Sea Glass Summer (8 page)

Brian had offered the information that his Aunt Nellie, who at ninety had to know pretty much everything, thought Gerard and Elizabeth were a disgrace to the Cully name. If it were up to her the old lady that used to live there would come back to haunt them. This, Brian had added solemnly, explained the shadow he'd seen at the window that he was sure was a ghost. Oliver had thought it would be super great if Gerard and Elizabeth were driven screaming all the way back to New York, but was scared the old lady spook would be so much on Oliver's side that she wouldn't leave him alone, even in the bathroom. And, as Twyla had agreed with him, a boy of nine liked his privacy. There was no doubt about it: God had let him down real bad.

The conversation with Brian had taken place in the playground during recess and, after a quick look around, Oliver had lowered his voice. ‘If it weren't for letting Grandpa and Twyla down, I'd become an atheist.'

‘Seriously, Ol? How do you spell it?'

‘Don't know.'

‘Then that's out. You can't be something that you can't spell.'

Secretly relieved, Oliver said that in that case maybe he'd become a Mason. He didn't know what a Mason was, except that its members had a secret handshake, which sounded satisfactorily sinister.

‘Good.' Brian had brightened. ‘My Dad's one of those!'

Oliver now noticed that the two suitcases Twyla had helped him pack weren't on the bench under the window. She must have taken them down after he fell asleep, not wanting him to see them first thing when he woke up. This was really happening. He looked at the empty space on the top of the chest of drawers where the photos had been. That's how he felt – empty. He shut his eyes tight. If only Mom and Dad could show up right now. He wouldn't be scared of their ghosts – or if he could just hear their voices telling him what to do. And suddenly he did, not out loud, but in his heart.

‘We love you so much, Oliver. And you're not fat.'

He answered in a whisper even though he was alone, because this was such a private conversation, ‘I love you guys, too. Say hi to Grandma Olive and my other grandparents.' He always thought it polite to mention Dad's parents even though they'd never seen him because they hadn't wanted to. It wasn't Grandpa who'd told him that. Again, it was something Oliver seemed to have always known.

Tears filled his eyes but he brushed them away and went out to the hallway, then down into the living room. Empty. He couldn't hear Twyla moving about in her bedroom or Grandpa's either. He'd told them last night he might go for a bike ride if he got up real early. A blue Chevy was coming down the road as he went out the front door. It stopped at the bottom of the drive and Mr Hodgkins who lived down the road stuck his head out the car window. He worked nights at the airport and was just coming home, Oliver knew.

‘How you doing, young man?'

‘OK, Mr Hodgkins.'

‘I guess this is the day then?'

‘Right.'

‘We'll miss you and your grandpa. ‘I'll be down to see him at Pleasant Meadows, and don't you be a stranger. You let us know when you're coming in, and Mary' – Mary was Mr Hodgkins' wife – ‘will bake those brownies you and Brian like so much.'

‘Thanks.' When the car drove off Oliver got his bike out of the shed and pedaled around the corner. He slowed for a goodbye look at the Armitage's house. As he was about to ride on, the front door opened and Brian came out, his dark hair sticking up from not being brushed. He was wearing a Boston Red Sox sweatshirt that he must have dragged on in a hurry, because it looked like it had been bought when he was six. His glasses were higher on one side than the other.

‘I've been watching for you,' he said as he came down the step.

‘Hey, dude.' Oliver leaned on his handlebars.

‘Dad said last night he'd bet his next meal you'd go for a ride round this morning. He said that's what he'd do in your place. We've got Aunt Nellie staying over. She couldn't believe you're going to your aunt and uncle.'

‘Let's not talk about them.'

‘Right.' Brian collected his bike from the side of the house and pedaled alongside Oliver around the next corner onto the stretch of road that went past the grade school. ‘Aunt Nellie said she was just talking to a new neighbor about you yesterday, like how you and me are friends and all that.'

‘Why would her neighbor care?' Oliver hunched a shoulder.

‘Probably didn't. Aunt Nellie thinks you and your grandpa and Twyla are great and she doesn't like . . . those two people. Sorry – forgot.'

