by Sally Derby
“I told them just before you got back. Do you know what Andrea said? ‘Poor Kyle.’ She knew, we all knew how hard this would be for you. And I was planning how—darn Dave!”
“What did Vicki say, and Josh?” I asked bitterly. “I’ll bet they’re glad. They didn’t want to come anyway.”
“They aren’t glad.” Mom pulled a cigarette out of the pack beside her on the table. “They’re sorry, too. We’re all sorry, Kyle.”
“Sorry doesn’t help. Why don’t you do something?” I stood up so fast my elbow knocked against the big flashlight we kept on the table for trips down the hill at night. It banged to the floor, but I didn’t bother to pick it up.
“There’s nothing I can do.” Mom said that so quietly I could hardly hear, and for some reason that made me angrier than ever.
“There’s gotta be something! You give up too easy.” I was shouting again.
“Kyle, if you’ll just look at this reasonably—”
“The hell with reason!” My voice bounced off the cottage walls. “First you can’t hold on to Dad, and now you want to take the cottage away from us. This stinks!”
Mom didn’t answer. Her hand flew up to her cheek, like I’d hit her. For a moment I was sorry, then I wasn’t sorry at all. She wouldn’t fight for anything, not the cottage, not Dad. She’d just let Dad leave, let him have everything his way. I’d heard her tell him he could come back whenever he wanted. She’d be waiting, she said. But maybe he’d never want to, maybe he’d want a divorce instead. Had she thought of that?
I had to get out of there. I was a time bomb ready to explode. She had no idea. I wanted to throw something, hit something or someone, run until I dropped. I moved back from her, stumbling a little. My foot bumped against the flashlight, and I kicked it, hard. It spun crazily across the room, hit the opposite wall. I had my hand on the door when Mom’s voice stopped me. “I couldn’t help what happened with your father, Kyle. And I can’t help this. Regardless of what you think.”
I went out then. I let the screen door bang behind me.
* * *
Down by the lake I saw Vicki, Andrea, and Josh just sitting on the pier, dangling their legs over the side. Andrea’s head turned when the door banged. She waved for me to come down, then said something to Vicki. Vicki moved over and patted the place where she’d been sitting, like she was coaxing some little kid. Well, I was coming, wasn’t I?
“Are you okay?” Andrea asked as soon as I came near.
It took me a minute to get calm enough to answer. “Mad, that’s all,” I muttered.
“We heard you yell,” Josh said. “Kids aren’t supposed to yell at grown-ups.”
Just what I needed: a lecture from my little brother. I took a deep breath, all set to blast him, but then I saw the way he was looking at me. He looked so sad—pathetic, really. I shut my mouth. Josh sat there between the girls, soccer ball beside him like always, fooling with a clamshell. He didn’t look at me again.
“I’m sorry about the yelling,” I said. “Don’t worry—things will work out somehow. We’re staying right here in the cottage, the way we planned. If anyone wants to buy it, they’ll have to buy us, too.”
“Can they do that?” He sounded really alarmed.
I laughed. We all laughed. After a minute, Josh did, too. It was like laughing was something we needed right then. Josh handed me the clamshell. “I’m going to start a collection of lake treasures right away, so I’ll always have them,” he said. “This shell is my first. Do you want me to find one for you, too? There are lots.”
I held the shell so tight its sharp edge dug into my palm. I felt like throwing the dumb thing into the water. I didn’t want a treasure collection. I wanted the cottage. But when I looked at Josh’s face, I could tell he really wanted to make me feel better. “That’s a great idea,” I told him. He can be a good kid sometimes.
He jumped down into the water and started wading around, bending over every so often to run his hands along the mucky bottom. I sat down in his place, and Vicki scooted over to make a little more room for me. “I’m sorry, Kyle,” she said. For once, she didn’t have a book open. She’d taken off her glasses, too. Without them she looked a little like Mom. “I really am,” she went on. “We all know how much you like it here.” Andrea had been quiet, just looking at me. Now she said, “You don’t look as bad as I thought you would. More mad than sad.”
