Swing Sideways

by Nanci Turner Steveson

  How could I resist such an invite? Besides, he was right. The day was jewel-tone perfect—brilliant emerald and sapphire colors splashed from earth to sky, and the sun blazed overhead like a yellow diamond. A cool breeze swept across the lake, forcing any lingering humidity away. Dad and I rigged the Sunfish and pushed off from the dock, a small cooler of birch beer in the cockpit. Birch beer was our thing. Mom didn’t like it.

  “North, south, or west?” he asked.

  I tilted my head back and let the sun warm my face. “South,” I said, not really caring.

  “South it is, m’lady.” He tipped a fake hat and we sailed on.

  The lift and sway of the sailboat cradled me. Pretty soon the tightness in my shoulders eased, and the fight California and I’d had didn’t feel as huge. It was good to be out on the lake—good to have time alone with Dad, to not talk, to sit side by side and glide over the water, watching the sail billow in the wind, like we’d done every year since I was three. We moved along at a good clip. I touched the fluttering feathers of the blue-and-yellow tell-tale with the tip of my finger. Until this summer, Dad and I had always gone together to pick out a half dozen wind indicators. It was tradition.

  “I guess you already bought all the tell-tales?” I asked.

  “Got them a couple of weeks ago. You were busy, off on some exciting adventure.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No biggie. That’s what you’re supposed to do, remember?”

  Half an hour and two birch beers later, we’d sailed almost the entire way to the south end, where the border of the lake curved and lily pads grew as thick as weeds.

  “We’re going to turn around in a minute. Pay attention so we can switch sides,” Dad said.

  I’d never gotten anywhere close to that part of the lake. More than once, some kid had got their rudder caught in the lily pads and been stuck for hours. The area was off-limits to junior sailors.

  “Can we go a little farther?”

  Dad laughed. “And get stuck on purpose so Mom has a hissy fit when we get home late?”

  “We’d be doing her a favor. She wouldn’t have to find something to hiss about on her own,” I teased. “Besides, I don’t ever remember seeing it up close with you, and juniors aren’t allowed to sail down there.”

  “Exploring it is, then.” He winked and positioned the bow slightly to the left. “When I was a teenager, we used to camp at a spot down this way. I’ll see if we can get close to show you.”

  About two hundred yards from land, he loosed the mainsheet and let the boat drift.

  “Right around that bend, if we could navigate through the lily pads, you’d see it. Just a little meadow-like thing poking out from the woods. We’d hike around from the beach and have a campfire. Took us hours getting through the woods, but worth every blister. Some of my favorite memories from growing up took place on those nights.”

  “What, did you take girls down there?”

  “Awww, Pumpkin, answering that would be going against the boy-code.”

  “Eeewwww gross, sorry I asked. Never mind, I don’t need to see it.”

  Dad ruffled my hair and laughed. “Wish I could. Haven’t been since I was a teenager.”

  He turned the boat, we switched sides and sailed away from Dad’s childhood memory. I looked back once, but all I could see was the regular edge of the lake and the national forest that went on forever beyond.

  TWENTY

  California was waiting for me in the orchard.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as soon as I was close, eager to get the ruined-papers discussion out of the way.

  She crinkled her nose. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Come on. Field is gonna be hungry.”

  I followed her silently down the hill toward the woods, puzzled. Why was she pretending nothing had happened? At the beginning of the trail, she swung around to face me.

  “I know you think I’m crazy for getting all bent the other day, Annie, but you’re lucky to have your whole family together, and you don’t even appreciate it.”

  “What? Living with my parents isn’t all theater and lemon pies, you know. Most of the time I hate my mother. She isn’t anything like Piper.”

  “But she’s here. Every day you go home and they’re both waiting for you, cooking for you, taking you to the theater, talking to you. I can’t even talk about Piper without Grandfather getting all dark and storming away like I’ve soiled the air. He makes me feel ashamed of her. When I’m with Piper, she doesn’t want to talk about him, either. Your parents, they’re in your house, together, when you go to sleep at night. No one is sick. No one’s been mad for all these years. And you don’t even care.”

