Water Steps

by A. LaFaye

  SECRETS

  I got up the next morning with a mission. I’d hike into Plattsburgh and see what I could find out about this Rosien. With a small town, it’s easy to get the inside scoop on folks. They published just about everything in our hometown newspaper. The Perryville Post even announced who brought what for church picnics. Plattsburgh wasn’t that small, but with a name like Rosien, it’d be pretty easy to track her down with a good word search. Too bad Mem and Pep thought the Internet was a way to catch fish or I wouldn’t have to walk all the way to town to find some answers.

  Grabbing my camera—a photographer’s Swiss Army knife in the “always be prepared” department—I left a note to say I went hiking. Actually, I was hiking. Just not in the mountains as Mem and Pep would suppose. To be honest, I’d prefer a hike in the mountains to trudging into town. I kept to the trees because these days traveling roadside is more dangerous than the chance of running into a bear in the woods.

  And even though I’d rather be in my nice, safe downtown park on Clark Street far away from a lake, I had to admit that the ferny undergrowth and sky-scratching pine trees of upstate New York weren’t half bad. With it being just light, I even heard an owl hoot—probably headed home for a day’s rest. Started thinking a shot of an owl in flight might even top my purple hairstreak shot. What if I got it from above rather than below?

  The idea almost had me ready to shimmy up a tree for a test run, but I had a mission. One that proved impossible. At the library, I searched the Plattsburgh Register online until my eyes blurred, found a Rose, a Rosie, and two Rose Maries, but no Rosien. Even did a Yahoo search of the phone listings in town. Not a one.

  I tried “Ireland,” “Irish,” and “Immigrant” and all I came up with was a stupid Halloween story about the silkies in the lake. Sure, the article was a joke, something fun for the little kids who still believed in fairies and silkies, but why print that kind of stuff in a paper? Newspapers are supposed to print the facts, not the fairy-tale nonsense Mem and Pep tried to feed me. I needed real answers, like who was this Rosien woman who came to our house the night before?

  Not sure what else to do, I asked the librarian if she knew a Rosien.

  “Row-sheen, you say. That’s pretty,” she said. “But no, I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  A lot of help she was. I could’ve kept trying, but I was a little dizzy from all that searching and a lot hungry, so I headed home, hoping Mem and Pep had a big lunch in the works.

  All the way there, I kept wondering, who was this Rosien? Not everyone gets their name in the paper, I guess, but it still seemed odd not to catch even one reference to her. That meant she hadn’t been married there or gotten a speeding ticket or been to a town meeting or had a daughter win a ribbon at the Clinton County Fair Mem had told me about. A pretty secretive lady this Rosien. Maybe she talked even less about the past than my mem and pep. She might be a Traveler. They like to stay off the radar. Local folks tend to blame things on strangers they don’t understand. And I sure didn’t understand why Mem didn’t tell me she had a friend living up in Plattsburgh. Maybe that’s why Mem and Pep really wanted to vacation there—a chance to see some of the folks from their old home. But how was I ever going to know if I couldn’t find Rosien?

  Not that I thought it’d do me any good, but I planned to ask Mem and Pep once I got home. When I walked into the kitchen, Mem looked like she’d had a “bout of the misties.” That’s how she described crying. Like it wasn’t nothing more than a bit of weather. But it made me sad just to look at her. Sidetracked all my thoughts of hunting down her Irish friend.

  And the view from the kitchen made things worse. The room had more windows than walls and every single one of them looked out at that ripply blue lake. Gave me that tipsy, walking-a-rope-bridge kind of feeling, like the kitchen itself went out over the water. I inched to the wall and started pulling down the shades, so I didn’t have to look at it.

  Pep sighed, but started pulling shades from the other end of the room so I could join Mem at the table. Afraid my impromptu trip had upset her, I said, “You aren’t mad at me for going hiking, are you?”

  She touched my hand all kind, then slapped it. “That’s for leaving without asking.” She sniffled. “But no, that’s not what’s given me the misties.”

