Sway (4 page)

“Oh, just a little something I shared from my beauty box…I mean,
our
beauty box,” Mom said, giving me a wink. “We'd have offered you some too, Douglas, but you just don't seem the goldenrod and chartreuse type.”

Dad looked perplexed, so I closed my eyes to show him better.

“My new favorite colors,” I said.

“I see.” Dad stooped and splashed some water on his face. “Don't you think you're maybe a little young for that stuff?”

“Mom was just telling me some things about being a rescuer,” I said, feeling a sudden need to change the subject.

“Like what?” he sputtered.

“Exciting stuff,” I said. “Like about not ever knowing where you're going next, and having to be ready for anything.”

“It's all about putting yourself in someone else's shoes for a while,” Mom said, slipping her sandals back on. “Trying to understand each and every person's needs.

“And
shoowee
,” Mom added, pointing toward Dad's feet and pinching her nose. “From the smell of things, Douglas, you might want to put yourself in some other shoes too.”

Honestly, I hadn't noticed any stink coming off of Dad, but I smiled and nodded like I did.

“My apologies for rudely interrupting you girls making sport of me,” he said, patting his beard dry with a dish towel. “But have a look at this.”

Dad picked up the slick remains of his soap from the dish, held the little piece out, and said, “Looks a bit like Abraham Lincoln, no?”

Mom and I both tilted our heads from side to side to try and see the resemblance.

“Not so much,” Mom said. “But I'd say it's definitely a wishable piece of soap you've got there, Douglas.

“So, Cass,” she said. “You want to take that wish, or shall I?”

“You go,” I said.

“Well, if you insist,” she said. “I'll make a big one.”

Dad and I both listened like we were going to be quizzed on it later.

“I just wish that I could do more,” she said.

“What do you mean?” asked Dad.

“Like, to be everywhere I'm needed all at once, you know?” said Mom. “So I could reach out to someone without having to let go of someone else to do it.”

She picked up a piece of mail and fanned her face with it, making her charm bracelet tinkle like crazy.

“Well, you never know, Toodi, this may be the day your wish comes true,” Dad said. “I've got a special something to reveal to you ladies at the party today.”

“What? You mean surprises galore are outside that door?” said Mom. “That's mighty unlike you to keep a secret, hon.”

“Yep,” he said. “And it's the kind of something that will let all three of us do more for people…
together
.”

Judging by the unchanged look on her face, I guessed Mom was less than captivated by Dad's hint. But to my relief, she slapped the envelope onto the table and said, “So, what are we waiting for? How about we go on next door before Syd starts to hang Funyuns off his nose?”

“You two go on. I'll be over in a minute,” Dad said, rummaging through the cabinets. “First I'm going to find some kind of smell-good to sprinkle in these shoes.”

Poor Dad is
so
not the cheese, I thought as Mom and I stood to leave.

M
om's hand felt smooth as butter when I grabbed hold for the walk next door. After all, a ten-year-old can do that when it's just a one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi thing. I had to take a double-stride to stay alongside her, which made my phone squeeze up and right over the edge of my back pocket. The phone bounced with a
crack-crackcrack
down onto the concrete steps, but I didn't even care to see where it landed. Then Mom and I went separate ways around the Castanea dentata tree, stretching our arms till her lotiony hand slipped right out of mine.

“Toodi Bleu Nordenhauer, you are a vision!” Aunt Jo called out as she poked toothpicks into rows of Vienna sausages.

“You two are like a magnolia and her brightest bloom,” said Uncle Clay.

“More like a magnolia blossom and some stinkweed,” said Syd, with a ring of yellow crumbs around his lips.

“Good one, crustache,” I said.

“There's that lucky brother of mine.” Uncle Clay popped a cough drop into his mouth. When he plans on talking a lot, he always sucks on a Sucrets to smooth out his words a bit.

“Well, Douglas, you think you might have over-seasoned the tootsies a bit?” Mom snickered as Dad walked up with little brown clouds puffing from his shoes with every step.

“Yeah, I guess cinnamon may have been a poor choice for a shoe deodorizer,” he said.

Syd snorted as Aunt Jo slapped at Dad's shoes with a dish towel to dust them off.

Uncle Clay pretended not to notice. “That was some mighty fine bird-trapping you did this morning, Douglas. Fine, fine work,” he said.

“Thanks, brother.” With a gentle pat to Uncle Clay's back, my dad took his usual spot on a folding chair next to the recliner. Uncle Clay tapped a flat carpenter's pencil on the metal part of his arm brace. “Now that we're all here, I'd like to say a few words,” he began. “Toodi, we don't like when you leave. But we know that when you do, you're making the darkest day brighter for countless others more needy than us.”