  She stalked off down the path without saying anything about our misunderstanding. Nothing about the papers getting wet. What she had been upset about all had to do with family.

  The rest of the morning was quiet. Field came out from under the shelter and was much more active than he had been two days before. California held him steady while I checked him over.

  “You’d better change the bandage today,” she said. “I have to go to the city tomorrow. Piper’s meeting us. Can you feed him? Saturday, too. We’ll be back, but Grandfather probably won’t be feeling well.”

  “Sure,” I said, grateful I could do something to make up for ruining the papers.

  I finished with Field, and we went on a search for the ponies, taking a bag of fresh apples and scattering them strategically in places California thought they might find them and where we could easily check later to see if they’d been eaten. After a nearly silent hour we were back at the river. It felt good to do something normal again after the mess of the last week.

  “I brought lunch,” she said. “Are you eating at home or only when you’re here? Because you’re going to have to eat at home too. I can’t fix everything, you know.”

  The corners of her mouth turned up in a sly smile. She handed me a sandwich and took a giant bite of hers.

  California was back.

  I was fast asleep when my cell phone beeped, stopped, then beeped again. The clock said eleven fifty. Almost midnight. It must have been a mistake. I bunched up my pillow under my head and closed my eyes. A minute later it beeped again. California’s number flashed on the screen, then disappeared. I held the phone in my hand, and as soon as it vibrated, I clicked it on.

  “California?”

  “Can you come?” she whispered.

  “Now? It’s midnight.”

  “I know, but I leave at six in the morning. I want to see what’s in the trunk before we go, in case there’s something I can use to get Piper to come back. I don’t want to do it alone. Will you meet me?”

  I thought of the ruined papers, and of Scout Finch facing her fears to stand up for someone else. Mom and Dad were already in bed. If I was really quiet, I could sneak down the stairs instead of climbing the cedar tree again. I’d already proved I could do that.

  “Okay, I’ll come.”

  Click. She hung up without even saying good-bye.

  It took me almost half an hour to get to the farm in the black night. California was already upstairs, waving the flashlight beam back and forth in front of the big window. Not that there’d be too many people standing in the middle of the road after midnight to see such a thing, but still . . .

  Inside, she pointed to a pile on the floor. “You go through those,” she said. “I’ll do the rest.”

  We sat side by side, sifting, inspecting, and sorting. I organized my stuff into stacks according to type: newspaper articles, letters, photos, and memorabilia. California read one thing and tossed it aside. Read another and tossed. Eventually she looked like she was sitting in a paper replica of her front yard. I forgot all about my system when I emptied the contents of a fat manila envelope marked KMM/MKM on the floor.

  On top of the pile was an obituary of someone who looked like an older version of the lady in the photograph on the tricornered table. The same lady California ha
d said must have been her grandmother.

  “I might have something here.”

  She shone her flashlight on the old clipping from the New York Times. The lady in the picture smiled at us with perfect teeth, and dark hair cut short in a bob. The name underneath was printed in bold letters: KATHERINE MARGARET McMURTRY.

  “What’s the date?”

  I looked closer at the yellowed paper. “The date on top says September third, nineteen eighty-six.”

  California took it from me and read out loud. “‘Dr. Katherine Margaret McMurtry, age fifty-one, passed away suddenly on September first during an event at the Lake Eleanor Marina in East Blue, New York. She is survived by her husband, Joseph (Jody) Woodrow McMurtry, fifty-two, and their daughter, Margaret Katherine McMurtry, sixteen. Dr. McMurtry was a leader in cutting-edge medical research during the nineteen sixties and founded the Institute for Cancer Research and Understanding in New York City before retiring from the medical field in nineteen seventy-four. She continued to serve on the board of directors until her passing. Services are pending.’”

  California stopped and studied her grandmother’s face. “She did cancer research. She was a doctor. That’s why—”

  “Why what?”

