Swing Sideways

by Nanci Turner Steveson

  “Hey, look, the silverware matches.”

  “Lucky day,” Mr. McMurtry said.

  California sat down and smiled. “Oh, you don’t even know how lucky.”

  It was amazing what the proof of the ponies we’d found had done for her. Everything shone. She was one hundred percent happy-go-lucky California.

  “The corn is ready.” She handed me a bowl of steaming yellow cobs. “We eat it at every meal. Have to or it’ll waste.”

  She motioned to a basket on the floor overflowing with fat, unshucked ears. “Grandfather, what did you do with all the corn before I was here to eat it?”

  Mr. McMurtry brought a large platter of pancakes to the table. The top one had blueberry eyes, a mouth, a nose, and small pancake ears. He slid five fried eggs around the edge of the same platter and piled a dozen slices of bacon on top of them. But he never answered her question.

  “Help yourself, ladies.”

  California gave me the happy-face pancake, then loaded her plate with four of her own, two eggs doused with hot sauce, and four pieces of bacon. She gobbled up everything, along with a large bowl of blueberries in cream, two cups of coffee—I’d never seen a kid drink coffee before—and two ears of corn slathered with butter and seasoned salt.

  We were almost done when Mr. McMurtry handed her a pill bottle and motioned for her to open it.

  “Ugh, vitamins.” She downed three large, oval pills with the last of her juice. “Don’t you think, with everything I just ate, that I got enough good-for-me food to last a week?”

  Mr. McMurtry held his knife and fork over a piece of bacon and said, “No, Catherine, I do not.”

  California jabbed the air with her fork. “Argh! You’re so evil.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Do you have to take vitamins, Annie?”

  “Mom used to make me take cod liver oil every day. She finally stopped when I threw it up all the time.”

  Mr. McMurtry kept cutting, chewing, and wiping his mouth with a napkin; but I could tell, behind all that hair and those proper manners, he was laughing at us.

  “That’s worse than gross, right?” California said. “Grandfather, are we excused?” Without waiting for an answer, she pushed back her chair and took both our plates to the sink.

  “Remember your chores.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” California saluted.

  “Annabel, it was lovely to have such polite company this morning. You are welcome anytime. Give my regards to your father.”

  “I will. Thank you for the nice breakfast.”

  He stood up when I did, dipped his head, and sat back down.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  California paused at the gate leading to the paddock and ran her hand through a mass of white, star-shaped blossoms that fell across the top of the wood slats.

  “Piper planted this jasmine. She used to sit here and write poems. That’s the only thing Grandfather ever told me about her, and the only reason he told me that is because he saw me out here with the pruning shears one day, ready to cut. He freaked out.”

  She jerked the half-rotted post upright and stuck her nose deep into the flowers.

  “I didn’t even know she wrote poetry.” She ducked her chin and pushed through the gate to the paddock. “There’s so much she never told me.”

  Mr. McMurtry’s car pulled onto the road. He honked twice, driving off toward town. California brightened instantly.

  “Game time!”

  We ran through the kitchen, down a hallway, past a creepy living room with furniture covered by plastic sheets, and drapes closed so tight not a sliver of sunlight could break through. California stopped halfway down the hall.

  “Attic first. Climb on my back, then pull that string hanging from the ceiling,” she said, dropping to hands and knees.

  I took off my shoes and climbed up, bracing myself with my hands on the wall on each side. “Easier than climbing a tree that first time,” I said.

  Grabbing the string tight, I eased the door downward.

  “Pull on the bottom of that ladder—that’s how I saw Grandfather do it—and once it starts unfolding, jump because it’ll fall down pretty fast.”

  I pulled until I felt it give. “Okay, got it.”

  We jumped out of the way right before the ladder planted a leg in the middle of her back. I followed her up into the dark, cramped space. The ceiling was barely high enough for us to stand, too dark to see anything. California took a miniature flashlight from her pocket.