“You’re damn—” I noticed Josh look over at me and corrected myself. “Darn right I’m mad. It was going to be so good, coming up here—now it’s like someone gives you this great birthday present and then takes it away two seconds later. Why did she even bother bringing us up here? Just so she could sell it?”
“Maybe she wanted us to have this one last time. We are here, Kyle. And maybe it won’t happen—maybe no one will want to buy it. Don’t let this spoil the time we have.”
“It’s already spoiled.” But as usual, Andrea had made me feel kind of better. Ever since we were little kids, she’s always known how to do that.
As we all sat together on the pier, I stared out at the island. One thing was for sure—this summer I was going to get on that island, explore it properly. I wondered how much time we had.
“Someone’s coming to look at the cottage tomorrow,” Vicki said, as if in answer to my thoughts. “The Realtor called Mom at the Morleys’.” We didn’t have a telephone at the cottage, but the Morleys, in the cottage next door, did. They’d always taken any calls for us and let us use their phone if we had to call out. In return we let them use our pier any time they wanted. They were nice people, but they were pretty old. Mr. Morley still fished a little, but his wife hardly ever came outside.
“Kyle, you want to kick the soccer ball for a while?” Josh called to me.
“Just a minute, Josh. Somebody’s coming to look at it already?”
“Mmm-hmm. So Mom said we have to be sure our suits and wet towels don’t get left on the floor.”
“Huh,” I scoffed, getting to my feet. “I’m not going to clean the cottage for anybody. They can just see it as it is.” Josh climbed back up on the pier and looked at me hopefully. I grabbed him around the neck and gave his head a Dutch rub with my knuckles. He hunched his shoulders and squealed, and I remembered how I used to feel when Dad did that to me—kind of safe and scared at the same time. “Okay, Josh,” I said, letting him go, “we’ll kick the ball around a bit.”
“We’ll play, too.” Andrea held out her hand to Vicki. Vicki looked uncertain, then laughed and said, “Okay, Andrea and I against Kyle and Josh. Losers do the dishes.”
It’s funny how sometimes a silly game you’ve played a thousand times turns into something special. That’s the way it was that day. It was like I was playing, but I was watching at the same time. I saw the determined way Josh clenched his jaws when he was dribbling the ball. I saw Vicki’s long blond hair kind of floating behind her as she took the ball toward our goal. I saw the tiny beads of sweat on Andrea’s upper lip as she tried to dribble past me. I even saw the scab on my knee as I passed the ball to Josh. Our voices seemed to float out over the water. The day was so beautiful, and things were so right between us all.
It’s not like this at home, I thought. At home we’re all separate and busy, each of us going our own way. Here we’re together. Close. We can’t lose all this just because of a little money. Why can’t Mom see that?
CHAPTER FIVE
I’D SAID I WOULDN’T HELP clean the cottage for the people coming to look at it, but there I was the next morning, sweeping the porch floor with Gram’s old straw broom. I hate sweeping. I’d offered to do dishes, but Vicki said she and Andrea were planning to do them, that they had things to talk about. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Josh had volunteered to help Mom make beds, so I could complain or sweep, and I didn’t think it was a good day for complaining.
I was still mad at Mom, but a little ashamed, too. You shouldn’t let go that way, shouting and all. When I was little and lost my temper, Dad taught
me a trick. He said, “You never see me lose my temper, do you, Kyle? You can control your temper or let it control you.” And then he’d ask, “Who’s boss, son, you or Old Man Temper?” OMT—funny, I hadn’t thought of him in years—but it got so all Dad had to do was grin and say “OMT,” and I’d make myself calm down.
Well, yesterday afternoon OMT had sure shown up again. After Josh and I won the soccer game, he’d run up to the cottage to brag to Mom. When he came back down, he looked at me kind of accusingly and said, “Mom’s been crying.” That wasn’t exactly my fault, but no one likes their mom to cry. So today I was being Pleasant and Helpful, the way Mom wanted—up to a point.
“As soon as they get here, we’ll pile into the car and go into Elkhart for lunch,” Mom told me when I started sweeping in the main room.
I stopped sweeping. “Not me. I want to stay here.”
“It would be awkward, Kyle. They’ll need privacy to talk to Dave, say what they really think.”