Oliver rode faster. He wasn't mad with Brian. He wanted to go so fast that the thought of Gerard and Elizabeth couldn't catch up with him. He wasn't just sad, he was scared – scared worse than he would have been going alone into a big dark cave. Before Grandpa got sick the future had always been friendly. Even afterward, up until the last week, it had seemed sort of fuzzy. They passed Bigg's Furniture Store and Kayak Rentals and then drew to a standstill at the cemetery entrance. At the front were the older gravestones, some of them dating back a hundred and fifty years. Mom and Dad were farther back, close to the path. Grandpa had chosen that place because it was shaded in summer by a giant oak tree.

‘Want to go in?'

‘Came with Twyla yesterday. We brought yellow roses that she got at The Flower Box. Mom carried those on their wedding day.'

‘It's not like you're really going today. You'll be in school on Monday. Maybe Twyla will take you to see your grandpa at Pleasant Meadows when we get out of class.' In contrast to yesterday's crying bout, Brian seemed determined to look on the bright side.

Oliver gripped his handlebars tighter. ‘If they
don't make me go straight back with them.'

Having listened to Aunt Nellie and his parents talking last night Brian had decided they sounded as bad as the aunt and uncle in
Harry Potter
, but again he made a big effort to sound hopeful. ‘Guess what?'

‘What?'

‘Mom and Dad said they'll take me over to Aunt Nellie's as often as I like when school's out, and we can hang out there, and p'raps they'll
let me come out to the Cully Mansion. I think it'd be cool if we saw old Emily's ghost, but maybe,' his voice perked up, ‘they won't think having her there so great. And they'll decide to clear out and go back to New York.'

‘I thought of that, but it's stupid. They'd take me with them and then I'd never see Grandpa or Twyla.'

‘Not if they've decided they don't like you. Remember we talked about you making sure they don't.' The words hung in the air.

‘Right.' Oliver was staring off into the distance at the big oak.

‘Worth a try, don't you think? You could do it by pretending to be nice, or at least reasonable.'

‘How?'

‘Tell them you're really into sports. They'll get sick of you real quick if they have to spend half their time running you to baseball or swimming. And if that doesn't do it you can say you want to take piano lessons.'

‘Actually, I would like to learn. Thanks, bro.'

‘And if that doesn't work something else'll happen. Aunt Nellie says it always does if you trust your spirit guides. She goes to that church at Dobbs Mill. Dad says it's no nuttier than any other church.'

Oliver was no longer listening. His ears had choked up along with the rest of him. It was time to turn back. After parting from Brian, he rode slowly up his own drive, returned the bike to the shed and went back into the house, through the still-empty living room up the stairs. Back in his bedroom, he lay down on the bed to think. He didn't get far. Within a moment his eyes closed and he dozed, waking with a start half an hour later. Jumping up he hurried down the hallway.

From the top of the stairs he could now see Grandpa in the wheelchair wearing his plaid bathrobe, with his gray hair combed flat to his head. If he couldn't get dressed in real clothes, it was all the more important that his hair didn't stick up the way it always wanted to do. Twyla was sitting across from him on the sofa. Her dark hair was speckled with silver and buzz cut so it sculpted to her head. Brian's mother, Mandy Armitage, had said she didn't know any other woman who could wear her hair that short and look great. It required a perfectly shaped head. If she tried it, she'd joked, she'd have looked like a light bulb. Twyla was tall and rangy. She didn't look cozy, but she was. From above Oliver saw her get up and cross to the wheelchair to lean down and kiss Grandpa's cheek. He'd been a big man once, filling out his plaid flannel shirts, but he'd shrunk.

‘It's going to all work out just fine, Frank.' Twyla had a voice like warm molasses. ‘It's a good place, Pleasant Meadows, and I'll be over to see you most days.'

‘You're . . . one in a . . . million; my Olive would have . . . thought same.' The words came out as if squeezed exhaustingly through a straw. ‘But isn't . . . me . . . worried about.'

‘I know. I know. It's that dear boy. Nothing would make me more joyful than taking guardianship of him.'

‘That's what we'd want, Oliver and me both, but Gerard is his next of kin,' Grandpa kept going, ‘and gave me to understand he'd go to court to get him if I'd other plans. Don't understand what's brought this on.'