  “Nothing, well, probably why— Never mind, doesn’t matter. She died when Piper was sixteen. That’s when she left home. I wonder if there was a connection?”

  “Let’s see what else we can find,” I said.

  There were more obituaries, each one ending the same way, “Services are pending.” They’d been printed in newspapers across the country, which we thought was weird until we found the stack of missing person bulletins. Eleven altogether, published in papers from Maine to Texas, Florida to California. The first one was from September twentieth, nineteen eighty-six. The last one was dated February fourteenth, nineteen eighty-seven. Front and center on each notice was the photo of Piper with the two ponies at the horse show.

  “So the question is,” California said, “did she leave home before or after her mother died?”

  By the time we finished going through everything in the packet, the sequence of events seemed less vague. A death certificate said heart failure. An article in the local town paper said it happened in the middle of the year-end sailing awards banquet, held at the lake on Labor Day weekend. Mrs. McMurtry had collapsed after an argument with a family member who had since disappeared. Because the person was a minor, her name was withheld for privacy.

  “Nothing private about this tabloid-worthy piece of you-know-what,” California grumbled. She was shaken up.

  There were sympathy cards, like the ones I’d already found and got wet, and a dozen long letters. Most of the people who wrote offered to “help look for Margaret.” In one, a minister had counseled Mr. McMurtry not to dwell on the things he’d said to his daughter that night, that “surely she would soon understand he was reacting to his wife’s sudden death when he blamed her for it, and when she did, she would return home, God willing.”

  “That pretty well sums it up, I guess,” California said when we were finished. “Piper and her mother had a fight, her mother had a heart attack and died, and Grandfather blamed her, so she ran away.”

  Instead of opening my mouth and having something stupid come out, I started putting things back the way we’d found them. Mr. McMurtry’s sadness made sense now. The way he looked like it hurt to be happy, the way he was so protective of California but still kind of distant, or formal. He’d lost his family, his wife and daughter, both at the same time. He’d been alone for years, much longer than we’d even lived. That was a long time to hurt.

  We were on our way out of the carriage house when California stopped and asked quietly, “Do you think he still blames Piper?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It doesn’t feel like it, but I don’t really know.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Can you ask her?”

  “I don’t think so, unless I can figure a way to bring it up without her knowing I know. There’s still something missing here. Something important. Keep thinking on it. I’ll see you Sunday.”

  Images of Piper and Mrs. McMurtry having a fight in the middle of the awards banquet, of Mrs. McMurtry collapsing, her heart giving out, dying right there in front of everyone, followed me all the way home. I was finally drifting off to sleep when a thought startled me upright.

  Could that kind of thing happen in my family?

  TWENTY-ONE

  My whole body was a bundle of nerves before I got out of bed the next day. If Field hadn’t needed food, I easily could have pulled the covers over my head and slept until noon. But he did need food, and I couldn’t mess up again. I slid my feet into my slippers and was headed to the bathroom when Dad knocked.

  “Pumpkin? You ready?”

  Ready for what? I flung the door open and there he was, dressed in freshly ironed tennis whites, holding a racket in one hand and tossing a fluorescent-yellow ball in the other.

  “Uh-oh. You forgot we have a court reserved for nine o’clock.”

  “I forgot.”

  “You keep forgetting things. It’s the first time we’re playing all summer. Mom made a bacon frittata. She’s waiting downstairs.”

  My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Dad tossed the ball and caught it, tossed and caught it. Sweat broke out on my forehead. His face shifted. After bouncing that ball at least a dozen times, he leaned close and whispered, “I wouldn’t recommend telling Mom you forgot.”

  “I can’t play, Dad. I’m sorry I forgot, but can you tell Mom something came up? It’s kind of urgent.”

  He stopped tossing the ball. “Nope.”

  “What?”

  “Get your tennis clothes on and we play, or you tell her yourself.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s your choice. I’m good either way.” He bounced the racket strings lightly on top of my head. “You decide, and I’ll see you downstairs.”

