Summer by the Sea

by Susan Wiggs

  Finally she found her voice. “What are you doing?”

  He pulled the tube away from his mouth. “This helps me breathe,” he said. “It’s a portable bronchodilator.”

  She edged a little closer, but still felt wary. He was very skinny, lying on a leather sofa with a sailboat quilt covering him up. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had a nice face, nicer than you’d expect for a ghost boy. Pale yellow hair, pale blue eyes, pale white skin.

  “You need help breathing?” she asked.

  “Sometimes.” He set aside the tube, hooking it into a holder on the side of the machine. A wisp of steam coughed from the mouthpiece. “I have asthma.”

  “Can you get rid of it?” Rosa tensed up, wishing she hadn’t asked. Sometimes a person got sick and there was no way to get better.

  “No one can tell,” he said. “It can be controlled, and maybe it’ll improve when I get bigger and my lungs grow. What’s your name?”

  “Rosina Angelica Capoletti, and everyone calls me Rosa. What’s yours?”

  “Alexander Montgomery.”

  “Does everyone call you Alex?”

  He offered a mild, sweet smile. “No one calls me that.”

  “Then I think I will.”

  They verified that they were just a year apart in age, but in the same grade. Alex had started kindergarten a year late on account of having trouble with his asthma. He admitted that he disliked school, and she got the impression that he got bullied a lot. She declared that she, too, despised school.

  “I know I have to go,” she lamented. “It’s the only way to get ahead.”

  “Ahead of what?” he asked.

  She laughed. “I don’t know. My brothers were in ROTC and joined the U.S. Navy for their education.”

  “You go to college to get an education,” he said with a frown.

  “If you go in the navy first, then the navy pays for it,” she explained patiently. “I thought everybody knew that.” She indicated the book that lay open across his lap. “What are you reading?”

  He picked it up and showed her the spine. “Bulfinch’s Mythology. It’s a collection of Greek myths. This one is about Icarus. There’s a picture.”

  Rosa sat beside him on the sofa and scooted over to see. Alex thoughtfully put half the book on her lap. “He’s flying,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “He doesn’t look like he’s having much fun.”

  “Well, he’s in pain.”

  “Why would he fly if it hurts him?”

  “Because he’s flying,” Alex said as if that explained everything.

  Rosa stuck out her bare foot. The beestings formed red dots on her ankle and shin. “I tried flying, and trust me, it’s not worth the pain.”

  “I saw you,” he said. “I was watching from the window.”

  “I know. I saw you watching me.”

  “I was going to come and help, but I didn’t know what to do.”

  “That’s all right. Mrs. Carmichael came straightaway when she heard me yelling.”

  He nodded gravely, studying her with such total absorption that she felt like the only person on the planet. “Do the beestings hurt?”

  “Not anymore. Mrs. Carmichael put baking soda on them. She said I’m lucky I’m not allergic.”

  “You are lucky,” he said with a funny, dreamy look on his face. “You get to be outside and do whatever you want.”

  She thought about telling him just how unlucky she was. She was a girl without a mother. But she didn’t want to say anything. Not just yet. It might be too scary for him, this sick boy, to hear about a sick person who had died.

  “You mean you’re not allowed outside?”

  He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Not without supervision. I might have an asthma attack.”

  “Going outside causes an attack?”

  “Sometimes.”

  She’d heard of a heart attack. An attack of nerves. But not an asthma attack. “What’s it feel like?”

  “It’s like...drowning. But in air instead of water.”

  Rosa had some knowledge of the sensation. More than once, while swimming, she’d gone out too far and under too deep, and she’d experienced the momentary panic of needing air. The feeling was horrifying. “Then you’d better not go outside.”

  He stared down at Icarus, whose mouth was twisted in agony as he flew too close to the sun. Then he looked up at Rosa, and there was a new light in his blue eyes. “Let’s go anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “My lungs were twitchy this morning, but I’m better now. I’ll be okay.”