His hand trembled as he held the bamboo stick out.

“As a welcome-home gesture, please accept this custom creation of mine.”

“Thank you, Clay,” said my mom, taking Ye Olde Piñata Whacker and studying the letters carved into its length. “I assume that cumulonimbus dangling over there is in need of some whacking.”

I couldn't wait to see what would fall out of that cloud. There was never any predicting what was hidden inside of Uncle Clay's piñatas. Popcorn, cashews, paper clips, but almost never candy. Just whatever was within reach at the time of creation.

“Rubber bands,” Syd whispered his guess in my direction.

I thought marshmallows.

“How about I test this thing out after we eat?” Mom said, leaning the Whacker against the fan and making her way to the table, with Syd and me fighting for next in line behind her.

Once everyone had piled food onto their plates and found a place to sit on the porch, we took turns asking Mom questions, so our words wouldn't all blurt out at the same time. Mom always came back from storm trips with the best stories. Chickens stuck on telephone poles. Double rainbows. Toilets in the road.

There on the porch swing, she sat with her toes pointed in at each other, so that her knees were close enough to balance a flimsy paper plate on her lap. Even with a glub of onion dip sliding down her plate, she was graceful.

“Toodi, what was the strangest thing you saw this time?” Aunt Jo asked.

“Whew, that's a tough one,” Mom said, damming up the dip with a deviled egg. “But I'd have to say it was this poor old lady hanging on to a church steeple for dear life. My whole team tried to peel her off of it into the rescue boat, but she was so scared of the water around her, she just wouldn't budge. We had to remove her and the cross together, and she held it all the way to the first-aid station.”

The way Mom described the lady and the cross was so vivid, I imagined the whole scene depicted in stained glass.

“Did you ever have to bust through a window to rescue anyone?” asked Syd.

“No,” Mom said. “But I did see a wall with the shape of a fire hydrant broken through it.”

“Cool,” he said, and went back to throwing peanut shells at the box fan.

After a while, I noticed that each time the question-asking would make its way around the porch, my dad would always be doing something that distracted him right out of his turn. Clapping the bottoms of his shoes together to knock off the excess cinnamon. Removing his ball cap and scratching at his sweaty head. Jangling the mix of keys and change in his pockets.

“Hey, what's with your dad?” Syd asked me. “He looks like a baseball pitcher doing signals or something.”

“I think he's all nerved out,” I said. Which was odd, because my dad's edginess is usually pretty smoothed by the time Mom has unpacked. It was like someone forgot to tell his clappers, scratchers, and janglers that Mom had arrived. Or maybe the surprise he had yet to reveal was giving him the same twitch inside as it was giving me.

“Douglas, you've been mighty quiet all afternoon,” Uncle Clay said, with a nudge to my dad's side. “Don't you have a question for Toodi?”

Everyone else's questions had just rolled right out like gum balls, but Dad must have really had to dig for one. He didn't even look up from his lap when he said, “So…where'd you get all those beachy charms?”

The tan on Mom's face pinkened.

“Oh these,” she said, tinkling the bracelet with her finger like tiny wind chimes. “I just picked these up in honor of some people near and dear to my heart.”

Feeling pretty certain that Dad and I were the nearest and dearest to Mom's heart, I couldn't figure what all that beachiness had to do with us.

“I wonder where you'll go next, Aunt Toodi,” said Syd. “It better not be Hawaii. I'd be ultra jeal.”

I wanted to tell Syd that “ultra jeal” sounded more like a brand of hair goop than a clever phrase, but Aunt Jo handled things even better.

“Can it, Syd,” she said. “Toodi's home to stay for a while now, and we're not even going to
think
about her leaving again anytime soon.”

“Well, I don't know about all that, Jo,” my mom said, flicking at the edges of her plate with her thumbnails. “I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you all about my summer plans.”

In an instant, I ran through ten possible definitions of Mom's “summer plans” in my head, making sure all of them included a ten-year-old girl.

“My next trip, that is,” Mom said, staring down at her knees. “I'm afraid it's going to be sooner rather than later.”

Dad quit his jangling.

“What do you mean, Toodi?” said Uncle Clay.

“You guys remember that big hurricane that hit the coast of Florida last year?” she said.

“The one where you saw a swordfish poked through a mailbox?” asked Syd.

“That very one,” Mom said. “Well, a few of the people I met when I was there last summer…a few of the orphans…” She began to cry again, so I ran to the table to find her something to dab with. Talk of storm orphans always meant a napkin for my mom.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said. “The thing is, those kids are in need of someone in a bad way. Someone to help them rebuild their lives after all that devastation.”

