Surface Tension (12 page)

I hit the water. Mom and Dad are running over to me, but I call out, “I'm okay. I'm okay.”

I think I cut myself. I think I cut myself on some of the stone.

Oh God, I've got a big cut on my knee from where it scraped across the stone. Mom is bending over me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank God.”

I look around for Sophie, but she's gone. I wonder if she saw me fall. Maybe she'll want to help.

Dad helps me stand up, but the cut on my knee is bleeding all the way down my shin. It hurts to walk on. I can't walk.

Dad puts himself under one arm. That makes it a lot easier to walk. I can hop on my good leg and keep the other one up.

Dad says, “That was pretty stupid.”

“Yeah,” I say.

My back is really hurting too. I think I scraped it pretty good. My butt too. My whole body is hurting now. I ripped a hole in the back of my bathing suit. That's embarrassing.

I hop along as far as I can, but my body is aching so much. Mom puts herself under the other arm, and even though she's a lot shorter than me, they carry me home.

The doctor at the emergency room gives me a bunch of shots, pulls the little pieces of shale out of my cuts, and stitches me up.

Mom and Dad went to the hospital gift shop and bought
me a bunch of magazines and some puzzle books to look at while I'm recovering.

They take me home and set me up on the green couch. My leg is still throbbing, and I'm just plain tired.

Mom and Dad leave me alone for a while and go down to the lake, and I close my eyes.

I wonder where Sophie went. Her eyes look like an Egyptian queen's eyes. They're huge and brown, and I don't know why, but I want to stare into them for as long as I can.

Mom wakes me up. She's holding a peach. Mom says, “I think this is for you.”

“What?”

“Someone left it outside the front door while you were sleeping.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know who left it?”

“No.”

“You didn't see anyone?”

“No. I was asleep.”

“Hmm. That's a mystery. You would think they would leave a note.”

“Yeah, I guess they just wanted me to have a peach.”

The Richardsons brought over the newspaper so I would have something new to read.

I'd like to read a story about someone bringing a peach to someone who fell down a waterfall.

The whole Richardson clan is down for the weekend and I'm missing it. Mike and Eliza, Joe and Danielle, even Mary, and
they're all out on the lawn playing soccer. I want to go out and play so bad. They look like they're having the best time. The minister's van is gone and my parents and the Richardsons are having drinks on the porch.

I limp out onto the lawn and stand next to the field. Joe and Mary are on one team, and Mike, Eliza, and Danielle are on the other. It's not really fair because Mary and Joe are both really good. They can pass and dribble and do everything. They've got two orange cones set up on either side of the lawn for the goals, but they don't have a goalie.

“Can I be goalie?” I say it loud enough so everyone can hear it, but they ignore me. I say it again and this time they all stop and think about it. I hope Mike doesn't say anything about that weird phone call or the
Playboy.

Mike says, “Sure, if you feel up to it.”

Eliza smiles at me. “Watch out, you guys. This kid's dangerous.” I wish she hadn't called me “kid.”

I go out to the middle of the goal that Mike and the ladies are going to shoot on. This way it's three on three and it's more fair, and besides, I want to be on the winning team.

Joe passes the ball to Mary and she makes a nice little move to go right around Eliza. I don't think Eliza has ever played soccer before. Danielle tries to get in front of Mary, but Mary goes right by her too. Danielle stuck her foot out and Mary had to kick the ball a little farther away than she wanted to. Mike comes running in and steals the ball from her.

Mike is better than I thought he was. He makes a sweet crossover move and goes right past Joe. Okay, here he comes. He's going to shoot. Which way? He kicks it really hard. Which way? Left? No, right. Shit.

Fuck, I fell on my knee. Fuck that hurts. Ow. Fuck, I think I hurt my knee again. That was so fucking stupid.

Ah shit. It's bleeding. It's bleeding a lot. Fuck. It looks like we're heading back to the emergency room.

