Three Bird Summer (15 page)

Alice followed me. “You sound paranoid,” she said.

“You don’t know them like I do,” I said. “They pry and try to find out as much as they can about you. And then all they do is laugh at you.”

Alice looked at me without saying anything. This time, I couldn’t read her thoughts. Was she feeling guilty for divulging something private between us, or was she thinking about what I’d said?

But it looked like I wasn’t going to find out. She started climbing down the ladder and said simply, “We talked about Camp Watson.” And then she swam home.

THE NEXT DAY,
Alice showed up as planned for another round of treasure seeking. We didn’t say anything about how we’d left things the day before, and I was glad to put it behind us.

The day had a muggy, heavy feeling to it, which seemed to inspire the bugs to new heights of activity. It was a lousy time to be in the woods. After walking through our paces two more times — once with Alice’s steps and then once more with mine — and searching the ground like a pair of bloodhounds, we felt the futility of our hunt settle in.

“It’s miserable out here,” I said, slapping at a bold mosquito trying to pierce me through my eyebrow.

“This map is really annoying, actually,” Alice said, inspecting it again. “It doesn’t have any landmarks besides the cabin. And it’s crazy not to use real compass coordinates.”

“No wonder my grandmother sounded frustrated in that note,” I said. “Remember, she called him a tease.”

“He
is
a tease!” Alice said. Just then light raindrops began falling. We heard them hit the birch leaves over our heads before we could feel them, but we figured it was only a matter of time before we’d be getting wet.

Alice carefully tucked the map inside her shirt. She’d been smarter about the bugs than I had, throwing on a long-sleeved red-checked shirt over her T-shirt. “There’s so much we don’t know,” she said with a sigh.

“No point in getting wet, anyway,” I said. “Do you need a ride home in the canoe?”

She shook her head as we began walking back to the cabin. “I’ve been bushwhacking more and more through the woods. Pretty soon I’ll have a regular path beaten down through all the poison ivy.”

“You can call it Poison Ivy Parkway,” I said.

“That’s beautiful,” Alice said sarcastically.

We stood under a lone oak tree by Mom’s and Grandma’s cars. Alice gazed at the cabin with a thoughtful expression. “People were so charming back then, weren’t they? Can you imagine a guy today making a hand-drawn treasure map for his sweetheart?”

“He wouldn’t even call her his sweetheart,” I said.

“Good point,” she said. “And then naming the paths after animals. It’s so old-fashioned and cute. I miss the old days.”

I laughed. “You weren’t even there.”

“That’s why I miss them,” she said. She looked up at the treetops and spun around slowly, almost as if she were trying to wind back time with each turn of her body. But then she stopped and shook her head and gave me her usual smile. “So we’re done treasure hunting?” she asked.

“I think so,” I said. I was actually relieved to be ending our search. What had started out as a fun diversion had turned into a lot of frustration.

“Can I keep the map a little longer, anyway?” Alice asked. “I thought I might go over some of your grandma’s letters and see if there are any clues in them.”

“Sure,” I said. “And do you want to do something later? I could teach you cribbage.”

“Oh, um,” she said, looking uncomfortable, “I can’t. My dad and I are . . . doing something.”

“Yeah?” I asked, hoping she’d explain.

But all she said was, “Yeah. So another time.” She walked around our woodpile and began to pick her way through the enveloping trees down Poison Ivy Parkway.

The rain continued as just a light sprinkle, so I didn’t hurry back inside. Instead, I leaned against the tree and looked at the cabin, trying to imagine going back in time twenty, forty, sixty years. How different would things have looked back then? Aside from the cars, there wasn’t much here to indicate the year. Just my mom’s New Balance running shoes on the deck, my fleece jacket hanging up to dry. But the cabin was the same. The trees were the same — taller, Grandma said, but still the same. The clothesline, the light fixtures, the rubber bucket where we washed the sand off our bare feet before stepping indoors — I was pretty sure these had been here, virtually unchanged, since the day the cabin was built. That was part of Grandma’s master plan. But wasn’t there still something else around us — some hum of activity, pushing and pulsing in the air, that we could feel standing here even if we couldn’t see it? Maybe it was our communications signals, buzzing around us. Or maybe it wasn’t the present at all, but the past and all its stories living on in this place — not buried and forgotten, but racing around unseen like a pack of ghosts so that we crashed into them at every turn without even quite knowing it.

During lunch, I tried to ignore the tense conversation that had started up between Mom and Grandma. Not surprisingly, Mom was fixated on the calendar, trying to figure out how to get everything done before we left and trying to resolve what to do with Grandma. Just as predictably, Grandma found her tiresome.

“Martin can come get me like he always does,” she told Mom. “I don’t know why you keep bringing this up.”

“Because, Ma, you can’t stay here alone until he comes. Look at you — have you driven the Taurus even once this summer? How will you get food?”

Grandma shrugged.

“Maybe she could get weekly deliveries,” I suggested.

Mom shot me an angry look, so I went back to my silent eating. But I couldn’t help feeling a little protective of Grandma. I remembered what Uncle Martin had said, about how she didn’t fence him in and he wasn’t going to do the same to her. Why was it just my mom who wanted to make everyone follow certain rules?

I peered through the screen window and noticed that we still hadn’t had a downpour. No wonder the atmosphere felt so charged.