  “Just in a family feud,” Pep said, pouring Mem a cup of tea.

  “Ronan,” Mem warned as she dashed some salt into her tea.

  Too late, he’d already “spilled the milk” as it were. There was no putting it back in the bottle.

  “A feud with who?” I asked, slipping into my chair with thoughts on Rosien. Was she a relative? Even better. She’d know everything about Mem.

  Mem and Pep echoed each other, both saying, to my surprise, that Mem had a sister named Rosien.

  “You have a sister?” I stood up. “You never told me!” Never told me she had one. Never told me this mystery aunt lived in New York. So that’s why we came to Plattsburgh. Maybe they’d had a feud, swore never to speak to each other again, but Mem wanted to patch things up. Maybe she wanted to ask Rosien to be my godmother!

  Mem looked as flustered as I felt. She spun her spoon so fast she spilled tea onto the table.

  Pep sat down between us, patting both of our hands, “Rosien’s a package.”

  “Package” in Pep language meant you had to take the good with the bad. A person with kindness in her soul, but darkness in what she did.

  What dark thing had she done that had made Mem cry? When she came to see me the night before, she didn’t sound so thrilled with me. Was I the reason they didn’t get on together? The idea made me feel like I had sand under my skin, all scratchy and wrong. “She doesn’t fancy me then?”

  Mem looked about ready to cry again, her hand even shook as she sipped her tea. I felt so bad for her, I wanted to cry, too. To get into her arms and hug her.

  Pep turned to me and leaned in close. “Rosien’s not one to fancy folks. And she got to prattling on about being meant to be a mother to the earth not to children. But not your mem, she’s wanted to be a mum from the moment I met her.”

  “On the rocks of a bay so blue, it made her gray eyes glow.” I smiled as I repeated a line from the story Pep always told me of their meeting. Mem even chuckled.

  “That’s right.” He looked over his shoulder at Mem. They smiled at each other.

  I got up to go to Mem. Putting my hands on her knees, I said, “But it’d be nice to have your sister around, right?” I’d always dreamed of having my own sister, someone I could hang out with. A person who would understand my fears. Help me when they closed in around me.

  Mem nodded. “If she wasn’t enough to make me want to stuff her tail end with rocks and see her sink to the bottom.”

  Pep barked, “Mem.”

  Just the idea had me shivering. Most people could talk about drowning. Joke about it even. But not me. Just the thought of that choking water made me relive it. The wetness of it filling me, stretching my lungs, drowning out the air, and the black waves churning me around as I sank. Deeper and deeper with the pain of the fight for air crushing me. I backed into the wall as my lungs started going at full shutter speed, leaving me no air to breathe.

  Mem scooped me up and ran for the front door. She knew a panic attack when she saw one coming—the kind that seized up my muscles and my mind, leaving me quaking and gasping for breath.

  Outside the front door, she pointed up at the bushy pine trees. “Look at those trees. Hear the birdies singing. Think that breeze is blowing those clouds?”

  I let the wind blow through my hair, took in the piney fresh air. Pines can’t grow in water. I’m on dry land. Staring up into branches in the nice, dry sky. I pulled in a good deep breath and imagined I could fly up into the branches with the birds. No more water. No more churning. No more sinking.

  Pep came close, whispering into my hair, “That old lake ain’t nothing. Just some of that blue Jell-O you Yanks love so much. Nothing more than
jiggly blue Jell-O, so it moves with the wind.”

  A lake of blue Jell-O. That made me laugh, but I cried too. Cried because Mem had a family. A sister who stayed away because of me. Would they be closer if I wasn’t such a mess? Wasn’t afraid of silly blue Jell-O water?

  If only it were that silly. That stupid. That easy to swallow. Then I could make that fear just disappear down my throat.

  I imagined myself drinking that lake down a gulp at a time, but my tummy filled up, my neck tightened, and still it looked as though I hadn’t even taken a sip out of the thing. I couldn’t even beat that darn water in my mind. How could I ever hope to do it in real life?

