Three Bird Summer (12 page)

“It’s so tragic,” Alice said. “But I wish she’d tell us more. Really, Adam, you should try talking to her sometime. Or writing her notes. We need more information!”

“No way,” I said, remembering how awkward it had been even trying to find out more about her engagement. “She’s confused enough as it is!”

Alice sighed.

“But should we start looking for the treasure?” I asked. “I mean, it might be interesting to find it, even if it isn’t worth anything.”

Alice’s brow furrowed. “That was — what did you say? — more than sixty years ago? What are the chances it’s still here after all these years?”

“You never know,” I said. “There are bottles of iodine in my grandma’s medicine cabinet that look like they’ve been there half a century.”

But she had a point. Grandma had been puttering around the cabin for her entire adult life. Between her exploring and my mom’s cleaning, somebody would have turned up a hidden treasure long ago.

“It could even be underground,” Alice said. “Buried treasure.” She shook her head. “This is going to be a tough one, Sherlock.”

“Memory Guy,” I corrected.

“Oh, right. Except that’s not going to help us much at this point, right? You can’t remember something you never knew.”

“Memory Guy has his limits,” I acknowledged. “But if you want to know the names of all fifty states in alphabetical order, say the word!”

Alice smiled tolerantly. “Listen, I’m going to go put this note with my collection. Then let’s take a dunk, OK? It’s hot out here.”

I nodded and watched her jog toward her house. When she came back out, she was wearing her swimsuit and holding a rainbow-colored towel.

“Last one in is a dead walleye!” she said, throwing the towel onto a lawn chair and dashing off toward the lake.

Before I’d even taken off my sneakers, Alice had run the length of the dock. She looked over her shoulder and shook her head when she saw how far behind I was. Then she did a cannonball into the lake, sending a huge spray of water over the dock. She popped up, waving and laughing.

Grandma’s secret treasure was kind of interesting — I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t. But the real mystery of the summer was how a guy like me was getting to spend an entire summer hanging out with a girl like Alice.

MY UNCLE MARTIN
came up to visit the first weekend in August. He was a nice guy — big and gentle, with long wiry hair pulled back in a ponytail. He taught history at the University of Minnesota, teaching and writing year-round, so he was ready to make the most of his brief time at the cabin. As soon as he arrived, he took off his shoes and didn’t put them on again all weekend unless he was going out for a bike ride. He stayed outside as much as possible — encouraging Mom and Grandma to eat dinner on the deck, and even sleeping in the meadow in his own tent. And he told me he wasn’t going to read a single word on a computer while he was there.

“I get so sick of being indoors and looking at a glowing screen,” he said. “This place is like a balm for my wounds.”

We were sitting on the deck eating cheese and crackers. A chipmunk darted back and forth on a log below us, and a blue jay called out a warning from overhead. Mom was making a pasta dish in the kitchen, and Grandma was nowhere to be seen.

Uncle Martin cut a couple of slices of cheese and handed one over to me. “How’s your grandmother, Adam?” he asked.

“You’re asking me?” I said.

“I trust you more than Bobbie,” he said.

I gulped, feeling a wave of guilt. “She’s OK, I guess,” I told him.

He didn’t say anything.

“She gets a little confused sometimes. Don’t all old people?”

Uncle Martin popped a cracker in his mouth and shook his head. “Not everyone,” he said. “You should see this fellow in my department. Herman Milstein. He’s been retired for twenty years. Twenty years! But the guy still comes to his office every day, fills his coffee mug, and gets to work. His work is careful and smart — and it’s still being read by scholars in his field.”

“Well, it’s hard to compare that to Grandma,” I said. “But she still remembers her birds and everything.”

Uncle Martin nodded. “I think your mom’s overreacting, actually. She feels so guilty that she’s not around to help out with things more — in St. Paul, I mean. But Ma and I, we have an understanding. If she doesn’t fence me in, I won’t lock her in a cage.”

“A cage?” I asked.

“An old folks’ home. Assisted living, or whatever they call it these days. A place like that would kill your grandmother.”

Just then, Mom came out with a pile of plates and four forks. “Adam, honey, can you go in and get the glasses?”

I wondered if she’d overheard us. I headed inside and was halfway to the kitchen when I saw Grandma coming out of my room, patting her pockets.

“Grandma?” I said. “Everything OK?”

She looked distracted but she told me, “Everything’s fine.”

“Grandma, you didn’t . . . ? You didn’t leave me a note, did you?”

She looked at me quizzically. “What do you mean, ‘note’?”

“Those notes, Grandma,” I said, already wishing I hadn’t said anything about them. “You leave them in my room sometimes.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, setting her mouth in that firm straight line.

I walked past her into my room and looked up at the mirror. No note. I sighed.

“Sorry, Grandma,” I said. “Never mind.”

“You’re as bad your mother,” she said haughtily. “I don’t know why everyone’s so suspicious around here.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled again.

I went back to the kitchen and got the glasses Mom had asked for. Grandma held the door for me, and I carried them out to the table.

“Now, how about getting that pasta?” Mom said.

“You sure work that boy hard,” Uncle Martin said, giving me a sympathetic look.

“You call that working hard?” Mom said indignantly.

I was a little worried that she and Uncle Martin were going to start arguing, but when I returned with the pasta, they were both smiling.

“Uncle Martin has a surprise for you, Adam,” Mom said.

