Three Bird Summer (4 page)

“You’d smell,” she said.

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “Anyway, I have a bunch of shirts, and you’ll only be gone for four days.”

She folded her clothes carefully and placed them in her suitcase. “Do you have something to read?”

“There are lots of books here,” I said.

“And you’ve probably read most of them three times already.”

“I haven’t read
Remembrance of Things Past.
I haven’t read
One Hundred Famous Minnesotans,
” I said. After all these years, I had managed to memorize most of the titles on Grandma’s shelves.

“Yeah, good luck with those,” she said. “I’ll bring you back something from Madison.”

“Cool.”

I sat down on the bed, leaned back, and began picking up Mom’s little balls of rolled-up socks and tossing them into her open dresser drawer across the room. It was definitely a three-point shot.

“Name two things you liked best about Grandma when you were a kid,” I said as I tossed.

“Name what?” she asked. “Oh, Adam, I don’t know.”

“OK, then two things you didn’t like about her,” I suggested.

She wrapped the cord of her hair dryer around its handle, then tucked it into the side of her suitcase. She still wasn’t answering me.

“You’re no fun,” I said.

She sighed and combed her fingers through her hair. “OK. Two things I liked most,” she said first. “How strong she was — the canoeing and swimming. And how steady.”

“And two things you didn’t like?” I asked.

“Well, her hairstyle,” Mom said. She frowned. “That hasn’t changed,” she added, speaking quietly even though my grandmother was out on the dock.

“What else?”

Mom paused and looked a little pained. “Well, I didn’t always like the way she treated people — me, Martin, even my dad.”

I could imagine Grandma being hard on Uncle Martin and my mom — she still was. But my grandfather, too? He was a legend in the family: like Paul Bunyan or something. Grandma boasted about his accomplishments more than anybody else.

“Was she mean?” I asked.

“No, not mean exactly,” Mom said. “Just testy.”

“Like you?” I asked.

“Not like that at all,” she answered quickly, and her face turned red. Just then she became aware of my work with the sock balls. “Hey, what are you doing?” she said, catching the last one in midair. “Those are supposed to go
in
the suitcase!”

“Sorry.”

“Listen,” she said when she had all the socks back in her bag, “I told the neighbors that you two would be here on your own. Mrs. Jensen is very nice. She said you could come over day or night if you need anything. And they’ll take you into town if Ma won’t drive, OK?”

“Four days, Mom.”

“And you can keep in touch with your dad, of course. Oh, and if you’re lonely, Mrs. Jensen said that Alice will be back from camping tomorrow.”

“Mom,” I said. “Enough about the neighbor girl. How many times do I have to tell you? I like being on my own.” I stood up and headed for the door, ready for my swim.

Mom planned to leave very early the next morning, so I said good-bye to her that night. She was sitting at the kitchen table when I went to bed, writing down names and phone numbers and lists of instructions. Sometimes I felt like my mom was only vaguely interested in being a parent until there was some big event or crisis, at which point she became as focused as a general. If you could read affection in someone’s to-do lists, my mom’s love was deep and very organized.

Early the next morning, I heard the slam of the hatch and sound of the engine starting up, followed by the grinding of tires on dirt and rocks. Eventually the car sounds gave way to a lone loon wailing across the water.
This,
I thought,
this is when freedom begins.
I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.

AFTER BREAKFAST,
Grandma finished washing up, pulled on her cotton hat, and said, “Come with me.”

I followed her out the door and down the steps of the deck. For a moment, I thought she was planning to take me for a drive in the Taurus, which would have been a shocking way to begin our first day on our own together. But she turned down the path toward the lake, stopping at the storage area under the cabin to grab a life jacket and a paddle.

“Are we going canoeing?” I asked.

“Just you,” she said, thrusting the paddle and life jacket into my hands.

I swallowed hard. If she expected me to take off alone across the lake, she was dreaming. A strong breeze was kicking up the water, making it too choppy for easy paddling. Two people could handle it without real difficulty. But it was no place for a beginner to solo.

“Put the canoe in the water,” Grandma said.

I was so used to following her orders that I didn’t have time to wonder if I was strong enough. I grabbed the far side of the overturned canoe and flipped it over onto the grass. A bigger guy would have carried the whole thing to the lake upside down on his shoulders. But I gripped the deck and dragged the canoe slowly across the mud and into the water.

“Watch the rocks!” Grandma barked. Scratching the bottom of the canoe was considered a major sin in our family. Grandma always shook her head and made an audible
tsk
if we ever passed rocks streaked with the colors of lesser paddlers’ boats.

“I won’t hit the rocks, Grandma,” I said. Amazing. This was my first day of freedom, and my grandmother was already ruining it.

“Get in, get in,” she said.

I zipped up the life jacket and stepped into the canoe.

“Now,” she said, “are you feeling a little chicken?”

“There’s probably a nicer way to say that,” I mumbled, but my words were lost in the wind.

“It’s easy,” Grandma said. “You’ve paddled your whole life. You’re strong enough to cart that canoe around. You can do this alone.”