  She looked at him very closely. There were no lies in that face of his. She could just tell. “I have to get my clothes. Mrs. Carmichael put them in the dryer.”

  “I think that might be in the utility room.”

  As she followed him through the house, she marveled that he didn’t know for sure where the dryer was. At her house, everyone knew, because laundry was everyone’s business. He opened a painted door in the kitchen to reveal a dim, cavernous room dusty with dryer lint. “It’s in there.”

  “You wait here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I have to change. I sure don’t need any help doing that.” The room smelled of must and dryer lint, and a hissing sound came from the water heater. Her clothes were still damp, but she put them on anyway—undies, cutoffs and a T-shirt from Mario’s Flying Pizza. The sun would finish the job of drying them. She left the bathrobe on top of the dryer and hurried back to the kitchen.

  There, she found Alex and Mrs. Carmichael locked in a staredown. “I’m going,” he said to the housekeeper.

  She sniffed. “You’re not to leave the house.”

  “That was this morning. I’m better now. I have my inhaler and my EpiPen, see?” He took a plastic thing in a yellow tube from the pocket of his shorts.

  “I’ll watch him,” Rosa blurted out. “I will, Mrs. Carmichael. If he starts looking sick, I’ll make him come right back inside.”

  The housekeeper kept her hands planted on her hips, though her eyes softened and there was a barely perceptible easing of her shoulders. Mothers were like that. They gave in with their eyes and their posture before saying okay out loud. “You will, will you?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. I got my things from the dryer. Thank you, Mrs. Carmichael.”

  “You’re very welcome.” She looked from Alex to Rosa. “Try to keep your noses clean, all right?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Carmichael,” they said together, trying not to look too gleeful.

  Out in the sunlight, Rosa noticed that Alex’s eyes were ocean-blue, and they crinkled when he grinned at her. She vowed to be on her best behavior, just like Mrs. C had admonished them. If she got in trouble, Pop wouldn’t let her come to work with him anymore. He’d make her stay with that dreadful Mrs. Schmidt, the widow with the mustache, whom Rosa likened to a circling buzzard. Even before Mamma died, Mrs. Schmidt had started coming around the house, bringing covered dishes and making eyes at Pop, which of course he never even noticed.

  “Here. Have a cookie.” As they headed for the door, Mrs. Carmichael held out a white jar in the shape of a sandcastle.

  “Thank you.” They each took one and stepped out into the sunshine. Rosa nibbled on the cookie as she grinned at Alex.

  It was a store-bought sugar cookie. Not as good as Mamma’s, of course. Mamma made hers with a secret ingredient—ricotta cheese—and thick, sweet icing. Now that was a cookie.

  Ricotta Cheese Sugar Cookies

  1 cup softened butter

  2 cups sugar

  1 carton full-fat ricotta cheese

  2 eggs

  3 teaspoons vanilla (the kind from Mexico is best)

  1/2 teaspo
on salt

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

  4 cups flour

  For the glaze:

  1 cup powdered sugar

  2-4 Tablespoons milk

  2 drops almond extract (optional)

  sprinkles

  Preheat oven to 350° F. Mix cookie ingredients to form a sticky dough. Drop by teaspoonfuls on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes or until the bottoms turn golden brown (the tops will stay white). Transfer to wire racks to cool. To make the glaze, stir milk a few drops at a time, along with the almond extract if desired, into the powdered sugar in a saucepan. Stir over low heat to create a glaze. Drizzle over cooled cookies and top with colored sprinkles. Makes 3-4 dozen cookies.

  seven

  “Too bad about the rope swing,” Alex said, eyeing the rope that still hung from the tree branch.

  “I took it from that shed behind the—what is that building, anyway? It’s too big to be a garage,” Rosa said, stopping to put on her flip-flops. The tall building was painted and trimmed to match the house. It had old-fashioned sliding wooden doors like a barn, an upper story at one end with a row of dormer windows facing the sea and a cupola with a wind vane on top.

