Whose parents were in jail … Summer rolled over on her back and put her arm across her eyes, trying to shut out a picture of Oriole. A picture of Oriole alone in a dark cell—a cell from an illustration in a book she’d once read—perhaps, Les Miserables or The Count of Monte Cristo. Stone walls, a narrow bunk and a tiny barred window, with the ragged, bearded figure of the illustration replaced by another thin, pale prisoner, her face furrowed with deep wrinkles and her bright hair turned thin and gray. Other pictures came then—Oriole playing games with Sparrow on the trailer floor—singing “Gentle on My Mind” as she kneaded bread at the kitchen table—on a picnic with flowers in her hair.
She sat up suddenly, her fists clenched. The summoned anger flamed like an opened furnace, burning away the tears that had started to flood her eyes. “Damn her,” she whispered. “God damn her.”
It wasn’t until then that she suddenly thought of the Olivers. In all the time, almost thirty-six hours since the raid had started, the Olivers had not entered her mind. Away in Connecticut buying their new home, they had disappeared from her thoughts as well. But now suddenly they returned, just as they would return before long to gather up all their many belongings and leave Alvarro Bay forever. And just as suddenly Summer knew what she was going to do.
It was no more than fifteen minutes later, and she was still sitting on the edge of the lounge chair, thinking and planning, when Mrs. Jensen appeared at the back door.
“Summer,” she called. “Come here. You have visitors.”
She couldn’t think who it might be, and under the circumstances she certainly couldn’t think whom she would want it to be. She supposed most of Alvarro Bay knew by now about what had happened, so it might be almost anyone. She hoped it wouldn’t be someone like Haley and her mother, full of condolences and curiosity.
For some reason she never thought of the Pardells until she walked into the living room, although as soon as she heard what they were there for, she wasn’t at all surprised. It was just like Meg and Pardell to take on two more stray cats and then pretend to blame each other for it.
14
THE SCENE AT THE Food Mart was just about what she’d expected. It was the first time she’d been downtown since she and Sparrow had moved in with the Pardells, and left to her own devices, she’d have put it off even longer. In another week or two, some other local scandal might have occurred to take people’s minds off the big pot bust at the Fishers’. So when Meg said she needed help with the shopping because of the crutches, Summer was anything but enthusiastic. She’d even thought of offering Sparrow’s services, but Marina had just arrived for a visit so that was out. She’d agreed to go very reluctantly.
“I really appreciate this, Summer,” Meg said as they were pulling up in front of the Mart. “And I’m sure Arnie will, too. After last week, I’ve been afraid he was about to revoke my license to operate a grocery cart in his store.”
“Why? What happened last week?”
“I had one of those wobbly wheeled carts, and when I tried to turn the corner with one hand, it went out of control and sideswiped a display of strawberry jam. Then, while I was grabbing at falling jam jars, I dropped my crutch and clobbered a small fortune’s worth of instant coffee.”
So, of course, Summer said she was glad to help, and while Meg concentrated on her shopping, Summer pushed the grocery cart and tried to ignore the stares. Since it was midweek, most of the shoppers were local people, and it was immediately apparent that everyone in Alvarro Bay knew all about the raid and everybody involved. The stares varied from curious to hostile to sympathetic. As usual, it was the sympathetic that she hated most. If Arnie had only known ahead of time, he could have advertised. “All you locals who’ve enjoyed feeling sorry for the poor McIntyre kids all these years, drop in tomorrow for a real bargain basement special.”
She hadn’t thought Meg had noticed, but when they were on the way home, she suddenly said, “It takes a thick hide, doesn’t it? That’s the way with life in a small town. There’s no comfortable shell of anonymity, so we all have to grow our own.” She leaned over then and patted Summer’s arm. “But don’t let it get too thick, honey. There’ll be times and places when it won’t be necessary any longer.”