“Oh, Toodi,” said Aunt Jo, getting a little damp around the eyes herself.

“When will you go?” said Uncle Clay.

“I need to leave for Florida in two weeks,” Mom said, pausing long enough for the napkin to soak up her tears and for me to soak up her words. I saw a blanket of worry cover my dad's face as he got still for the first time all afternoon. And it was big enough worry for him and me both.
Did she say two weeks?

I suddenly found myself wondering if it was ever appropriate to be mad at orphans, because being mad at orphans felt icky as Twinkies filled with toothpaste.

“I heard they've got crawfish big as cats in Florida,” said Syd.

“Seriously, Syd,” said Aunt Jo. “Oh, Toodi, that's so soon. Why the rush?”

“There's simply no one else who can do it,” said Mom.

“Wow, talk about things taking a turn for the not-soawes,” Syd leaned and whispered to me. “Your mom's about to leave again, and you're not even trained to rescue a mouse from a trap.”

I looked to the paper cloud to try and find that silver lining I hear people talk about.

“Two weeks is more than enough time for training,” I whispered back sharply, giving Syd the
shut up dot com
look he deserved, and feeling fairly certain that two weeks wasn't even enough time to begin.

“Well then, forget asking your dad about some puny crawfish,” he said. “You better bring me back one of those jumbo Florida ones.”

“How noble of you to help those children, Toodi,” said Aunt Jo. “But it hurts our hearts to see you go again so soon.”

“Ditto,” said Uncle Clay, giving my dad a
Go on, do it!
nod that jump-started Dad's fidgets instantly. I could tell without a doubt that Dad was mustering something. Maybe words. Maybe courage. Maybe both. I hoped he'd muster a little extra for me while he was at it.

“S
akes alive, I sure know how to kill a mood, huh?” said Mom, patting her cheeks with the crumpled napkin. “Now, let's see what I can do to fix that.” She stood to shake the crumbs from her sundress and made her way to the dangling paper cloud. Grabbing up the Whacker and raising it high in the air, she said, “I'd like to propose a toast.”

She waved the stick all around without even touching the piñata once, and said, “Here's to home sweet home…to family…and in particular, to the Southern Mobile Aid Response Team's youngest future volunteer, Castanea Dentata Nordenhauer.”

Mom shot me a twinkly smile. My spirits flared up fast as a struck match.

“And here's to doing more,” she said, holding the Whacker firm with both hands and rearing back for a big try at the cloud.

“Wait! Toodi! Wait!” My dad yelled out so loud, he seemed as startled by his own volume level as the rest of us. His mid-swing holler scared Mom into launching the Whacker clean out of her fists, and it landed with
thwunk!
onto the roof of Syd's house.

“Whoa, Nellie!” said Uncle Clay.

“You don't mean it,” said Aunt Jo.

“Awes toss!” said Syd.

We all gazed hopelessly at the far-flung whacker, until Dad cleared his throat in a big dramatic way.

“I'll go fetch that later,” he said, bringing our attention back to earth. “But first, I too have a presentation to make.”

A hush filled the little porch. I couldn't imagine what Dad was going to say.

“Toodi, do you remember when Cass was a baby and you made a wish on that heart-shaped lemon? That maybe someday we could all go sweeten the world together as a family?”

“Mmm-hmmm, I sure do,” she said.

“Well…” said Dad, aiming his hand across the way, toward the old covered motor home in our backyard. “Folks, may I direct your attention to what's behind, or better yet, what's
under
curtain number one.” All six of us gazed at The Roast, big and stuck as ever.

“Happy fifteenth anniversary, Toodi,” Dad belted out. “I know she's not so easy on the eyes, and she don't exactly run like the wind, so I won't uncover her just yet. But underneath that plastic over yonder is a circa 1991 Roadstar Deluxe that I like to call The Roast.”

Mom's eyes widened, and I hoped hard that Dad's speech would get better from there. Thankfully, it did.

“Or maybe we should call her a wish come true,” he continued. “Just imagine, if you will, Toodi. You, me, and Cass. Out there on the road together in that RV…helping people. Like our own little storm rescue team.”

I found myself instantly wowed by Dad's words. Rough around the edges as it might be, his plan set off a pinball game of possibilities in my head. Unfortunately, though, Mom's version of
wow
looked more like she'd just bitten into a heart-shaped lemon.

“You mean the three of us,” she said. “Living in
there
?”

Dad gave her a slow unsure nod.

