Sun & Spoon (2 page)

Spoon gave up. There was no reason to hurry now. He plopped down at the edge of the garden to catch his breath. He let his father explain, in detail, why the new door was better than the old one. And then he watched his mother show her delphiniums off.

“Look at the color, Spoon,” Kay said, turning his chin toward the spikes of spurred flowers with her gloved hand. “Isn't it the most incredible blue you've ever seen?”

“Yeah, Mom,” he answered unenthusiastically, squinting because of the sun.

He could admit that they were nice as far as flowers were concerned. And the blue was undoubtedly very blue, but no more incredible to him than the new M&M's color or the blue of his father's old Brewers cap.

Joanie, on the other hand, showed great interest. She set her suitcase down on the lawn, leaned into the shortest clump of delphiniums, and brushed her cheeks against the petals. Then she proceeded to do an odd little dance around the flower bed. “Teensy blue stars, stuck on a pole,” she chirped, her nose pointed upward, her arms extended, her hands opening and closing like flowers themselves.

“You're frisky this morning,” Scott said. (Frisky was not the word that came to Spoon's mind. Weird perhaps, or bizarre, seemed more appropriate.) Scott came up behind Joanie, scooped her up, kissed her, flipped her onto his shoulder, then flipped her back down to the ground. Her hood fell off as she spun through the air, and her disheveled hair looked like a feather duster.

Joanie squealed.

Scott used to do the same thing to Spoon, but Spoon was too big for that now. Although they still wrestled, which was much more dignified.

Spoon wondered how it was that he had outgrown being flipped. Did it happen all of a sudden? Overnight? One day did everyone just know that flips would no longer be a routine activity for him? It struck him that there had to have been a last flip, although he could never have known that fact as he turned that final turn from his father's shoulder. As hard as he tried, he had no idea when his last flip had occured.

That train of thought led him to Gram. It felt strange to wonder what her last word had been, what her last thought had been, why she had smiled her last smile. He shredded a long blade of grass into his palm and blew the pieces, scattering them. A few pieces stuck to his sweaty fingers.

It was going to be another hot, humid day. There had been so many days like this—one after the next—that it was difficult to remember how long the heat wave had been going on. A thin layer of moisture was already covering Spoon's arms and legs. Scott and Kay were dripping, their T-shirts sleek against their bodies. But Joanie seemed immune to the heat; she had pulled her hood on again and appeared perfectly comfortable prancing back and forth along the thick row of yellow marigolds. Her energy was endless, as if she were running on eternally charged batteries.

Scott and Kay's short break turned into a longer one. Scott leaned against the toolshed, and Kay closed her eyes and rolled her neck. “I'm so thirsty,” she said.

They had tugged their work gloves off, and Spoon could see their tattoos as they passed a thermos bottle of lemonade between them. Both of his parents had a small tattoo on the weblike skin between the thumb and index finger on their right hands. Kay's was a daisy and Scott's was a ladybug. They had decided to get the tattoos the previous year to commemorate turning forty. Their birthdays were three days apart in November. “This makes me feel less bad about getting old,” Spoon had heard his mother say to his father right after they had gotten the tattoos; she was holding her hand out before her, her fingers splayed as if she were modeling a ring. Of course, Spoon, Charlie, and Joanie had each wanted a tattoo then as well. “You have to wait until you're forty like we did,” Scott said jokingly, moving the ladybug toward them, then pretending that it was biting their necks. For a while, the three of them drew and redrew tattoos on
their
hands—a human skull (Charlie), a baseball and the letter
S
(Spoon), and two red Froot Loops (Joanie)—but the phase had passed.

After wiping his face and sliding his glasses back up his nose, Scott crouched behind Spoon and placed his hands on Spoon's shoulders, the ladybug brighter and bigger than a real one. “How about helping me weed?” Scott asked.

Spoon hated to disappoint his father, but he really wanted to go to his grandfather's house. He needed to.

“Earth to Spoon,” Scott said.

Before Spoon had come up with a suitable answer, Joanie had climbed onto Spoon's lap. “What about your project?” she asked through tightly cupped fingers.

“Shhh,” Spoon hissed, shoving her away.