  “My mother parks her car there. She calls it the carriage house even though there’s no carriage in it.”

  Sunlight glinted off the windows at the top of the house. “I knew it was way too fancy to be called a garage. Does somebody live there?”

  “No, but somebody used to. In the olden days, a caretaker lived upstairs.”

  “What did he take care of?”

  “The horses. And carriages, I guess, but that was a long time ago. My grandfather used it as an observatory. He showed me how to spot the Copernicus Crater with a telescope.”

  He sure did seem smart. Rosa nodded appreciatively, as though she knew what the Copernicus Crater was.

  “My grandfather was teaching me about the stars, but he died when I was in first grade.”

  Rosa didn’t quite know what to say about that, so she followed him across the property to the carriage house. The front doors were stuck, but they struggled together to push them along the rusted runners. Inside was a maze of spiderwebs, old tools and some sort of car under a fitted cover. “My mother’s car,” Alex said. “She calls it her beach car. It’s a Ford Galaxy. She hardly ever drives it, though.”

  “My mother didn’t like driving, either.”

  He shot her a quick look, and Rosa realized that now was her chance to tell him, because she’d said “didn’t” instead of “doesn’t.” But she decided not to say anything. Not yet. She might later, though. She’d already decided he was that kind of friend.

  Before he could question her, she ran up the stairs. Sure enough, there was a whole house up there, flooded with dusty sunshine. Alex sneezed, and she turned to him. “Is this going to cause an as—” She couldn’t remember the word. “An attack?”

  “Asthma attack. I don’t think so.” He stuck his hand into his pocket and she could see him feeling for the inhaler. Still, he seemed fine. So far, so good.

  The furniture was stacked in a broken heap, like old bones on Halloween. The most interesting item was a spinning wheel. Rosa stepped on the pedal, and when the large wheel spun, she jumped back with a yell of fright.

  Alex laughed at her, but not in a mean way.

  “What are you going to do with all this stuff?” Rosa asked.

  “I don’t know. My mother says she keeps meaning to clean it out, but she never gets around to it. I get to keep the telescope, though.” It was on a table in front of the biggest window. He opened the long black case to reveal the instrument broken down in parts.

  “Can you see the man in the moon with that?” Rosa asked.

  “There’s no such thing as the man in the moon.”

  “I know. It’s just an expression.”

  He shut the case, and a cloud of dust rose. When he breathed, he made a scary wheezing sound, and his face turned red.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” Rosa asked.

  He waved his hand and headed for the stairs, gasping all the way like a cartoon character pretending to die. Rosa followed him in terror. When they got outside, she headed for the house to tell Mrs. Carmichael, but Alex grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

  His touch felt desperate but not angry. “I’m okay,” he said, though his voice was only a whisper.

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “Cross my heart and hope to— I’m sure.” His eyes looked brighter, somehow, than they had before. Magnified by the lenses of his glasses, they appeared huge.

  “Was that an asthma attack?”

  He grinned. “No way. That was just a little wheezing.”

  “I’d hate to see an attack, then.”

  “I’m all right. Let’s go to the beach.”

  She hesitated, but only for a second. You just didn’t say no to a kid who spent half his life cooped up like Alex did. “Okay,” she said.

  The Montgomery house overlooked a part of the shore almost no one visited, an area known as North Beach. It was a long, isolated curve of the coastline, a good hike from the nearest public beach. It was also a bird sanctuary, safe from development and a good distance from town. A path, overgrown by runners from wild roses and greenbrier, led through the sanctuary to the shore. The summer crowds had never discovered the marsh-rimmed beach, or if they had, it was too rocky to be popular.

  “Too cold for swimming yet,” Rosa said, running down to the water’s edge. “But soon. Ever seen a tide pool?”

  “In a book,” he said, following more slowly, breathing hard.

  “I can take you to see some real ones.”

