The Summer Before Boys (8 page)

“Power Rangers?” Uncle Bruce asked her.

“Living?” Eliza would try and she was serious.

I gave her one. “Lilo and Stitch.”

“Living?”

And we would all laugh, especially Eliza. I think she loved the attention but I knew she really couldn't tell the difference.

“Harry Potter?” my mother would ask.

“Animated?”

I was lonely for Eliza. So out of the blue I just said, “Shrek.”

Nothing.

“Raven,” I tried another one.
That's So Raven
was one of Eliza's favorite shows.

She looked up. I saw a little smile, the tiniest smile showing.

“Animated?”

I knew she was playing with me. I knew it was going to be okay.

A
nd Peter's father did come back, just before the end of school—only a couple of months after he had left for his second tour.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mrs. Jaffe was asking.

No,
I thought.
Why would he want to talk about it? He hasn't talked all year.

But he did.

Nonstop. All of a sudden Peter Vos was a virtual chatterbox.

“They sent him home early,” Peter told us.

It was just the three of us in the room, like always. It was a half-day kindergarten room, the room we used when the half-day kindergarten kids all got to go home. I felt huge sitting in those tiny chairs at that tiny table. There were gigantic colorful pictures of the alphabet all around the room. Colors, and
numbers, and the seasons—winter, spring, summer, fall. And faces of the clock, faces, real faces all pointing to different times. The hour and the half hour. All smiling. All cartoons, nothing real.

“He got hurt but not really hurt. Not hurt in his body, anyway,” Peter went on. “He didn't get his face blown off, or his brains blown out, or anything like that, either.”

I shuddered, all the way from my shoulders to my toes. No one ever talked that way. But Mrs. Jaffe was nodding her head and listening, sitting right under the ridiculously gleeful face whose nose had hands pointing to twelve noon.

“He's different now. My dad is different.”

“How so?” Mrs. Jaffe asked him.

“He's angry all the time,” Peter said. “He yells. He likes it quiet in the house. When my baby sister started running around the kitchen, making all this noise, he slammed his fist down on the counter. He told her to shut up.”

I saw that Peter wasn't looking at Mrs. Jaffe when he was talking. He wasn't looking at me, either. His head was turned and his eyes were looking up at the ceiling. It was like he didn't want anyone to connect him to what he was saying.

“Kaley's two and a half,” Peter said. “She doesn't understand. And he screams. At night. In his sleep, I guess.”

I felt bad for Peter, I did. But in that moment all I could think
of was my mom. My mom crying or screaming. Or coming home so different. Did that happen to everyone?

“He's always angry,” Peter went on.

“Does he talk to you about it, Peter?” Mrs. Jaffe was saying. “Or your mom?”

Peter shook his head. “Nobody talks about anything.”

Mrs. Jaffe leaned closer to him. “This is the place to talk, Peter,” she said.

Peter finally lowered his eyes. He looked at her and I couldn't tell if he was really sad or really mad and he said, “Well, sometimes I wish my dad hadn't come home at all.”

M
y dad was supposed to take me home every weekend and bring me back Sunday night so he could go to work again Monday. But last weekend my dad called and said he had to work and Aunt Louisa said it was easier having me around anyway, which made me feel kind of good about that, but sad that I wouldn't get to see my dad.

Now the weekend had come again and I didn't want to go.

I wanted to go up to the hotel, which we didn't usually do on weekends. First of all, Uncle Bruce liked to stay home on his days off, and second, weekends were the busiest at Mohawk and Mrs. Smith didn't like us “underfoot.” But sometimes, maybe, there was always a chance, I thought. If I wanted it badly enough I could find a way to get up to the mountain house.

Michael would be there, I bet.

There was the Saturday night outdoor movie on the lawn. I bet he would be there, at the movie. I imagined the sun would have just set and crowds of people would be gathering around in the almost dark summer evening.
Oh, hi,
I might have said as if I barely remembered who he was.