“Together,” he said.

“And you plan on getting that thing ready in the next two weeks?”

“Well, you did throw me for a loop with this Florida announcement,” said Dad. “But if I work on her every night, I believe The Roast could be roadworthy just in time.”

Mom crossed her arms. “Just how in the world do you plan to pay for this trip, Douglas?”

Dad sat on the edge of the workbench, pulled off his cap, and wiped the sweat from his brow.

“I've been putting aside a few bucks here and there,” he said. “A family can save a lot on bulk cereal, homemade haircuts, and potpies, you know.”

Dad recapped himself.

“Besides, frozen meat travels well,” he added. “I can borrow a freezer and sell on the road. That'll pay for our gas and food. And we'll be sleeping in The Roast.”

I looked from Dad to Mom to The Roast, picturing my family as yams squished together in a dented can, but it was okay. Dented cans are bad, but yams are good. And
together
is even better.

Dad shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

“So what do my ladies think?” He said it kind of practiced and clumsy, like it was his one line in the school play.

Mom's blank expression was as hard to read as a wet newspaper.

“Don't you see, Toodi?” Dad said. “I know that you want to do more. This is how we can all do more
and
be together as a family. We can all help those kids in Florida.”

Yes, yes, what Dad said! I thought, trying hard to hide my reaction until I could see how Mom was going to respond. It took tremendous control to not shoot Dad a toothy grin, like a dog must feel wagging only the tip of its tail. But then, all too quickly, Mom crossed her arms and added the period to the end of Dad's speech.

“Douglas, I'm sorry,” she said. “I just don't know if that's going to work out. Can we maybe discuss this a little later?”

Then, for what seemed like forever, Mom and Dad looked to be having a no-blink contest.

Okay, well, maybe what Mom said, I thought. Perhaps she just has to think it all through before she says yes. No big deal. Even so, I still felt like wagging just the tip of my tail.

“Sure, Toodi,” Dad said, breaking the silence to dig a Dr Pepper from the cooler and press it to his flustery face. “We can discuss things later, I suppose.”

And that's when I realized that feeling embarrassed for someone else can make you twice as squirmy as feeling embarrassed for yourself.

“Whoa,” Syd whispered to me. “He totally got shot down in flames.”

Looking at the stunned faces around the porch, I had to agree that it had been a very short trip from awes to
awk
.

“Bro, I believe you have really outdone yourself this time,” said Uncle Clay, like he was trying to chase the weirdness from the air with some kind words.

“Yes, Douglas, I think that is all just terribly exciting,” said Aunt Jo. “Looks like everyone just has to let the idea soak in a bit. In the meantime, why don't we all get cozy and do some more catching up?”

And that's just what most of us did for the rest of the afternoon. Aunt Jo, Mom, and I squeezed together onto the porch swing, and with my head on Mom's lap, I listened to the hum of their conversation until the lightning bugs came on duty. Looking mostly deflated, my dad sat at Uncle Clay's workbench, crushing one can after another in the vise. Uncle Clay kept him company until he slumped over the edge of his recliner in a snooze. And Syd spent the rest of his day throwing rocks, big and small, trying to knock Ye Olde Piñata Whacker off the roof. With every run of her long nails across my neck, Mom tickled away most of the pity I'd felt for Dad when his surprise fizzled. My head became filled with images of sitting on a beach after a long day of heroics, sorting through seashells under a chartreuse-and-goldenrod umbrella.

“Aunt Toodi, you're like a lady version of Fearless Fenwick,” Syd said, dissolving my dreaming as he lobbed a broken brick for one final attempt at the Whacker.

“Syd Nordenhauer, you break a window and you'll be scrubbing the bathroom tomorrow,” snapped Aunt Jo. “And with no help from Fearless Fenwick.”

“I think that's our cue,” Mom said. “Jo, Syd. Thank you for a darling celebration. Please give Clay my thanks as well.”

She hung her sandals off her thumbs, so I hung my tennies off mine. We tiptoed together through the grass while Dad and Aunt Jo helped Uncle Clay into the house.

My mind flickered in as many directions as there were sands on the seashore as I considered how to go about talking Mom into taking a ten-year-old amateur rescuer with her to Florida, whether in a tin-can RV or not. And how if I didn't convince her tonight, I would never hear the end of Syd making that
buh-gert!
chicken noise he does when I bail out of something.

Mom and I
ooch-ooch
ed barefoot across the sharp driveway rocks.

“You never whacked your storm cloud,” I said to her.

“It's okay, honey,” she said. “That cloud will still be there tomorrow.”