Middle of Nowhere (16 page)

I counted my steps. One, two, three. When I did that, I stopped panicking. And as soon as I stopped panicking a glimmer appeared beyond the trees. One, two, three. One, two, three.

Finally I reached the shore all tangled with reeds, sat down and cried. But not for long, because it was starting to get dark. The days were shorter now. Summer was coming to an end.

I kept walking.

One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three.

The next time I stopped was on a mossy patch of ground. I badly needed to see things in a different way so I put my head on the ground and — one, two, three — kicked my legs up against a tree.

I missed my mom. I loved her.

On a scale of one to ten, how would I rate the chance of her coming back? Of her being a good mother?

Upside down, I clung to the tree, but when I looked out at the lake I saw a different number, one that was the same no matter which way you looked at it. A number was half sunk in the shallow water near the shore, among the stones and reeds.

On a scale of one to ten? Was she ever coming back?

A zero.

A toilet seat.

12

AFTER I FISHED
the toilet seat out of the water, everything changed. All the way back to the cabin the trees sort of parted and I knew the way. Mrs. Burt and Artie were huddled by the fire, but they jumped up as soon as they saw me staggering toward them. The scratches on my face stung and my legs and arms were muddy and bleeding. In my outstretched hands was the toilet seat.

When they saw it, they whooped for joy. Artie started jumping around me, hugging me and saying, “You really are Sir Curtis, Curtis! You really are a hero!”

Mrs. Burt heated water on the stove to wash all my cuts and scratches. She bandaged the worst ones, then made a special tea and fed it to me with a spoon while she sang all her old songs for me. I fell asleep and didn't wake up until the middle of the next day.

When I did finally get up, I felt so light, like I had lost a hundred pounds overnight. It was the weight of all that worry finally lifting off. I wasn't waiting for Mom anymore. I wasn't wondering where she was. I was just living, like I had been before she went away.

Mrs. Burt polished up the toilet seat for a special ceremony.

With towels as capes and clover chains as crowns, we marched in a procession to the outhouse. Artie led us, carrying the toilet seat on a pillow.

“Brave King Arthur,” Mrs. Burt said in a deep pretend voice, “we have succeeded in our noble quest. After thirty long years your most worthy knight, Brave Sir Curtis of the Round Toilet Seat, has returned this treasure to the royal outhouse. Your throne is now intact.”

Then we cheered and Mrs. Burt took from the folds of her cape a special treat she had been saving — two bottles of orange pop. We poured a little down the hole of the outhouse to christen it. Then we drank the rest.

With the seat, the outhouse was much more comfortable than before, but I didn't go there anymore except when I had to. Whenever I thought of Mom I pushed her out of my head.

All her promises had been lies. I knew that now. She was somewhere with some new guy, listening to his dumb songs. She had probably ripped the sleeves off her T-shirts, too.

Mrs. Burt and I finally swam across the lake together. Artie promised to stay in the cabin. He stayed inside with his life jacket on and played with Clyde's Matchbox cars and Smelly Bear and Happy and the china boy and girl.

According to Mrs. Burt's watch, it took twenty-four minutes to swim across and thirty-three minutes to swim back because we were tired. From the other side we could see Mr. Munro's place.

The feeling I had crawling back on shore after the swim was total exhaustion. Also total satisfaction. I flopped onto my back and watched a honking V of Canada geese fly over, breaking up the blue.

“Right on time,” said Mrs. Burt, who sat beside me in her dripping tutu. “There's a nip in the air in the mornings. Do you feel it, Curtis? Fall comes fast up north.”

What were we going to do? When she invited us to the cabin, she called it a holiday. I never wondered how long the holiday would be. By now Nelson would have rented our apartment to somebody else. The police would have forgotten all about us.

I told this to Mrs. Burt that night around the fire.

I said, “We should probably go back.” Artie was supposed to start grade one. He had to learn to read.

“Why can't I teach him? It can't be that hard. As for you, you've learned more this summer than you ever did in all your years doing the three Rs.”

“What are the three Rs?”

“Reading, Writing, Rithmetic.”

That made me wonder if she was the best person to teach Artie.

She read my mind and said to Artie, “Go and get one of those books of Clyde's out of the box.” He came back with exactly the one she needed, an alphabet book.

“What's this letter, Artie?” she asked.

“I don't know,” Artie said.

“It's A. Say A.”

“A,” Artie said.

“Give me your finger.” He did and she took it and traced the letter for him, saying, “A,” again. “Now pat my back.”

He scampered behind her. He loved making her burp.

“A,” she burped.

Artie giggled like it was the first time he had heard her do it.

“What's this letter?” she asked, pointing in the book.

“A!” Artie laughed.

Mrs. Burt looked at me in triumph.

“Do B now!” Artie screamed.

He is probably the only kid in history who learned his letters by the burping method.

And so I agreed we'd stay on a little longer and that Mrs. Burt would take charge of Artie's lessons. As for me, I hiked up to the Bel Air and brought down the pillowcase of schoolwork that I hadn't even looked at once.

