Bittersweet Summer (5 page)

T
HE TRAIL LED US
steeply down until we reached the foot of the first waterfall. Mist floated around us as we tipped our heads back to see the top of the falls.

“My neck hurts.” Dad wiggled his head to get the kinks out and picked up the binoculars. “Look there,” he said, pointing across the river. “A water ouzel. That bird is hunting for food. It knows how to swim under water. It even knows how to walk on the bottom of the river.”

All at once Tyler’s thumb was in his mouth. “That bird,” he said removing his thumb a quick moment, “is looking for his mother.”

“How do you know that?” Ms. Morgan asked.

“All the children are looking and looking,” he told her. “Expec-shally.” He always had trouble with that word. “Expec-shally if their mothers are gone away. That story is in all my books.”

Ms. Morgan looked over at Dad, who looked worried. “You may be right,” she said to Tyler. “My mother lives a long way from here in Minnesota. I send her lots of e-mails.”

Tyler popped his thumb out of his mouth and wiped it on his shirt. “More waterfalls,” he yelled, pointing downriver. We hiked down the trail and reached a place where we could actually walk behind some falls. The river roared over and past us like a giant’s shower.

Claire pulled her light jacket around her. “Drippy under here.”

“Smile,” Mr. Plummer said, lifting his camera.

“Take another one,” Claire said. She pulled Ms. Morgan over to a boulder and posed beside her, tipping her head like a movie star. Mr. Plummer snapped the picture. They looked like a perfect mother and daughter.

After the fourth waterfall, Dad said he was starving, and Ms. Morgan said her new boots were starting to hurt.

As we climbed back up the cliffs toward the picnic grounds, Ms. Morgan stopped at a bend in the trail and fanned herself. “Look at these lovely mosses,” she said. As she trailed her fingers through the green plants growing between the rocks, Mr. Plummer rushed over with his camera.

Above us, some birds began to sing.

“I wish I could see those birds.” Dad balanced himself against a tree trunk and held the binoculars up to his eyes.

“Let me look, Daddy,” Tyler said. Dad held the binoculars in front of Tyler, but no matter what he did, Tyler said everything was black.

I kept walking up the zigzag path, careful to stay away from the side that sloped down toward the noisy river. On the uphill side, ferns and rocks looked like a perfect place to find a mouse or a ground squirrel. I studied little holes and dark places under the ferns until, all at once, I realized a huge slug was draped across some sticks. It was looking back at me. I swallowed a scream. Then I looked closer at his orange-and-black stripes.

“You’re beautiful,” I told the slug. “And big. Almost as big as my shoe.”

I found a leaf and slid it under the slug’s head. “Climb on,” I told him, but he pulled back and wouldn’t move.

“Come on, guy.” I gently poked his tail with a stick, and sure enough, he moved a little. “Come see this,” I called to the others.

Mr. Plummer was trying to get Tyler to look at the birds through the camera instead of the binoculars. “Just look,” Mr. Plummer kept saying. “No fingerprints, please.”

“Let’s try the binoculars again,” Dad said. “I don’t care if he gets fingerprints on those.”

“Never mind.” Tyler pushed the binoculars away.

By then, I had two sticks. The more I gently poked his tail, the more the slug crawled toward me, getting on top of the second stick, leaving silver slime behind as he went. “This is better than a bird,” I yelled back to the others. “Hurry!”

As they started toward me, I pulled on the stick, and the slug held on. But then, my stick bent under the weight of it. I heaved up, and all at once, the end of that stick popped and, just like a golf club, sent the slug flying into the air. It flew straight toward Ms. Morgan!

Ms. Morgan’s boots slid and stumbled on the path. Her eyes widened, and she raised her hands. Was she going to catch that slug? Slime and all?

No, she wasn’t. With a soft plop, the slug hit her in the stomach and thunked to the ground. “Oh,” she said as her feet finally slipped out from under her on the downhill side of the path.

Her bottom thunked down onto the ferns, and she slid away. In a moment, she had disappeared.

Still holding the stick, I stared at where Ms. Morgan had been. My mouth was open, but my voice was stuck. I turned away from all the scandalized faces and ran up the trail toward the parking lot.

Our picnic was ruined!

B
Y THE TIME I
reached the sunshine of the picnic area, loud, gasping noises were coming out of my mouth. I flopped down on the grass and buried my face in my arms. Over and over in my mind, the orange-and-black slug flew toward Ms. Morgan. Over and over, I watched her slide down the steep bank beside the trail.

