The Summer Before Boys

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  “He’s always angry,” Peter went on.

  “Does he talk to you about it, Peter?” Mrs. Jaffe was saying. “Or your mom?”

  Peter shook his head. “Nobody talks about anything.”

  Mrs. Jaffe leaned closer to him. “This is the place to talk, Peter,” she said.

  Peter finally lowered his eyes. He looked at her and I couldn’t tell if he was really sad or really mad and he said, “Well, sometimes I wish my dad hadn’t come home at all.”

  eighteen

  My dad was supposed to take me home every weekend and bring me back Sunday night so he could go to work again Monday. But last weekend my dad called and said he had to work and Aunt Louisa said it was easier having me around anyway, which made me feel kind of good about that, but sad that I wouldn’t get to see my dad.

  Now the weekend had come again and I didn’t want to go.

  I wanted to go up to the hotel, which we didn’t usually do on weekends. First of all, Uncle Bruce liked to stay home on his days off, and second, weekends were the busiest at Mohawk and Mrs. Smith didn’t like us “underfoot.” But sometimes, maybe, there was always a chance, I thought. If I wanted it badly enough I could find a way to get up to the mountain house.

  Michael would be there, I bet.

  There was the Saturday night outdoor movie on the lawn. I bet he would be there, at the movie. I imagined the sun would have just set and crowds of people would be gathering around in the almost dark summer evening. Oh, hi, I might have said as if I barely remembered who he was.

  Or maybe I would just nod my head like I knew but didn’t really care.

  “Your dad’s here,” Eliza shouted and she ran to open the door.

  I felt my hopes sink.

  “Okay, I probably should have told you before,” Aunt Louisa said, getting to her feet. “Dad’s here to visit, Julia, but he’s not going to be able to take you for the weekend.”

  I looked over at my dad who was now standing inside. He had his hands in his pockets. Aunt Louisa seemed to be doing the talking for him as if they had it all planned out.

  “Well, Dad has to work again, the weekend shift. And it’s no big deal, but summer is good overtime and it will just make it easier when your mom comes home and all.”

  My dad said, “I’m sorry, sweetie, but let’s have a good visit while I’m here.”

  So many thoughts jumped into my brain one at a time, so fast they collided.

  First: Oh, goody, I can go up to the mountain house.

  Second: But we’re not supposed to go to the mountain house on weekends.

  Third: Maybe I can figure out a way—then fourth: I am not going home this weekend and it’s been a month and that’s when I started to feel really bad.

  “Now, Julia.” My dad put his arms around me. “It’s only another week.”

  I pressed my face into my dad’s shirt. I had never felt more homesick. How could I have wanted something so badly a second ago that was making me feel awful now? How could I be so sad and so excited all at the same time?

  “C’mon now, everyone. We have lots of time,” Aunt Louisa said. “Who wants something to drink? Some chips?”

  When Uncle Bruce came home we all ate dinner together, and when my mom called even she seemed to know I wasn’t going home for the weekend. I was the only one who didn’t get any say in my own life.

  “I love you, Julia. I miss you like crazy,” she told me.

  I couldn’t hear her that well and besides there was no privacy so I just acted like everything was fine, even though I felt so uncomfortable inside.

  “I miss you, too, Mommy,” I said. I sounded like a baby and I knew everybody at the table was listening to me and for some reason that made me so mad.

  When it was time for my dad to leave, Aunt Louisa and I walked him out to his car. Every step closer I got madder and madder and then I started to cry. I couldn’t help it, it all just came out.

  My dad turned around. “Sweetie, please, don’t make me feel worse than I already do.” He took a few steps toward the front seat of his car and then he reached into the backseat. “Look, sweetie, your mom and I were going to give you this when she gets back in a couple of weeks, but now seems like a better time.”

  He handed me a cell phone.

  Louisa gripped her hands together and it made a clapping sound. “Wow, Julia, look at that. How exciting.”

  I had wanted a cell phone for so long, but somehow right now it just seemed wrong.

  “Don’t you like it?” my dad asked.

  I did. “I do,” I said. I was stuck in the middle of myself again and neither side was very pretty. If I took the cell phone it made me look selfish and if I didn’t I looked ungrateful.

  It was pink.

  “It’s all set up.” My dad smiled. He looked happier.

  “Thanks, Dad.” I sniffled.

  • • •

  Louisa and I stood in the driveway and watched our dad head off down the road. He had a bumper sticker of two yellow ribbons on either side of the bold printed words: SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. I remembered when we bought it, at the pharmacy in town, just after my mom left for Iraq.

  nineteen

  By Saturday morning I had pretty much replaced my homesickness by hatching the perfect plot for getting Eliza to agree see the movie with me up at Mohawk. Well, actually I had no plan yet at all, but I was mentally hard at work on it until Aunt Louisa just crushed my dreams like a bug on the windowsill.

  “No one’s going up to the hotel over the weekend,” Aunt Louisa said. “You two can occupy yourselves right here.”

  Really, life should have an accompanying soundtrack. There should be pathetic violin music playing just in case you are not sure how you are going to feel. But I knew. The disappointment washed over me as quickly as I could understand the words coming from her mouth. I felt like a wall had just fallen down on me, crushing me and all my potential plans underneath.