The beginning of the school year was mostly review anyway. I could read over last year's work.

SOMETIMES ARTIE SLEPT
with me, sometimes he slept with Mrs. Burt. It didn't hurt my feelings anymore when I woke in the morning and saw his sleeping bag at the bottom of the bed like an empty cocoon. It just meant he was in the next room with Mrs. Burt, not that he was any less of a brother to me. But the mornings were chilly now, so I liked it better when Artie was there. Because it was warmer.

We woke up whenever we felt like it. Artie was almost always first. But one morning he just lay there working something in his mouth, a funny expression on his face.

“Are you sick?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

“Do you feel sick?”

“No, but there's a pill in my mouth.” He stuck out his tongue. Sitting there on the pink cushion of it was his tooth.

A memory came back. Not Brandon's hand feeling under my pillow for the dollar, but Mom waddling into the Pennypackers' living-room behind her big stomach. She never missed a visit even though it took her three buses to get there. But it seemed like she'd grown huge in just a week.

I pointed at the bulge and asked, “What's that?”

She laughed. “This is your brother who you're going to meet in a few weeks.”

I started to cry then. I probably pitched a fit. Mrs. Pennypacker came running. When she saw I was all right, that Mom was hugging me, she walked backward out of the room again. Brandon was gaping in the doorway and she made him leave, too.

I was crying because I knew then I would have to live with the Pennypackers for the rest of my life. The rest of my short life, because the string in the bedroom was barely a hand space from the wall. This was probably the last time I would see my mother before the string touched the wall and I ceased to exist. She would have another little boy in a few weeks. She didn't need me anymore.

“No, Curtis,” she said. “This little baby is going to help me get you back.”

“How?”

“He's going to be born and I'm going to look after him. I'm going to take better care of him than any mother ever did. And when they see what a good job I'm doing, when they see how much I love this little baby, they'll know I'm a good mother and they'll let me bring you home.”

Then she took my hand and pressed it to her hard belly, the way she ended every visit. She pressed her other hand to my heart. I put my hand over hers. Our foreheads touched.

“I promise,” she said.

This time I could feel Artie kicking to get out.

That's exactly what happened. Artie was born and she looked after him so well that every Saturday afternoon he was bigger and his little hand clutched my finger harder and he cried louder and nursed longer. So one of those Saturdays I said goodbye to the Pennypackers and the three of us went home.

“Hold still,” I said to Artie. Very carefully, I lifted the tooth off his tongue. “Go and ask Mrs. Burt for her mirror. There's a nice space left in your mouth.”

Off he scampered. In a second I was out of the bed, too, and clawing through the drawers until I found Mom's wallet. I opened it and there she was, looking at me from the community college I.D. card.

She wasn't smiling. She was just looking straight ahead, but her eyes seemed to be saying something to me now as I put Artie's tooth in the change compartment and zipped it up.

What were they saying?

They were asking for Artie's tooth.

I knew Mrs. Burt would want it. She would want it so Artie could put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy.

“How could you lose it?” she snapped at me. “You only had it for a minute!”

“I dropped it.”

We unzipped our sleeping bags and shook them. When the bottle of lotion fell out of mine, Mrs. Burt gave me a look. We moved the bed away from the wall so she could sweep around it with the broom. Artie pitched a fit.

“Good thing we found the lotion,” she said, glaring at me again.

In the end we used a substitute tooth, a pebble the same size. Artie got his dollar but Mrs. Burt still grumbled under her breath.

I TRIED TO
be honest with her. I approached her at a good time, while she was cooking, and said, “Mrs. Burt, I have an idea.”

“What?”

“I think we should go together to Social Services and say Artie and I want to live with you.”

She was bent over stirring batter for johnnycake, but now she jerked up straight.

“You're living with me now. Why should Social Services have to know?”

“I want to go back to the city.”

She swung around so fast a big glob of batter flew off the spoon and landed halfway across the room.

“They'll never let you stay with a crippled old lady like me!”

“We've been staying with you all this time and you've looked after us really well.”

Her eyes bulged behind her glasses. “You can't tell anybody that!”

“Why not?”

“I didn't have permission. I'll be in big trouble. Then my daughter'll sell me out and put me in a home.”

“Mrs. Burt,” I said, trying to calm her down. “Before we came away with you, I was afraid of going to Social Services. I thought they'd split up me and Artie and we wouldn't have any choice. But now that I swam all the way across the lake with you and came face to face with a bear? Now that I found the toilet seat? Convincing them to keep us together is going to be a snap compared to that.”

Mrs. Burt shrieked, “They aren't going to give a hoot about that old toilet seat!” At the sound of her raised voice, Artie came tearing inside the cabin and ran to her.

“If we go back,” she continued, “they are going to take you away for sure! They'll put me in a home and they'll split you up! They'll put you with those people again! The Pennywhatsits. You already know them so they'll think they're doing you a favor sending you back.”

“I don't want to go with Brandon!” Artie wailed.

“Mrs. Burt,” I said.

“No! No! No! No!”