The Great Good Summer (4 page)

I pull the door open, and the hinges squeak and cry. Abby floats in. Abby's what Mama calls “conventionally pretty,” with her blond silky braids and white tank top and short striped skirt. She's tan but not at all burned, and her toenails are pink.

Mama calls her conventionally pretty to make me feel
better when I complain about being not all that pretty or popular in school. “You're more unique,” is how she put it once.

But Abby's pretty through and through, and I'm not all that unique. I'm actually a little mousy, with sort of light brown everything. But I didn't argue, 'cause if I did, Mama'd start in on how I'm beautiful inside and out, blah, blah, blah, having nothing to do with the truth and everything to do with me being her little girl.

“I can't stay, but thanks for asking. Mother says I need new shoes, which doesn't make any sense if you consider the fact that it's summer and I walk around barefoot all the time. But . . .” She trails off.

“But what?”

Abby's followed me into the kitchen, where I go back to my sandwich making, so I'm not looking at her when she says, “Oh, never mind. I shouldn't bring up going shopping with my mama when your mama's run off and all.”

“My mama did not run off, Abby Newton.” I pivot around and face her head-on. “I don't know where you got that idea. She's . . . studying. That's what. She's studying the Bible. Haven't you ever heard of The Great Good Bible Church of Panhandle Florida? Sheesh.”

I realize too late that I am shaking a butter knife
straight at her, and it's dripping with grape jelly that looks like the petrified blood from a cow's eye in science lab. I set the knife back down on the counter next to the open jelly jar and Mama's cookbooks.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Gosh, me too,” says Abby. “I was actually trying to be nice,” she says.

It's always been true with Abby Newton that her “trying to be nice” doesn't necessarily look or feel nice. But I don't think that's all her fault. It's partly due to her voice, I think, which usually comes out about three squeaks too high.

Still, I feel bad for snapping at her and for threatening her with murder-by-butter-knife. “I know it. I know you were. I'm feeling a little sensitive,” I say. “Sorry, Abby. You want a quick sandwich after all?”

“Sure,” says Abby, and we're both quiet for a second.

I'm thinking that she's probably noticing the crumbs and the newspapers piling up and the other stuff in our kitchen, which just isn't right without Mama here. But it turns out that isn't what she's thinking at all.

“Hey, Ivy. You have a boyfriend you've been meaning to tell me about?” she asks as I slap her sandwich shut.

And I feel myself blush, probably purple as the jelly. I
don't have a boyfriend, that's for sure, but I do know who she's talking about. And if Abby's talking about him, half of Loomer is too. They've probably got me near married to Paul Dobbs, science guy.

“I think the sun's getting to you,” I say, and I cut her sandwich into triangles and slide it toward her on a paper towel. Then I bite into mine before she gets me saying another thing.

Chapter Six

T
he day the postcard arrives from Mama, I've been flopping around at the city pool all afternoon with Abby and Kimmy. It is blazing hot outside. And poor Daddy's been up on a roof, where it's even hotter than down here. We show up at home right at the same time.

“How can you stand working outside in this heat, Daddy?” I hold the door open for him as we walk inside, and I head straight to the thermostat to crank the A/C up to cold.

Daddy peels off his T-shirt, right there in the kitchen. He's so wet, he looks like he's been the one at the pool.

“You know what I always say, baby. I'm closer to the angels when I'm on a roof than when I'm on the ground. Even when it's a hundred and two.” He pops open a cold soda and gulps most of it down without stopping for a breath.

“Will you grab the mail, Ivy?” Daddy says, finishing off his soda and wiping his mouth with his T-shirt. “I'm gonna hop in the shower, and then we'll get some dinner
started. Deal?”

So of course he's already in the shower when I drop my butt straight down onto the porch hard, because I've got a postcard from Mama in my hands. On the front is the word “Mobile,” all done up in purple cursive neon. I don't have a clue why she'd send us a card that says “Mobile,” until I turn it over and see, in little printing,
Mobile,
Alabama. Population 195,822 people, strong and proud.

Oh! It's a town! I was thinking “mobile” as in “on the move.”

Which would've made sense for Mama.

Beneath the information on Mobile, Alabama, there's Mama's familiar handwriting, in blue ink. It's curvy and round, nicer than mine, and sort of school-girly. Mama's writing is one of the things that marks her as young, for a mama, I mean. Younger than most of my friends' moms, at least, with her pretty skin and shiny hair and school-girly cursive. That's what happens when you have your baby straight out of high school, I suppose. You're still young, even when you're a mama.

“Oh, Mama,” I say. I cannot help but say it out loud, sitting here on the hot wood planks of our porch with this tiny postcard in my hands. I am so distracted and heart-fluttery over her inked letters that it takes me a second to
actually get to reading the words.