  “Always be prepared,” she said, shining the tiny beam around the empty room until it landed on a large wooden crate pushed against the far wall.

  “Jackpot!” We crept to the other end of the attic. “This is it. I can feel it. Here, hold this for me. Shine it right there,” she said, pointing.

  “I feel like Nancy Drew.”

  “Nancy Drew’s got nothing on us.”

  It took a lot of heaving to open the crate, but finally the top rested against the wall. I shone the light inside.

  “What the—” California lifted out a bottle and studied the label. “Wine. From France.” She put that bottle back and pulled out a second one. “Exactly the same.”

  Bottle after bottle was identical. Same year, same vineyard.

  “I can’t believe this,” she said. “Bottles of wine and nothing about his own daughter.” She snatched the flashlight from me and moved the beam around the room again. “Let’s get out of here. I feel sick.”

  We climbed out of the attic, folded the ladder, and pushed the door closed. California looked beaten. Dark circles I hadn’t noticed before hung underneath her eyes.

  “Nothing up there. Useless waste of our time,” she grumbled.

  “There’s got to be something in his room.”

  “Why? Because no one erases everything about their own kid’s life except a few ribbons and photos stashed away inside a trunk in some super secret closet?”

  Mr. McMurtry’s bedroom could have been a hotel room for all the stuff that wasn’t there. No pictures, no papers, no television, just a double bed made up with hospital corners—the same precise way Mom had taught me—a dresser with a small wood-framed mirror over it, one rung-backed wicker chair pushed against a wall between two curtainless windows, and a small, oval braided rug on the floor. California went right to the dresser and started riffling through the drawers.

  “You search in there,” she said, waving toward the closet. “Check the floor and walls for loose boards or openings.”

  Mr. McMurtry’s clothes hung neatly on hangers. Two pairs of old shoes were tucked underneath, alongside a small, sturdy step stool. A cane hung from a nail on the wall. Nothing else. No boxes, no extra coat hangers, no cedar trunk for sweaters, nothing like what Mom and Dad had in their closet. When I came out, California’s feet projected from under the bed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking to see if there’s a secret compartment under the mattress,” she said. “Nope, nada.” She scooted out. “Any luck in there?”

  I shook my head. “It’s almost empty.”

  She sat up and rested her back against the bed, her shoulders slumped. “Dagnabbit! I felt sure we’d find something in here. Nothing in there at all?”

  “Just regular clothes-type stuff, and a step stool. That’s it.”

  “There’s a step stool in there?”

  “Yeah, a wooden one.”

  “Annie, if there’s a step stool, there’s going to be something up high.” She pushed me out of her way, set the stool in front of the hanging clothes, and climbed up, shining the flashlight on a shelf.

  “Hand me that cane! There’s something up here.”

  Pushed way to the back was a small, metal box. She set it on Mr. McMurtry’s bed, brushed dust from the top with her hand, and tried to open it.

  “Locked up tight, of course,” she grumbled.

  I turned the box over. Taped to the bottom was a small, silver key. “That’s where I keep the key
to my diary. Taped underneath.”

  It fit perfectly.

  “Annie-girl, you’re brilliant. Did I ever tell you that?”

  California opened the lid, and her skin instantly drained, as if someone had unplugged her. Parcels of envelopes, tied together by faded pink ribbons, were stacked neatly inside. With shaky hands, she picked up a packet and pulled the ribbon loose.

  “Letters. That’s Piper’s handwriting. The postmarks—Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nebraska, Wyoming, and look at the dates. She wrote these on her way to Oregon. This whole bunch.” Turning one over, she peeked inside, her eyes widening. “He opened them—he’s read these.”

  She grabbed another batch and checked the front of five envelopes. “These are all from a post office box in Eugene. That’s about an hour from where we live in Oregon.”

  There were two more bundles, all tied with the same kind of pink ribbon.

  “These last couple of letters are from right before I was born. Nothing recent, though. Nothing about—”

  The screen door in the kitchen slammed. Mr. McMurtry!