“Help me weed later. Or tomorrow,” Scott said. “If you've got something better going on, that's fine.”

“We do,” said Joanie.

“A brother and sister project?” Kay asked. “That's a nice change.”

Spoon shrugged.

Joanie smiled broadly. “Yes!” she shouted.

Spoon couldn't believe this was happening, but he tried to see it all in a positive light. If he took Joanie with him, he would get out of weeding, a job he hated. He'd simply try to ditch her somehow at Pa's. He sighed. “May I—
we
—go to Pa's?” he asked quietly.

His parents nodded.

Spoon hoisted himself up off the ground. “Okay,” he said halfheartedly. “Let's go.”

“Wait a sec,” said Kay. “Let me get a bag of lettuce, beans, and peas together for Pa.”

When the bag was ready, Spoon grabbed it carefully and cradled it in the crook of one arm so that he wouldn't crush the lettuce. The beans and peas were at the bottom of the bag; the top was overflowing with delicate lettuce leaves—green and ruffled, some edged in dark purple.

Scott and Kay waved them on. “Tell Pa I'll phone him later,” Kay called.

Joanie tried to slip her hand into Spoon's free one, but he shook it off.

It may not have been under the circumstances he had intended, but he was finally on his way. Or, to be more precise,
they
were on their way.

“This could be the best day of our lives,” Joanie said brightly, skipping to keep up with her brother.

Spoon had his doubts.

P
A
'
S
HOUSE WAS ONLY FIVE BLOCKS AWAY,
but Spoon decided to walk the long way, meandering through Hillington Green and lagging along the railroad tracks before winding back on course. He needed time to think. When Joanie asked why they weren't going straight to Pa's, Spoon simply said it was part of the project. The explanation was good enough for Joanie. She seized the opportunity to collect more sticks and put them in her suitcase.

The light seemed odd to Spoon; everything was blanched by the sun. The leaves on the trees looked dull and tinged with gray like old coins. Even Joanie's features seemed bleached out. My sister's an alien, Spoon thought.

After turning the corner onto Willow Street, Joanie held the bag of vegetables and watched Spoon jump over a fire hydrant straddle-legged. Then they walked slowly past the Frosts' house. The house was painted a rich, glossy yellow color, but in this particular light it looked dingy. Don and Douglas Frost were Spoon's best friends. They were identical twins, although it wasn't difficult to tell them apart, even if you didn't know them well. Douglas was thinner and shorter than Don, and shy. Don had a penchant for terrible puns, was forever doing armpit farts, and never wore short pants, even in sweltering heat, unless he was playing basketball or swimming.

“Bet you miss your friends,” Joanie said.

Spoon glanced at the house and nodded. The Frosts' house was quiet; the lawn was shaggy. Don and Douglas had been away at a week-long basketball camp, and now they were up north at their family's cabin for two weeks. Another two of Spoon's classmates—Alex Norman and Nate Dempster—had gone to the basketball camp as well. When they all had signed up for camp the previous winter, Spoon had wanted to go badly, but because of the planned cross-country trip to Evie's he had had to decline. By the time Gram died and the trip to Evie's was canceled, the basketball camp was filled. With prompting from Don and Douglas, Spoon reluctantly agreed to having his name put on the waiting list, but he only made it to number four. He wondered if it had all worked out for the best. What if he had gotten to attend camp and then missed Gram so much, suddenly found himself so sad because of her, that he needed to go home? The thought embarrassed him.

Don and Douglas had asked if Spoon could join them at the cabin following camp, but Spoon had gone last year and Mrs. Frost said that she couldn't handle more than one guest at a time and it was Angela's turn to pick a friend to vacation with them. Angela was Don and Douglas's eight-year-old sister. Don, Douglas, and Spoon called her Devila. Spoon was relieved that he hadn't had to decline an official invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Frost—relieved, for once, that Devila was treated fairly.

“Good-bye, Frosts' house,” Joanie said, waving. She blew a kiss.