  But sometimes it’s better not to show your hand. And most times it’s better not to show your handwriting, either. Eliza was fine with not going up to the hotel, but I went to hide in the bathroom because that’s what a journal is for.

  I wrote: M-i-c-h-e-a-l. M-i-c-h-e-a-l. And when I was too embarrassed to read over my own sentences, the ones I had just written, I just kept writing.

  I have to get up to the hotel tonight. I have to be there if Michael shows up for the outdoor movie. He’s got to show up. He’s just got to. And Aunt Louisa has to let me go. She’s not my mother. She can’t tell me what to do anyway.

  Uncle Bruce knocked on the bathroom door. “Are you all right in there, Julia?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I listened as his footsteps moved away. But there was only one bathroom in the house, so I had to write fast before someone had to use the toilet.

  Michael is the one. I think I really like him. And if I can just see him alone I will know for sure. Movie night is my only chance. I’ve got to find a way to get up there. Summer is already half over and I won’t have the chance ever again. I don’t know where he goes to school. I don’t even know his last name!!!!

  My life was terrible.

  Then, just like that, the background music changed.

  Aunt Louisa and Uncle Bruce had to drive all the way up to Albany to pick up the truck from a friend who did the work at cost, which meant it would cost a lot less on this end. And they had to go today or else at four thirty Monday morning in order to be back in time for Uncle Bruce to get to work.

  “I don’t want to leave you girls alone,” Aunt Louisa was saying and Eliza was whining about how she didn’t want to drive a whole two hours just to turn around and drive back again.

  “I stay alone all the time,” I added, knowing that four hours would be just what I needed.

  “Mom, we’ll be fine. You’ve left me alone before. And besides,” Eliza added. “We’re not alone. We have each other.”

  Inside, my heart was pounding with the anticipation that Eliza would b
e able to convince her mom to go without us, even though I knew we had completely different reasons. And even though I knew I wasn’t being fair by keeping mine a secret.

  “Well, okay,” Aunt Louisa gave in.

  I swear, if there was an orchestra playing somewhere, it would be getting louder and louder, building up to that moment just before the girl meets the boy—

  —And then they kiss.

  twenty

  Even while Eliza was explaining why never in a million years would she agree to sneak out and walk up to the hotel, I was imagining how I would first see Michael. What it would be like. What I would say. What he would say.

  Uncle Bruce and Aunt Louisa pulled out of the driveway, but not before telling us they would be back in a few hours. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t answer the phone unless you hear someone you know talking into the machine.

  And don’t go anywhere.

  “It’s not somewhere,” I was telling Eliza. “It’s practically still staying home.”

  “But it’s not, Julia.”

  “But no one will know.”

  “C’mon. It will be fun,” I told Eliza. “Like we are runaway slaves.”

  “Following the North Star,” Eliza added.

  “Or we were captured by Indians and now we have to walk for miles back to their camp so they can adopt us into their tribe.”

  “They live in a longhouse.”

  “And the clan mother hands us each a cornhusk doll to represent our new family.”

  We headed up to the hotel, promising our Olden-Day selves that we’d be back before the “high moon rises,” or something like that.

  The peepers were so loud, almost desperate. The sun was resting along the tops of the trees and spreading a golden light across the road. It was already late enough in the summer that the days were noticeably shorter and there was a coolness at night that hinted at the start of autumn. The movie would start as it was just beginning to be dark so the little kids could stay up and watch. There would be a later movie too for the grown-ups only, but I knew we’d have to get back before then.

  I could hear the right words coming out of my mouth: moccasins, wampum beads, canoe. I could hear the story we were telling, but the whole walk up to the hotel I was only hoping beyond hope that Michael would be there early too.

  twenty-one

  It was seven thirty and still light, a gray light, but the movie had started. A couple of Mohawk employees in their green polo shirts were making popcorn in a giant hot-air popcorn machine, scooping it into paper bags, and handing them out to anyone who wanted one. For free.

  Chairs had been set up in rows all along the great lawn and the movie was projected onto a giant screen that rose up against the stone guest-room side of the hotel. There were big black speakers on either side, and a papery rug rolled out between aisles. But no Michael.

  “I wonder if they had popcorn in the olden days.” Eliza was talking. “They had the corn. I wonder if they just popped it one day, like by accident or something, and then someone ate it and said, umm yummy. But I guess the Iroquois wouldn’t have butter, right? I wonder if they had salt.”

  My eyes were scanning the people in the seats, soaking in all the remaining light, trying to make out the figures, the groups of kids and teenagers, parents. He wasn’t next to that old man in the front row with the jacket, was he?

  “Julia, are you listening? Do you want to sit here or not?” Eliza was pointing to the empty last row. “No one will notice us here and we can leave early.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “I’ll get us some popcorn,” Eliza said. She slipped off and I plopped down in the folding chair, my heart sinking.

  “Thought you might be here.”