What if she’d broken something? A leg. An arm. They were probably calling on their cell phones, getting an ambulance. She would go to the hospital. I loved her so much, and now, I knew for sure that I wanted her to be my mother.

My mother. Not Claire’s.

I had ruined everything. Now, she would be sure to choose Claire. Every time she thought about me, she would remember that slug. I could hear them coming back. I peeked through the blades of grass and saw that Dad was carrying Tyler, who was carrying the binoculars. He looked through them at Dad’s head. “There’s something black in your ear,” he yelled.

“Quit that,” Dad said. But he was laughing.

He sounded normal. Maybe everything wasn’t ruined, after all.

Ms. Morgan walked next to Claire. They were holding hands while Claire told her a story about a trip she had taken. Claire would never have picked up a slug. She would have walked right past it. Claire never did terrible things.

Ms. Morgan was walking fine. Her arms looked okay. She was even smiling. At Claire. I buried my face again in the grass as despair washed over me.

“Let’s get the picnic things,” I heard Mr. Plummer say, and he organized everyone into carrying things from the car.

Dad bent over me. “Once you’ve apologized, you’ll feel better,” he said. He went off toward our car.

I sat up on the grass. Finally, I got to my feet.

“Wait,” Mr. Plummer was saying. “The cloth goes on first.” He pulled a green-and-blue cloth from a box and tossed it over the wooden table. He lifted the lid of one of the coolers. With a flourish, he pulled out a bud vase holding a white rose.

Thoughts of last Thanksgiving flew into my mind. I remembered how Claire and her dad had decorated their whole house. Was our picnic going to be decorated the same way?

While everyone was looking at the rose, I moved close to Ms. Morgan. “I’m really sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean for that slug to fly at you.”

She smiled down at me. “That was a slug out of control,” she said. “It was actually quite pretty, once we took a good look at it.”

I blinked the tears from my eyes. “You thought it was pretty?”

She nodded. “Claire’s dad took pictures.”

I touched her arm. “Did you hurt yourself when you fell?”

She brushed at the back of her shorts. “Only my dignity,” she said with a grin. “I’m fine.”

“Great!” I said.

I ran to our car to get a paper bag Dad was holding. “Tyler and I made the plates fancy,” I said when I got back. “I made a bluebird for you, Ms. Morgan.”

She held it up to admire it. “This is much too beautiful to put food on. I want to save it.”

“I can make another one for you,” I told her. “It’s easy.”

“We brought some real plates,” Claire said as her dad carried another box to the table. “Real plates don’t bend.”

Claire and I set the real plates on the table.

“First, we have hors d’oeuvres,” Mr. Plummer said. “Ta-da!” He opened a cooler and pulled out a platter of fancy vegetables and gooey sauces to dip them in.

“We brought some chips,” I said, pulling a crackly bag out of our box.

As Claire looked at the potato chips, I could tell she was thinking that they were ordinary. She opened the other cooler. “My father and I made these this morning.” The tray she held was full of tiny stuffed tomatoes.

I set down the bag of chips.

Ms. Morgan picked up a stuffed tomato.

“Clever,” she said before she popped it into her mouth.

“Did you bring peanut butter sandwiches?” Tyler asked.

“Assorted meats. Three kinds of cheese.” Claire slid onto the bench close to Ms. Morgan and smiled up at her. “I love helping in the kitchen.”

“These are certainly good,” Ms. Morgan said as she reached for another little tomato.

Dad handed me a package. “Here, Katie. Want to give everyone a paper cup?”

“Just a minute,” Mr. Plummer said. He opened a cardboard box and lifted out wine goblets—glass ones with stems. “I had some extra room in the car, so I put them in.” He stopped then and looked at Tyler.

“Can I have a pretty glass, too?” Tyler’s blue eyes were full of wishes.

“Use two hands,” Dad said. He twisted open the thermos and poured lemonade into the tall glasses.

“Good thing we remembered the ice,” Mr. Plummer said. He lifted ice cubes from a thermos bowl with silver tongs and plunked them lightly into the drinks.

Ms. Morgan lifted her glass and the ice cubes clinked against the sides. “Let’s toast to this wonderful day in a beautiful place.”

