The Summer We Lost Alice (2 page)

In Wichita, my teachers on Parents' Night always tell my mother that I have an active imagination. They smile when they say it, but they angle their heads funny and I know they're saying something more
. Mom just smiles and says, "Yes, that he does."

My mother sends me out of the room so that she and Aunt Flo can talk. She tells me to go to the living room and take my cousin Alice a glass of lemonade and a bowl of popcorn. I don't want to go, but I do as I'm told.

Alice sits on the floor with her back against the sofa. She bites her lower lip and twists a lock of hair and she seems to be staring at the wall, or through it. She looks at me as I enter with the popcorn, cradling her glass of lemonade in the crook of my arm and splashing it on my shirt. She sees me but it's like she is seeing a vision or a friendly apparition, like she can see right through me. She closes her eyes. When she opens them again, I'm solid and she's back from wherever her mind has taken her. She says, "Hi, Ethan" and I say "Hi" back. I sit down beside her and we share the popcorn and she tells me that one day she's going to live in California.

"As soon as Cat's eighteen, she's blowing this burg," Alice says. "She's going to be an actress in Hollywood. Then when she's famous and I'm eighteen I'm moving there, too. Have you ever seen the ocean?"

I shake my head "no."

"I'm going to live in a beach house and fish right off the back porch. I'll have a boat, too."

Boo enters on his big, clumsy feet, smelling the popcorn. I smell him almost before I see him. He starts to stick his nose in the bowl but Alice puts her hand on his enormous forehead and shoves him away. He's so big, I don't know where she gets the nerve, but I guess she's used to him.

"Sit, Boo," she says. Boo sits, but his eyes never leave the popcorn. Alice tosses him a kernel
. He chomps it in midair and swallows it whole. We take turns tossing popcorn to Boo.

"I guess you aren't afraid of him anymore," Alice says. "Daddy says you near peed your pants the first time you saw him."

"I didn't pee my pants," I say.

"I didn't say you did, I said Daddy said you
near
did." She looks at me and I feel all the blood rushing to my face like it does. "Hey, I near pee my pants all the time," she says. "Look at his teeth." She pulls Boo's lips back to show his big, yellow teeth and makes
grrr
sounds.

"You want more lemonade?" I say, and she says she does. I'm glad to get away because my face is probably about beet red.

I go back to the kitchen but as soon as I walk in I wish I hadn't. My mother is crying and Aunt Flo is saying, "It'll pass, sugar, it'll pass." She looks at me standing there with the two glasses with ice cubes half-melted in the bottom and she says, "Help yourself, Ethan. There's ice in the freezer and more lemonade in the pitcher."

I think Aunt Flo is probably a good enough person, and she is being kind to my mother, but hard lines surround her eyes like the metal strip around the counter tops. Caring flows from her but it is contained by those lines that keep it in its place. It is doled out in measured portions, as if everybody only gets so much and then that's it, you're on your own now. Aunt Flo's love is not a soft thing, I think, but something hard and unyielding, which can be good or bad.

I can only imagine what it would be like to get on the wrong side of Aunt Flo. If I'm going to be here for a while, I am going to make that my obsession, avoiding the wrong side of Aunt Flo.

I must stand there a long time thinking all these things because Aunt Flo says "Go on" and angles her head toward the refrigerator. She's lost patience with me. I make my feet move.

My mother has stopped crying but she won't look at me. She's thinking about somebody else, and I think it must be my father. He's made my mother cry. Now she's crying again and Aunt Flo knows why, even though I don't, exactly.

I open the freezer and look for the ice cube tray. I don't recognize it at first because it's dull gray metal and has a handle you pull up to loosen the ice cubes. In Wichita
, the ice trays are bright white plastic and you twist them and the cubes tumble out every which way. This tray is frosty and it sticks to my fingers and the handle is hard to pull up and even then the ice doesn't want to come out. I hate this thing and wonder if I'm doing it all wrong.

"Hold the tray upside down under the hot water, Ethan," Aunt Flo says. "Under the faucet," she adds. I do as she says
. The ice cubes drop into the sink and start melting in the flow of hot water. I scoop them up as quick as I can and put them in the glasses.

I think about filling the tray up again and putting it back in the freezer, but I'm worried that I won't do it right and when Aunt Flo wants ice she'll see that and think, "The boy doesn't even know how to fill an ice tray." I leave it in the sink because I'd rather she thinks I'm lazy instead of stupid. I top off our glasses with lemonade. I fill them almost to the top
. That makes it hard to carry them without spilling.

Everything is different here. Everything is harder. Why does anybody live in a place like this?

I hear somebody at the kitchen door. It's Alice and Boo, standing there looking at me.

"What's taking so long?" Alice says. I feel my face on fire again.

I hate this place. I want to go home now and never come back.

Boo wags his tail while Alice twists his ear. I can't believe I was ever afraid of him. He's just a mutt.
A big, smelly, stupid mutt.

WE HAVE BEEN
two days with Aunt Flo and Uncle Billy and Alice and Catherine. I haven't seen much of Catherine. She lives in her own world apart from me and Alice and everybody except Sammy, whoever that is. I only know him as a shadow inside the car that picks up Catherine.

I like Uncle Billy. He plays music on his "squeeze box" that makes me feel good. It isn't like anything on the radio. Mom tells me it's "polka music" and she spells it for me so I'll know. I wouldn't want to listen to polka music on the radio
, but I like when Uncle Billy plays it.

The water still tastes funny but I've gotten used to the look and smell of the house. The smell is oldness and scents blown in from the nearby fields and the smell of dog, of Boo. There are other dogs, too, but Uncle Billy keeps them outside in the run. They are hunting dogs. Boo is too stupid to hunt.