Summer nodded, smiling stiffly. “I know,” she said. And to herself she added that her own time for small towns, and the thick hides they made necessary, would be over very soon, if everything worked out according to her plans.
As they pulled into the yard, Pardell was playing football on the front lawn with Sparrow and Marina and Patrick, the eight-year-old kid from next door. Pardell was flat on his face under a stack of squirming kids, but when he saw the car he got up and walked over to the driveway, with Sparrow and Marina still clinging to him like a couple of leeches.
“Alan,” Meg said. “I thought you were going to get some work done this afternoon while the girls were out of the study.”
Pardell grinned. “That was the plan, wasn’t it. But first things first. My duty as an educator called, and I answered.”
“An educator?”
“Absolutely. Sparrow and Marina came in for a little chat, and I discovered that their education has been sadly neglected. Here they are pushing eight years old and completely ignorant of the basic principles of the great sport of football.”
“But they’re little girls,” Meg said.
Pardell looked down at the kids and raised his shaggy eyebrows in a surprised expression—as if he’d just noticed. “Well, so they are,” he said. “But a pair of promising first string tackles, nevertheless.” He shook his leg gently, detaching Marina who was still clutching his ankle. “Okay, team. On your feet. The play’s over.” He tossed the football to Patrick. “Call the next play, quarterback, while I take in the groceries.”
It wasn’t until he came into the kitchen with the last two bags that he suddenly thumped his forehead and said. “I nearly forgot. You got some mail, Summer. A letter and a postcard. On the dining room table.”
The letter was postmarked Ukiah and was addressed to Summer in Oriole’s disjointed, childish handwriting. Summer took it into her room, or rather into Pardell’s study, before she opened it.
My Beautiful Babies,
I’ve just heard the news. I’ve always thought that Meg and Alan Pardell were just about the most beautiful people in Alvarro Bay, and now I know it. I’m so happy and relieved. I was really freaking out, sitting here all day thinking about my Beautiful Babies shut up in some kind of Kiddie Jail just because their dumb mother doesn’t know how to pick her friends.
Don’t worry about me. This place isn’t exactly the Taj Mahal, but it’s not as bad as it could be. The food’s pretty plastic but there’s plenty of it, and there are books to read and once in a while even TV. I’ve been talking to Greg Allbright, he’s the Fishers’ lawyer and he’s going to represent me, too. Isn’t that great! He’s a great lawyer and a really beautiful human being, and Galya is going to take care of his fee for the time being and I’ll pay her back later. Greg thinks that I’ll be a good witness and that the jury will see that I wasn’t really involved in what was going on at the Fishers’, and find me not guilty.
I miss you both like crazy, and I’m really counting the days until we’re all back again in our trailer in the free, clean forest air.
Summer, why don’t you get a dozen real nice roses and give them to Meg Pardell from me and tell her how much I appreciate what she’s doing. And maybe you could ask her if she’s coming to Ukiah to bring you kids along so we could have a visit. It may be a few weeks yet before the trial comes up, and I’m really going to be climbing the walls if I don’t get to see my babies before then.
Hoping to see you real soon,
Your loving Oriole
Summer put the letter down quickly to keep from wadding it into a ball and throwing it across the room. She wanted to scream. She wanted to scream things about free air, and lawyers and roses that weren’t free. And babies that weren’t eith
er. That shouldn’t be, at least, because after a while they stopped being babies and definitely stopped being free. But she didn’t scream because she couldn’t without scaring a lot of people to death. In a house as small as the Pardells’, you couldn’t scream, and you couldn’t stay for very long either. Not when you had to sleep on a hide-a-bed in somebody’s study so that most of the time he couldn’t even get to his desk.
It was several minutes before she trusted herself to put the letter back in the envelope. She’d forgotten all about the postcard, but when she picked up the envelope there it was. It was from Nan Oliver and it said that she and Richard would be back in Alvarro Bay at the end of the week.