Or maybe I would just nod my head like I knew but didn't really care.

“Your dad's here,” Eliza shouted and she ran to open the door.

I felt my hopes sink.

“Okay, I probably should have told you before,” Aunt Louisa said, getting to her feet. “Dad's here to visit, Julia, but he's not going to be able to take you for the weekend.”

I looked over at my dad who was now standing inside. He had his hands in his pockets. Aunt Louisa seemed to be doing the talking for him as if they had it all planned out.

“Well, Dad has to work again, the weekend shift. And it's no big deal, but summer is good overtime and it will just make it easier when your mom comes home and all.”

My dad said, “I'm sorry, sweetie, but let's have a good visit while I'm here.”

So many thoughts jumped into my brain one at a time, so fast they collided.

First:
Oh, goody, I can go up to the mountain house.

Second:
But we're not supposed to go to the mountain house on weekends.

Third:
Maybe I can figure out a way
—then fourth:
I am not going home this weekend and it's been a month
and that's when I started to feel really bad.

“Now, Julia.” My dad put his arms around me. “It's only another week.”

I pressed my face into my dad's shirt. I had never felt more homesick. How could I have wanted something so badly a second ago that was making me feel awful now? How could I be so sad and so excited all at the same time?

“C'mon now, everyone. We have lots of time,” Aunt Louisa said. “Who wants something to drink? Some chips?”

When Uncle Bruce came home we all ate dinner together, and when my mom called even she seemed to know I wasn't going home for the weekend. I was the only one who didn't get any say in my own life.

“I love you, Julia. I miss you like crazy,” she told me.

I couldn't hear her that well and besides there was no privacy so I just acted like everything was fine, even though I felt so uncomfortable inside.

“I miss you, too, Mommy,” I said. I sounded like a baby and
I knew everybody at the table was listening to me and for some reason that made me so mad.

When it was time for my dad to leave, Aunt Louisa and I walked him out to his car. Every step closer I got madder and madder and then I started to cry. I couldn't help it, it all just came out.

My dad turned around. “Sweetie, please, don't make me feel worse than I already do.” He took a few steps toward the front seat of his car and then he reached into the backseat. “Look, sweetie, your mom and I were going to give you this when she gets back in a couple of weeks, but now seems like a better time.”

He handed me a cell phone.

Louisa gripped her hands together and it made a clapping sound. “Wow, Julia, look at that. How exciting.”

I had wanted a cell phone for so long, but somehow right now it just seemed wrong.

“Don't you like it?” my dad asked.

I did. “I do,” I said. I was stuck in the middle of myself again and neither side was very pretty. If I took the cell phone it made me look selfish and if I didn't I looked ungrateful.

It was pink.

“It's all set up.” My dad smiled. He looked happier.

“Thanks, Dad.” I sniffled.

• • •

Louisa and I stood in the driveway and watched our dad head off down the road. He had a bumper sticker of two yellow ribbons on either side of the bold printed words:
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
. I remembered when we bought it, at the pharmacy in town, just after my mom left for Iraq.

B
y Saturday morning I had pretty much replaced my homesickness by hatching the perfect plot for getting Eliza to agree see the movie with me up at Mohawk. Well, actually I had no plan yet at all, but I was mentally hard at work on it until Aunt Louisa just crushed my dreams like a bug on the windowsill.

“No one's going up to the hotel over the weekend,” Aunt Louisa said. “You two can occupy yourselves right here.”

Really, life should have an accompanying soundtrack. There should be pathetic violin music playing just in case you are not sure how you are going to feel. But I knew. The disappointment washed over me as quickly as I could understand the words coming from her mouth. I felt like a wall had just fallen down on me, crushing me and all my potential plans underneath.

But sometimes it's better not to show your hand. And most times it's better not to show your handwriting, either. Eliza was fine with not going up to the hotel, but I went to hide in the bathroom because that's what a journal is for.