“I’m trying to reason with you, Ma,” Mom said. “But at a certain point, I’m just going to make you do what I say. You know that, don’t you?”

My grandmother looked up at my mother with a sudden flash of anger. “You’re treating me like an infant! This is my house, Bobbie. If I want, I can make you leave!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom said. She picked up her dishes and half tossed them in the sink. Good thing they were made out of metal. “This is what I get for trying to take good care of you. Beautiful.”

Ladies fighting. I hated it and felt a sudden longing for the old days, when my dad and uncles and cousins were around to fill the house with silliness and energy. Dad would know what to say to calm them both down, or at least he would have before he and Mom started their own arguing.

I left the kitchen, grabbed some money from my room, and told the two of them I was going into town. Mom and Grandma weren’t even talking anymore, just brooding from opposite sides of the cabin. Never was I more grateful to Uncle Martin for the gift of his bike.

THOMPSON’S DIME STORE
had emptied piggy banks all over Hubbard County for decades. Kids loved the place: the squirt guns, beach balls, yo-yos, plastic tomahawks, cheesy paint-by-number sets. Supposedly Mr. Thompson had opened the store at a time when many things did sell for just a dime. Now the name was sort of a joke; even the windup tarantulas cost a dollar. But I didn’t care. It was still my favorite store in town.

The bells chimed when I went inside, and the familiar smell of scented candles filled my nose. I turned to the toy and game section and started looking around. The jigsaw puzzles were usually tempting, but not these — too many soft-focus scenes of kittens and unicorns. I checked out the bins of plastic animals, packages of marbles, dart sets, playing cards. The amount of junk was impressive.

The only thing that really captured my interest was a rubber crayfish, its antennae and pinchers hilariously wobbly. It reminded me of how Alice had looked dancing on the dock the day we’d played lake golf, and I couldn’t help chuckling.

Then something else caught my eye. It was a black plastic chest about the size of a small shoe box and filled with fake gold coins and colorful gems. Pretend treasure, of course, for kids who were into pirates. But it got me thinking about what Alice had said, about how nobody ever made treasure maps anymore. Maybe I could bury a treasure chest and make a map showing her where to find it. And unlike G, I’d make sure my map was easy to follow.

I looked again at the plastic chest. It would be kind of fun making a map and figuring out how to give her clues. But I’d need to fill it with something other than fake gems and gold — with something Alice would actually like. Then I remembered that the candy store usually sold coin-shaped chocolates covered with gold foil. I could fit a bunch of them in the chest. Maybe I’d even throw in the rubber crayfish. Alice would think it was hilarious.

I bought the treasure chest and the crayfish from the salesclerk — an older teenager who looked at me like I was two instead of twelve.

“It’s not for me,” I mumbled as he slid my purchases into a paper bag.

“Whatever,” he said.

I made my way down to the candy store and bought gold coins for Alice and a bag of malted milk balls for myself.

It was still early in the afternoon, and I didn’t have any interest in getting home before dinner. So I headed over to the grocery store and spent the last of my money on a couple of new magazines. There was a bench at Pullman Park right next to the water and under the shade of the weeping willow. It was the perfect place to waste some time. I rode over to the park, propped my bike against the tree, and sat down to read and munch on the malt balls.

After an hour my mouth felt sticky and parched. I walked up the embankment toward the water fountain, halfway between the kids’ playground and the tennis courts. Someone had left pink gum stuck to the edge of the metal basin, but I ignored it and took a few big gulps of water. When I was done, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and was just about to return to my bench when I caught sight of a familiar figure on the tennis courts.

It was Alice.

She had her hair pulled back in a smooth ponytail and was dressed entirely in white — white dress, white tennis shoes, and white wristbands. She looked like she’d just stepped out of a sports catalog.

On the other side of the net was a guy — about fifteen — dressed in a slightly more rumpled version of the same outfit. He had that old-school preppy look, where the clothes looked super expensive, but he was too cool to keep them neat.

So this was her afternoon plan. And it wasn’t with her dad at all!

I watched as Alice gathered up some balls — rolling them deftly up against the side of her foot with her tennis racquet, then sliding them onto the racquet to lift them to her hand. She tucked the extra balls under her dress — what did she have, pockets in her underwear? — and then positioned herself on the baseline. Her movements were seamless as she drew back the racquet, tossed the ball into the air, and then whacked it powerfully over the net. Mr. Preppy had no trouble returning it, but Alice ran to the net and smashed the ball into the front corner, where not even a pro could have reached it. Her opponent said something that sounded sarcastic, but Alice was already picking up another ball and jogging back to the baseline.

It was then that she spotted me. For a moment, she hesitated, but then she waved her left hand eagerly in my direction, as if my catching her playing tennis with a country-club guy was the most normal thing in the world. I was glad we were too far apart to exchange words, too far even, I hoped, to see each other’s expressions. I waved halfheartedly, then headed back for my bike.

A sparrow sat perched on my bag from the dime store. It fluttered away when I approached but left behind a piece of white bird poop that summed up perfectly how I now felt about the treasure chest and my stupid idea for making Alice her own map. What a fake she was, pretending to be some kind of down-to-earth nature geek with freaky toes and a love of science. In truth, she was what I’d always suspected her to be: a star athlete who hung out with preppy guys and who, once she was back home, would probably joke about the dorky guy she had to hang out with all summer.