“I know I can, Grandma,” I lied. I sat down in the stern, then pushed off the side of the dock. I pulled a few strokes on the right side of the canoe, then a few on the left. The bow of the canoe rose high above the water, listing back and forth like a bloodhound that had lost its scent. I wasn’t going to win any style points, but at least I was getting somewhere. I pulled past the end of the dock and hit the harder waves. Almost immediately I felt what it was like to lose control. A strong wind caught the bow and shoved it hard to the left. My heart started racing. I dug the paddle in a few times on my left, but I wasn’t doing it well. The wind still had me beat by a mile. I listed back toward the shallower water, made a couple of quick strokes on the right side, and managed to turn myself back fully around. Luckily I was out of the harder waves now, too. I slowly brought the canoe back to the dock.

I glanced up at Grandma. She was smiling knowingly. “Is that how your parents taught you?” she asked.

I shrugged. Truth is, I didn’t remember anyone teaching me anything — just Max and Rocky and my other cousins showing off their skills and expecting me to watch.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” she said.

My heart sank. This could go on for hours. Why couldn’t Grandma just leave me alone? I had my whole life to learn how to solo canoe.

“First off,” she said, “what are you doing in the stern?”

“What?” I asked.

“Your weight back there is what’s lifting up the bow. That’s why the wind could fling you around like a plastic bag.”

Grandma sure had a way with words.

“You sit in the bow seat, facing the stern!”

Of course. I’d seen this done before. No wonder the paddling had felt so hard.

I climbed into the bow seat and faced the middle of the canoe.

“Now,” she continued, “you can paddle on both sides like you were doing out there. That’ll work easy in a solo canoe. But you might want to pick a side and do your J’s and draws, just like you’re steering. See which works better for a kid your size.”

I ignored the comment about my puny stature and gave it a try.

J strokes were just what they sounded like: you pulled the paddle along the edge of the canoe, then finished with a twist, making a
J
shape. The twist of the
J
turned the paddle into a rudder and kept the bow straight. For a draw stroke, you pulled the paddle toward the canoe before finishing your stroke. That made the canoe turn toward your paddling side. Both of these maneuvers worked easily with a partner, who was usually paddling on the opposite side as you. A little J could even out the power, which was greater in the back than the front. Without anyone paddling in front, though, I didn’t know if I could really control the canoe just by executing these moves. Grandma made it sound so easy.

I made a few attempts to paddle as Grandma had instructed, but I preferred paddling on both sides. I wasn’t making much better progress, though. Even with my weight more toward the middle, the stern now rose out of the water enough to catch the wind.

“Maybe I should try this again later,” I said, returning to the dock. “When it’s not so windy.”

Grandma didn’t reply. She walked back down the dock and picked up a melon-size rock from the shore. I was amazed she was still strong enough to lift a thing like that. Then she made her way back to where I was waiting and squatted down with the rock still in her hands.

“If it’s really gusting, you can always kneel in the middle of the canoe,” she said. “But this usually does the trick in ordinary wind.”

She placed the rock in the stern. The weight was enough to bring the end of the canoe down into a normal position.

“Cool,” I said.

She looked me up and down and shook her head. “You’re a funny one, Adam,” she said. “All these summers on the lake, and the only thing you’ve ever done by yourself out here is dock-sit. I don’t think you’ve come down even once and fooled around with this stuff on the water.”

I looked away, feeling the weight of her judgment. Grandmothers were supposed to shower you with praise, not make you feel like a loser.

I don’t know if Grandma realized that she’d hurt my feelings or if she’d just gotten tired of the day’s lesson. But she stood back up, brushed off her hands, and turned toward the cabin. “I’ll leave you alone to practice,” she said, her captain’s voice gone.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll be up in a bit.”

What I wanted to do was drag the canoe onto shore and retreat to the hammock. But I knew Grandma would see me there and be more disappointed than ever, so I stayed on the water. I paddled in tentative circles near the shore where the wind wasn’t as strong. It felt juvenile and absurd — like riding a pony in a ring. But the idea of heading into open water felt even worse.

I’d been out for about half an hour when I heard voices over in the neighbors’ yard. Shouts. Laughter. It sounded as if Alice and her cousins were back from their camping trip. If they came down to the dock, they would see me and my infantile paddling.

Quickly, I steered the canoe to shallow water and heaved it onto shore, more grateful than ever for the sheltering trees.

IN THE EVENING,
Grandma made me pancakes for supper, just as I had hoped.

“Don’t expect these every night,” she said.

“It works for me,” I said.

“You need protein. Vegetables.” Grandma had been a nurse in her younger years, and she still liked to assert her medical knowledge now and then, even if it was sometimes outdated. When I was a kid, she’d caught me stuffing my face with popcorn while I watched TV. “You can’t eat that much popcorn,” she’d told me then, “or your stomach will explode. I saw it happen once at the hospital. A kid your age.”

Her words had terrified me so much I hadn’t eaten more than a few kernels at a time for years after. When I was ten, I finally told a friend what she’d said. Just putting it out there in words had been enough for me to realize the ridiculousness of her warning. We’d laughed so hard our stomachs almost did explode. And then we’d gone ahead and eaten two bowls of popcorn and not even felt a cramp.

When Grandma and I finished dinner, she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat back down. She glanced at the clock. “Your mother should have arrived a while ago. I wonder why she hasn’t called.”

“She stops a lot,” I said. I’d almost said “to pee” but Mom was right: that really wasn’t something to share with Grandma.