Dear Max and Ivy,

As you can see, I got this in Alabama, on our drive. I guess a card from Alabama doesn't mean much if you've only driven through it. The Great Good Bible Church is something different than I expected. How are you? I'm running out of room. You know I love you.

And then it isn't even signed because, sure enough, she ran out of room.

Here's the not-very-good thing about postcards: they don't leave a person an ounce of extra room for details, like “Here's where I am” and “Here's when I'll be back.”

Daddy's still mopping off his hair with a towel when he walks back into the kitchen to make dinner, and I'm sitting at the table, all dizzyish, like I've seen a ghost.

“I'm thinking pasta, huh, Ives?” he says, before he notices the card on the table in front of me, my hands on either side of it, shaking. I've read it probably twenty times by now, and it still hasn't told me a thing.

“What's that you've got, baby?” Daddy reaches for the card, and I hear his breath suck in as he sees Mama's handwriting. Then there's dead silence while he reads.

When he finally says something, it's this: “Well, I pray God is looking after her.” That's it. That's what he says. He doesn't stop to wonder where she is, or how she's getting by without her medications, or what she means that The Great Good Bible Church is different than she expected.

“You're praying? Daddy, explain to me why you are praying,” I say. “What can God do about any of this? Aren't you the least bit mad at God? We wouldn't be in this fix in the first place if it weren't for God.”

Daddy's mouth actually falls open, and I have to admit I'm surprising myself too, but what's a prayer gonna do for us right now? “We've gone to church all our livelong days,” I say, “and put our collection money in the basket, and volunteered in the food pantry, and still here we are, Mama run off to Florida without her pills, us left behind to worry, and nothing but a postcard in more than a month! Do you think that's truly and indeed the best that God can do?”

“Ivy. You stop right this second,” says Daddy, his mouth back under his control. He drops the towel and the post
card and slams his hands on the tabletop. “You—”

But I don't let him finish. Words come out of me, hard and fast, like a drum beating. I can't help it.

“If I were you,” I shout, “I'd be mad at God and mad at Mama, too! She ran off, Daddy—at least that's what people are saying. Do you know that, that people think Mama ran off? Is it true? Did Mama run off with Hallelujah Dave?” And right as I say it, I get the meaning I'd been missing all along. Maybe Mama really, truly did run off, y'know,
with
Hallelujah Dave. Like, not as a preacher so much as a boyfriend.

I swallow to keep my heart from coming up through my throat.

Daddy doesn't say a word at first. And then his voice is low and quaky—really quaky—like we're driving on a gravel road instead of sitting at the kitchen table. “Don't let's make things worse than they are by saying things about God you'll regret later on, Ivy Green. We need God, you and me, now more than ever, and I think we'd be wise not to take our anger out on the wrong guy.” Which I take to mean that Daddy
is
mad at someone, whether he's saying so or not.

Also? He doesn't tell me I'm wrong about Mama, not at all. He just pulls out a chair and sits down heavily, right
next to me, close enough that I can still feel the quaking.

“Daddy?” I say, kind of sorry-like. 'Cause I'm starting to think maybe
he's
the wrong guy to be mad at too, if you know what I mean.

“Ivy, your mama saw those piney woods burn down to the ground, and her daddy's church burnt right along with them, and it about broke her heart. Most people would've lost faith, but not Diana. She was not gonna stop praying just 'cause God is hard to understand. She just set out to pray harder. I've got to believe that's what she's doing now, and I've got to believe that's what we should be doing too.”

Daddy picks the postcard back up and holds it between his two hands like it's an extra hand—like it's
Mama's
hand—as if he's gonna put Mama herself right smack in the middle of his prayer. He looks so sad, I just don't have the heart to fight him any further, so I hop up to fill a pot with water.

“Okay, Daddy. Okay,” I say. “We're tired and hungry, right? So, what about that pasta? Should we go for the fancy kind since we heard from Mama? To sort of . . . cele­brate?”

“Celebratory pasta.” Daddy laughs a tired but not-mad Daddy laugh and lets the card drop out of his hands onto
the table. “You are my kinda girl, Ivy Green. My kinda girl.”

So we cook the fancy pasta, which just means ordinary old noodles but with butter and canned clams on top, and we talk about everything except for Mama as we eat. It's a nice night. But in the back of my head, quiet as a mouse, is a little voice that says,
Daddy may not be mad at God, but I am. And I'm pretty sure I'm mad at Mama, too.

Chapter Seven

S
ome days are plain unlucky. Like today. I get a flat tire on my way to the Murrays' and have to push my bike the rest of the way. Then it turns out Lucy has a summer cold with a runny nose, and she fusses the whole way to the park, and I get green snot on my pretty yellow shirt when I bend down to love her up. And Devon somehow loses a shoe between there and here.

