“Hey, Leah, can we say you’ll try to be home by four? We haven’t seen you much lately. It seems like you’re always either gone or sleeping. Your dad and I thought it might be nice to go out for sushi or something. Reconnect.”
Reconnect? What was she talking about? We hadn’t connected in a year. But I nodded at her. “Sure,” I said as I pushed on the screen door and stepped outside. I liked sushi.
And moments later, dinner was the farthest thing from my mind as Jasper appeared from behind the azaleas, and together we ran down the street, racing for the park.
We arrived just as the pool was opening. A few old men were there already at the gate, looking very serious in their swim trunks, and probably planning to hog the pool for lap swim. Then there was a whole crew of moms with little kids waiting. A few dads too. They had huge picnic baskets and folding chairs, and I knew they’d stay all day, the parents talking to each other and the kids peeing in the splash pad and falling over and crying. Jasper and I hung back and let the crowd go ahead of us.
But at last the line was gone and it was our turn. We darted inside, pulled on our suits, took a two-second obligatory shower just inside the gate, and then ran to spread out our towels in the shadiest spot we could find, which was unfortunately close to a massive trash can.
“What a view!” said Jasper, nodding at the garbage. “With any luck we’ll have flies in a few minutes. Maybe bees too!”
“I know, but I promise, by noon we’ll be glad for a spot under the tree,” I said. “I know what I’m talking about.”
“If you say so,” said Jasper.
“I do,” I said, and sank down on my towel.
Suddenly, I heard someone calling my name. A grown-up voice. I turned around. “Leah Davidson!” called out Mrs. Hanson, waving as she walked our way. She was wearing a flowered swimsuit with a ruffled skirt and clutching a squirming baby in a floppy hat. The baby did not look happy about the hat.
“Hi,” I said, standing up. “How are you and, umm . . . her?” I couldn’t remember the baby’s name.
“We’re fine,” Mrs. Hanson said. “Mostly, anyway. The baby isn’t sleeping terribly well. And she has a funny rash. But that’s sure to go away, I suppose.”
I didn’t know the first thing about rashes, so I just nodded and said, “Sure! Umm, hey, Mrs. Hanson, this is my new friend, Jasper. Jasper, this is Mrs. Hanson. She teaches first grade.”
“Lovely to meet you,” said Mrs. Hanson distractedly. The baby was chewing on her hat string. “Any friend of Leah’s . . .”
Jasper grinned. “What was Leah like in first grade? Did she eat too much paste?”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Hanson. “I didn’t have Leah in my . . . well, that is to say . . . she had another teacher. I, umm . . . I had her . . .”
“She taught Sam,” I explained, as Mrs. Hanson glanced down, staring intently at the top of the hat. “She was Sam’s favorite teacher of all time. Right, Mrs. Hanson?”
Mrs. Hanson nodded.
“I remember that Sam picked out that huge orange candle for you, for your birthday. He bought it with his own money, at the farmers market. He saved up.”
“Yes, I remember. I still have it,” said Mrs. Hanson gently, but she still wasn’t making eye contact with me.
Then there was a pause, until at last Mrs. Hanson cleared her throat. “Okay, well, I think maybe Olive here should get over to her little buddies to splash. But it was nice seeing you, Leah. Please, dear, tell your mom hello from me. It’s been too long.” She turned to leave.
That probably would have been a good way to end things, but right then something funny happened. Inside me. A little twisting snake of a feeling. I don’t know where it came from, but I was just so tired of this same dumb interaction, which I seemed to have with everyone. Everyone wanted me to tell my parents hello. Everyone had trouble making eye contact and everyone said those same words, It’s been too long. Now, for some reason, I couldn’t let Mrs. Hanson just walk away. Not this time.
“You know,” I shouted after her, “you could call, if you want.”
“What’s that?” she said, looking back over her shoulder. “What do you mean, Leah?”
“I mean, you could call my mom. You could check in.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose,” she said, nodding sadly. “I suppose I should. It’s just . . . you know, been a busy year.”