“First, a picture,” Mr. Plummer said. As we held our glasses up for the toast, he rummaged through all his pockets for the camera. Claire slid across the bench, closer to Ms. Morgan.

He snapped three pictures, and then handed the camera to Dad. “I wonder if you would take one with me in it,” he said.

Mr. Plummer crowded onto the bench so he and Claire and Ms. Morgan were in a row.

“Smile,” Dad said. He snapped a quick photo. At last, we could quit holding our glasses up in the air.

Even Tyler joined in the toast, the beautiful glass shaking in his little hands.

T
YLER OPENED UP HIS
sandwich and put the parts all over his plate. “My mother is coming to live with us,” he said. “She’s going to be our mother again.”

“Um,” Dad said. He had just taken a big bite of his chicken sandwich.

“No, she isn’t,” I said.

Dad finally swallowed. “She’s coming to Portland next week to do a concert. We’re going to it.” It was short notice, he said, because Mom was filling in for another singer who was sick.

“Katie’s mom is on a poster in her bedroom,” Claire said. “She’s wearing a beautiful red vest that sparkles. I wish she would come back to live with you.”

“She will,” Tyler said. “She’s going to cook my breakfast.”

Dad frowned. “We’re going to her concert, Tyler. Then we’ll come home, and she’ll go do her next concert.”

“I guess she has CDs out?” Mr. Plummer asked.

“Four CDs,” I said around my bite of sandwich. I stared across the table at the three of them, Ms. Morgan, Mr. Plummer, and Claire, looking like a family as they sat side-by-side at the picnic table. Ms. Morgan would probably like having a daughter who never talked with her mouth full.

“I wonder if there are any tickets left,” Ms. Morgan said.

“I want to go to her concert,” Claire said.

Tyler ripped his piece of ham into little pieces and made a tower on his plate.

“Eat your castle,” Dad said.

“Lighthouse,” Tyler said. “Blink, blink.” He looked around at us. “The light goes on and off,” he explained. “It blinks.”

“I’ll see if I can get more tickets,” Dad said. “Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to travel together,” he continued, “because we’re going to stay after the concert to visit with her.”

“She’s going to be my mother again,” Tyler said, “and tuck me in.”

Dad shook his head at Tyler. Then he swept his arm around him and held him close. “Your mom is really busy doing her concerts,” he said.

Mr. Plummer and Dad shook their heads at each other and looked sad, feeling bad about Tyler, I guessed. They had forgotten that I missed Mom, too.

Ms. Morgan got up to make another sandwich. “This cheese is perfect with the ham,” she said.

“Your potato salad is perfect with our sandwiches,” Mr. Plummer said.

Claire ran around the table to watch Ms. Morgan build her sandwich. “My father is a wonderful cook.”

Mr. Plummer coughed. “Well,” he said, “I do enjoy fussing around in the kitchen. But I could use new ideas for things to make.”

The grown-ups talked about recipes while we finished our sandwiches. Then, we played with Tyler’s Nerf ball and hit a badminton birdie around with the rackets the Plummers had brought. After that, we ate our watermelon and spit seeds into the grass, except for Claire, who folded her seeds into her paper napkin. Shadows of the tall trees filled the parking lot as we carried our boxes and bags to the cars.

After we said good-bye to Claire and Mr. Plummer, Tyler and I climbed into the back seat. Ms. Morgan sat in front with Dad. As we drove out of the park, I watched the back of Ms. Morgan’s head as she and Dad talked. Her head looked perfect in our front seat. Dad was saying something about looking for another job and maybe having to move. He sounded worried again. Ms. Morgan said she liked living in Hartsdale, but it had taken a while to feel at home.

“Time to rise and shine.” Dad’s voice woke me up. I blinked at him. We were in our driveway. Beside me, Tyler stretched and yawned. “I want to go on the picnic,” he said.

“You already went on the picnic.” Dad unbuckled Tyler from his car seat.

“Where’s Ms. Morgan?” I asked. Then, I saw her, unlocking her bike.

“I had a good time,” she said as she pushed her bike toward us. “Thank you so much for inviting me.” She swung her leg over the seat.

“I’ll let you know about the tickets,” Dad said to her. She waved at us and pedaled down the street.

I slammed the car door. “I fell asleep and missed her riding with us,” I said as Dad handed me two grocery bags to carry into the house. “It was an awful picnic.”

“I had a great time,” Dad said.