  California shoved the letters into the box, threw it back on top of the shelf, and pushed me out of his room, across the hall to hers, all in about two seconds.

  “Why is he home so soon?” I whispered.

  “No idea, just go out through the window,” she said. “I don’t want him to know we were inside and ask what we were up to.”

  “Am I not allowed to be—”

  “Just go!”

  She held the curtains back for me to escape. Of course, I knocked the desk lamp over trying to get out so fast. I don’t know if Mr. McMurtry heard it fall—I was halfway home before he’d have made it to California’s bedroom to investigate.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Someone tapped on my door. Before I could get up, Dad pushed it open with one of his crutches, the other wedged under his armpit.

  “Made it up the stairs in record time. Come on down, Pumpkin. Let’s have dinner and talk this out so we can move on, okay?”

  “Dad, can I skip—”

  “No. That’s not fair to anyone.” He turned away.

  The dining-room table was set with the good china and linens. Mom sat stiffly at one end and made a big production of unfolding and laying her napkin in her lap so she didn’t have to look at me. I took my seat, and Dad offered me a glass bowl of fresh-cut fruit salad.

  “Fruit?”

  At the same time, Mom held out a crimped porcelain dish.

  “Quiche?”

  My hand hovered awkwardly in the air between them. It felt like a tug of war. Dad quickly set the fruit bowl on the table, and I grabbed the quiche dish. First tricky moment out of the way.

  “Annabel. I mean, Annie—” Mom twisted her wedding ring. “I apologize for not helping you last night when you weren’t feeling well. I was in a bit of a shock myself.”

  She was apologizing to me? Who was this mom? Just as quickly, she ruined a perfectly marvelous moment.

  “It’s always you and Dad together with your secrets,” she said. “I feel like an outsider in my own family. I’ve tried so hard this summer to be the mom you wanted. You can’t imagine how difficult this has been. Then I find out about your friendship with the McMurtrys’ granddaughter, and to make it worse, you confided in Dad and left me out again. Apparently everyone at the lake knew except me.”

  I pulled the neck of my T-shirt. Her nostrils flared at the edges, but she leaned back in her chair, placed her hands neatly in her lap, and pressed her lips together.

  “Mom, you always talk bad about Mr. McMurtry. California’s the best friend I’ve ever had, and I didn’t want you to say mean stuff about her. Mr. McMurtry loves her. He does, and he’s good to her.” My voice cracked. “There’s something wrong. I have to help her get her mother to come back. She doesn’t know—”

  I’d worked myself up into such a frenzy that my face was wet. I choked on the rest of my words. Mom handed me a box of tissues.

  “Her mother isn’t what you think,” I sobbed. “She helps run a really big tree farm, and she’s smart. She homeschooled California and taught her about wood and trees and nature and the stars and math—California’s better at math than I am, and she’s never even been inside a school—”

  “I’m sure she is very bright,” Mom said. “Her mother was very intelligent. Lively and undisciplined, but smart.”

  It took a moment for me to digest what she had said. “You knew her?”

  Mom tipped her head. “I only met her twice, but I heard a lot about her from Grandmother Stockton. She didn’t approve of the way Margaret was being raised. Too much freedom, she always said.” She gave Dad an I-told-you-so look. “Too much freedom can ruin a child, you know.”

  She swished in her seat, like what she had announced was fact, and no one should argue with her because she knew everything. She was talking about me, and I couldn’t stay silent. Not anymore.

  “Well, no freedom will choke your kid. Did you know that, Mom? Did you know I almost choked to death every time I ate because you had me so squished into a . . . a . . . mold or something, I couldn’t breathe or swallow any food? That’s why I couldn’t eat. You do realize that, don’t you?” My voice had gone up two octaves. “You did it. You made me sick!”

  Mom jolted upright like I’d slapped her, then planted her face in her hands. Dad’s fist slammed the table.

