“What’s this?” asked his mother.
“Well,” said Henry, “I cleaned out my closet and these are the things that don’t fit me anymore. I thought we should give them to the Family Center. I know how you hate sorting through my clothes, and I wanted to save you the trouble. While I was at it, I decided to make a donation to the animal shelter, so here’s all my money.” He held out the envelope.
Henry’s mother looked at him with her mouth open. Then she pulled Henry to her and gave him a hug. “I am so proud of you,” she said.
At dinner that night Henry waited until everyone had been served before he said, “I’ve been thinking about our investments lately. Maybe we should give up our bank holdings and put everything into municipal bonds.”
“What?” said his father.
“It just makes sense. Munies are very reliable.”
“Munies . . .” murmured his mother.
“That’s short for municipal bonds. It’s sort of their nickname. Anyway,” said Henry, “I’m just watching out for our,” he paused, “for our assets. And our future.”
Henry’s mother looked across the table at his father. “Chas,” she said, “do you know what Henry did this afternoon? He cleaned up his room—unasked—sorted through his clothes, bagged up the ones that don’t fit him anymore, and also made a donation to the animal shelter.”
“I haven’t actually made the donation. Not yet,” said Henry. “The envelope is still here. Mom said we’ll take it to the shelter on Monday.”
“This is all very impressive,” said Henry’s father, “but is there anything you’d like to tell us?”
Henry looked at his father in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“Are we going to find a message from one of your teachers when we check our e-mail tonight?”
“No!” exclaimed Henry. “You think I did something wrong? Is that it? You think I’m covering something up?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I can’t help but remember how clean the house was after you and Matthew erased the library files from our computer.”
“We didn’t do that on purpose!”
“I know you didn’t. The point is that before you confessed to your mother and me—and, by the way, we were very proud of you for telling the truth—you tried to soften the blow by vacuuming the bedrooms.”
“And washing the kitchen floor,” added Henry.
“Yes.”
Henry put his fork down. The conversation was not going as he had hoped.
“So, is there anything—anything at all,” said his father, “that you’d like to share with us now?”
Henry shook his head. “No. I was just trying to show you something. Actually, I was trying to prove something to you.”
“What was that?” asked his mother gently.
“I was trying to prove that I’m responsible enough to be a dog owner. I’ll be in middle school next year. I can do things without being told. And I don’t mean,” he said hastily, realizing that he had been on his good behavior for scarcely twelve hours, “that I’m going to be a responsible person for just a day or two. I mean that’s who I am now—a mature and responsible son who will take very good care of a dog. All by myself.”
By this time, nobody at the table was eating. Henry’s hands were in his lap and his dinner was growing cold. His father was sitting in front of a nearly full plate of food. And his mother had pushed her plate away and folded her arms on the edge of the table.
Henry’s father drew in a deep breath. He opened his mouth to speak, closed his mouth, and then opened it again. At last he said, “I’m very, very sorry, but we are not going to get a dog.”
Henry turned to his mother. She shook her head.
“But why?” cried Henry. “Why?”
“For one thing,” said his father, “the dog would be home alone for most of the day while we’re at work and you’re at school. That’s not fair.”
“Amelia Earhart is alone all day,” Henry pointed out.
“Cats are different from dogs,” said his mother. “They don’t need to go outside to go to the bathroom. And they don’t mind being alone. Dogs want company.”
“Also,” his father continued, “dogs are much more work than you imagine. You have to housebreak them, and that’s a big job. And they need lots of exercise. Our yard isn’t fenced in, so that means that if we had a dog it would need to be taken on walks every day.”
“And, of course, you need to feed a dog and clean up after it,” added his mother.
“Furthermore,” said his father, “dogs are expensive.”
Henry was tempted to say, More expensive than cats? but instead he said nothing at all.
“Besides, you have Amelia Earhart, Carlos Beltran, and Hamlet,” said his mother.
Henry felt anger rising up from somewhere deep inside. He thought of telling his parents that they were thoughtless and cruel, but he had a feeling that such behavior might appear immature, and he was not yet ready to give up on his plan.