  “All right.”

  His breathing worried her. “Can you make it?”

  “Sure, I’m okay.”

  It was impossible to walk in a straight line on the beach; Rosa had never been able to do it. They darted back and forth, examining shells, overturning rocks to watch the tiny crabs run for cover, picking out a perfectly round, flat stone to skip.

  Alex turned out to be a big talker. In fact, he was a funny, clever boy who took delight in everything she said and did, everything she showed him. And he knew things, too. He knew a dolphin swims at thirty-five miles per hour, and a baby gray whale drinks the equivalent of two thousand bottles of milk each day. So all that reading was good for something, after all.

  He had a sister who was away at horseback riding camp. “Her name’s Madison. She’s fifteen. I’m not allowed to go to camp on account of my asthma.”

  “It’s just as nice here,” Rosa declared, though she had no idea whether or not that was true.

  “My family’s firm has offices in the city, and my father comes to the beach house only on weekends and holidays,” he said.

  She didn’t really get what a firm was, but it seemed to keep his father plenty busy. “Which city?”

  “New York City. And Providence, too. Where do you live?”

  “In Winslow.”

  “You’re lucky. I wish I could live here all year around.”

  “I don’t know. It gets pretty cold in the winter. Summers are the best. Do you like swimming or hiking, going out in boats?”

  “I don’t do things like that,” he said. “I’m not allowed.”

  “That’s too bad.” What an odd boy, she thought. “Pop says when I’m twelve, I can go parasailing.”

  “See what I mean? Lucky.”

  “I guess. Maybe we could go down to the docks at Galilee and catch a ride on a fishing boat that’s heading out for the day. Mrs. Carmichael’s husband is a lobsterman. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  She had a feeling he didn’t do much talking to the housekeeper. “My brothers’
names are Roberto and Salvatore. We call him Sal but never Sally.” She pointed out a firepit with the charred remains of a few logs. “My brothers used to build bonfires that would shoot sparks a mile high.” Just saying it made her miss Rob and Sal, who were so much older than her. Her parents used to call her their last blessing. After the boys, they weren’t really expecting to have a daughter, too, nine years later. Her parents had been older than the parents of her friends, but Rosa never cared about that. She was surrounded by love, she was the last blessing and she used to think she was the luckiest girl in the world.

  “Maybe we could build a bonfire,” Alex said.

  It was nice, the way he seemed to feel her turning sad, and spoke right up. “Maybe,” she said, and took him past the public beaches and parking lots to the rocky tip of Point Judith. “You have to be careful here,” she warned him. “The rocks are slippery. Sharp, too.”

  He took a step and wobbled a little on his skinny white legs, then regained his balance. He looked very small, standing on the sharp-edged black rock with the waves exploding high into the sky.

  Rosa put out her hand. “Hang on and watch where you step.”

  He grabbed on, and his strong grip surprised her. He studied each move with deliberation, but they made steady progress. When a fount of white foam erupted between the rocks he was straddling, Alex jumped, but not in time to avoid getting his shorts soaked.

  “Are you all right?” asked Rosa.

  “Yes.” With his free hand, he straightened his glasses. “It’s steep.”

  “Don’t worry.” She stepped down to the next rock. “I’ll catch you if you fall.”

  “What if you fall?” he asked.

  “I won’t,” she declared. “I never fall.” Step by unsteady step, she led him down to the placid clear pools that stayed filled at low tide. They studied hand-sized starfish and sea cucumbers, neon-colored algae and clusters of black mussels clinging to the rock. Alex knew what everything was from his reading, but he didn’t know how to make sunburst anemones squirt. Rosa showed him that. Splat, right on his eyeglasses.

  Alex laughed aloud as he wiped his face, and the sound made her smile bigger than she’d smiled in weeks. Months, maybe. Crouched by the pool, she felt a slight change, like the wind shifting. They weren’t just two kids anymore. They were friends.