the thumb. He would say Tyler was going through a stage. He would tell me Tyler needs lots of hugs right now.

As I closed the album, the phone rang.

“You have to get it,” Tyler said. “Dad’s not here.”

I ran to the phone. “Hi, Katie bug,” Mom’s voice said.

“Mom!”

Tyler ran into the family room. “Let me,” he shouted. “Let me talk!”

I jerked the phone away from him. Then I gave up. No way could I talk to Mom while he was yelling. I slid down on the floor and thumped my feet while he pressed the phone against his ear and nodded.

“Say something to her,” I whispered. He shook his head and frowned at me.

When Mom’s voice stopped, I held out my hand. “My turn,” I said.

Tyler shook his head. “Mommy?” he asked. “Can you come back home?”

Mom’s voice started up again and I heard something about concerts and Dad. “She wants to talk to Dad,” I said. “Give me the phone.”

“She’s coming,” Tyler said as he handed the phone to me. “I think.”

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

“Katie.” As usual Mom’s talking sounded almost like her singing. “I’m doing a concert in Oregon. Next week. It would be so much fun to see you all.”

My stomach lurched with excitement. “I’ll tell Dad!”

“Where is he?” she asked. “I want to talk to you, too, but can you call him to the phone?”

The back door opened, and Dad came in carrying a huge watermelon. “He’s here,” I said.

He rolled the watermelon onto the kitchen counter and raised his eyebrows at me.

“It’s Mommy!” Tyler yelled. “I think she’s coming home!”

Dad picked up the phone. “Hello, Roxie.”

Tyler and I sat on the floor while Dad talked to Mom. “Great!” he kept saying. “Great! Okay to bring a five-year-old?”

Finally he handed the phone to me. “She says it’s your turn.”

“Honey,” Mom said. “I’ll see you next week at my concert.”

My poster picture of Mom holding her guitar flew into my mind. “Cool,” I said.

“And then we’ll have supper together,” Mom said. “What should I order?”

“Pizza,” I told her. Beside me, Tyler jiggled up and down. “Don’t get mushrooms,” I said. “Remember? I hate mushrooms.”

Mom laughed. “I can’t wait to see you.”

She told me about a boat ride she took on the Mississippi River. “I thought about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer,” she said. “Ask your dad who they are.” She went on about a concert she did in North Carolina the week before. “My agent thinks my next CD will get me an award,” Mom said. “It’s pretty exciting here.” As we hung up, I thought of all the things I should have told her. About my new art book. About tomorrow’s picnic. “Does she know we might have to move?” I asked Dad.

He shook his head. “We’ll have lots to talk about when we see her.” He picked up the watermelon. “How am I going to fit this into the refrigerator?”

While Dad was moving things around in the refrigerator, Tyler and I did jumping jacks across the kitchen. “She’s coming. She’s coming,” Tyler sang.

Dad pulled more things out of a grocery bag. “Napkins and paper plates,” he said. “For the picnic.”

“Those plates aren’t fancy enough,” I told him.

He looked surprised, but I didn’t feel like telling him I had decided that Claire’s plans for Ms. Morgan were okay.

“We can decorate these,” I told Tyler. A moment later, he and I were drawing on the plates with my colored pencils. I drew a beautiful bluebird for Ms. Morgan while Tyler filled a bunch of plates with crawly black ants.

W
E WERE IN THE
driveway, loading things into the car, when Ms. Morgan pedaled up the street. She grinned as she whooshed into our driveway.

Ms. Morgan at my house! She hugged me, and then Tyler. “Great day for a picnic,” she said.

Today she was wearing shorts. She pulled off her bike helmet and put on a red ball cap that matched her shirt. She saw me looking at her hiking boots and stuck out her foot. “These are brand new,” she said. “I’m trying to break them in so they’ll feel comfortable when I go on a long hike.”

She undid the bungee cords that held a large bowl onto the rack of her bike. “I’m so glad this didn’t spill off,” she said as she handed it to me. “I’m afraid I took a chance with our potato salad.”

Dad took the bowl and put it into our cooler. “It’s safe now,” he said. “Nice bicycle. I’ll have to show you mine sometime.”

“Dad has so many bicycles, we can’t put the car in the garage anymore,” I said.

“She’s right,” Dad said. “Isn’t that embarrassing?”

“Good morning.” Mr. Plummer marched up our driveway, looking as if he’d just stepped out of a store, in white shorts and a bright, flowered shirt. Claire followed in blue tennis shoes, blue shorts, a blue crop top, and even a blue barrette in her blond hair. She smiled sweetly at Ms. Morgan.

“I put the sandwich fixings into our cooler,” Mr. Plummer said. “And there’s probably room in there for the salad.”

“We found a place for the salad.” Ms. Morgan waved her hand at Dad’s cooler. “We picked perfect weather, didn’t we?”

Dad fitted bags full of paper plates, potato chips, and mystery stuff I hoped were cookies into the trunk. “Let’s hit the road,” he said.

“Ahem,” Mr. Plummer said. “Unfortunately, we will need two cars.”

“We certainly can’t all go in yours,” Claire said. She glanced into our car as if she expected something nasty to fly out of it.

“Ms. Morgan should ride with Claire and me,” Mr. Plummer said. “We’ll meet up at the park.”

“Good idea,” Dad said.

“Yay!” Claire grabbed Ms. Morgan’s hand.

Ms. Morgan hesitated. “Will that be all right?” she asked.

“Of course.” Dad lifted Tyler into his car seat. “We’ll be more comfortable. But then, to be fair, I hope you’ll ride with us on the way back.”

Ms. Morgan smiled at him. “Of course.” She went across the street with the Plummers.

We drove for ages while I watched the Plummer’s car ahead of us, wishing I could hear what they were talking about, wishing I had gone with them, wishing Ms. Morgan didn’t have to be Claire’s mother. Finally our cars drove up a narrow road through tall evergreens. When I opened the car door, I heard sounds of a crashing waterfall.

“Fifteen different falls,” Mr. Plummer was saying when we all stood together in the parking lot. “We can hike to several of them.”

“Let’s hike right now,” I said. “Ms. Morgan has on her new hiking boots.”

Dad pulled binoculars out of their case and hung the strap around his neck. “Shall we work up an appetite?”

Mr. Plummer reached into his car. “I brought a camera,” he said.

Claire stood very still. “I think we could stay here on the nice grass,” she said. “I brought my latest poetry.”

“After we hike,” Ms. Morgan said, “we’ll have more things to write about.”

Claire sighed, but she came with us when we crossed the grassy picnic area to stand by the rushing river. We threw sticks into the water and watched them float downstream where they disappeared over a cliff. Ms. Morgan took Tyler’s hand firmly in hers. “This is no time for a swim,” she told Tyler.

“There’s a fence to keep people from going over the falls,” I said.

“But still,” Ms. Morgan said, “we don’t want to lose Tyler for one minute.” She grinned at him, and he smiled back.

“You’ve made a friend,” Dad said.

“Aren’t we too close to this wild river?” Claire asked.

“That’s the whole idea,” I told her. “That’s why we came.”

Tyler led us down the trail, and Claire ran beside him, trying to stay as close as possible to Ms. Morgan.