8. CHARLIE
Charlie can’t remember a summer vacation as quiet as the one that is now unfolding. The mornings are particularly quiet. His father rises early, eats in a hurry, and goes to the barn to gather the supplies he and his men will need that day. Charlie gets up next. He feeds Sunny, then himself. Pop-Tarts make a good breakfast if anyone has remembered to buy them. If it’s one of the days Charlie will be working at Mr. Hanna’s, he leaves the house at nine-thirty. If it isn’t a Mr. Hanna day, Charlie sometimes goes to work with his father and sometimes just wanders around the farm. His mother hasn’t been getting up before ten. By the time school has been out for four days, she’s staying in bed until at least eleven. These mornings are so different from the mornings of a year ago that Charlie can barely stand to remember the old summer days. When he does—when he recalls Sunny leaping to her feet at the sight of RJ, and his mother laughing as she fixes eggs and bacon, and the radio with Cousin Brucie and Ron Lundy playing the sizzling summer hits (if Charlie’s mother will allow the rock and roll station)—those summer days seem to belong to another family somewhere else, another family that’s now as lost as RJ.
“I wish I were back in school,” Charlie tells Sunny one morning. When school was in session, Charlie’s mind was occupied with homework and lessons and friends. Now his mind sometimes seems as empty as his days, and what tiptoes into all that emptiness in his mind? RJ. A morning at Mr. Hanna’s is good and a day spent on the job with his father is good, but a day in which the emptiness creeps in is unbearable.
On Wednesday morning Charlie discovers that the Pop-Tarts box is empty, so he eats a bowl of cereal, sitting alone at the kitchen table. His father has already driven down their lane in the pickup. Charlie can hear birds calling and the wind soughing in the firs and in the distance a tractor, but that’s it. The quiet is unnerving. He considers turning on the radio to see if he can find the top ten, but his mother is asleep and Charlie doesn’t think he can bear to listen to Cousin Brucie alone. At the stroke of nine-thirty he hightails it to Mr. Hanna’s.
“I hope you got your muscles ready today, boy,” is how Mr. Hanna greets him. He’s standing on his stoop hefting a hatchet. “It’s never too early to lay in firewood.”
Charlie grins. He likes splitting logs. He’s not sure his mother would allow him to do such work, but she was still asleep when Charlie left the house, so Charlie doesn’t care what she would allow. He spends the first part of the morning splitting dozens of logs while Sunny dozes in the shade. Later he paints Mr. Hanna’s two Adirondack chairs using a bucket of Forest Shade he brought over on Monday. When Charlie is done, Mr. Hanna fixes lunch—tomato sandwiches for himself and Charlie, and a bowl of water for Sunny who isn’t supposed to eat lunch since the vet estimates that she’s five pounds overweight.
After lunch Charlie is disappointed when Mr. Hanna hands him his pay. He’s grateful for the money—it’s more than he expected; that isn’t the problem—but he doesn’t want to go home
yet; had, in fact, hoped to work all afternoon. Maybe he could take Sunny on a walk through the woods. He doesn’t have a book with him, though, and Sunny is wilting in the heat like his mother’s pansies, so finally he leaves the woods behind and enters the expectant rooms of his house through the back door.
The house sounds empty.
“Mom?” Charlie calls.
He hears Sunny’s toenails clicking as she makes her way into the bathroom to cool herself on the tile floor.
“Mom?” he calls again.
There is no answer. After a while Charlie finds his mother sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch. She’s crying. Just sitting and crying. Charlie backs away.
The next day is not a Mr. Hanna day, and Mr. Elliot drives off before Charlie is up. Mrs. Elliot doesn’t leave her room. Not the entire long day. Charlie listens at the bedroom door and can hear her crying. He wishes he knew where his father was working so he could phone him.
Charlie brings his mother water. He makes her tea. He offers to read to her. But she won’t get out of bed and she won’t stop crying.
Charlie and Sunny wait on the front porch for Mr. Elliot to return. When at last he does, when the shadows are lengthening and the air is cooling and Charlie thinks that this endless day may have an end to it after all, Mr. Elliot disappears inside to see to Charlie’s mother, and Charlie sits and waits and thinks about RJ.
