Birds of Summer (7 page)

Summer’s voice wavered when she said, “I’m sorry” and Nan reached out and squeezed her hand; but what had made Summer’s throat tighten really had very little to do with Nan and the dead Deborah. Mostly it was because of Sparrow who was the same age and even got the same funny expression on her face when her picture was being taken.

At lunch that day, while Nan was making sure that Summer ate every crumb of an enormous crab salad sandwich, she went on talking about Deborah—about what an exceptional child she had been, bright and beautiful and happy—and about the diagnosis of leukemia and the terrible months that followed. After it was over, Nan said, she had gone into a state of deep depression that lasted for many months.

“That’s why we’re here, actually,” she told Summer. “I’d always wanted to raise Arabians, and Richard thought it would be good for me. A change of scene and something to occupy my mind. So when he heard about this place, he bought it, and we sold our home in Connecticut and moved out. Richard was already spending as much time on the West Coast as on the East, so it made very little difference as far as our time together was concerned. I was terribly busy at first with the remodeling and finding good breeding stock, and after a while it did help.”

“You never had any other children?” Summer asked.

“No. There were some serious problems when Deborah was born and eventually an operation. I wasn’t able to have any more children.”

Summer gathered up her dishes and Nan’s and took them to the dishwasher, where she stood for a moment staring out of the window and down the long sweep of lawn to where the peacocks were passing in ceremonial procession. But this time their weird prehistoric posturing was depressing—sinister almost, like some strange inhuman ritual for the dead. She turned her eyes away. Later, as she was sponging off the table, she asked Nan if she’d ever thought about adopting a baby.

Nan sighed. “Actually I did,” she said, “but Richard wouldn’t hear of it. His parents adopted a baby boy before he was born and it turned out tragically. Jeffrey, his adoptive brother, turned out very badly. He died, eventually, in an automobile accident, drunk driving, and Richard’s parents nearly impoverished themselves to take care of the hospital bills—his and the other people involved in the accident. It all happened years ago, but it left Richard absolutely opposed to adoption. Nothing I could say, no examples of successful adoptions, made any difference.”

The half-hour Summer usually allowed herself for lunch was over long before Nan stopped talking. Every time Summer tried to get back to work, Nan made her sit back down to hear a little more. When it was finally over, she understood a lot of things about the Olivers that she hadn’t before, but she was also a long way behind on her work. It was almost time for her bus and she was only starting the study when Nan came into the room.

“Here,” she said, handing Summer her check. “It’s for the full amount. It was my fault you didn’t finish. You run along now and catch your bus. We’ll just skip the rest of the house this week.” She stopped, looked around the study, and ran her finger along the edge of a bookshelf. “Unless you could come back tomorrow morning.” She smiled her wide smile. “Would that be possible, dear?”

Summer said that it would.

When she got back to the trailer, Cerbe was tied up and Sparrow was home alone. She was sitting at the kitchen table drawing pictures, and she jumped up when Summer came in.

“Hi.” she said. “Hi, Summer. Did you bring me a peacock feather? Did you get to feed the horses today? How are they? How are the horses? Are there any new baby ones?”

Summer hung her backpack on the hook by the door. “Where’s Oriole? she asked.

“She went into town with Angelo to go shopping. She said they were going to get bananas and raisins and everything. And you know what, Summer? Cerbe was very bad, and that’s why he’s tied up.”

“Did she say when she was coming home?” Summer said.

“You know what Cerbe did? He tried to bite Angelo. And Angelo had to climb up the madrone tree and yell for Oriole to come and get him. And Oriole spanked Cerbe and tied him up, and he’s supposed to stay there until she gets back and …” Sparrow stopped babbling and stared at Summer.

The anger wasn’t at Sparrow, but she obviously felt it. Watching Summer warily, she climbed back into her chair. “She said she wouldn’t be gone long,” she offered hopefully. “She’ll probably be back real soon.”