“Really?” I said. “It’s mostly been quiet at our house. Super quiet.”
Mrs. Hanson stared at me for a second, as the baby made a gurgling noise and then said “Ba!” in her arms.
“I mean, it’s been quiet ever since the funeral. Nobody ever calls or stops by.”
“Oh, Leah,” said Mrs. Hanson, even though the baby was squirming now. “I’m so sorry, dear.” She looked incredibly sad, but also incredibly uncomfortable.
Then things were quiet again, and Jasper coughed, which somehow made it feel okay when Mrs. Hanson turned to go. “Well, I just wanted to . . . you know, check in, Leah. And maybe . . . I’ll see you soon.”
I watched her walk away, out the main gate and off to the parking lot, with her baby staring back at us all big-eyed and drooly. Even though they had only just arrived. I couldn’t stop staring back.
After that, Jasper and I got into the water and paddled around. Jasper swam a quick lap across the pool and back, then ducked down to do some somersaults beside me, but when she burst up out of the water, she said, “Hey, Leah!”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Why did you do that to that teacher?”
“Do what?” I swam away from her.
“You know,” she said, following me, treading water. “You intentionally made that woman uncomfortable. Didn’t you?”
I turned and splashed at her lightly. “Kind of, I guess. I wasn’t trying to do it. But then, yeah. I guess maybe I did know she was uncomfortable.”
“That wasn’t nice,” said Jasper.
“No, I guess it wasn’t,” I said.
“Well, okay then,” said Jasper. And she swam off to the deep end.
I wasn’t exactly sure why I’d done it, and I knew I couldn’t explain it to Jasper. It was just a thing I’d done, because it had been in me to do. Because there was a broken little place inside me. A crumpled piece of paper I couldn’t straighten out. Because I was tired of everything being wrong with everyone I’d known all my life. Because it didn’t seem fair that some people got to be busy and comfortable, and others didn’t. Because saying the wrong thing felt better than keeping silent any longer.
A year was a long time to be silent.
I sank under the water and held my breath for a full minute.
The Vine Realm
After that day, I tried not to go places where we’d see people I knew. It was better just to be with Jasper. When we were all alone together, summer felt right. Like a little island of time set apart from the rest of the year. The days drained away like they’re supposed to. Like something you want to savor. Slowly, but still too fast.
Sometimes, Jasper would turn up on my porch in the morning after my parents had left for work, and together we’d make breakfast and spend a lazy morning watching TV or sitting around, talking. Normal things, like I used to do with Tess. The things I’d always done, until Sam died. One morning we gave ourselves facials. Another day, we weeded the incredibly overgrown garden my mom had been neglecting all year. I had no idea what I was doing, and I don’t think Jasper really did either, but it was nice to sit in the sun and dig in the dirt and smell all the green growing things. And that evening, when my mom came home from work, she noticed right away, perked up, and said, “Well, look at that! You know, Leah, I was a little nervous about you just hanging around the house, but I have to admit, you seem really mature this summer. . . .”
I’d never really cooked for anyone but myself before, but knowing Jasper didn’t have a working stove made me want to. Mature or not, I’d probably have grumped about it if my parents had asked me to cook dinner
for them, but it didn’t feel like work, not with Jasper sitting beside me on the counter, her long legs hanging down, as she sipped a cup of coffee. I felt older, somehow. I felt like a person instead of just a kid. And so we made messy omelets that gooped onto the plate. Grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. Tater Tots. I’d tie on my dad’s Watcha Cooking, Hot Stuff? apron that he used to wear when he grilled, and lean into the fridge, happily.
Once in a while, Jasper would ask to take a shower or to wash her laundry, but mostly, she didn’t ask for things. She left it to me to offer. Which made me want to offer her everything.
On the mornings Jasper didn’t come to my house, I walked over to hers. And those days were just as good. We’d pick the wild berries along the fence on Mercer, washing them with the farm’s hose, or we’d walk the creek, looking for pieces of colored glass smoothed down by time and water.
