The Forget-Me-Not Summer

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The Forget-Me-Not Summer Page 6

by Leila Howland


  15. A Different Ocean

  When they stepped off the plane and made their way to baggage claim, Zinnie spotted a round, smiley lady holding a sign that said SILVER SISTERS. At first she thought she was Aunt Sunny, but then Marigold reminded them that she was the driver and Pruet was an hour and a half away.

  Once in the car, after they’d collected their luggage, Zinnie looked out the window and contemplated her situation. Lily was asleep in the middle, and Marigold was seated as far from Zinnie as possible, her face turned toward the opposite window.

  The plane ride had been turbulent for Zinnie, and not just because they’d hit weather over the Rocky Mountains. And not just because her seat back wasn’t reclining or because she’d finished rereading the one Night Sprites book in her carry-on somewhere over the Mississippi River, forcing her to play tic-tac-toe with herself and make origami out of the pages of the in-flight magazines.

  It had been a rough ride because Marigold was furious with Zinnie for getting in the way of her kiss, even though it had been a complete mistake on Zinnie’s part. Marigold was refusing to even acknowledge her except for the one time she called her number two. Zinnie knew darn well that number two wasn’t only her birth order. The punishment did not fit the crime, Zinnie thought, because there hadn’t even been a crime. There’d only been a mistake.

  Zinnie had tried to explain to Marigold at least five times that she hadn’t realized that rhubarb pie had strawberries in it. She’d never had rhubarb. She didn’t know what it was. Pilar had been raving about it to the point that Zinnie was going to feel like a jerk if she didn’t get it. Zinnie knew she was supposed to ask if things contained strawberries, but a pie usually said exactly what it had in it. Peach pie had peaches. Apple pie had apples. Blueberry pie had blueberries. None of those pies had secret strawberries in them, so why should rhubarb? Did Marigold think that she liked breaking out in hives? That she enjoyed being itchy and swollen?

  Or maybe it was about more than the kiss. After Marigold had walked off toward the gelato shop with Alex, Pilar and Zinnie had gone into a store and Zinnie had held up an enormous bra and said in her best grown-up voice, “This will be perfect for my big bazoombas! Does it come with matching underpants?” Pilar had laughed so hard Zinnie thought she was going to wet her pants. It inspired Zinnie to keep going. She grabbed a pair of leopard-print underwear and said to no one in particular, “Which way to the zoo? I’m an animal!” This had sent Pilar to the floor in convulsions. Zinnie wished Ronald P. Harp had been there so he could see that in real life people liked it when she pulled faces.

  She also wished Marigold had been there. She wished Marigold had been the one laughing.

  Zinnie had always had a feeling that Pilar liked her a lot. Even though Zinnie was still in the lower school, which made her totally uncool to middle schoolers, Pilar talked to her every day, in the library or on the playground or in the locker room. It was almost like Zinnie and Pilar had their own friendship. After last night, when Pilar had laughed so hard that she cried, Zinnie was starting to wonder if Pilar liked her more than her own sister did. After the way Marigold ignored her or merely tolerated her, it had felt good to be appreciated.

  As the driver turned off the freeway onto a smaller road, Zinnie had to admit that it had also felt good to get so much attention from Pilar, to take something away from Marigold.

  “Almost there,” the driver said. They drove over a small bridge, down a long, leafy street, through a little town with an ice cream place, a café, a general store, some small shops, Ed’s Fish ’n’ Tackle, and a tiny post office. A little farther up the road was something called a boatyard. A yard for boats? As they rounded the corner, a harbor came into full view. This place was so different from Los Angeles, where the roads were big, even, and smooth; and the freeways, alive with speeding cars, crossed over and under one another like snakes; and tall palm trees guarded the sidewalks. As they bumped down the road, Zinnie felt as if they were in the pages of a book about summertime. The houses along the little road, which were covered in gray shingles and had bright white or red or green shutters and flowers in the window boxes, were like cottages. The water was dark blue, calm and sparkling. Sailboats crossed in the distance. The trees with their green canopies seemed just the type to be occupied by talking animals.