That was on Wednesday, and on Thursday Summer went with Sparrow to the Fishers’. Galya had been driving in to town every morning to leave Marina at the Pardells’ or to pick up Sparrow. But when she arrived on Thursday, Nicky was with her. Summer was weeding the flower garden, and while Galya was in the house collecting Sparrow, he strolled over and stood around watching. After they’d both said “hi,” Summer went on weeding while she waited to see what was coming next. She was beginning to think nothing was, when Nicky said, “You want to play Star Wars? You can be Darth Vader.”
In the old days who got to be Darth Vader was one of the things they always fought over. She sat back on her heels and looked at him. “You mean I don’t have to wrestle you for it?” she asked.
“Not unless you want to,” he said, and then he grinned and raised his right hand and said it again. “Not unless you want to.”
It seemed very strange to be at the Fishers’ again. It was the first time in more than six months, except for the night of the raid and the other night visit when she’d come looking for Sparrow. Adam was home from the hospital with his arm in a sling, looking palely heroic and taking himself even more seriously than ever. Jerry and Galya and Nicky were busy preparing the huge greenhouses, five of them now, for some new varieties of berries; and Sparrow and Marina were in a seventh heaven of imaginary adventures and giggly secrets.
Most of the day Summer helped out in the greenhouses, but in the afternoon she accepted Nicky’s invitation to go for a hike in the woods. It was a cool day, with a high, thin overcast filtering the sunlight and a slight tang of surf and spray in the breeze. They followed a deer trail to the top of the ridge to where they could see clear down to the town and beyond it to the dim line where the sea met the sky. Near the highest point of the trail, they found a fallen log and sat down to rest.
When Nicky put his arm around her shoulders, Summer didn’t resist; but when she took his other hand and held it, it was partly to keep it under control. She remembered his hands as almost as small as hers, with close-bitten grubby nails and scraped and scabby knuckles. But the hand she was holding was large and lean and masculine, with long sensitive-looking fingers. She thought of saying something about the change; but when she looked up at him, he started to kiss her. She pulled away instinctively, but he stopped and said, “Okay, Darth. You got it.” So after a few minutes she looked up at him again.
They’d tried several kinds of kisses, and Summer had found that she liked most of them when Nicky started talking about next year at school and what the reaction was going to be to a Fisher-McIntyre item, and how she felt about going, not steady, which was pretty passé, but at least fairly steadily. As she listened, Summer went stiff and silent, and when he finally noticed and asked her what was the matter, she had to tell him.
He didn’t believe her at first, and then he said he didn’t understand it, and then he got angry and said, and what was he supposed to do, and what in the hell did she think Oriole was going to do when she got out of jail.
And then suddenly she was very angry, and she told him that Oriole would go right on doing what she’d always done and anyway it wasn’t any of his business. Then she got up and ran down the path. He caught up with her after a while, but she refused to talk to him. They went all the rest of the way down the hill in silence.
When they got back to the Fishers’, Galya was getting ready to leave for Alvarro Bay. Before they left, Summer reminded Nicky that she’d told him about her plan in strictest confidence and asked him not to mention it to anyone. “Okay,” he said. “But I don’t see why it matters. They’ll all know soon enough, anyway.”
“Maybe not. It may not happen.”
“Oh yeah? Well, wouldn’t that be too bad. That would be a real disappointment, wouldn’t it?”
Nicky’s sarcasm usually drove her up the wall, but for some reason she didn’t flare up this time. There was something in his face that revealed the pain that lay beneath his anger, and anger that hurt was something Summer knew a lot about.
“I don’t want to go,” she told him, and it was at least partly true.
“Then why are you? Why can’t you just stay at the Pardells’?”
“They really haven’t room for us. And besides, they’re planning to take a year off and live in Europe soon.”
Galya came out of the house then with Sparrow, and there wasn’t time to say anymore. As they drove away, Nicky was still standing on the front veranda, but when Summer waved, he didn’t wave back.