I found myself bracing for the announcement. Surprises made me uncomfortable.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I bought myself a new bike for my fiftieth birthday,” Uncle Martin said. He gestured across the driveway to where his bike was leaning against his car. “This is my old one,” he said. “It’s covered a lot of miles, but it’s been a loyal and safe steed. And your mom tells me you’ve outgrown your bike back home. Would you like to have mine?”

“Me? Sure,” I said, even as I wondered if I was really big enough to ride the thing. “Thanks a lot, Uncle Martin.”

“Maybe you can take it out to visit Alice,” Mom said with a teasing smile.

I didn’t answer her. I tried to think about water glasses and pine needles or anything else that would keep my ears from turning red. But then Uncle Martin asked Mom and Grandma if they’d heard the one about the doctor, the lawyer, and the ice fisherman, and all eyes shifted to him. Like I said, Uncle Martin was a nice guy.

UNCLE MARTIN LEFT
the next day after lunch. Mom settled in at the kitchen table with a pile of manuscripts, and Grandma looked like she was going to do more of her wayward puttering, so I decided it was time to try out my new bike. I was glad it was a mountain bike; a road bike with narrow tires would never have held up on the rutted drive out to the main road. Once there, it only took a few minutes to get to Alice’s street and her short paved driveway.

“Cool bike,” she said, coming out of her house to greet me. “Is it your birthday or something?”

I shook my head. “My uncle Martin gave it to me last night. It’s his birthday, actually, so he’s giving himself a new one.”

“Lucky you,” Alice said.

“Want to ride out on the rail trail?” I asked. I’d always been jealous that my great-grandfather had been able to take a train from the Twin Cities to the cabin in his day. Those trains didn’t run anymore, but somebody had had the bright idea to convert some of the rail lines into paved bike trails. You could ride for miles out there as long as you didn’t get tired of looking at cornfields.

“We didn’t bring my bike up,” Alice said. “But I’m pretty sure one got left behind by the old owners. Let me go see.”

She ducked into her garage and came out with a bike that looked at least two sizes too small for her. It was hot pink with sparkly streamers coming from the handlebars and had a little white basket in front covered with plastic flowers.

“Don’t say anything,” she said.

“You think you can ride that?” I asked. “It looks like it’s made for a kindergartner!”

“It’ll work,” she said with cheerful confidence. “Once I put some air in the tires, anyway.”

“What about a helmet?” I asked.

“Yes, Mr. Boy Scout,” she said. “Give me a minute.” She disappeared back into the garage and emerged with a Dora the Explorer helmet perched on her head.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, cracking up.

Alice tried to pull the helmet down, but it wouldn’t budge. “I guess I am kidding,” she said. She thought for a moment. “Wait! I know what I can use!”

She returned to the garage. This time she came out wearing a huge black hockey helmet, complete with a face guard.

I burst into laughter again.

“I guess the people before us played ice hockey, huh?” Alice said behind her face guard.

“I guess,” I said. “I never met them.”

“Hermit,” Alice said. “You’re as bad as your grandmother.”

I ignored the comment. Alice found a pump, and we filled the tires of her bike. Then she fastened on her hockey helmet.

“So are we ready?” she asked.

I gave her a thumbs-up. “I think you’ll be
very
safe.”

With that, we pushed off — me on Uncle Martin’s cool blue mountain bike; Alice wearing red high-tops and a gargantuan hockey helmet as she rode a little girl’s pink bike.

We pedaled out to the rail trail and followed it up and down the rural hills. We hadn’t thought to bring snacks or money, so on the way home, we were crazy with hunger. Talking about food only made it worse, so I finally changed the topic.

“Name the four worst things about your school,” I said to Alice.

“In Minneapolis?” she asked.

“You have another school?” I asked.

“No.” She laughed, almost to herself. “It just seems so far away right now.”

“Well?”

“I hate cafeteria food,” she said with a shudder. “The beef macaroni, the tofu supreme. Even thinking about it now makes me totally lose my appetite.”

I grunted in agreement.

“I also hate school dances — they’re so awkward, with all your teachers watching you like you’re a lab rat in some kind of menacing experiment.”

“All of middle school is a menacing experiment,” I told her.

“I hate the edges of the hallways,” Alice went on. “That’s where the wax hardens and the janitors never clean it right, so there’s all this dust and lint and gunk stuck in there . . .” She fell silent.

“What’s the fourth?” I asked.

Alice hesitated. “I’m really bad with the pressure,” she said finally.

“The pressure?” I asked, confused. Given how much Alice talked about science, my first thought was that she was talking about air pressure. The kind barometers measure.

“I get stressed out. Big-time, sometimes,” she said, almost like a confession.

“You?” I asked.

“Why are you so surprised?” she asked. But of course I was surprised. Here at Three Bird Lake, she seemed cool as a cucumber — fearless and unflappable.

“It’s different for boys,” she said, not waiting for a response. “The girls at my school, there’s a bunch of them trying to be the smartest, have the cutest clothes, have the most friends, get the starring roles in the school play. It feels like what everyone notices isn’t how many things you’re doing right but whatever thing you’re not doing perfectly. To me, anyway.”

“So you freak out sometimes?”

“Yeah,” Alice said.

“Not here, though,” I said.

She shook her head. “It’s totally different here,” she admitted.

“Back in Minneapolis you wouldn’t wear an oversize hockey helmet while riding a little kid’s bike, would you?”