  “I thought we were going far away from California,” Lily said.

  “We are,” Zinnie said. “We’re just about as far away as you can get and still be in America.”

  “Then why is the ocean right there?” Lily asked.

  “It’s a different ocean,” Zinnie said.

  “A different ocean?” Lily asked. Her face tightened with fear as she held Benny close. They turned up a dirt road. On either side of them there was a stone wall made of big, round rocks that looked like it was going to topple over.

  They rolled down a long driveway and pulled up in front of a small house. Zinnie opened her window all the way. The air smelled sweet and sunny and green. She saw a face in the window, and then the door flung open.

  16. Aunt Sunny

  Aunt Sunny bounded out of the little house. She had short gray hair, small glasses, and a big smile. She greeted them all, getting a good long look at each of them and shaking their hands. Zinnie liked the way Aunt Sunny looked her in the eye, the way her favorite teachers did. “Oh, I can’t stand it,” Aunt Sunny said. “I’ve got to give you all a hug.” She wrapped her arms around all three of them and squeezed. She smelled a little bit like pumpkin pie. As soon as she let them go, Lily stood shyly behind Zinnie. Marigold took a step backward and checked her cell phone’s reception.

  “Um, I don’t have a signal, and we need to call Mom and Dad to let them know we arrived safely,” Marigold said.

  Zinnie felt in her pockets for her phone. Maybe hers would get a signal. “Oh, no,” she said, rechecking the pockets of her jeans and her sweatshirt. “I left mine in L.A.”

  “Are you sure?” Marigold asked.

  Zinnie nodded. She could picture her phone still plugged into the wall. She had left in such a rush this morning.

  “You won’t need it. We don’t get really get any cell reception out here anyway,” Aunt Sunny said. Zinnie watched the color drain from Marigold’s face. “But don’t worry. You can call from the house. Okay.” Aunt Sunny clapped her hands three times. “Time for the grand tour.”

  They followed her inside, dragging their luggage behind them.

  The house was the strangest Zinnie had ever seen. It was like something out of a fairy tale. The front door was inside a stone archway and had a little latch that opened it instead of a doorknob. And everything was made of wood: wooden floors, wooden walls, wooden ceilings. In the kitchen, the countertops were made of wood. So was the table. So were the two long benches on either side of the table. And it was like a maze. It was full of tiny rooms, one leading into another, with either a step up or a step down between them. How was Zinnie going to find the kitchen at night if she needed a glass of water? She would have to make a map.

  And there were pictures of boats everywhere: photographs of boats, paintings of boats, and drawings of boats. There were tiny, intricate boat models. The other decorations were also ocean or boat related. There were paintings of waves, postcards of beaches, collections of shells in the windowsills, and a whale’s tail carved out of wood on a side table.

  Zinnie paused in front of one of the photographs in the study. It was black and white. There was a couple sitting inside a little sailboat, waving at whoever had taken the picture.

  “Great picture, isn’t it?” Sunny asked.

  “Who are they?” Zinnie asked.

  “Why, that’s me,” Aunt Sunny said, pointing to the young lady with the long braid. Zinnie recognized Aunt Sunny’s eyes. “I was with Ham in Tippy, our little catboat. She was a beauty, Tippy was.”

  “I don’t see any ham,” Lily said.

  Zinnie nudged Lily and whispered, “I think Ham is a person.”

 
“Oh, was he ever!” Sunny said, her face opening into a smile that sent wrinkles in six directions. “Hamish Holt. He was a handsome devil, wasn’t he? He was my husband.”

  “Where is he?” Zinnie asked.

  “I lost him to cancer many years ago,” Sunny said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Marigold said. Despite their arguing, Zinnie felt proud of Marigold in that moment. It was the right thing to say.

  “I think Berta’s mother has cancer,” Lily said.

  “Some people who have cancer get better,” Aunt Sunny said. “But not Ham. Now I visit him at the Pisquatuit Head Cemetery.”

  “Where’s the rest of him?”

  “What do you mean?” Aunt Sunny said, leaning against the big wooden desk.