It's the same doctor as the last time I was here. And last time he was really nice. He was making jokes about boys doing stupid stuff while he was pulling the little pieces of stone out of my knee, but this time he's in a really bad mood. He says I popped open almost all of my stitches when I fell down on my knee.

I notice that he didn't give me any painkillers this time. He's probably pissed off because he has to do this all over again. It really hurts every time he puts a stitch in. It really does. Like a needle being pulled in and out of my knee. I don't get why he's so mad. He's probably going to make more money off of me. I wonder if they get paid per stitch or if they get paid by the amount of time they take with each patient or what.

I don't know, but if he gets paid by the hour, he should really slow down, because he's not being very careful this time.

The first time he did this, I think he took about twice as much time. Finally, he finishes with his stitches and then takes Mom outside the room to talk.

I'm practicing my rock skipping on the beach because it's about the only thing I can do without hurting my knee again. The Richardsons are working on their gardening, and the minister is adding to his seaweed pile.

The minister goes back to the shed on the other side of
his house. He brings back a gallon of gas in one of the red plastic containers like we have. Not like the nice metal ones Mr. Richardson has.

He pours a little of it over the seaweed and lights it on fire. There's not a lot of flame, but there is a lot of dark gray smoke. And the smoke is blowing right off the beach into Mr. and Mrs. Richardson's bedroom window. I don't know how well that's going to go over. Probably not too well.

Seaweed doesn't smell good when it's burned. It's got this really nasty, ashy smell and the smoke hurts my eyes. It almost smells like burning hair, but not as bad.

Mr. Richardson is gardening on the other side of the house, so it takes a while for the smoke to get over to him.

He doesn't waste a second. He walks right over to the minister and starts talking. I can't hear what he's saying, but I don't have to. I can see exactly what he's saying.

Mr. Richardson stops talking and the minister starts. I can't hear what he's saying either, but he's speaking without moving any other part of his body. Mr. Richardson shoves his hands way down into his pockets and keeps them there.

He doesn't listen for too long. He turns around and walks back to his yard. In a way, the whole thing is kind of funny, watching two old guys argue with each other.

I call out, “Hey, Mr. Richardson, what did you say to him?”

Mr. Richardson just ignores me and keeps on walking. That's not a good sign.

The wind shifts after dinner. A north wind, blowing right up the beach and toward the minister's cottage. Mr. Richardson doesn't waste any time. He goes right to the garage and gets
his antique gas can, douses his stick pile, and lights it up. It's our last night. I'm glad I got to see this.

The flames rise up into the fading light, and the smoke drifts across the lawn toward the minister's house. If this were a James Bond movie, he'd say something like “Looks like the
wind
has shifted,” putting the emphasis on “wind” and making it seem like that actually meant something else.

From the picnic table, I just watch the smoke cross the yard and go right into the minister's windows. There are lights on in there, but I'm not sure anyone is home.

The minister drives a big white van with a cross painted on the side in red. Not like the Red Cross, but a Jesus cross painted red. The van is still in the driveway, but I don't see him.

The Richardsons invite us over to have marshmallows around their bonfire, and we carry our folding chairs onto their beach and sit down.

Mr. Richardson hands me a stick and two marshmallows and I get to work. I like to toast my marshmallows slowly on the edges of the flames, constantly spinning the stick so they cook evenly. I watch them, so if one of the marshmallows catches on fire, I'm ready for it and can blow out the flame before it gets too charred. It takes a while to cook them this way, but finally they're done and I take them out of the fire.

I look around the fire at everyone's faces: Mom and Dad, Mr. and Mrs. Richardson, Mike, Joe, Mary, Danielle, and Eliza. They stare at the flames like they're hypnotized. Their faces are orange and flickering. A rock pops inside the fire and everybody snaps out of it. I want to say something to liven things up and get everyone to stop thinking so much,
so I start singing a song from a CD we used to have in the car when I was little.

And then you make up two rhyming things, like:

It takes a second for everyone to pick up on my song, but halfway through the third verse, Mr. Richardson still hasn't chimed in. He's just staring into the flames.