Charlie sits for so long that his stomach begins to rumble and he decides to make dinner. But when he steps into the living room he finds his father speaking nervously into the phone, twisting the cord around his fingers.
“Dad?” Charlie says in a loud whisper.
His father puts his hand over the mouthpiece. “Not now, Charlie,” he says. “I have to . . . to make some calls.” He shifts his body so that he’s facing away from Charlie.
Two days later, Charlie’s aunt Susan arrives. She steers her aged Studebaker along the Elliots’ drive and climbs out of it with a bag of groceries, three books for Charlie, and warm bosomy hugs for everyone including Sunny.
Charlie has met his aunt, his father’s older sister, only a handful of times, but he’s grateful for her appearance now. Mr. Elliot hasn’t left the house since the night he phoned Susan, and to Charlie his parents seem to be spirits drifting through the rooms, his mother weeping, his father cajoling and occasionally losing his temper. Mrs. Elliot, Charlie knows, is going to go back to Susan’s home and rest there for a while. Charlie suspects it will be a long while. Like maybe until the end of the summer.
Aunt Susan stays for lunch, which she makes (and which Mrs. Elliot doesn’t eat), but as soon as it’s over she says, “I guess we’d better hit the road.”
Charlie glances at his mother, who is sitting at the table right next to Aunt Susan and appears not to have heard her.
Mr. Elliot has tears in his eyes, and Charlie cannot bear to see him cry again, so he runs up the stairs to his room to watch the leave-taking from a distance. His room is roasting, but he closes his windows so he won’t have to hear any of the words in the yard below. He watches his father take his mother by the elbow and lead her toward Susan’s car, watches him stow her suitcase in the backseat, watches him hug his sister and kiss his wife and wave to the car as it creeps down the lane. Mr. Elliot looks up at Charlie’s window then, but Charlie ducks away. He can’t ignore the knock on his door a minute later, though.
“We’re on our own now,” says Mr. Elliot as he sits on the edge of Charlie’s bed.
“For how long?” Charlie wants to know.
Mr. Elliot shakes his head slowly. “Until things are better,” he says at last.
The next day is Sunday and when Charlie and his father go to church, Charlie is reminded of how fast news travels in Lindenfield. It seems that everyone already knows that Mrs. Elliot has gone away for a while.
RJ is lost, and Mrs. Elliot has gone away. For a while.
For the whole summer, guesses Charlie.
He averts his eyes when people press their hands on his father’s arm or pat his back. “We’ll bring a casserole by tonight,” they say. Or a pot roast or corn muffins or a three-bean salad. And they do. The neighbors start arriving not long after church (during which they prayed for “our dear Doreen Elliot who has gone away for a while”). By suppertime the neighbors have left and the kitchen is so full of food that Charlie and his father don’t quite know where to put it all.
“I guess we won’t have to test our cooking skills,” says Mr. Elliot in a very bright tone of voice. “At least not right away. What would you like for dinner tonight, Charlie?”
“I don’t care.”
“Well,” his father continues in the same perky voice, “we have everything but fried worms here.” Charlie still does not smile, so his father sighs and says, “All right. Roast chicken and potato salad.”
Charlie feeds Sunny while his father serves up their supper. When they are seated at the kitchen table, just the two of them, the other two chairs now empty, Mr. Elliot says, “We’ll have to make some changes around here for the summer. Your mother’s egg business has to be seen to. And she started the vegetable garden before . . .” He pauses. “Well, she started it, and we need to keep up with it. That’ll be your job, Charlie. And we’ll both take care of the chickens.”
Charlie nods. He doesn’t mind either of these things, although he doesn’t think the garden will flourish under his care the way it does when his mother tends it.
“I’m afraid you’re going to be alone a lot this summer,” Mr. Elliot continues.
“Not really,” says Charlie. “I’ll be at Mr. Hanna’s, or I can work with you, and I always have Sunny.”
“Still, it doesn’t sound like much of a summer.”
Charlie shrugs. It wasn’t much of a summer before his mother went away.
Charlie and his father eat in silence until Mr. Elliot says, “Mr. Trego spoke to me in church this morning.”
