Three Bird Summer (16 page)

I picked up both bags and dumped them into a garbage can. Then, rethinking it, I reached into the one from the dime store and retrieved the rubber crayfish. I grabbed a stick off the ground and used it to bang every bench and bin in my path as I pushed my bike up the hill. Who was that preppy guy, anyway? I wondered. Alice’s boyfriend from the tennis team, visiting for the weekend? A friend of the family from the wealthy, suburban side of Three Bird Lake?

As soon as I reached the parking lot, I tossed the stick and hopped on my bike. Maybe I heard my name being called as I rode away; maybe not. It didn’t matter anyway.

I PEDALED OUT
to the main road to the cabin, then cut onto the rail trail and biked as hard as I could, up and down the tree-lined hills. When the path opened up through fields, the sun was almost unbearably hot and the air was so thick, it was hard to breathe. But sweating felt good, and I ignored my growing thirst to make it a marathon ride.

I reached the town of Dalton, where I found a drinking fountain and stretched my legs. When I turned back for home, the sun was a fuzzy yellow ball sinking down through the gray gloom. The fast ride out seemed to have drained some of my fury. I pedaled more slowly now, left with a feeling of disgust. As if I’d been tricked or let down. It reminded me of when I found out my favorite Cubs player — the guy who seemed so righteous for as long as I’d followed him — had actually been using steroids just like so many other players. How were you supposed to believe anyone in this world, if you couldn’t believe the ones who seemed the greatest?

I almost felt like crying, which only made me madder.
Come on,
I told myself.
Alice is just a girl. And it isn’t like we’re best friends or anything. Who cares if she’s been lying about who she really is?

But I knew that it was more than that. Alice was also hope, in a way. Hope that someday I really could understand girls and be friends with them. Or even something more. And now that hope had been crushed.

My legs were aching by the time I turned onto the dirt drive to Grandma’s cabin. Going over the bumps and roots sent shock waves up my arms to my elbows, so I kept my eyes trained right in front of my tire to choose as smooth a route as possible.

That’s why I didn’t see Grandma’s station wagon until I was almost upon it.

The car was stopped in the middle of the drive, angled awkwardly to one side, with the front end smashed into the trunk of a stout tree. I stopped, shocked by the sight of the car here in the road, and shocked by the damage. I peered through the window on the passenger side, but there was no one inside.

I rode quickly to the cabin. Mom’s car was there, but there was no one around. Not even a note. For once I regretted the ancient technology of the cabin, which didn’t even have an answering machine. I also regretted not having my own cell phone, because Mom surely would have tried to call me. She carried hers sometimes, but I knew her well enough to know that she probably hadn’t kept it charged out here at the cabin. Still, I used the phone in the cabin to try the number, just in case. When it went straight to voice mail, I hung up and tried my dad at work. He didn’t answer, either, but I left a message asking if he’d heard anything.

The cabin had never felt so empty — or so isolated. I wandered from room to room, looking to see if there were any clues to explain what had happened. But all I found was one of Grandma’s notes stuck into my mirror. I’d probably missed it that morning. The first part was written in blue pen:

Scribbled at the bottom in pencil, she’d added:

I threw the note in my drawer, no closer to knowing what had happened that afternoon. Had Mom made Grandma prove she could drive? Had Grandma fled in a huff? And how badly was everyone hurt? I thought about going back to the car and looking to see if there was any blood on the steering wheel, but I couldn’t bring myself to actually do it. Besides, I wasn’t even sure the windshield had been cracked. Maybe they hadn’t hit that hard.

I wandered onto the deck and peered through the trees. It was unnaturally dark for this time of day, and a wind was picking up. The tree branches shuddered. I wrapped my arms around my body and tried to get a better view of the sky. As I suspected, tall dark clouds were gathering to the north. Just my luck. Here I was, all on my own at the cabin for the first time in my life, and it looked like we were about to get a serious storm. For a moment, I thought about running down Poison Ivy Parkway to the comfort of Alice’s house and family. But not after what I’d seen that afternoon. No, that path was a dead end. I was on my own.

I found a flashlight in case the power went out, made a sandwich for my supper, and sat by the phone. Mom had her problems, but she wouldn’t forget about me.

Sure enough, the phone rang just as angry raindrops started pelting the roof. But it wasn’t Mom. It was my dad.

“Dad, what happened? Did Mom call you?”

My dad’s voice was steady but tense. “Your grandmother had an accident, Adam. They’re at the hospital now.”

“She was driving? By herself?” I asked.

“I guess there’d been some sort of fight.”

I grimaced, thinking of Mom and her needling ways. “Is Grandma OK?”

“She hit her head on the steering wheel and now she’s disoriented, but they don’t think it’s anything too serious. Mom’s been waiting around while they get her through X-rays and some other tests.”

“Maybe she has a concussion,” I said, thinking about football players who banged their heads too hard in games.

“Probably,” Dad said. “Anyway, Mom has no idea how long she’ll be there. If it starts getting late, she wants you to call your neighbors — the Jensens, is it? — and ask them if you can spend the night over there.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” I said.

“I know, Adam. But she’d feel better knowing you were with other people.”

“I tried calling her cell phone,” I told my dad.

“The battery’s out,” he said. “She says she left the charger at home. But I’m sure she’ll try you again soon.”

“So why’s her car still here?”