  “Dad—” But he was gone.

  There was no choice. I was not telling Mom about California and Field and why they were more important than my own family. It would take less time to play the darn game and get it over with. I yanked on my stupid tennis dress, laced up my sneakers, and was on the stairs when Dad screamed.

  “OOOWWWWW!!!” He writhed around on the hall floor, gripping his left ankle.

  Mom careened around the corner and shoved me out of her way. “What happened?”

  “It’s my ankle. Mother of Mercy, this hurts.”

  I pressed my back against the wall while Mom helped Dad sit up.

  “Annabel, bring the ice pack. Hurry!” she snapped. “And a towel—no, no, bring me a chair cushion—and a towel—two towels—hurry!”

  I bolted to the kitchen and grabbed a red corduroy cushion from one of the stools, ran to the bathroom and snatched three beach towels from the closet, raced to the hall, deposited everything on the floor, and ran back to the kitchen for the ice pack.

  Of course, the ice pack wasn’t there. It was still down by the river, along with all the other medical supplies I’d stolen for Field. I’d never brought any of them home.

  “Annabel!”

  Dad mumbled something. Mom’s feet pounded across the floor. “I can’t be bothered with a silly name—”

  She pushed me aside, shuffled around a package of peas, a gallon of ice cream, and a box of frozen cream puffs in the freezer. “Where’s the ice pack? Did you take the ice pack out of here?”

  I stepped back and pulled the neck of my tennis dress away from my throat, ready for her interrogation. But the oddest thing happened—

  “Never mind. Get a thin towel from the drawer.”

  She scooped ice from the bin into a plastic bag, wrapped the towel around it, and ran back to Dad.

  “Put your leg up here. No, on the cushion. I’ve got ice—”

  “Please stop—yelling makes it hurt more.”

  “I’m not yelling, Richard. I’m helping you. . . .�
��

  My stomach lurched. There must be something useful for me to do, something to make up for whatever was going on, because whatever it was, it sure felt like it was my fault. I ran hot water over the dirty dishes in the sink and picked at dried egg on the edge of a bowl. Was Dad faking so I didn’t have to play tennis?

  Mom screeched me out of my daze. “Annabel, the frittata is burning. I can smell it from here.” Smoke billowed in a thin stream from the top of the oven door. She rushed past me, scowling. “What is wrong with you?”

  The frittata emerged black and crispy. She dumped it, pan and all, into the sink, waved a towel around the kitchen, then ran back to Dad, yakking about whether to take him to the hospital or the local urgent care center.

  We packed him into the backseat of the Volvo with pillows and a blanket. “Be sure the oven is turned off,” Mom instructed. “I’ll call you.” I tried to see Dad’s face before they drove away, but the pillow engulfed his head.

  Minutes later I was on my way to McMurtry’s farm, still wearing my white tennis dress, still sore from my fall out of the tree, still unnerved by what California and I had learned the night before. It wasn’t until I got to the orchard that I realized I’d forgotten food. How stupid! I didn’t want to walk the entire mile again, there and back, and no way was I going into Mr. McMurtry’s house to scrounge up something. Where else could I find food?

  What would Scout do?

  Scout was not only a little wild and a lot brave, she was resourceful. I jogged to the back of the house. The trash bin! Dogs loved getting into people’s trash. That was one of Mom’s reasons for not allowing us to have one. The Rhode Island Red and the two Leghorns acted suspicious when I passed the coop, squawking like they’d already had their heads cut off. Lacy, who refused to stay inside the pen, watched from her perch on the back step. Those chickens were so weird.

  The trash bin was empty—not even a scrap of leftover bread. The lid banged shut, and one of the Leghorns startled, rose up, and squawked. The other ran at the Rhode Island Red, and pretty soon all three chickens were fighting in a flurry of feathers and straw and dust. When they finally calmed down and everything settled, I saw three perfect eggs in their nests. Raw or cooked, Field would love them. Besides, it was all I had to offer.