The Summer I Learned to Fly (4 page)

I took up a post behind the cheese counter. I kept the case stocked and the sample plate full. I cut, wrapped, and weighed cheeses, and for those who sought my advice, I gave it. Most people gravitated to Swoozie, whose size and age gave a stronger impression of a long and close relationship with cheese. But for those willing to take the chance on a sulky girl who must have worn her dashed dreams of summer all over her pale face, I had good advice to give. I knew my cheeses.

I also emptied the trash. I wiped down the countertops. I kept the cash register filled with bills and coins for change even though I wasn’t permitted to operate the register myself. And I performed my favorite task—taking the bread we
didn’t sell that day, the fresh pasta it was too late to freeze, and whatever cheeses were past their prime out to the alley behind the shop. Come morning, without fail, the piles had always disappeared.

All week long I had wondered why I wasn’t on the sign-in sheet where Mom tracked the hours of her employees. I waited until Sunday, our day off, to broach the subject.

We went to our favorite spot for breakfast: Bartholomew’s. It had become a tradition, although with my new devotion to sleep these Sunday breakfasts had turned into something more like Sunday brunches.

She ordered a latte. She always let me have a sip or two, but this time I asked if I could have my own.

“No, Birdie. Not yet.”

“Why?”

“Caffeine stunts your growth, and I’m pretty sure you’ve got some growing left to do.”

I hoped not. I was already taller than most of the boys in my class, and I imagined this was the reason none of them seemed remotely interested in me. Although I couldn’t really blame my height for the total lack of interest I had in them. It was a two-way street. I was too tall. They were too immature. Too un-Nicklike to warrant my attention.

“Fine.” I said. I began to build a tower out of the coffee creamers.

Mom sat back and closed her eyes to the sun. We’d scored one of Bartholomew’s primo tables out on the deck. She was a burner, and she’d burn herself to peeling. She loved the sun with unwavering devotion.

“How come I’m not on the time sheet?” I asked.

“What?”

“The time sheet at the shop. My name’s not on it.”

She opened her eyes. Puzzled. “So?”

“So, I work there too, you know.”

“Okay. I’ll put your name on the sheet. Why are you being so pissy?”

In the ten months or so we’d been in business I’d come to the shop most days after school, and a fair amount of Saturdays too. I’d never been paid for any of my time, but now this was a job. My job. My summer. And there were things I wanted to buy.

I wanted a new leather jacket. Shawls were so over. Georgia and Beatrice and Janice had leather jackets. So did Geraldine Moore. I didn’t want to be like the rest of the girls at school, and yet I wanted that jacket.

I’d convinced myself that I’d gotten there first. That I’d imagined this jacket, pictured myself wearing it, before everyone else had raced out and bought one.

So that’s why I was being pissy.

“Am I going to get paid for my work or not?”

“Birdie. You’re thirteen years old.”

“I’m aware of that, Mom. Thanks.”

She looked at me. I knew she was counting to five. That’s what she did when she started to get angry or tense, when she worried she might say something she didn’t want to say. She always encouraged me to do the same. I rarely made it past one.

“Listen, Drew. It’s not that I don’t value you or the time you give to the shop. I do. You’re part of the team. And I love that you love to pitch in. But you’re only thirteen.
There are child labor laws. I can’t just put you on my payroll. And even if I could, I can’t afford to pay you anyway. We’re barely squeaking by as it is.”

The waitress had delivered my eggs, and I broke the yolks with my fork. I watched the bright yellow spill to the edges of my plate.

“This shop is ours, Birdie. Yours and mine. It’s our future. You don’t see my name on that time sheet, do you? That’s because it’s my shop, so I’m not really an employee. And neither are you.”

She reached for my hand. I could feel myself forgiving her. The unclenching of some interior muscles too remote to know by name.

“So.” She leaned forward in her seat. “What do you think of her?”

“Who?”

“You know.”

Of course I knew, but that didn’t mean I had to cop to it. I shrugged.

“Nick’s new girlfriend?” She asked. “The blonde? Little Miss Perfect?”