On the way home they stopped to let Summer and Sparrow get some things they needed from the trailer. While Galya waited in the car, they ran down the familiar path for the first time since the raid. Although it had only been about a week, there was a deserted look to the clearing, and inside the trailer the air smelled dusty and dead. Summer couldn’t wait to get out. She threw some things into shopping bags, clothing and shoes and a few of Sparrow’s favorite toys. In the bottom of the biggest bag she put Grant’s hairbrush and the letter box.
On Saturday Nan Oliver called. They’d gotten home that morning, and as soon as they found Summer’s note, they’d called the Pardells’. Nan sounded shocked and horrified.
“How perfectly awful for poor little Sparrow,” she said. “For you both—but Sparrow’s at such an impressionable age.” Sparrow was impressionable all right; but although Summer didn’t say so, she felt certain that having an only parent put in jail just might make as much of a dent in a sixteen-year-old. In her experience seven-year-olds bounced back. Like Silly Putty they could be all out of shape one minute and back to normal the next. But she didn’t argue.
“We’d like to see you,” she said, and less than an hour later the dark blue Cadillac pulled up in front of the Pardells’.
She almost didn’t do it. It was something about the precise orderliness of the long, low ranch house, even now in the midst of packing. Along the walls identical boxes of carefully wrapped treasures were perfectly aligned, and there wasn’t a scrap of paper or trace of dust anywhere. Things weren’t where they used to be. The carefully designed patterns had changed. But there were still patterns, and for some reason, they were more noticeable than ever. She’d not minded it before. In fact the predictability and stability of everything at Crown Ridge had seemed pleasant and comfortable. But now, suddenly, she found herself wondering what the Olivers’ patterns would create from the seven-year-old Silly Putty that was Sparrow.
But of course Nan and Richard had wanted to hear all about the raid and Oriole’s involvement; and explaining it—even explaining it in words that told as little as possible—reminded Summer of her plan. So while they were having tea and pastries on the patio, and Sparrow had temporarily disappeared across the lawn after the peacocks, she made her proposal.
She did it straight out front this time, without any pretense or subterfuge. She simply asked them if they’d like to have Sparrow, and when they said they would, she told them how to go about it.
15
SHE COULDN’T SLEEP. AND when she finally did, she kept dreaming things that woke her up with a start. She felt tense and restless, and her mouth was dry, and she finally decided to get up and go to the kitchen for a glass of water. It was after midnight, but the light was still on in the dining room. Before she’d had time to realize why, Pardell had seen he
r.
“Sleepwalking?” he asked. “Or hungry.”
She rubbed her eyes, blinking in the sudden glare. He was sitting at the dining room table surrounded by a huge stack of books and papers. He’d been there, doing research for a new article, three hours earlier when everyone else had gone to bed, but it hadn’t occurred to her he’d still be there.
“Just thirsty,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“You sure you’re not hungry? I was just on my way to the kitchen for a peanut butter sandwich. Want to join me? I’ll vouch for peanut butter as a sure-fire sedative. Knocks me out every time.”
She said no again, but while she was drinking her water, he was spreading peanut butter and the smell got to her. “I guess I’m changing my mind,” she said.
“A human’s prerogative,” he said. “You catch that quick rewrite? Human’s for woman’s? I want my Brownie points for raised consciousness.”
He slathered another piece of bread with peanut butter and poured a big glass of milk. “Here. Pull up a chair and dig in. You look famished.” He paused, studying her face. “Hollow-eyed. Maybe not so much famished as—haunted. That’s it, haunted. Restless spirits abroad tonight?”
It was strange because haunted was exactly the way she’d been feeling. Haunted by ghosts of the past as well as some new, dimly seen ones of the future. “I guess so,” she said.
Afterwards she couldn’t remember exactly how she started, but suddenly she was telling him about her plan, and how she’d taken the crucial step that afternoon at the Olivers’, and how their reaction had been exactly what she’d hoped and planned for.
Birds of Summer Page 14