I wrote:
M-i-c-h-e-a-l. M-i-c-h-e-a-l.
And when I was too embarrassed to read over my own sentences, the ones I had just written, I just kept writing.

I have to get up to the hotel tonight. I have to be there if Michael shows up for the outdoor movie. He's got to show up. He's just got to. And Aunt Louisa has to let me go. She's not my mother. She can't tell me what to do anyway.

Uncle Bruce knocked on the bathroom door. “Are you all right in there, Julia?”

“I'm fine.”

I listened as his footsteps moved away. But there was only one bathroom in the house, so I had to write fast before someone had to use the toilet.

Michael is the one. I think I really like him. And if I can just see him alone I will know for sure. Movie night is my only chance. I've got to find a way to get up there. Summer is already half over and I won't have the chance ever again. I don't know where he goes to school. I don't even know his last name!!!!

My life was terrible.

Then, just like that, the background music changed.

Aunt Louisa and Uncle Bruce had to drive all the way up to Albany to pick up the truck from a friend who did the work at cost, which meant it would cost a lot less on this end. And they had to go today or else at four thirty Monday morning in order to be back in time for Uncle Bruce to get to work.

“I don't want to leave you girls alone,” Aunt Louisa was saying and Eliza was whining about how she didn't want to drive a whole two hours just to turn around and drive back again.

“I stay alone all the time,” I added, knowing that four hours would be just what I needed.

“Mom, we'll be fine. You've left me alone before. And besides,” Eliza added. “We're not alone. We have each other.”

Inside, my heart was pounding with the anticipation that Eliza would be able to convince her mom to go without us, even though I knew we had completely different reasons. And even though I knew I wasn't being fair by keeping mine a secret.

“Well, okay,” Aunt Louisa gave in.

I swear, if there was an orchestra playing somewhere, it would be getting louder and louder, building up to that moment just before the girl meets the boy—

—And then they kiss.

E
ven while Eliza was explaining why never in a million years would she agree to sneak out and walk up to the hotel, I was imagining how I would first see Michael. What it would be like. What I would say. What he would say.

Uncle Bruce and Aunt Louisa pulled out of the driveway, but not before telling us they would be back in a few hours.
Don't let anyone in. Don't answer the phone unless you hear someone you know talking into the machine.

And don't go anywhere
.

“It's not somewhere,” I was telling Eliza. “It's practically still staying home.”

“But it's not, Julia.”

“But no one will know.”

“C'mon. It will be fun,” I told Eliza. “Like we are runaway slaves.”

“Following the North Star,” Eliza added.

“Or we were captured by Indians and now we have to walk for miles back to their camp so they can adopt us into their tribe.”

“They live in a longhouse.”

“And the clan mother hands us each a cornhusk doll to represent our new family.”

We headed up to the hotel, promising our Olden-Day selves that we'd be back before the “high moon rises,” or something like that.

The peepers were so loud, almost desperate. The sun was resting along the tops of the trees and spreading a golden light across the road. It was already late enough in the summer that the days were noticeably shorter and there was a coolness at night that hinted at the start of autumn. The movie would start as it was just beginning to be dark so the little kids could stay up and watch. There would be a later movie too for the grown-ups only, but I knew we'd have to get back before then.

I could hear the right words coming out of my mouth: moccasins, wampum beads, canoe. I could hear the story we were telling, but the whole walk up to the hotel I was only hoping beyond hope that Michael would be there early too.

I
t was seven thirty and still light, a gray light, but the movie had started. A couple of Mohawk employees in their green polo shirts were making popcorn in a giant hot-air popcorn machine, scooping it into paper bags, and handing them out to anyone who wanted one. For free.

Chairs had been set up in rows all along the great lawn and the movie was projected onto a giant screen that rose up against the stone guest-room side of the hotel. There were big black speakers on either side, and a papery rug rolled out between aisles. But no Michael.