“But I won’t be where I can hear them. I’ll be down by the lake. C’mon, Mom—let me stay.” Just in case, I thought. If this really was our last summer here, I didn’t want to miss a minute.
Andrea came in from the kitchen, dish towel in one hand, plate in the other. “Lunch will be a lot cheaper without Kyle, Mom—more room in the car that way, too.” She winked at me.
“You promise you’ll keep out of their way?” Mom sounded doubtful, so I gave her my best smile and put my arm around her shoulders.
“I promise,” I said. She shook her head a little then, but she said okay. So around eleven-thirty, when a car pulled up out back, we all went outside.
The Realtor, a tired-looking man in khakis and a blue shirt, was opening the car doors for the couple inside. “Morning, Dorrie,” he said to Mom. “Beautiful day, isn’t it? I’d like you to meet the Thompsons, Terri and Keith.”
“Morning, Dave,” Mom said. She held out her hand, and the Thompsons shook it.
“Are you going to buy our cottage?” Josh asked.
The adults all laughed, and Josh scowled and kicked at the dirt. I didn’t blame him. Why do grown-ups think it’s funny when kids ask what everyone’s thinking anyway?
“Kyle’s going to stay here, down by the lake,” Mom said. “But the rest of us are going into Elkhart. Take as long as you need.”
“Thanks, Dorrie,” said the Realtor. He led the way into the cottage, and I wondered how the Thompsons would like it. They didn’t look like fishermen. They didn’t look like cottage people, even. She was dressed up in high heels and a blue pantsuit, and he had cowboy boots on. “C’mon, kids, let’s go,” Mom said. “You be good now, Kyle.”
“Can’t I stay with Kyle?” Josh begged for what must have been the millionth time.
“No, we’re going,” Mom said firmly, and they did.
I started down the steps to the lake. Halfway down I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, something disturbing the sparse ground cover on the hill. I stood still. Sure enough, there it was again—a trembling of leaves right beside the next step down. Then I saw it: a little brown toad, half-hidden by a weed. I bent down slowly. He didn’t move. My hand shot out, and I had him. I cupped him in my palm and looked at him. He squatted there, just tickling the skin a bit. He was all angles and bright eyes. I rubbed my thumb down the skin on his back. It was dry and bumpy.
“Wait till Josh sees him,” I said. “I’ve gotta find something to keep him in.” A coffee can would work. I could punch holes in the lid and put in grass to make him comfortable. I started back up to the cottage. The murmur of voices came through the screens. It wouldn’t hurt if I just slipped into the kitchen for a minute, would it? I went around to the side door and opened it quietly with my free hand. It wasn’t easy getting into the fridge and pulling out the can with just one hand, but I managed. Then I was stuck. I needed both hands to pour the coffee into a bowl or something. What could I use …? Sure, why not? I set the can on the counter of the old kitchen cabinet, opened the silverware drawer, popped the toad in and shoved the drawer shut. He should be safe there for a minute. I was poking holes in the can lid when a screech of laughter startled me.
There were open windows between the kitchen and the screened porch. I moved closer to the window. “Well, I realize it’s not exactly what you want, but …,” Dave the Realtor was saying.
“Not exactly?” Terri Thompson’s voice was shrill. “It’s impossible. What makes them think anyone will buy a dump like this?”
“It’s a fishing cottage, not a resort, Ter,” said her husband.
“Yeah, I know, but look at it. No running water, no commode. It doesn’t even have any real walls!”
It was a strange way to put it, but I knew what she meant. The cottage was just a shell. There were no plastered walls, no wall board, just the outside walls. To separate the kitchen from the main room, a partition rose partway up, about ceiling height, but there was no ceiling, just a space between the rafters and the inside of the roof. Lots of neat stuff was stored up there on the rafters—spare cane poles and nets, extra chairs, straw hats and boots. A nail on the inside of the back door held Gram’s raincoat and a big old denim jacket that had belonged to my grandfather.