One day, in the creek, I heard Jasper give a loud shout, and came running to find her waving something in the air. “Look at this guy,” she said. “He’s huge!” When she stopped waving her hand, I could see she was clutching a large crawfish. He wasn’t moving, probably stunned by the wild ride Jasper had given him.
“I’m going to keep him for a pet,” she said. “His name is Fido. I’ve never had a pet before.”
She looked so proud of her find, I didn’t tell her I knew this particular crawfish already. Sam had caught him at least three times.
“I think maybe you should let him go,” I said. “He’s got to be really old, to be so big, don’t you think? It would be a shame if he died in your house. I bet he’d smell.”
Jasper pouted at me. “I know,” she said. “I was just kidding, mostly.”
I stood there, watching Jasper set him back down, and thinking about how Sam used to wave the crawfish at me, even though he knew I hated it. I’d always been so angry at him when he did things like that, pranks and tricks. But it was impossible to be angry at him now.
A few times I treated Jasper to ice cream at Morelli’s—always salted caramel for me, but Jasper ordered something different every time. Weird flavors, like rosewater or olive oil. Earl Grey or jalapeño coconut.
“Are you crazy?” I would always ask. “What if you don’t like it?”
“But what if I do?” asked Jasper. “What if it’s the best thing ever, and I don’t try it, and I die, years from now, old and miserable, wondering . . .”
“It seems unlikely you’ll be thinking about ice cream when you die,” I said.
“You never know,” said Jasper, licking her cone thoughtfully. “There are definitely worse things to be thinking about when you die. It might be my last gasp. Earl. Grey. Tea!” We both laughed.
One day, Jasper was over at my house, running a load of laundry, and she happened to notice the art supply cabinet in the office. She swung the door open and peered inside.
“Hey, what’s all this for?” she asked as she picked up a little box of purple seed beads and shook it at me, like a maraca. She reached for a bottle of poster paint.
“Nothing really,” I replied. “Dad used to do art projects with Sam and me. You know—tie-dyeing and stuff like that. But he doesn’t anymore. He says he doesn’t have time these days, for art.”
Staring at the paint in Jasper’s hand, I thought briefly about the cornfield in the garage. I’d been out to see it a few more times during the day, when I wasn’t with Jasper and I knew nobody would come home. I couldn’t quite tell if it had changed or not, if he was still working on it. But I liked to stand and look at it in the dusty garage light. It made me want to cry, every time, but in a way that felt right. Like stretching, almost, or yawning. I hadn’t told Jasper about it, and somehow, I still didn’t want to. I didn’t want to share it.
“No time for art?” Jasper said. “What’s he so busy with?”
I shrugged. “Working. Checking his email. Being a dad. Who knows.” I turned to the wall above the desk and pointed at a still life, a painting of a fruit bowl, only there were other things in the bowl too. Keys, a broken Barbie doll head, random junk along with the apples and pears. “My dad painted that. He painted most of the pictures around the house. Once upon a time, before I was born, he wanted to be a professional artist. He even went to college for it. And when I was a kid he took me to the art museum all the time. But he doesn’t talk about painting much anymore.”
Jasper looked at the painting for a minute. “I like it,” she said.
“Yeah, me too.”
“What does he do for a living?” asked Jasper. “You never talk about your parents, really. I’m not even sure what their names are.”
“You never talk about yours either,” I said.
For weeks, we’d pretended to ignore the conversations we obviously weren’t having. As wonderful and comfortable as we were with each other, there were gaps, holes, empty places in our friendship. Jasper didn’t come around when my parents were home. And I never asked about her family. We both saw the gaps and knew they were there. Only now we’d stumbled into one of them.
But I didn’t want things to be tense, and there was really no reason not to talk about Dad’s job. So I shrugged and said, “Honestly, his job is kind of dumb. I’m not even really sure what he does. Something boring at a desk that means he needs to wear a button-down shirt. He works for a company that makes toilet paper.”
“Oh,” said Jasper. “Toilet paper?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not very interesting.”