  “Well, if that’s where his head is buried, where’s the rest of him?” Lily asked.

  Zinnie bit her lip. This was the strangest conversation! Marigold covered her mouth with her hands. Aunt Sunny put her hand on Lily’s shoulder and laughed and laughed.

  “Oh, dear me,” Aunt Sunny said, and took her hand off Lily’s shoulder to remove her glasses and wipe her eyes. “They buried him in one piece. Pisquatuit Head is the name of the land where the cemetery is. Come on now, shall we complete the tour?”

  Sunny led them down another low-ceiling hallway and over a step and through a little archway to a room with a fireplace and sofa and some big comfy chairs. “And here’s the living room,” she said, “which gets the most heavenly afternoon sunshine and is the best place to read a good book.” There was a large window that looked out onto a garden and, beyond that, the ocean. There was also a rug with a mermaid on it.

  “Excuse me, but where’s your TV?” Zinnie asked.

  “I don’t have one,” Aunt Sunny said, and gestured to the picture window. “I find nature puts on a fine show. From here you can actually watch a summer storm move across the sky. And there’s a family of foxes that lives just east of that tree.”

  Lily was busy looking for the family of foxes while Zinnie and Marigold exchanged the first sisterly look since before the strawberry incident. No TV? Dad had written for TV, and Marigold was on TV. All three Silver sisters had TV shows they watched regularly. It was one of the few things that they could do together without fighting.

  “Um, do you have internet?” Marigold asked.

  “Of course! I don’t live in the Dark Ages. Come along now,” Aunt Sunny said. “I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.”

  17. The Barracks

  Up the narrow staircase they went: Aunt Sunny, then Marigold, then Zinnie, and finally Lily. From her position two steps below Aunt Sunny on the staircase, Marigold couldn’t help looking at the back of her aunt’s legs, which were tan and strong for an old lady.

  At the top was a bedroom with a ceiling that slanted on both sides and a window that looked out over the backyard. The whole room was painted white: the ceiling, the floor, the walls, and even the old radiator. There were four doors no taller than Lily that fastened with wooden latches.

  “Are these secret passageways?” Zinnie asked, referring to the little doors.

  “They’re closets,” Aunt Sunny said, opening one to demonstrate.

  Marigold turned her attention to the two narrow little beds parallel to one another, each with a pale-blue blanket, the sheet folded over in a band of white, and a single pillow at the top. These beds were pretty much the exact opposite of the pink, duvet-covered fluffiness the girls enjoyed at home, where no Silver bed suffered from any fewer than four color-coordinated pillows at a time, be they square, rectangle, or tubular.

  If it hadn’t been for the colorful hooked rugs on the floor, which sort of matched and sort of didn’t, the two painted white dressers, and the dollhouse that seemed straight out of Little House on the Prairie times, Marigold thought, it would look as if the girls had joined the army. Clint Lee had been in a movie about the army, and the beds the soldiers slept in were almost exactly like these, only with green blankets instead of blue.

  “They may not look like much, but these beds are quite comfortable. Ham built them himself. They’re just like the berths he built in his boats. Just a piece of canvas stretched across a wooden frame. They suit a body nicely.” Lily and Zinnie each sat on a bed. Zinnie was smiling, her eyes lit up. Marigold guessed that she was pretending she was a stowaway.

  The big relief was that there were only two beds in here, which meant that Marigold would be sleeping somewhere else. Marigold needed her privacy. She needed to be able to shut the door and block out her sisters. She needed her own space: her own closet, her own window, her own four walls. Marigold was very particular about the way things needed to be set up. Zinnie was so messy, it gave Marigold anxiety to think of her room back home, with the clothes on the floor and the homework all over her desk. Marigold had lowered her expectations and didn’t think she’d be lucky enough to have her own bathroom, but she took comfort from the thought that there had to be another room, another space, for her. No one would expect her to sleep on the floor, and these beds were way too small for sharing.

  “I hope you girls will be happy here,” Aunt Sunny said. Marigold noticed Aunt Sunny’s accent then. “Here” sounded like hee-ah. “I know it’s simple”—Aunt Sunny continued—“but simple things are often the best.”