Summer took the stuff out of her backpack and slammed it down on the table so hard that Sparrow jumped as if she’d been slapped. Then she turned and stalked out and right down to the end of the trailer where Cerbe was tied. Watching her approach, he performed his ritual welcome dance, bouncing around in circles and then crouching in a kind of bow, with his curly tail waving like a frenzied football fan’s banner. When she squatted down in front of him, he gamboled around her, tangling them both in his rope until she toppled over. She lay on her back covering her face with her arms to protect it from his kisses until he got tired and collapsed beside her, his chin on her shoulder. Reaching over she took hold of his muzzle with two fingers and lifted his floppy lips to reveal the long sharp canines. “I wish you had,” she whispered fiercely. “I wish you’d bitten his leg off.” When she got up, she untied Cerbe and took him with her into the trailer.

Oriole did come home fairly soon that day, but after that she started being away more and more often. At first she offered a variety of flimsy excuses, but after a while she said she had a job.

“I’m working for the Fishers,” she said. “I’m helping them plant the new greenhouses that Angelo and Bart built.”

That left several questions without answers. Like—how long it took eight people—four Fishers, three weirdos and Oriole, to plant three greenhouses. And there was also another question that wasn’t asked or answered, and that was just what it was that the Fishers were planting. Summer was afraid to ask that one. Afraid, first of all that Oriole would lie to her, and even more afraid of what the answer might be if, by some chance, she decided to tell the truth. So she kept her suspicions strictly to herself. She didn’t even write to Grant about it.

She hadn’t, in fact, written to Grant for almost three weeks. Not since the day she’d had the disaster with Pardell. It was possible that she never would anymore. Not that she’d made any definite decision about it, because she hadn’t. However writing to a nonexistent person was a habit one might be expected to outgrow at some point, and it was beginning to look as if that time had come.

Then on May thirty-first Oriole stayed out all night; and when she strolled in at eight-thirty in the morning, Summer yelled at her and there was another violent argument. That night Summer wrote to Grant again.

She said she’d worked late and decided to spend the night at the Fishers’, and all I said was, “With who?” and she got mad and said I was worse than her parents used to be and that she didn’t see how she could have produced such an up-tight hung-up kid, and if she’d known how I was going to turn out she would have abandoned me on the doorstep of some stuffy Orange County reactionaries. So I said, no, she wouldn’t, because she’d never had enough money for a ticket to Orange County in her whole life, and she said that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Money That’s what she always says when we fight. That I’m really angry at her because she doesn’t have “a legally wedded sugar daddy with a high-salaried nine-to-five job and a ticky-tacky split-level house and all the rest of the establishment crap.” There’s no use arguing with her when she gets on that kick so I just came in here and locked the door.

But that’s not it. It’s not money that I want. At least, it’s not just money. I want a lot more than that. What I want is—something else, but whatever it is, it’s not here. And as soon as I get a chance I’m going to get the hell out of Alvarro Bay and go looking for it.

The next day Oriole was cringingly conciliatory. Summer despised her for it, and herself for causing it. The whole scene was giving her a stomachache, so she said she was sorry and Oriole looked delighted and said she was sorry too and why didn’t the three of them go into town and see if they could find somebody who would trade some food stamps for enough money to buy three tickets to
Superman II.
Sparrow jumped up and down and yelled, “Goody! Goody!” but Summer said, “Thanks just the same but I’d prefer to skip it, unless you can get Superman to keep us from having to live on stale bread for two days like we did last month.”

So Oriole said, “Okay, forget it.” But afterwards Summer was sorry she hadn’t taken her up on the offer because Oriole went out by herself and didn’t come back until almost morning, and after that she quit trying to cover up and make excuses. Just like always, when she had a new man, she forgot about everybody and everything else. She was away from home most of the time; and when she was there, she was always listening for the sound of the pickup’s horn blaring away—two shorts and two longs—from way out on the road.

It had happened before with Danny and Mike and Jim and Rif and etc., but this time there was one difference. The others had all spent a lot of time at the trailer, even the ones who never actually moved in; but this new one, this Angelo creep, never came any closer than the end of the path. At least not since Cerbe chased him up the madrone. That was one thing, Summer supposed, she had to be thankful for, and it was obviously Cerbe who got the credit.