  If I did, would Mem and Pep stop worrying about me? Would Mem patch things up with her sister Rosien? Could they go back to Ireland and see the rest of their family?

  It hurt me in a fist-around-the-heart kind of way to know that taking care of me took so much away from Mem and Pep. I wished I could take my biggest water step ever and just walk right into that stupid lake. But wishes are worth no more than a stone and stones make you sink, so there I stood, holding onto Mem’s hand, staring at the trees, and wishing they’d never even heard of Lake Champlain.

  LEAVES

  Finding out Rosien was a package who hurt Mem stomped out my ideas of tracking her down. She’d probably only tell me lies anyway.

  And with my little freak-out, I just wanted to get away for a bit. Let the cold layer of fear in the pit of my stomach just melt away. Felt like disappearing into the woods to “recharge my batteries,” as Pep always says.

  And Pep sure loved recharging in the lake. He’d pound away at an article for a couple of hours after breakfast, then come charging out of his new office shouting something in Irish. Mem laughed as he flew past and sped down to the dock. I closed my eyes, so I didn’t have to see him jump in, but then I watched real close to see him come back to the surface. Then I could let out the breath I’d been holding inside.

  Mem preferred a quiet night swim herself. For breaks from the illustrations she had due come August for some save-the-world magazine, she knit. Kippers loved it. He sat at her feet and played with the yarn. But knitting is not my favorite hobby, really. Meant nice knitted afghans to nestle in by the fire, but it also led to jumpers for Christmas, scarves for birthdays, and more doll blankets than I’ve got dolls.

  “Maybe you could knit Rosien a jumper,” I suggested as I left for the woods. Anything so that I wouldn’t have to wear another one of those bulky, itchy things to school the first day after Christmas vacation. Last year, Bobby Clarkson said I looked like a mutant snowball.

  To get my mind off itchy jumpers and mean kids like Bobby Clarkson, I headed for my tree fort, a great camera roost. I sat up there, belly down on the floor, elbows as a tripod and started taking shots—the sunlight streaming down onto the rocks, the woodpecker drilling for bugs, and the squirrels scrambling about in a nutty little scavenger hunt.

  I love how photographs are like windows into a piece of nature. And no matter how the seasons change in the place you captured in that window, you can look inside that picture and see just what you saw when you first snapped the shot. It’s like you’ve stopped time. A bit of magic.

  But real magic, not foolish leprechauns and fairies and silkies and all those other made-up things Mem and Pep talked about. Little kid stories I outgrew in kindergarten. Now I made magic of my own with a little glass, a little paper, and a good flash.

  Whistling pulled me up short. I wanted to keep my tree fort private. A place just for me. The song being whistled didn’t have the hop and the jump of one of Pep’s tunes, and Mem’s not one for woods—too many snakes and bats about for her. What if it was one of Tylo’s rowdy brothers? They’d probably try to claim my fort. I had a serious need for some acorns myself, something I could pitch fast and hard to keep them away.

  Then I caught sight of the whistler through the trees. From the clam-combed hair, I realized it was Tylo. Eh, he could see my fort. Just as long as he didn’t tell his brothers about it. But to play it safe, I got down and headed out to the clearing to meet up with him.

  “Hi there,” I said as he came closer.

  “Hello.” He dragged his feet, a canvas bag snagging along behind him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My brother Trevor caught me stuffing my green beans in my pocket. Now I have to help him collect leaves for his science project. He has to get a gazillion of them before he goes back to school. Scratch that. I have to find them all. He’ll be at the beach all day.”

  Sibling blackmail. Now there’s one thing I’d never miss about not having a brother—

  That lie hit me like a bolt of lightning charging right down into my feet. I’d had a brother. An older brother who would’ve caught me planting my brussels sprouts in the fern by the back door.

  To let my brother Kenny know I would’ve done his science projects, carried his books, and even cleaned his nuclear disaster of a room—if it meant I could have him back—I decided to give Tylo a hand. After all, I knew my leaves.

  Pulling off a pine needle, I said, “Here’s a white pine to start things off.”

