The Great Good Summer (13 page)

“Yep,” says Paul again, keeping up our end of the conversation as I stand, half-asleep, right behind him. I feel like that bus we rode down on is catching up with me. And the jail. And the hospital. The whole thing is catching up with me, really. I yawn with my eyes closed.

“I've got a nice Chevy Malibu for you,” says the agent lady to Mama, and as Mama turns her attention to the paperwork, that's when it hits me. Hard.

I've been so concerned with finding Mama and keeping ahead of Daddy that I'm about to let us head straight home to Texas without so much as mentioning the space shuttle or Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Chapter Seventeen

I
want to call Paul's parents first, to put off talking to Daddy just a hair longer, but Mama says, “No, honey. It's time. We need to let him know that we're all okay, and that I'm well and good and responsible for you again. Now that I'm out of that hospital, I have the strength to do what's right.”

She doesn't ask
me
if
I
have the strength, so I'm guessing that doesn't affect her decision one way or the other.

We're in our rental car but haven't even started it up yet. Mama and I are up front, Paul is in the backseat with the map we got inside, and for the first time in a long time, things feel kind of settled. But still. I feel a little pang at giving over the phone. I can tell as soon as Mama starts to dial that she's fully in charge again, and I'm back to being a plain old twelve-year-old from an itty-bitty town in east Texas.

It's funny, really. Ever since Mama left, I've been missing her hot-cooked breakfasts and dinners, and her happy laugh, and just plain her. But I've also been babysitting
and going to church and doing my best to take care of Daddy while he did his best to take care of me.

And somewhere in there I made friends with Paul, and we made some actual plans out of our ideas, and we ran away to Florida, of all things. For an adventure—that's what we've been having! Paul was right about that, and it suddenly seems so much bigger and more important than having to eat cold cereal for breakfast every now and again.

“It's ringing,” Mama says. She's got her index finger pressed against her brow, which means,
I am in the middle of something right now. Please don't disturb me.
So I don't. I don't say a thing.

Mama sucks in a quick breath and then says, “No, it's not Ivy. It's Diana. It's me.” So I know that Daddy has picked up the phone. There's a long pause—Mama's listening, I guess—and then she says, “Oh, mercy. We do not need the whole entire family racing to the state of Florida, Maxwell Green. I am fine. I'm here and Ivy's here and Paul's here. We are all fine, and you should turn yourself right around and drive straight back home to Loomer. We'll be there before too long.”

I turn around to see what Paul's up to, to see if he's listening or not. His head tilts toward the map opened on
his lap, but when he looks up at me, I mouth the words “space shuttle” silently. Paul just kind of shrugs and smiles. And then I hear Mama's voice start to quiver, so I turn back around.

“I know it, Max, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's a big mess, and it's entirely my fault. I can't tell you how sorry I am that I ever left at all. I'm going to make things right with you. And with Ivy. We are going to talk it through on our way home and . . . What?  . . . Yes. Yes. You can talk to her. And, Max, I love you.” Mama hands the phone to me, which is a good thing, because now I'm mortally embarrassed at having Paul sitting in the backseat overhearing every little thing my Mama and Daddy have to say to each other. (But, also, I'm pretty glad about the “I love you” part.)

“Hey, Daddy,” I say.

“Ives. I'm so relieved. I've been so worried. I'm pulled over on the side of the highway right now, and, man, I'm just so relieved, I can't even tell you.”

And here's something funny:
I'm
suddenly relieved too. All this time, ignoring Daddy's phone calls, I forgot how safe he makes me feel. I was afraid of him, when really, I needed him. He gives good advice and good hugs, and I think I get now why he didn't want to go chasing
after Mama and Hallelujah Dave. That could be pretty embarrassing if it didn't work out. It'd be like Paul showing up at NASA expecting to sign on to a space shuttle that didn't exist anymore.

“Oh, Daddy, me too,” I say. “But Mama's right. We're fine. And I'm sorry I scared you. That wasn't the point. The point was to find Mama, and we did that. Do you know that, Daddy, that that was the point?” I see Mama, out of the corner of my left eye, slump over the steering wheel. I turn to look at her straight on, to make sure that she's okay, but I can't tell. Her forehead's on the wheel, and her shoulders shake.

Still, as sad as it is to see Mama crumble, I decide to tend to Daddy, since he didn't really have anything to do with any of this from the start. And he tended to me all summer, pretty well, if you think about it.

“You still there, baby?” he asks.

“Yep. I'm still here. And I really am sorry, Daddy. We both are, both Mama and me.”

And it's true. I am sorry. Or at least, I'm sorry that I worried him. I don't truly know if I'm sorry that I came.

“Honey, I made a big mistake,” Daddy says, “not taking all your worries about your mama seriously. I had no idea you were upset enough to board a bus to Florida, for
God's sake. For God's sake, Ivy!” His voice gets a little louder as he goes on.

“I know it, Daddy. You were doing your best. But so was I. This was my best, Daddy. And now we've got Mama, and Mama's got her pills, and everything's fine. We're gonna be home before too long. Okay?”

I feel Mama shift in the seat next to me, and the next thing you know, she's starting up the car. “Paul,” she says quietly over her shoulder, “shout out if you see a good place to eat. We've got to ready ourselves for the long drive home.”

So. I guess we're on our way.

“Daddy? Listen. I have to go. We still need to call Mr. and Mrs. Dobbs and then, y'know, help Mama with directions and all.”