“Oh, her.” What was Mom doing? Was she trying to rub it in? “I didn’t really get a chance to meet her.”

“She’s sweet. Really sweet. I just hope she doesn’t go and get her heart broken.”

“Yeah. Poor her.”

“Oh, Birdie,” Mom said. “I know you adore Nick. So do I. He’s adorable. But he isn’t worthy of your heart. Save that for someone your age, for someone who’s able to truly accept it, because it’s the most beautiful heart I know.”

She reached across the table and placed her hand where she thought my heart must be, though I knew from biology class she was a little too far to the left.

I’d suffered through Mom’s speeches about hearts before. She had visited the land of heartbreak, and it was the fact that I was pretty sure she still dwelled there, or at least dropped by frequently, that made these sorts of conversations unbearable. Because no matter how hard it was to sit across from my mother and talk about what I might be feeling, it was loads harder to see my mom as someone who knew this sort of exquisite pain too.

So I did what I always did in these situations.

I changed the subject.

“What are we seeing later?”

On Sundays we went to the movies. We saw everything. Mom didn’t care if I saw movies with R ratings, and that gave me the rare glint of cool when I’d talk about them Monday at school.

She winced. “Not today, I’m afraid.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s work, honey. I’ve got to go into work. Remember”—she reached over and pushed my hair off my forehead—“this is our future.”

I had no reason to think she wasn’t telling me the truth. What else but work could possibly keep her from honoring our Sundays at the movies? It was our tradition.

From Dad’s Book of Lists—Traditions:
a swim in the ocean on the summer solstice, a cigar on New Year’s Day, singing my Birdie to sleep
.

From my list of traditions:
Sundays at the movies with Mom
.

on the loose

It wasn’t until after seven that I noticed Hum was missing. I know that doesn’t exactly make me the poster girl for the proper care and feeding of rats, but there you have it. Hum was gone.

It was Wednesday. I’d been in the shop for the better part of the day, though I was starting to come in later and later. I wasn’t getting paid. Nick had gone and fallen in love behind my back. Neither fact inspired in me a desire to get up early.

I left the shop at six p.m., closing time. I delivered the bread and the food we couldn’t sell the next day to the alley and rode my bike home. Mom told me she had to stay late and she sent me home with some spinach farfalle and meat sauce to heat up. She didn’t mind me riding my bike while it was still light out.

I knew I’d opened up my backpack before hopping on my bike to put the farfalle in, but I couldn’t say whether I’d noticed if Hum was in his cage or not. All I knew was that now,
shortly after seven, while I was just settling down to watch TV, I’d gone to get Hum out of my bag and found him gone. Missing.

The first thing I did was start calling his name, which was ridiculous. He was a rat, not a dog. He didn’t come when called.

I searched the entire house. I returned to my backpack, panic rising in me. It was then that I noticed a chewed-through hole in the bottom right corner.

The last time I’d seen Hum? When I arrived at work, sometime after noon. I sneaked a look at him, as I always did, before hanging my bag on the hook near the back door. My crime was not checking on him at closing time.

I did another thorough search of the house. It was a small house, as Georgia McNulty had so kindly told everyone, so it didn’t take long. No Hum.

This presented a terrible problem. If he wasn’t here, he was in the shop. And Mom was in the shop, working late. I couldn’t very well call her up and ask her to look around for my rat.

I would have called Swoozie, but she had left when I did. She’d offered me a ride in her beat-up old Porsche, a car that might have given her some edge except that the tiny back was so filled up with her crap there wasn’t even room for my bike.

I’d have considered swallowing my pride and calling Nick, but Nick never stayed past closing, even in his pre-girlfriend days.

I had no choice. I had to get on my bike and ride back to the shop in what was left of the daylight. I had to search inside
and out, high and low, and I had to do all this without Mom noticing me. After all, he was my Hum, His Excellency the Lord High Rat Humboldt Fog. I couldn’t imagine a world without him.

I dressed all in black. This was what I’d seen people do in the movies—cat burglars, creepers, those who did not want to be seen. I grabbed my ugly orange vest with reflector strips for the ride back home.

When I arrived at the shop it was dark. Nobody there.