I say, “Mr. Richardson, take it.”

He looks up. “What?” He wasn't listening. I wonder what he was thinking about.

I take it:

We keep singing for a while, until we run out of marsh-mallows and the fire dies in the stones. We walk back to our
cottage, through the Richardsons' yard. The minister's van isn't there anymore.

We leave today, but we're taking our time. We're going to have one last breakfast at the picnic table. Dad made pancakes and used up as much of the groceries as he could. Whatever we don't eat we can give to the Richardsons.

I carry the syrup and the carton of milk. Dad carries the pancakes and the coffee. Mom's got the glasses for milk and a small container of strawberries. Dad joked about putting peppermint stick ice cream on his pancakes. Actually, I'm not sure if he was joking.

We all sit down on the lake-watching side of the picnic table. I start cutting up my pancakes so I can get as much syrup on them as possible. I'm ready for people to start saying “serene.”

“What the fuck is that?”

I look up expecting to see a sniper. Dad's looking out to the water, toward the Bells' dock. I don't see what he's looking at.

Oh wait. I see it. There's a new flag flying at the end of the dock. A Confederate flag.

Mom picks up her plate and stomps back into the cottage. Dad and I follow her with the rest of the food.

She says, “The Sinister Minister has gone too far this time. Doesn't he know where he is? This is the North, not the South. Where does he think he is? He put a Confederate flag up at the end of his dock. It just makes me so mad to look at it. Who does he think he is? This isn't Alabama or Georgia.”

My mom is really mad. I've never seen her this mad.

She's stomping around the cottage, packing up our stuff and throwing it in the suitcases.

She says, “I mean, the nerve. The nerve! He's just … he's just … I don't know. I do not know what he's thinking. That man is a terrible person.”

My parents grew up in the sixties. They marched against the Vietnam War. They protested segregation, and now, all these years later, there's a flag up, promoting all the things they protested, right in their backyard.

Dad is mad too. He's pacing around the cottage. Dad says, “That son of a bitch is going to have to take that damn thing down. That is not going to stand. That thing is going to have to come down.”

Mom and Dad are in the car. They didn't want to come down to the beach to say good-bye to the lake. This has been the worst two weeks of my life. Everything bad has happened.

I wish I could go back in time and change everything. I wish I could keep that stupid minister from moving into our neighborhood. Everything changed when he moved in.

I wish I could go forward in time too. And be a few years older so Eliza wouldn't look at me like I'm a little kid. I wish I'd never gone up to her house.

I limp down to the Richardsons' dock, stand in the sun, and look at the water. I love how it changes every day. Sometimes it's as smooth as glass, sometimes it looks like a mirror, and sometimes it's choppy as hell.

Right now it's just a little wavy. The waves lap up against the dock, and the sound makes me relax a little. The water is so perfect.

I close my eyes and listen to the waves lapping up against the dock and feel the warm wind coming from the south.

I wish I could live here. I wish I could live here forever, just like this, except for without the Confederate flag.

We're in the car and we're pulling away. The pine branches scrape against the kayak and Dad cringes. I look back over my shoulder at the Confederate flag blowing in the wind at the end of the Bells' dock.

Dad says, “That thing better be gone by the time we get back next year. It better be gone or I don't know what I'll do.”

“Would you boys like some ice cream?” Dad sounds stupid. We all know he just wants to stop and get his peppermint stick.

My best friend, Steve, is in the backseat with me. I've been telling him about this place ever since we were little, and he's finally going to get to see it for himself. I show him the Wirth mansion and the house where the famous guy from TV used to live. He takes out one of his earbuds but leaves the other one in.

I say, “That farm stand has the best corn on the cob, and really good fresh strawberries too.”

He just looks out the window and nods.

I tell him about the luckystones and the old farm they turned into a winery. It's kind of cool having somebody from home come up here, but I'm not sure he's really getting it.