“Right. Thanks for the call, baby,” he says. “I feel so much better. But I still really wish you hadn't run away, sweetheart, really.” And then he does a sort of sigh that has both a laugh and a cry in it. It sounds like some combination of relief and fear and disappointment and disbelief. Like he's thinking,
Out of all the people on God's green earth, we've never been the kind of family who'd get wrapped up in a thing like this. Any of this!

“I know it, Daddy. I really do know it.” And then I can't help myself, I just say it. “Parts of it have actually been a little fun. I mean, not the scaring you part, but . . . it's been an adventure!”

Mama pulls out of the parking lot, and Daddy starts to laugh for real. Hard. A big, rolling Daddy laugh. It takes him a second before he can even answer me. “Fun?” he says. “I've got the Loomer police on speed dial and I'm halfway through Louisiana with my pedal to the metal, and you're having fun? I think the Greens have all gone officially crazy. Don't tell your mother I said that, Ivy, but sheesh.”

And then he keeps on laughing, only not in a way that seems totally funny. So I tell him I love him, and he says he loves me back, and we hang up. But even still, I picture him sitting there in his truck, laughing and laughing on the side of the highway in that not very funny way.

Mama exits when she sees a sign for Applebee's, and says, “I can't imagine what you two have been eating, but I know I've been living on Jell-O. I think we need to start this trip off with something hot and good and real.” Both Paul and I moan with relief.

“But, Mrs. Green,” says Paul, “I'm afraid to say we're
just about broke. We had some, umm, trouble with money on the way down here.” Which you have to admit is an especially nice way to put it, considering it was really
me
who had the trouble.

“Oh, honey,” says Mama, “you don't know the half of it. I don't have two dimes to rub together, thanks to Davey Floyd, and sending him to the county jail isn't going to fix that. So. We do our best.” And she smiles.

Which I know means,
We use the credit card again.
Emergencies are starting to feel not so bad after all.

“Bring the map in with you,” she says as she shuts off the car. And it appears that she's so frazzled from talking to Daddy that she's forgotten Paul needs to make a call too. But Paul doesn't mention that.

We settle into a booth and order—a burger for me, club sandwiches for Mama and Paul, chocolate shakes all around—and Mama says, “Okay, let's make our route. Paul, honey, do you want to find Loomer for us?”

Paul does as Mama asks. We all have to move our waters aside so he can spread the map out on the table. We sit silently for a few seconds while he smoothes it out and takes a look.

“The problem,” he says, “is that Florida and Texas are both so big, and there's a couple of states in between
here and there.” He flips the folds back and forth, sticking fingers in between the sections to hold his place, and tracing the lines of highways, working his way west, trying to get us to a hotel before dark.

“No, hang on a second. Wait!” I say, a little louder than I planned. “Wait! That isn't the problem!”

Both Paul and Mama jump a little, like I've startled them, and they look at me, confused.

“The problem isn't that Florida and Texas are big. It's that we shouldn't be headed toward Texas at all,” I say.

Paul's eyes open wide as Os. I can see that he knows what I'm getting at. He looks kind of horrified. And then he kicks me under the table. Hard. My shin buzzes and stings.

“What in heaven's name are you talking about, Ivy?” asks Mama.

“Um, nothing,” says Paul, his cheeks all purply red. He shakes his head, just barely, at me.

“Yeah, never mind,” I agree. “Nothing.” I pull my foot up onto the bench next to me and rub my leg. Sheesh. Paul wanting to say good-bye to the space shuttle is
not
nothing, but I'm not gonna risk mortal injury turning it into something, I can tell you that right now.

We're back in the car, all full and fat and happy, before Mama suddenly remembers about calling Mr. and Mrs. Dobbs. So Paul calls. And here's something kind of crazy.

They are
not
on their way to Florida. They are not parked on the side of the highway halfway through Louisiana like Daddy was, and they're not at the airport or the police station or anywhere urgent at all. They're at home in Loomer, and their plan was to let Daddy pick up Paul and bring him home where he'd be “good and grounded for a long, hard time.”

Apparently they tried to call Paul, but his phone was at home in his room, turned off. (“They'll catch us for sure if we bring phones,” he said before we left. And, yep, he was right about that.) So since then, they've just been waiting, and “fuming,” says Paul, which I happen to know from Mrs. Murray's vocab list has to do with being quietly angry.

Now that plans have changed, they've approved Mama as the driver instead of Daddy, and the time it takes us to get back to Loomer will be good, because it'll give Paul's dad “some time to cool down.” That's what Mrs. Dobbs told Paul, that his dad had worked up quite a head of steam and Paul would be smart to let him cool down.

“What if we tell them that it's my fault?” I say, seeing as how, let's face it, it is. “Will that help?”

“No. Don't worry about it. It'll be fine,” says Paul. “They're not really home enough to keep me grounded. They'll get over it.”

I'm about to say, “But are they relieved, like you thought they'd be? That you're fine and everything?” But before I can, Paul hands the phone up to Mama and flops back in his seat with a big, tired sigh. Somehow I know not to say anything else.

Maybe this is what it means to be distinguished. You don't go racing after people when they run away, and you don't laugh-cry with relief when they're found. You just fume. Which is sort of sad, if you ask me. I mean, it's one thing to have worked up quite a head of steam—I guess my daddy did too—but here's Paul, alone in the backseat of a rental car, in the panhandle of Florida, for goodness' sake. The least they could do is laugh-cry, right?

We drive on quietly for a little while, and the next time I look back at Paul, still slumped down low behind me, well, that's just it. I can't stand not speaking up for another second.