She laughed. “He seriously switched from art to toilet paper?”
“Yeah, I guess he did,” I said. “But I never thought about it like that. He never seemed to mind his job. It was just his job. Most of what he was didn’t have anything to do with that. Mostly, he was a dad. “Anyway,” I added, “the exact same thing happened to Mom. She was a poet a long time ago, and now she writes for the newspaper. She started doing that after I was born. Like, it made sense to try to do whatever they wanted when they were young, but then I was there, and they both thought they needed a house, and groceries, and health insurance, and that sort of stuff. So Mom packed all of her poet-hippie dresses in the back of her closet, and Dad turned into Mr. Toilet Paper.”
Jasper laughed. “Mr. Toilet Paper.”
I laughed too. “See, it’s not all boring. That was a joke we had, when we were little. We thought he actually made the toilet paper himself. He’d bring home a roll for each of us on Friday after work each week, and be, like, ‘I made these ones special for you.’ And then Sam and I were allowed to throw the toilet paper at each other through the air, so we’d end up with a big tangled mess of it in the yard.”
“Your dad sounds weird.” But she was grinning, so I could tell she understood.
I nodded. “He used to be weird. . . .”
“But not anymore?”
I shook my head slowly, thinking it over. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it like this until just now, but the truth is that’s the thing that’s changed the most. That they aren’t weird anymore. They were weird until Sam died. Weird and funny. Maybe they’re just too sad to be weird and funny now. Too numb.”
I stood there, trying to think about whether it was true, what I was saying. Deep inside, I thought it was. It was like there was a sharp clear bell ringing, like I’d stumbled onto the truth, even if I didn’t quite understand it.
Then I thought about Dad’s secret. About the cornfield in the garage. The one weird thing he had left. Except that he wasn’t sharing it. He was keeping it to himself. What did that mean?
And standing there, with Jasper and the art supplies, I suddenly had an idea. “Hey!” I said so sharply that Jasper jumped. “I know something neat we could do!”
“I’m in!” said Jasper right away, even though she had no idea what I was thinking about. “I’m a fan of neat somethings.”
That afternoon, we packed up all the paints and brushes we could find in the house and took them to Jasper’s place. Up the creek, through the kudzu, and around the
back of the house, into the kitchen. Then we stood together, staring at the one big blank wall in the room, the one over Jasper’s bed, and trying to think of what kind of mural we wanted to paint.
“We need a theme,” said Jasper. “What’s a good theme for a mural?”
Friendship, I thought. Magic. Summertime. But I didn’t say them out loud. They sounded cheesy and babyish, even inside my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “What do you mean by a theme?”
“Or maybe not a theme,” said Jasper. “That makes it sound like school. I just mean that the house needs an identity, a name, an idea, something special. Like Cair Paravel or the Burrow. What’s a good name for a house? What’s this house all about?”
“It’s a secret portal,” I said. “This house is, like, a doorway to another world, our little world. It’s a mystery to the outside world, you know? Just ours.”
“Yessssss,” said Jasper. “You’re right. It’s a secret door. This whole house is. You crawl through the kudzu vines and you’re in a different dimension, another realm. A vine realm!”
“The Vine Realm,” I repeated. “That’s it. We’re the Keepers of the Vine Realm! It almost sounds like it came from a book, doesn’t it?”
“Totally,” said Jasper. “Maybe we should write it someday. But for now . . .” She stepped back, and with a pencil, in four confident strokes, she drew a rectangle in the middle of the wall over her bed. It was a door-sized rectangle, but a small one. If it suddenly turned into a real door, and we wanted to step through, we’d have to duck our heads.
“Nice,” I said.
Jasper looked back at me over her shoulder. “Right?” Her face was shiny with sweat, and she looked extra alive as she turned back around and quickly added a circle for a doorknob.
For two seconds, it almost felt like she’d cast a spell, like if she wanted to, she could actually turn the knob and step through the wall. I knew it wasn’t true, but it felt true.
My Jasper June Page 10