‘Has me pondering too, Frank. Trouble is he's in the bird seat. Not only am I no relation to Oliver, I'm sixty-six, and while I'm fit as a flea right this minute a judge could hold my age against me. Maybe rightly so. Should something happen to me, Oliver could be at the mercy of the State. Least with them there's two. And whatever's done and gone, they're family, and people can change if they want to good and hard enough.'

‘Could . . . be they've . . . held back for . . . fear,' Grandpa had to wait to get out the rest, ‘. . . that I've talked against . . . them.'

‘Maybe. They don't know you.'

Oliver had been brought up not to listen in on other people's conversation. But he couldn't move. He leaned against the top banister, gripping the knob in his hands. He could see his suitcases by the front door. Grandpa had told him that Granny Olive hadn't been into decorating schemes. They'd bought what they could afford and not given it much more thought. But Oliver loved everything about that room from the tweedy brown sofa and armchairs with their orange and green Afghans to the fall landscape picture above the pot-bellied stove. Most of all he loved the photos on the bookcase. Especially the ones of his parents, different from those that had been on his chest of drawers, but with the same smiling faces. Mom, so pretty with her curly red hair and the same blue-green eyes as his own. Dad, dark and handsome. Best of all, they looked kind. Oliver squeezed his eyes shut. He had to remember that room exactly as it had always been.

‘Let's pray the aunt and uncle will do right by your boy,' said Twyla in a soft, crooning voice as she continued to stand by the wheelchair with her hand on Grandpa's shoulder. ‘Can't help but grow to love him. Born with a heart of gold was Oliver. So they told you way back that they weren't geared to children, but life changes people. Could be that with the Lord's grace they'll come to see him as a gift.'

‘He's been my blessing. Couldn't have gotten over losing Clare and . . . and Max . . . came to love him like a son . . . then Olive . . . without him. Had Clare later in life than most couples back then. Grandpa's voice had strengthened, evened out. It happened that way sometimes, making him sound almost like his old self. ‘We wanted children right off the bat . . . didn't happen and then we got to adopt her. Best thing . . . best daughter. Oliver cut from same cloth. Never believe that business about blood being thicker than water, Twyla.'

And yet in the present situation it had to be. The day ahead had to be faced. Silence, one that stretched like a fitted sheet on a bed. Oliver knew the grown-ups were deep in thought. He had always known that his mother was adopted. It had made her seem even more special. Out of all the families wanting a baby, God had chosen Grandpa and Granny Olive to be her parents. He was glad now that he'd decided not to become an atheist; it could have been a close thing if he'd known how to spell it. Not that atheists couldn't be really nice people – Brian's dad was great. Oliver just wasn't brave enough to go it alone.

‘Oliver surely is dear to me as if he was my own.' Twyla broke the silence. ‘Some days I feel like I'm about to spill over with love just looking at his face. So you take heart, Frank; I'll see every bit as much of him as his aunt and uncle will let happen.' She paused. ‘I wonder if they'll tell him about the house.'

‘Been thinking about that myself. Somehow don't think so; best maybe if he doesn't find out. No . . . need to load up on young shoulders.'

Were they talking about the Cully Mansion being haunted? They could have heard that rumor from Brian's parents, passed on to them by Grantie Nellie, as Brian called her. But now Grandpa was talking about his parents' wills.

‘Made 'em before . . . going on that trip. Told us they'd left guardianship to Olive and me. Could've been Gerard took offence to that.'

‘Maybe, but surely in light of the estrangement . . .'

Grandpa and Twyla looked up and saw Oliver standing at the top of the stairs. He started down feeling at once very young and quite old. ‘I am going to try to like them.' He didn't stretch his smile too big, because then they wouldn't have believed it. ‘P'raps they'll bring me to see you real often Grandpa, and let Twyla come and stay at the house. Maybe even Brian too.'

‘That's my boy,' said Grandpa.

Oliver ran to kneel down beside the wheelchair and lay his face against the knee beneath the plaid dressing gown. He didn't have to see Twyla's face to know that she was also trying not to cry. He felt the trembling hand upon his sandy hair.