  I turned around and it was Michael. It was him. Right next to me. His whole body, his face. Everything looked sort of muted in the dusk, with the light from the screen, like a movie in a movie. I struggled to keep my brain working. My body had already betrayed me; my breathing was too fast, and I could feel an odd sensation rise to the surface of my skin. I shivered.

  “You cold?” Michael asked me. “It gets colder up here at night than down in town. The mountains, I think.”

  “No,” I said but as soon as the words came out of my mouth I wondered if I should have answered differently. Had that sounded unfriendly? Did it sound like I wanted to be left alone?

  I didn’t.

  I had planned this exactly. It was an imaginary story and it had come true and now I didn’t know what to do.

  “I mean, I’m fine. Are you cold?” I said. I looked at his face and then looked away.

  “Me? I’m never cold.”

  The sounds of the movie, the chill starting to replace the heat in the air, the grays of light and shadow. The grass under my feet was damp with wetness seeping into my sandals. I could feel that he was next to me as if some power in the universe had made this happen.

  But Eliza would be back any minute. And all this would be over.

  “I have a cell phone,” I said suddenly.

  Did that sound like I was bragging? Did that sound like I wanted him to call me? Did he even hear me?

  “Yeah, so? I have one too,” Michael answered, reaching into his back pocket.

  I didn’t know what to say now.

  Then Michael asked, “So what’s the number? I’ll call you and you’ll have my number too.”

  It was like my heart squeezed into a little ball, exploded, and flooded my body. Michael plugged in the number as I gave it to him. My cell phone vibrated almost instantaneously. He flipped his phone shut and it stopped but his number appeared on my screen.

  “Maybe I can call you then sometime?” he asked me.

  I nodded.

  “Or text you?”

  I shrugged. “Whatever.”

  I thought I was surely getting better at this by the minute. By the time Eliza returned, Michael had left. I could barely let the popcorn touch my mouth. I wasn’t hungry at all. I stared at the big screen and the flickering images but I don’t remember what the movie was about. When Eliza said we should probably start heading back, I agreed. There were no cars on the road and it was completely dark. We couldn’t see the hotel behind us anymore and I could barely see the road ahead of us. We started to run.

  twenty-two

  I saw Peter later that same day, the same day he told Mrs. Jaffe and me that his dad had come home, come home different. I saw him on the playground with his friends. I recognized one of the other boys that Peter was throwing a ball around with. He lived on the same street as I did but I didn’t really know any of Peter’s friends. He was in the sporty group, all boys who played Pop Warner football in the fall and did Little League in the spring. Alexandra Joyce was the only girl in that group and only because she could pitch and they had to let her on the team.

  But even Alexandra Joyce didn’t get to play ball during recess.

  Peter looked up when Eliza and I walked by the patch of grass next to where the boys were playing. He didn’t talk much to me outside of Mrs. Jaffe’s room and I knew after today he probably wanted to forget everything he had said. I knew I would. But I waved my fingers at him and he waved back. Then when I was almost out of earshot I heard Peter shouting out to one of his friends. I could hear the grunt in his voice so I knew he was the one throwing the ball. Far, as hard as he could. He called out loudly, “What do Baghdad and Hiroshima have in common?”

  I stopped and looked back.

  “I don’t know.” The boy caught the ball, lifted his arm, and threw.

  “Nothing,” Peter paused, ball in hand, and then shouted, “Yet.”

  I knew what Hiroshima was. It was the Japanese city that was bombed and completely destroyed by the Americans in 1945. Almost every website about the end of World War II had the same photo of a woman whose shirt was burned right into her body and it left a geometric tattoo on her skin.

  It took me a second to get it. Peter was telling a joke.

  “That’s a fu
nny one, Pete.” The other boy laughed but I don’t think he even understood what it meant.

  Eliza pulled me away, but not before I saw Peter look at me, to see if I had heard.

  twenty-three

  We had practically run the whole way home. Eliza lifted her arms like wings and let the wind carry her up into the air but I had already forgotten what we used to see. If Eliza really had feathers, I would have seen them falling off, one by one and being carried into the night sky. But of course, she didn’t. She didn’t really have wings, did she?

  I ran right beside her with my hands out too. It felt good. I let the excitement of the night flood through me.

  “We’re flying.” Eliza laughed.

  “We can look down on the whole world,” I said even though I couldn’t. “I can see our school.”

  “I can see the playground.”

  “I can see Tomasello Pool.”

  And Eliza was happy.

  We were both lying in bed but not nearly asleep when we heard Uncle Bruce and Aunt Louisa come back.

  “They could have called when we weren’t here,” Eliza suddenly whispered to me. “What if my mom called the house and we didn’t pick up?”

  It seized the inside of my chest. What if she had?

  How could I not have thought of that?

  “There’s nothing we can do about it now,” I said. I kept my eyes on the wall but when Aunt Louisa pulled open the screen, I shut them as quickly as I could.

  “Are you sleeping, girls?” Aunt Louisa said quietly. I could tell she was leaning over the bed. She said it again. Eliza rustled and groaned and shifted onto her side.

  I felt terrible. Aunt Louisa would be so angry at Eliza if she thought we had left the house. She might punish Eliza for the rest of the summer. But she wouldn’t be able to do anything to me. She never did.