  “Annabel! Stop! That is completely unfair!” His face was redder than the watermelon in the fruit salad. “Apologize to your mother right now!”

  “Apologize for what?”

  He thrust his finger near my face. “For saying something so blatantly hurtful. That’s uncalled for. Your mother has done everything she could all summer to try to make you happy. Now get ahold of yourself and apologize before we all have heart failure right here at the table!”

  It was those exact words, heart and failure, that made something raw rise up in me, that made my own heart seize when Mom crumpled in her chair. I thought of Piper and her father, who she hadn’t had the chance to know for all those years because they were broken. And Mr. McMurtry, already sick when he finally met his only granddaughter. I thought of the obituary with Mrs. McMurtry’s polite face looking out from the newspaper and imagined her collapsed on the floor of the clubhouse where the banquet was held, and my breath caught. Bad things really do happen in good families, and all it can take is the wrong thing said, or not said, at the wrong time. What would happen to us if Mom died because of me?

  I pushed the tissue box across the table and stuffed my hands in my lap. “I’m sorry.”

  Dad was still fuming. Mom dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

  “Mr. McMurtry had cancer.” I said. “That’s why California came here, to help him. He’s having some kind of treatments, but California said it could come back, or spread, and she’s trying to get her mother to come back home in case that happens because she knows her mother will never forgive herself if she doesn’t fix what’s broken before he goes, and it’s so awful, we’ve been searching the woods all summer trying to find her ponies because California thinks they’re still alive and if she brings them back everything will be like it was before Mrs. McMurtry died and Piper will come home, but it’s a mess, such a big mess, and I keep feeling like something else is wrong and I don’t know what it is, all I know is I need to help California, I have to, and you can’t tell me to not be her friend anymore because I won’t do it, I won’t!”

  By the time I finished I was gripping the edge of the table with both hands as if I might skyrocket to the ceiling. Mom and Dad looked at each other, then at me, then at each other again. Finally, Mom’s face softened. She reached her hand to touch mine and became that new Mom again.

  “I’m so sorry, Annie. I can only imagine how hard this must be for California, and for you. You’ve obviously been a good friend to her.”

  Tears fell fast and furious down my cheeks because I hadn’t been a good friend, and no one knew that but me. An
d there was Mom, being all . . . all Mom-like without the hysteria. Like she’d been taking lessons or something.

  “She knows about Mrs. McMurtry and why Piper ran away, but she doesn’t know why she never came back. Do you know? Were you there when Mrs. McMurtry died?”

  “I was,” Dad said.

  “Did everyone blame her?”

  One side of Dad’s mouth twitched, like the memory was too awful to think about. “Her father said some terrible things to her when it happened, but he was in shock. It was obvious Margaret thought he blamed her, but he didn’t. No one did. It was tragic timing, really tragic timing. She was gone before he came to his senses and realized what he had done.”

  “Is that why he’s been the way he is all these years? Because what he said made her go away?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “But I asked you, both of you, every summer when we drove past his farm.” My voice shook worse than my hands. “I asked you why he was that way, and you never told me.”

  There was this long pause when they telepathy-decided who would answer. Finally, Mom said, “You were so young when you first started asking, we thought the truth might frighten you.”

  “Did anyone try to help him?”

  Dad grimaced. “He didn’t want anyone around, Pumpkin. The last time I saw him, you were five. You were already infatuated with that farm, and I wanted to take you over. I thought seeing you might bring him out of whatever place he had disappeared to inside his head. But he closed the door on me. And that was that.”

  “When you went to see him this summer, did he say anything about his cancer?”

  “That’s not the kind of thing you talk about with someone you haven’t seen in all those years.”

  “Did he say anything about Piper? Or what happened?”

  “He didn’t say much of anything except that you were welcome at his house. That’s all I needed to know.”

  “He had to have said more. There’s something wrong, something besides his cancer and Piper. I can feel it. Do you know what it is, Dad? Can you tell me?”

  Dad shook his head slowly. “Don’t you think all that is enough?”