"He might be good on a rabbit hunt," Uncle Billy says, "if you were shooting from a helicopter." I've seen the way Boo thrashes and crashes around in the fields, scaring away anything hiding in the brush.

"He's a companion dog," Alice says, slapping him on the shoulder so that field dust flutters up from his back. Uncle Billy smiles when she says that. I think it means two entirely different things to them.

I like the porch swing. I knew I would. It's hung on rusty chains that creak when Alice and I swing on it. Sometimes we get carried away and swing clear back off the porch. That's when I imagine the chains breaking and I start slowing us down. Alice likes to swing as high as she can. At the schoolyard on the big swings there, I think maybe she's going to go all the way over the top. I can read her mind when she swings. I know she's thinking about jumping out and flying away when she swings that high. Flying to California. She doesn't say anything about it. When I tell her about it, she shoots me an angry look, like she's caught me going through her drawers.

"How'd you know that?" she demands. "I never said anything about jumping out and flying to California."

"It's on your face," I tell her. It's the truth, more or less.

She doesn't believe me. She thinks I can read her mind or something.

"What am I thinking?" she says. She squints at me.

"You're thinking about elephants."

"Hah! I wasn't! You can't read minds!"

I'm glad she wasn't thinking about elephants. If she had, it would have ruined everything.

* * *

We get home to find my mother and Uncle Billy and Aunt Flo waiting for us. Mom's suitcase sits by the door. My eyes go to it and they must be as wide as saucers when I look at my mother. She's leaving already, and I'm not going with her.

"You'll like it here, once you get used to it," she says. "You'll look back and say, 'That was the best summer of my life!'" I might have believed her but her eyes are wet and her smile looks like some kind of beetle that's settled on her face.

She takes me into the kitchen where a calendar from the Santa Fe Railroad hangs on the wall. She's circled a date two months from now, a Saturday.

"That's when we'll drive up to bring you home," she says. "Aunt Flo says you can mark off the days if you want to. Look, here's a marker."

We go back out to the living room for one last hug, then she and Aunt Flo hug while I carry her suitcase out to Uncle Billy's car. He places a hand on my shoulder as we walk,
me carrying the big suitcase with both hands held up to my chest. "We'll have a good time, you, me and Alice," he says. "We'll go
fishing
." I've never been fishing.

We all pile into the car, all except Aunt Flo.
And Catherine, of course, who is off somewhere with Sammy. I can't even imagine where they go or what they do. It seems like there's hardly anywhere to go in Meddersville or anything to do. I don't think Catherine will get into trouble like Aunt Flo is afraid of. What kind of trouble could a person get into in Meddersville, short of burning something down? Catherine doesn't seem like the type to burn anything down.

We drive in silence to the store where the bus stops. Uncle Billy promises us ice cream shakes when we get there. He looks at my mother and tells her that everything will be all right, that she and my father just need to get the spark back.

"He's a good man," he says, "despite it all."

"I suppose so," my mother says.

She's told me that it isn't my fault, that none of it is my fault, but getting rid of me for the summer is part of the solution, so how can it
not
be my fault, at least partly? I don't know what I've done or what I didn't do that I should have.

It's a sunny day. There isn't a cloud in the sky, but that only makes me feel worse, like things are out of joint. I'd feel better if it was raining, because that would suit the way I feel. The sunlight is phony. Everything that's happening is wrong. I think I'm getting carsick but I'd rather die than throw up in Uncle Billy's car. I close my eyes and lean back and imagine rain beating on the roof and lightning crashing in the distance. That helps, and it's a short drive. No
place is very far from any place else in Meddersville.

There is
a strangeness about sitting in the store, drinking our milkshakes and waiting for the bus to take my mother away. Something precious is being taken from me, like a part of my body being removed, and it's being replaced with an odd organ that doesn't properly fit the hole, like a pig heart or an arm from some kid who's died in a car wreck. Alice twists a lock of her hair as she sucks on her straw and swivels back and forth on her seat. The shush of the ball bearings sounds like the sea to her, like waves retreating through the sand. She is a thousand miles away. I know this, but I'm not going to let her know I know.

My mother's gaze is on some uncertain future
. Uncle Billy sits beside her uncomfortably. Then he sees a man he knows and excuses himself. Pretty soon he's happily engaged in conversation about insurance and fishing. I'm left alone.

I slip away and wander down the aisles. I find a rubber knife I want
. Uncle Billy sees me holding it and looking at it from all sides, and he buys it for me. He tells me to keep it in my pocket until my mother leaves—she might not like it. He gives me a wink.

The bus arrives with a hiss and a groan and there are more hugs all around. Mom smiles at me and reminds me that I'll have the time of my life here. Before I know it, she's inside the bus and looking out the window and waving to me.

The bus door closes and the engine rattles and black smoke spews from the tailpipe. The bus pulls away. As it vanishes down the road, I slip the rubber knife out of my pocket and finger the edge.

I'M IN
Aunt Flo and Uncle Billy's bedroom, where I'm not supposed to be, but that's where the window is that looks out over the backyard.

Aunt Flo digs in the garden with a hand spade. She's given Alice the job of cleaning out some old flowerpots with a hose. This is punishment for what we did the night before, which was to sneak out and sleep in the backyard with Boo. Alice protested that she was being punished and I wasn't
. Aunt Flo said that Alice knew better and I didn't, but I would next time. I don't think this is the first time Alice has sneaked out at night to sleep in the yard with Boo. I'm not even sure why it's such a bad thing except that she didn't check first with Aunt Flo. Aunt Flo said she likes to know what's going on under her own roof. Later Alice told me, "We weren't under the roof, we were in the backyard," as if that made any difference. I'm glad she didn't say that to Aunt Flo's face or she might be scrubbing flowerpots for the next hundred years.