As much as he wanted to lose Joanie, Spoon knew that he couldn't. Not out here anyway. He'd try to ditch her at Pa's. At least then she'd be safe. His parents and teachers were forever sounding warnings about strangers. “You can't be too careful.” “Don't think it can't happen to you.” “Trust your instincts.” A few times, he ran ahead and hid behind a tree or a garage, then suddenly sprang out at her, growling, just to give her a little scare.

It worked. Joanie screamed and dropped her suitcase every time. But then she was right at his heels again like his shadow, no grudges held.

As they crossed Commonwealth Avenue, the busiest street in the neighborhood, Spoon took Joanie's hand in his.

Joanie squeezed Spoon's palm. “Why did we call Gram Gram, but we call Evie Evie?”

Spoon flicked Joanie's hand away as soon as they were safely on the sidewalk. He shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. He had never really given it much thought before. Gram's name was Martha, but she had always been Gram. And Evie was their grandmother, too, but they had always, always called her Evie, never Grandma or Grammy or Gram. “I don't know,” he said again.

Names were funny things. His certainly was. His name was Frederick, but everyone called him Spoon. He hated it when he had to tell someone the story of his name. “
Spoon?
” people would say upon hearing his name for the first time. They always had the same pinched look on their faces. Many people had tried to guess the origin of his name, but none had ever guessed correctly. He doubted if anyone ever would.

One morning, when Spoon's mother was pregnant with him, she decided to plant some peonies in the side yard. The peonies had been divided from a plant of Gram's and were at least a half a century old. Kay had only been digging for minutes when her shovel hit something that clinked. She bent down, reached into the shallow hole, and found a tarnished baby spoon peeking out of the dirt. A young, lanky boy with thick curls, wearing a sailor suit and holding a hobbyhorse, was embossed on the handle of the spoon, and the name Frederick was engraved into the back of the handle in an elegant script. As Kay cleaned the spoon with the hem of her gardening smock, she felt the baby kick for the first time. She made up her mind then and there that if her baby was a boy, he would be named Frederick.

Following Frederick's birth, friends and neighbors asked where his name had come from. Was he named for an uncle? A great-grandfather? After telling the story time and again, Scott and Kay started calling Frederick “Spoon Baby” and then simply “Spoon.” Charlie took to it quickly. Spoon, or “Poon” as he pronounced it, rolled off his two-year-old tongue with much greater ease than did Frederick. He loved the
ooooo
sound. Soon Spoon was the only name anyone called the baby, and now when Spoon heard the name Frederick it barely registered with him, barely caused his head to turn. Sometimes, when he was asked, he lied and said that Spoon was a nickname for Spooner, his given name, an old family name on his mother's side.

The spoon lay on Kay's dresser amid a dusty jumble—hairpins, rubber bands, foreign coins, beads, stone fruit. “I'll give it to you,” she told him once, “when you're old enough for it to mean something to you.”

“There he is!” Joanie said all of a sudden. “There's Pa!”

Down the block, beyond a parked car and through some bushes, Spoon could see his grandfather. He was carrying a garbage can to the curb.

Joanie ran ahead.

When Spoon reached the front walk, Joanie was already in Pa's arms. “We're here to work on the project!” she announced.

Spoon blushed. He unrolled and rolled the top of the bag of vegetables; the lettuce leaves were squashed and wilted.

Pa put Joanie down. “That's funny,” he said. “As it turns out I
do
have a project. And I can use all the help I can get. I'm cleaning out the garage.”

“So
that's
the project,” Joanie said gleefully, winking at Spoon.

Spoon sighed with relief. What a coincidence! He could barely believe his good fortune. Now Joanie would be completely occupied and he could do what he needed to do. Maybe he'd even find something of Gram's in the garage. He and Pa greeted each other with a hug. Spoon handed over the bag of vegetables, and then they walked up the driveway to the garage side by side.

W
ITHIN
MINUTES
, J
OANIE WAS BUSY
sweeping the garage floor. Periodically she used the broom handle as a pretend microphone and sang her delphinium song. Streams of light from the windows cut the stale air, and when Joanie stepped through the shafts, they resembled spotlights. She turned circles like a cat chasing its tail. Dust rose around her.

“You lighten my heart,” Pa said to Joanie. “If you had a charm alarm, it would be going off every ten seconds and the whole town would hear it.”