I peered in the front window. Nick’s pasta corner was closed up, his stool on the counter, the floors swept clean of semolina. The only lights were the small red power lights signaling that the refrigerated cases were running. I could see through the shop to the edge of Mom’s office, and her chair, pushed away from her desk, sitting empty. There didn’t seem to be any light coming from the rear of the store, but I crept around to the alley to have a look, just to be sure.

I could peer through the back windows without standing on my tiptoes, something I couldn’t do when the shop first opened.

Total darkness.

I was baffled but also relieved. I had a key. I could look for Hum without any sneaking and creeping. The shop was mine to search. But where was Mom?

Then I heard it. A noise behind me. Behind the Dumpster to my left. I stopped breathing. I closed my eyes. I didn’t move, but I listened.

Whispering. Someone was back there. Behind the Dumpster. Whispering to somebody else.

I thought:
Isn’t this how tragic stories end? With a girl in a
Dumpster?
A girl who had gone out on her own, too late into the night? A girl someplace she shouldn’t be? Nobody could explain why she was in that alley. Why she’d left the safety of her own home. She was a good girl. A careful girl. And now she’d gone and wound up in a Dumpster.

I weighed my options. Running around front for my bike would bring me too close to the Dumpster and the whispering. Better to leave my bike and run like crazy in the opposite direction. I was fast. My already-long legs were getting longer, or else I wouldn’t have been able to see in this back window without standing on my toes.

But I didn’t move. I was frozen in place, with my face pressed against the glass.

More whispering. Some shushing.
Shhh-shhh-shhh
.

And then a clicking, followed by a high-pitched squeaking that I knew well. The sound Hum made when he was happy.

“Hum?” I whispered. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know his name, that he never responded to it; I couldn’t think of what else to do. “Hum?” I said louder.

I didn’t want to go behind the Dumpster. I wanted my rat to come to me. I wanted him to break free from his captor, and I wanted to grab him, and lock him in his cage, and hop on my bike and race home.

I heard some shuffling. The rustling of paper. And then a voice.

“Hello?”

It was a kind voice. The voice of a boy.

“Hello?” I responded.

“Um, if you’re trying to hum, the idea is to close your
mouth and sing through your lips. You don’t actually say
hum.
”

I had to admit, now that it was pointed out to me, calling out the word
hum
might sound strange to the uninformed ear.

“I know how to hum,” I said. “I’m just calling my rat. That’s his name.”

The boy stepped out from behind the Dumpster. He had a tangle of black curls, holes in the knees of his jeans, a cut on his cheek, and my rat on his shoulder.

“You mean him?” He lifted his hand to the waiting rat’s mouth and fed him a small scrap of something orange.

“Yes. That’s Hum. My rat.”

“And who are you?”

I should have asked this question first.
He
was the one hiding behind the Dumpster behind
my
shop.
He
was the one holding
my
rat and feeding him God knows what.
Who are you?
I should have asked, shouted even, but instead I just said, “I’m Drew.”

“Well, then why does everyone call you Birdie?”

“I’m sorry. Do I
know
you?”

“I’m Emmett,” he said, and he stuck out his hand, and as I took it, Hum crawled down his arm and ran up the length of mine. “Emmett Crane.”

emmett crane

It was obvious why I was there in that alley calling out the word
Hum
.

Emmett Crane’s story proved harder to unravel.

It turned out he knew I was the daughter of the woman who owned the store. Understandably, he was just confused about my name.

I explained that my mother called me Birdie because my name used to be Robin. This required mentioning my dead father, to which he responded, “Oh. So I guess that wasn’t your father in the Honda?”

“What Honda?”

“Or maybe it was a Toyota. I’m not particularly interested in cars.”

“What car?” I was getting agitated. “The silver Honda or maybe Toyota that came to pick up your mother after you left on your bike.”

I couldn’t think of one single person we knew who drove a silver car.

I sat down on the rickety bench we kept in the alley, where Swoozie would come to
get some fresh air
, which really meant
smoke a cigarette
.

He sat down next to me. He smelled both sweet and sharp, like something I knew but couldn’t quite place.