“They haven’t even painted it inside,” Terri was saying. “They write on the walls!” I rolled my eyes when she said that. The writing was one of the things I loved about the cottage. On the partition wall people wrote messages to Gram. “Claude and Lucille, 1938, eleven bass, thirty bluegills.” Things like that. Years and years of family history. There was a message from us for each year we’d been here. Of course, if you weren’t family, I guess you wouldn’t be interested. She sure wasn’t.
“You can see this isn’t quite what we had in mind,” Keith said. “The only thing right is the price, and even at that price I’d expected a little more.”
“Lakefront property is hard to come by,” Dave Becker pointed out. “And more expensive than you maybe realized. But I’ve got a couple other places to show you.”
I heard footsteps then, and I relaxed. I thought they’d go out the front. They didn’t. Just as I reached for the can, the Realtor appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “Oh, hi there, Kyle,” he said. “Didn’t know you were in here.”
“I was just—” I began, but Terri Thompson pushed past him.
“This place isn’t what we want,” she told me, “but tell your mom if she ever wants to sell that cabinet, I might be interested.” Tap-tapping across the kitchen, she said, “I just want to make sure the drawers are dove-tailed,” and before I could stop her, she yanked open the silverware drawer.
The toad jumped. She screamed. He hopped to the floor. She ran for the nearest chair and clambered up, high heels and all. “Get him! Get him!” she yelled. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” I’ll bet they could hear her on the other side of the lake. She was sure scaring the toad.
Then Dave and I were crawling around on the floor, while Keith Thompson kept saying, “There he is—no, there. Oh, you just missed him!” like he was giving the commentary at a ball game. Over our heads Terri’s screams rose and fell like a siren. It took forever before we caught him, but when I finally had him back in the can, Mr. Thompson had the lid ready and snapped it on.
“You can come down now,” he told his wife.
She looked at the open drawer suspiciously. “You don’t have any more in there, do you?” she asked.
They left in a hurry then. I stayed where I was until I heard them get into their car and drive away. “All right!” I cheered. “That’s one couple who won’t be buying the cottage!” I picked up the toad can. “Good job, buddy,” I told him. “They were jerks—come here and look down their noses—what did they expect?”
I thought about that as I went outside. The cottage was well-built. It was comfortable. Who wanted a fancy place you’d have to always be cleaning and dusting? A cottage was supposed to be a cottage, not a house.
Toad can in hand, I took the steps in happy jumps. A
t the bottom, after I’d opened the lid and dropped in some grass and weeds, I put the can in the shade. Then I went down to the pier. I checked on my fish in the live-box. I’d caught seven nice perch before breakfast this morning. I’d clean them later that afternoon, and Mom would fry them for dinner.
Closing the lid of the live-box, I lay down on the hot boards of the pier, put an arm over my eyes to shade them from the sun, and began to make plans. No way was I going to let us lose the cottage. We’d been lucky with the Thompsons. We might not be so lucky next time. Taxes were what I had to think about. If we could get the money for taxes—at least the half due this fall—I could probably persuade Mom not to worry about the college fund for a while.
Maybe Dad could pay them. He loved the lake, loved the cottage. Did he even know Mom planned to sell? Maybe I should write and tell him. But what would I say? And how would I begin? Not “Dear Dad,” for sure. Maybe, “Hi, butthole.” I grinned. I’d get in trouble, using language like that. But it’d sure get his attention.
Forget it—I wasn’t going to write. It would serve him right if we did lose the cottage. He probably wouldn’t care anyway.
And maybe something else would turn up. We could save money—stop going to movies, not order in pizza. Somehow, we would work it out.
I must have dozed a little bit, because I woke when I heard the doors of the wagon slam. Josh came running around the cottage, down the hill. He was moving so fast he almost fell near the bottom, but he caught himself. “Did they buy it?” he asked me.
I smiled up at him. “Nope,” I said. “And I don’t think they’re going to, either.” I got to my feet. “Come see what I’ve got for you.”
Josh was as excited about the toad as I knew he would be, even when I told him he could only keep it for the afternoon. I don’t believe in keeping wild things for pets. I know how I’d feel if someone tried to pen me up. I don’t even like going to the zoo, really. Andrea’s like me that way. Except she’s worse. She won’t even fish.
“Couldn’t I keep him just till tomorrow?” Josh begged.