“Grandma’s car was blocking the drive,” Dad explained. “So she hopped in with the ambulance.”

There was a long silence after that. Dad and I weren’t very good at talking on the phone. A whole summer was going by, and I’d hardly shared any of my news. I hadn’t told him about Memory Guy or Grandma’s notes or the secret treasure or even Alice. So after a few more strained minutes, we said good-bye and hung up.

I went to the windows and watched the rain slapping the deck. I couldn’t get to the Jensens’ in this downpour anyway. There was no point in calling — I didn’t have anything to say, and the last thing I wanted to do was talk to Alice. Instead, I turned on the radio and listened to a ball game while I washed up the dishes. Even without Grandma here, I could feel her eyes on me. I took the time to dry the plates and put them away.

The phone rang again. This time it was Mom.

“Oh, Adam, I’m so glad you’re home now. Did Dad get in touch with you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “How’s Grandma?”

Mom sighed. “So-so. She’s still a bit fuzzy.”

“From the concussion?” I asked.

“I’m not sure if that’s what it is. We’ll be getting test results back in a little while, and then I’ll let you know.”

“Why was she driving, anyway?” I already half knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it straight from Mom. I was angry at her for treating Grandma the way she had, for leading her to do this.

She sighed again. “She was mad that I’d challenged her independence. She wanted to prove to me that she could drive that old car. I know I shouldn’t have spoken to her the way I did. I was just so frustrated.”

I didn’t say anything.

“After you left, I went back to my room to sort clothes and cool off a little. The next thing I knew, I heard the Taurus starting up. By the time I got outside, she was driving down the drive. And then there was that terrible crash . . .”

Mom’s voice cracked, and I could tell she was crying. I held the phone without speaking while she recovered.

“Anyway, have you called the Jensens yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I can’t go over there now anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s pouring . . . can’t you see?”

“You can’t hear or see anything in this place,” she said, meaning the emergency room, I guessed. “It’s like a tomb.”

I’m sure she regretted the choice of words. Before she got all emotional again, I broke in. “Don’t worry about me, OK? I’ll be fine on my own till the storm passes over. Just take care of Grandma.”

“Thanks, Adam. You really are a great kid, you know that?”

It was a nice thing to say, but for some reason it didn’t feel like the right time for compliments.

“Bye, Mom,” I said in reply.

The drama of the day was complete when a full-fledged midwestern thunderstorm arrived. Lightning illuminated the dark clouds in surprise bursts, and thunder boomed and echoed so loudly, it sounded as if someone were rolling giant barrels across the sky. I reminded myself that the cabin had stood here unharmed for decades. But for once, being surrounded by tall trees wasn’t comforting. I backed myself up against the fireplace, figuring it had to be the sturdiest thing in the cabin. The power went out, just as I’d expected, and I lost the pleasant chatter of the ball game.

The strange part, though, was that I didn’t feel afraid. Not about the storm. And not about being alone. It had been terrible seeing Grandma’s car smashed against a tree, but even that wasn’t what I was dwelling on. Instead, my thoughts kept turning back to the encounter with Alice. The fancy tennis outfit. The guy across the net.

I hugged my knees to my chest and gazed around at the shadows of chairs and tables and lamps. I felt like the Alice I knew was gone, like she’d disappeared. Maybe this was what Grandma felt like so many years ago when her mysterious G went away. Where did he go? Why did he leave her? I wondered if she felt as empty as I did now.

When the storm ended, I could have called the Jensens. But I didn’t need to. And frankly I didn’t want to. Besides, it was late by then. I turned off the light switches in case the power returned in the night, and went to bed.

MOM MAY HAVE LIKED
a fresh-scrubbed cabin — the way a space felt open and shiny after she did her work with the vacuums and mops. But for me, nothing beat the feeling of the world after a storm. The clouds had dumped buckets of water over everything, the wind had scoured and polished, and then the sun emerged to make it dry and welcoming again. That’s how it felt when I woke up and went outside. The wind was still blowing, curling up little whitecaps on the surface of the lake, but the sun was bright enough to set it all sparkling. I stood on the dock, shivering in air that had turned suddenly cool. We were up north, after all, and by the end of summer, we always felt the first hints of autumn in the chilly air that pushed across the border from Canada.

I decided to make pancakes. Back in the cabin, I rifled through the cupboards looking for Grandma’s recipe until I realized that of course she didn’t have one. At least not written down. Luckily, she did have an old cookbook called the
Joy of Cooking,
and I followed the directions for their basic pancakes. After I’d mixed in the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, milk, egg, and oil, it occurred to me to add my own touch. I squeezed in a ripe banana and stirred in a handful of blueberries. Grandma had never put anything like that in her pancakes.

The burner clicked and clicked before finally lighting, sending a burst of orange and blue flames up under Grandma’s griddle. I waved the gas smell out of the air, then dropped a spoonful of batter on top of the hot metal. One circle. Then another. My very first pancakes. I was tempted to throw them high into the air when it came time for flipping, but I chickened out. Good thing, because even with the spatula they each landed sideways, sending frothy little batter dribbles onto the pan, which cooked faster than the pancakes they were connected to. I started to scrape the thin parts off with my fingernail, but I burned my finger. Then, while I was running my finger under cold water, the pancakes started to burn. This wasn’t going as smoothly as I’d hoped.