Plus the day started with Mama's postcard sitting out on the kitchen counter again. It keeps popping up and reminding me that Daddy's been worrying, which makes me double worry—about Mama and about him, too.

And now here we are to watch the flying machines—which is what I'd promised Lucy and Devon the whole snotty, shoe-losing nine blocks to the park—and it's closed. Empty. Shut down, with a sign on the gate saying,
NO MOTORIZED AIRCRAFT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE BY ORDER OF THE CITY OF LOOMER.

“Well, huh, guys,” I say. “There's nobody flying today.”

Devon starts to cry. Lucy sneezes. I wipe sweat and
sunscreen away from my eyes, drop the backpack onto the ground next to the stroller, and flop down beside it. If I were a tire,
I'd
be flat.

“I thought you guys might be here.” Paul Dobbs kind of jogs toward us from Picnic Hill, looking over his shoulder a couple of times. His voice sounds funny, as if he's got a cold too, like Lucy. And he's wearing a hoodie over his T-shirt, even though it's ninety-something degrees outside.

“Well, yeah. We're here, but what happened? Why is the airspace closed down? Mr. Devon Murray is none too pleased,” I say, “so neither am I.”

Devon hushes his crying a little bit 'cause Paul's here, and Devon just plain likes Paul. Lucy likes him too, and I can see why. Paul's funny with them. He makes goofy voices, and he rolls down Picnic Hill like a barrel, and he knows how to make model airplanes fly like magic. What's not to like, really?

“Ha. Welcome to my world,” says Paul, not sounding nice or funny or goofy at all. “It's like my own mini version of the space shuttle program shutting down. Some jerk complained about the noise coming from the airspace, and then they decide that maybe it's too dangerous anyway—noisy
and
dangerous. And that's it. No more flying.
Just like that.”

Paul plops down onto the grass next to us and pulls Devon onto his lap. “I'm never gonna get the chance to be a real astronaut, and now I don't even get to pretend anymore. Plus a freaking dog chased me half the way here, but I guess the City of Loomer doesn't care about that kind of noisy and dangerous, does it?” And he looks around, like the dog might still be coming.

“My summer's just junk,” he says. “The Space-Junk Summer of Doom,” he says, kind of kicking the ground in front of him as he talks.

Which makes me hop up and kind of kick my feet at him!

“
Your
summer is junk?
Your
summer? Seriously, Paul Dobbs, you should think of somebody other than yourself for one hot minute. I don't think your bike tire's flat, you don't have green snot all down your shirt, and I'm 100 percent certain that your mama's not gone missing!” I am half-shouting by the time I finish, and also half-hoarse 'cause I've got a lump in my throat again. (I don't even mention that it hurts my feelings when he says his summer's been junk, when he's spent a whole lot of it with me.)

“Ivy sad?” Lucy stands up and puts one hand on each of my hips.

“Wait, what? Your mom is really missing?” Paul asks, and he stands up too. “I thought she was at church camp or something. I didn't know she was missing, Ivy. Honest.”

And now I start to cry, for real. For the first time since Mama left forty-six days ago, I cry and cry and cry. There is something about both Lucy and Paul being soft and nice to me that makes everything feel even sadder, and two heavy streams of tears wash down my face. When I look up at Paul and then out across the park, at the hill and the playgrounds and the little kid learning to ride his bike, it all blurs and stings, and even though I want to, I don't quite know how to stop.

So I talk straight through the tears. “Well, she's not missing exactly, but we don't have the foggiest idea where she is.” And then I cry some more.

“Ivy have mom?” asks Lucy.

“Ivy does have a mom,” says Paul, “and we should go find her.”

That's really what he says. “We should go find her.”

Which makes my tears just up and stop, pretty suddenly. I look back at Paul and see him, truly, clear as day.

We
should go find Mama? I've been waiting for Daddy to go find her, ever since she left, but me? Me and Paul?
That's something that never, not even once, occurred to me. So much for me being an idea girl.

I wipe my eyes, swallow the feeling-sorry-for-myself stuff, and say, “Um, what? Paul? Seriously?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Seriously.” And then he smiles.

I agree to meet Paul at the church steps in a couple of hours, on my way home from the Murrays'. Which is kind of embarrassing, because once you set a time and a place, it could technically be considered a date. I figure someone will see us and the word will spread, and we all know what Abby's gonna have to say about that.

There's no such thing as a secret in Loomer. Pastor Lou even put that on the marquee outside of church once, and then he gave a sermon about it, about how we're all naked in God's eyes.

“Amen, brother,” everyone said. “Aaa-men.” Like it was a good thing. But as I roll into the parking lot of Second Baptist on my bike, I think,
Why on earth would we all be okay with God seeing us naked?
Especially when Pastor Lou also preaches that we're supposed to be modest and everything.