  “Don’t worry,” Marigold said. “l’ll help them get settled just as soon as I put my things in the room where I’ll be staying.”

  Aunt Sunny smiled, walked across the floor, and unfastened a latch on the wall, and presto—another boat bed.

  “A secret bed!” Lily clapped. Zinnie smiled. Marigold swallowed.

  “Isn’t that neat?” Aunt Sunny asked. “You’ll all be here together. Three beds for three sisters. Now raise your hands, who wants a hamburger for dinner?”

  While Aunt Sunny made hamburgers on the grill, the girls called home. The phone was in the middle of Aunt Sunny’s living room, and the talking-into part was attached to the dialing part with an old-fashioned curly cord, the kind that was in the classrooms at school. Marigold didn’t even know it existed in people’s homes. With no cell phone reception and only one phone in the whole house, Marigold felt all hope of the privacy she treasured evaporate. Since she was the eldest, it was understood that she would be the one to make the call. She picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Hello?” Mom said.

  “Hi, Mom,” Marigold said, and out of absolutely nowhere a big lump formed in her throat. This was the first time Marigold was going to be away from her parents for more than a weekend. She had expected to miss Pilar and her bedroom and all her things, and she was prepared to take care of Zinnie and Lily if they missed their parents. She and Mom had talked about that. But she hadn’t expected to be the one to be sad. Maybe it was because she was the oldest, and everyone depended on her to be strong. Or maybe it was because she’d been so mad about missing the audition for Night Sprites that she hadn’t processed that they were going to be all the way across the country without their parents for three whole weeks. Or maybe she was just tired from a long, bumpy plane ride and fighting with Zinnie. But whatever the reason, Marigold hadn’t anticipated that the sound of Mom’s voice, so warm and familiar, would make her feel like crying.

  “How are you, honey?” Mom asked. “How was the flight?”

  “Okay,” Marigold said. Zinnie and Lily were sitting on the couch, staring up at her with their big brown eyes. Marigold couldn’t let them know that she was on the verge of tears. As angry as she was at Zinnie for ruining her first kiss, she knew that if Zinnie saw her cry, she would cry, too, and then so would Lily. Marigold took a deep breath and said, “We just wanted to let you know we’re safe.”

  “Oh, good. I love you so much,” Mom said.

  “Me too,” Marigold answered. “Here’s Zinnie.” She passed the phone off and turned away as fast as she could so that no one would see the two tiny tears that had escaped despite her best efforts to hold them back.

  18. Pancakes an
d Dreams

  The next morning Zinnie woke up to the smell of pancakes. Lily wasn’t there, though her small body had left an imprint on the sheet and the blue blanket was all bunched up at the bottom of the bed. Marigold was asleep, one arm flung dramatically over her head, the other resting on her heart. Zinnie walked downstairs in her pajamas and saw Lily standing on a chair over the stove, pouring pancake batter out of a ladle onto a black griddle that was frothy and hissing with butter. Aunt Sunny, already dressed, stood beside her. She was guiding Lily’s hand as she poured three small circles of batter. Zinnie’s mouth watered in response to the delicious smell of almost-burning butter.

  “Good morning, Zinnia,” Aunt Sunny said. “There’s juice on the table, and the tap is perfectly fine for water. Blueberry pancakes will be up shortly. Your young sister is doing a fabulous job here with the last few. How’d you sleep?”

  “Fine,” Zinnie said, and poured herself some juice. “Do you know how to make champurrado?”

  “Shampoo what now?” Aunt Sunny asked.

  “Not shampoo!” Lily said, laughing. “Champurrado.”

  “It’s a Mexican drink. Kind of like hot chocolate?” Zinnie said.

  “I’m afraid not, but maybe you can teach me,” Aunt Sunny said.

  “Only Berta knows how to make it,” Lily said sadly.

  “We might be able to find a recipe online,” Zinnie said. She paused for a moment, her mind half remembering something odd, something she couldn’t quite grasp. “Oh, I had a weird dream.”

 

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