Mr. Trego is the music teacher at Jackson Elementary.
“Oh, yeah?” says Charlie.
“He wanted to know if you’d take RJ’s place in the Fourth of July parade on Tuesday.”
“Take his place? How can I do that?” RJ played the trumpet in the school band, which will be marching in the parade along with the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the firemen, the Little League team, and the High Notes, a singing group Mrs. Elliot used to belong to. “I don’t play the trumpet,” says Charlie. “I don’t play any instrument.”
“Mr. Trego just wanted you to march in RJ’s spot in the formation—as a tribute to your brother.”
Charlie feels heavy, as if a great weight is pushing down on him. He cannot take his brother’s place again, can’t accept one more honor for him or speak for him or play his role. Even as a tribute to him.
“Dad,” he says finally, “I’d be embarrassed walking along without an instrument.”
His father lowers his eyes. “It’s your decision,” he replies. “Call Mr. Trego tomorrow and tell him.”
Charlie knows better than to ask his father to make the call. “Can I call him tonight?” he says instead. “To get it over with?”
His father shakes his head. “It’s Sunday.”
But then the phone rings and Charlie rushes to answer it. If it’s Mr. Trego calling him, he would have a perfect right to give him the news now.
The caller is Aunt Susan, however. “Just checking in,” she says, “to see how you boys are doing.”
Charlie almost smiles at this, at his father’s being called a boy. “We’re fine,” he tells her. “How’s Mom?”
There is a slight pause, like a breath, before his aunt says, “I’ll put her on the phone.”
“No!” yelps Charlie. “I mean, wait. Let me get Dad.” He drops the receiver with a clunk and calls, “Dad! It’s Aunt Susan. Mom wants to talk to you. I’m going to take Sunny on a walk.”
In a flash he’s out the door.
On the Fourth of July all of Lindenfield is dressed for the ho
liday. Flags fly from doorways and the handlebars of bicycles. Red, white, and blue swags swathe the lampposts in town. Mr. Hanson sells red-and-blue Italian ices from his cart. Charlie finds a red-white-and-blue-striped T-shirt to wear to the parade, and he puts a red-and-white bandanna around Sunny’s neck, even though Sunny won’t be going into town. She can wear it later, just to look festive.
The day before, Charlie called Mr. Trego, who was understanding when Charlie said he would prefer not to march with the band. “It was just a thought,” said Mr. Trego.
“We’re still going to come to the parade,” Charlie informed him, relieved.
Now, on Tuesday, as Charlie and his father approach Dean Avenue in their truck and Charlie catches sight of all that red, white, and blue, and hears the bleat of a trombone in the distance, and somewhere, even farther away, the pop-pop-pop of firecrackers, he feels a little prickle of excitement. Maybe he and his dad can go to the fireworks show at the high school stadium that night. Charlie tries to decide when might be the best time to ask his father about that.
Mr. Elliot parks the pickup behind the Everything Else Store, and he and Charlie find spots on the sidewalk in front of Jackson Elementary.
“Dad,” says Charlie suddenly, guilt-ridden, “we should have asked Mr. Hanna to come with us,” and just as suddenly he catches sight of Mr. Hanna down the block.
Mr. Elliot waves to him and Mr. Hanna makes his way through the crowd to stand with Charlie and his father. Charlie feels that prickle of excitement again. It’s a glorious day for a Fourth of July parade. The sky is as blue as an indigo bunting and the air is clear and warm and everywhere people are shouting and calling to one another. Children are clutching tiny flags as their Italian ices drip down their chins and wrists. The people who greet Mr. Elliot do so cautiously, but Charlie ignores them, craning his head to the right for the first glimpse of the parade. Soon he can feel the beat of a bass drum in his stomach, and then there are the High Notes, leading off the parade. The Girl Scouts go by, followed by the Boy Scouts, and then Charlie sees two of RJ’s classmates in majorette uniforms carrying a banner that reads JACKSON ELEMENTARY. Behind them is the band and as it passes by, Charlie realizes that the space that would have been occupied by the trumpet player, RJ’s space, has been left open.
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