At school things had been all right. Facing Pardell again after the fiasco about the letter hadn’t been easy; but he’d never mentioned it in any way, and after a while she stopped watching to see if he was going to treat her any differently. If anything had changed at all, it was just that she thought she noticed more times when he did his “private message” bit with her, catching her eye when something was significant or funny—like the time he asked if anyone had read “The Highway Man,” and Brownwood said he’d read the first few chapters.

Summer turned sixteen on the last day of the month, and that was a change for the better. It seemed like growing up had been taking forever, and she’d been anxious to get on with it for as long as she could remember. There was another small change for the better, too, during that last month of school. Sparrow finally quit begging to go to the Fishers’. At first when Oriole started going there every day, Sparrow wanted to go along, but after a while she had given up. The fierce dog and Jerry’s bad mood and even Angelo and Bart hadn’t discouraged her, but what did make a difference was the fact that Oriole, who was now in a position to know, said that Marina had not come home—and Sparrow believed her.

Summer was glad she no longer had to watch Sparrow to keep her from sneaking off up the hill; but at the same time it worried her a little that, at the age of seven, Sparrow still believed everything Oriole said. At seven Summer had already known better for quite a while.

R
OSE EARLY AND OFF
down the road to catch the early coach. The weather, which has been unseasonably cold, has turned fine, and I greatly enjoyed the brief communion with nature that the walk provided. Having arrived at my place of employment, I set about my customary duties and the day progressed normally until, during my noontime repast, when my employer …”

“O
KAY! OKAY CERBE! COME
find me.”

Cerbe, who had been sitting obediently at the foot of the trailer steps with his head cocked and his ears twitching, leaped to his feet and dashed around the corner. A moment later there was a sharp bark, a delighted squeal and Sparrow appeared, skipping happily with Cerbe gamboling beside her. “He found me. He found me, Summer. I was hiding behind the watertank, and he just sniffed right across the yard and found me, as quick as anything.” She threw her arms around the dog’s neck and hugged him so enthusiastically she tipped them both over. On his back, with his big feet waving in the air, Cerbe growled with mock ferocity, grabbed Sparrow’s skinny little arm in his huge jaws and held it very gently while she squealed with excitement.

“Look, Summer. Cerbe’s biting me. Don’t you want to see how Cerbe’s biting me?”

Summer sighed. “Do I have a choice?” she said. Closing her binder and putting her pen behind her ear, she leaned back against the trailer’s screen door and turned her full attention to the dusty battle at her feet. “You’re getting filthy,” she said mildly.

“I know.” Sparrow got to her feet and made an ineffectual attempt to dust off her jeans. “Hide-and-go seek is a filthy game. What are you writing, Summer?”

“Nothing. I’m not writing anything. I gave up. It’s hard to write at a wrestling match.” Actually, she hadn’t stopped just because of the noisy game. If she were really into writing, it took more than Sparrow’s chatter to spoil her concentration. Part of it was probably the weather. “What is so rare as a day in June,” Pardell had recited last week on the first day of June; and today was another rare one—soft and green and golden, and so alive with growth you could almost hear it. Lifting her face to the sun, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift. The writing could wait. She wasn’t going to turn it in anyway.

Pardell had given the assignment, an extra credit one for people who needed to improve their grade, in connection with a project on journal writers. He’d started by reading excerpts from the writings of people like Franklin and Pepys and Boswell, and then he’d had everyone write a paragraph in the style of one of the diarists. He read some of those paragraphs, and everyone had guessed which famous journal-keeper the writer had been trying to imitate. The extra credit assignment was to keep a journal about the events of the following week. Since she didn’t need the grade, Summer hadn’t intended to do it—until the week turned out to be one of the most important of her entire life. It had all begun at noon on Saturday.

She had sensed a difference as soon as she walked into the Ranch kitchen. Nan was at the table and, as usual, she insisted that Summer join her, but she seemed quieter than usual as if something was on her mind. It wasn’t until lunchtime that it all came out. They were eating their chicken salad and bran muffins at the wrought iron table in the patio when Nan suddenly said, “Well, we’ve had an exciting time around here since last weekend. Richard came home last Tuesday with some incredible news and by Thursday we’d made the decision. We’re going back to Connecticut.”