  “Cool.” He rushed forward to grab the needles, popped them in a book in his bag, then rushed for a struggling maple. “Thanks for your help.”

  Felt good to help him, a faint hint of the kind of things I could’ve done with my own brother. And Tylo turned out to be a cool kid. Even if he did have a fairy tale obsession with threes. He fancied himself a spelunker and promised to take me to see his favorite caves—all three of them. He had a comic book collection big enough to fill three bookcases. He even had three brothers and three loose teeth (thanks to his youngest brother, Ben, who tripped him into a rock).

  “It’s okay, they’re all baby teeth.” He pushed them with his tongue. “Do you think I could get enough from the tooth fairy to buy that special night film you were talking about?”

  “You mean your mom and dad? The tooth fairy isn’t real.”

  I knew the score on fairies. All the fairy stories of my childhood had sent me in search of those little critters. I’d found a book about them at school. Told me everything from the myths about the hill-living baby-stealers to those famous doctored-up photographs that had people in England believing those little woodland pixie types might actually be real. Yeah, right. About as real as Gaylen Parker’s sunset. Not only did that book show me how people could fix photographs, but it also taught me that all those magical, fantastic stories Mem and Pep had told me didn’t have a word of truth in them.

  Reading that book made me feel like I’d been living inside a beach ball and someone sucked all the air out and left me with just a shrunk-up blob of plastic. All the possibilities of fairies and pixies and pookas just shriveled right up. That’s why I preferred real, honest, taken-from-life pictures that showed what a person can see, hear, and touch. They captured the real world.

  And that’s what I wanted from Mem and Pep—the real truth about their childhood. But instead I get to learn the ins and outs of fairyland. They can keep it.

  But Tylo seemed like the type of kid who’d still clap for Tinkerbell to say he believed in fairies. He stopped and squinted at me. “Does that mean you don’t believe in any imaginary things?”

  I walked past him. “Why would I, if they’re imaginary?” That’d be like waiting up to catch Santa eating the cookies you’ve left when you could be eating those cookies yourself.

  “What’s just make-believe to some people is real to others, like those people who can see ghosts.”

  “Mediums?” I laughed. “They’re just pretending.”

  “People aren’t always pretending when they see imaginary things.”

  I kept walking, searching for a birch tree, so it took me a minute to notice that he hadn’t followed me. I turned to see him standing there with the bag on his shoes, his head down, his shoulders all droopy like he’d just found out Santa Claus was a hoax.

  Sad feelings are like a shri
nking potion. When someone I like, even a new friend like Tylo, feels bad, it shrinks me up inside.

  “Okay.” I shrugged. I didn’t really believe him, but I had to say something to cheer him up. I thought about the article I’d seen on silkies in the town paper and I blurted out, “My parents say there are silkies in this lake.”

  You’d think I’d lit a rocket in his shoes the way he came rushing forward all shouts and laughter. “They do? That’s what I think, too! Lots of people around here joke about them. But I saw one three nights ago. Tried to take its picture, but the picture didn’t turn out. If you used your camera and that film you’re talking about, we could get one on film!”

  His words blew up a balloon of laughter in my mouth, but I couldn’t let it out. He’d know I thought he was a goofus.

  Silkies? Even my leprechaun-loving parents didn’t really think they lived in that lake. Those were just wacky stories people tell. Tylo probably just saw fish jumping in the water, not a ship-guiding seal. I coughed to let my laughter out, then said, “If you want that film, you’d better talk to your brother.”

  “Why?”

  “Three teeth won’t get you enough money to buy it.”

  His eyes got so big his head kind of flopped back like they made it too heavy. He thought I was serious. A total goofus.

  But I liked goofuses. How else would I put up with Pep? Giving Tylo a shove, I said, “Just kidding,” then headed on to find more leaves.

  “Well, I’ve got to get that picture.” He shook his head. “My brothers just won’t shut up about me seeing a silkie. They keep calling me ‘Gully.’” He turned to me. “That’s for ‘gullible,’ as in a kid so dumb he’d believe the moon is made of cheese.”