I swear, religion makes less sense every day. It's no wonder Mama's taken to acting so funny, when you think
of all the messages she's gotten over the years, from Pastor Lou and Hallelujah Dave and her very own daddy. She's spent her whole life long listening to bossy, confusing religious folks tell her what to do.

I lock my bike to the side fence and walk past the marquee on my way to find Paul. Today it reads,
THE ONLY BUSINESS WE OUGHT TO PAY ATTENTION TO IS OUR OWN.

Which I take to mean that maybe some secrets aren't so bad after all.

Paul actually looks better than he looked a while ago at the park, like his cold just cleared right up. And don't take my word for it, because it's a matter of opinion, I'm sure, but there is something kind of cute about Paul Dobbs. Or maybe I've just been seeing so much of him, he's grown on me. But whatever. Here's the thing:

He doesn't look like a science guy or a jock or a God-head or a skater. He doesn't wear glasses. His hair isn't supershort, but it isn't really long either. He's not all muscley or superscrawny, and his T-shirts don't say anything to give him away. He's just Paul, which either makes him sort of plain or makes him a genuine mystery—I'm not sure which. But I kind of like it.

And, this is interesting. His hair is the exact color of mine, but I wouldn't call his mousy, even though that's always what I've called mine. It's prettier than mousy, if you can call a boy's hair pretty—more like caramel, which makes me hate my own hair less.

Mama would say, “My mercy, Ivy Green, you fixate on the littlest things when we've got God's great big world to pay attention to. Head out of the clouds, little missy. Head out of the clouds.” (Even though Mama fixates on her own hair sometimes. She truly does.)

Anyway, here's kind-of-cute Paul Dobbs, a little twitch in his smile, sitting on the cellar steps, just the way I found him when I skipped out of service a few weeks back.

“Oh, hey, Ivy,” says Paul, standing up. “You came. Good. Okay, well, here's the deal. We can take a Greyhound bus to Florida and be there in a day. Eighteen hours, to be exact, if we go from, like, Houston to Tallahassee. And let's face it, it's gonna be easier to find your mom's church once we're actually there in Florida, right? People are gonna have heard of it. So if we leave, like, maybe tomorrow . . .”

Paul is waving a spiral notebook as he talks. He's got bus schedules and the names of towns written down, and
it suddenly occurs to me that he might be 100 percent totally serious, not kidding at all about this whole thing.

“Whoa, whoa! Hang on, Paul.” My voice shakes a little, and I don't know if it's 'cause I'm excited or 'cause I'm scared. What in heaven's name would Mama or Daddy or the good Lord have to say about
this
idea?

“Seriously,” I say. “Hang on a minute. I have a lot of questions.”

“Good. Questions are good,” says Paul. “They're my specialty.” And he laughs as if this whole thing is a joke, only it isn't.

“Paul Dobbs,” I say, “you better hope that
answers
are your specialty, if you think I'm getting on a Greyhound bus and going anywhere with you. I don't care whose mama we're looking for.”

Paul's face falls, and his eyes are instantly a little less shiny. I actually feel kind of bad for snapping at him, because it looks like I've hurt his feelings and I'm pretty sure he's only trying to help.

“Sorry,” I say. “That was rude of me. But this is all a little crazy, you have to admit.” I slide onto the steps next to Paul, and we both sit down.

“Yeah, it's crazy. But in a good way. Look, you've got to have a bunch of babysitting money, don't you? And I'm
gonna sell some of my planes and stuff. I've already figured that out. So we should be good for the bus tickets,” says Paul.

“Your planes? You're going to sell your planes?” I can't believe it. “You love your planes!” It's then I notice the big tote bag leaning against the railing behind Paul, full to bursting with flying machines. He really
is
100 percent serious, not at all kidding, isn't he?

And I don't know if I should be glad about that or not. I may be full of ideas, but that's about it. I don't
do
the things I dream up. I go to school. I babysit. I ask Mama and Daddy for a dog, over and over and over again. I don't aim to be an astronaut or an airplane pilot or anything wild at all, and I surely don't intend to be a runaway.

“Y'know what? I did love 'em, but they're just toys,” says Paul. I start to interrupt, but he stops me. “And, Ivy, you don't have to pretend that they're not, just to make me feel better. Plus, the airspace is closed. And it's not like I can pretend like I'm working toward something real, with the shuttle program shutting down. It's time to kiss space good-bye and start thinking about something more realistic, like being a doctor or something. My dad's been telling me that since the day I was born anyway, so, big surprise. He's right.”

Paul doesn't sound like a guy who thinks his dad is right. He sounds like a guy who's sad. But I can't think of a single thing that might fix that.

“Sorry,” I say, kind of softly, but I know that's not enough.

“C'mon,” he says. “Let's make a plan.”

Like it's been decided.