Bittersweet Summer

by Anne Warren Smith

  Dad went toward the kitchen.

  “My beautiful mother-mouse caves,” Tyler wailed.

  “I have a great idea,” I said. “Let’s make a hotel cave. We’ll make it behind the couch.”

  It took a while, but when we finished the room looked almost normal. All our shoes were piled on their sides behind the couch, little ones on top of big ones. “That’s a lot of mother mice,” I whispered.

  Tyler tucked the last mouse into place and looked around the room. “We are spruced up.”

  “Our living room looks like Claire’s house.”

  “At Claire’s house,” Tyler said, “nobody can build anything!”

  “Maybe somebody important is coming to see us.” I sat cross-legged on the floor and stacked my pictures together.

  “Maybe Mr. Friend is coming,” Tyler said. “When he came for Thanksgiving dinner, he played trucks with me. We builded bridges all over this room.”

  “Mr. Flagstaff is in Germany,” I told him. “He’s not coming.” Mr. Flagstaff was an engineer, and Dad worked for him, writing thick reports. He said it was a great job because he could work here at home.

  The smell of coffee came first, and then Dad walked in. “Much better,” he said, looking around. He straightened the cushions on the couch.

  Straightening cushions! That’s what Claire’s dad is always doing, I thought. I squinted my eyes again at Dad. Something was definitely wrong with him.

  He sat down on the couch and took a long sniff of coffee. That was normal. Dad loved sniffing coffee as much as he loved drinking it.

  “This week,” he said, “I had to make some phone calls for Mr. Flagstaff because he’s in Germany. I found out that he’s no longer consulting for some of the big companies.” Dad stared into his coffee mug. “I’m afraid he’s getting ready to retire. If he does, pretty soon there won’t be any work for me.”

  “Good.” I set my pictures on the coffee table. “You’ll have time to play with us.”

  He shook his head at me. “I need to be working, Pumpkin. That’s how I make money for us to buy groceries.”

  “Like toilet paper,” Tyler said, nodding at me.

  “I’m going to need your help,” Dad said. “We need to make some big decisions here.”

  I sat up straight. I liked it when Dad needed my help.

  He continued. “A wonderful company in Portland may offer me a job.”

  Tyler and I stared at him.

  “If I get a job in Portland, we’ll have to live there.”

  “Live in Portland?” I felt air whoosh out of me. “We can’t do that!”

  “It’s about two hours away,” Dad said. “Too far for me to drive every day.”

  Tyler kicked his feet against the couch and frowned.

  “If we move,” Dad said, “we’ll need to sell this house. A real estate person is coming tomorrow to talk about that.” He sighed. “All the jobs are in Portland.”

  I looked around our living room, almost all spruced up now. I remembered Tyler sitting on this rug, racing trucks with Mr. Flagstaff. I remembered me reading books to Tyler in the big, green chair. Out the front window, there was Claire’s house. I was used to looking out that window at Claire’s house.

  Right then, I remembered Claire’s plans for Ms. Morgan. Could she make it happen? I wondered. Would Ms. Morgan be her new mother? Claire’s life would be wonderful. And mine? I rubbed a sad place in my stomach.

  “Whatever happens, we’ll be fine,” Dad said. He pulled both of us into his lap. “You kids are not to worry. We’ll still be the three of us. We’re still a family no matter where we live.”

  I listened to Dad’s heart beating next to my ear. It wasn’t helping me feel better.

  Dad shifted us around so he could see our faces. “Now, tell me about the last day of school, Katie. Did you have a party?”

  I blew a big sigh out of my mouth.

  “The food made me sick,” I said. “And Sierra is gone for two weeks. And Claire has a really stupid summer project.”

  Tears suddenly came into my eyes, and I blinked hard to make them go away. “And now, we might have to move.” More tears ran down my cheeks. “It’s hardly started, and I hate this summer vacation!”

  Chapter 6

  Claire’s Project: The First Step

  WE SAT IN THE spruced-up living room while I tried to stop crying. Then the phone rang.

  Dad lifted Tyler and me off his lap and ran to his office.

  A moment later, he stuck his head in the door.

  “It’s Claire,” he said. “Before you talk to her, I want to tell you this moving thing is a secret. Please don’t tell Claire we might be moving.”

  I looked at Tyler. Dad looked at Tyler, too. We both knew Tyler couldn’t keep a secret longer than one minute.

  “Never mind,” Dad said.

  I rubbed tears from my cheeks as I walked to his office. The idea that we might move made my feet stumble. My sadness about the end of fourth grade seemed silly, now. “Hi, Claire,” I said.

  “I’ve got to find Ms. Morgan,” she said, “so I can get started.”

  I listened to Claire breathing into the phone and still thinking about her summer project. Nothing had changed in Claire’s life.

  “I looked her up in the phone book,” she continued, “but Katie, you won’t believe how many Morgans there are in the phone book. What am I going to do?”

  I picked loose paper clips off Dad’s desk and tossed them at his magnetic paper-clip holder. I couldn’t think of what to say.

  “How can I get her thinking about marrying us,” Claire continued, “if I can’t find her?”

  A little card on Dad’s desk caught my eye. A red-haired lady in a stupid hat with a feather looked up at me. “Sadie Fowler, Real Estate,” the card said. Ugh! I tossed the card at the magnet. Of course it stuck. It was a magnetic card.

  “The only thing I can think of,” Claire said, “is going to the library. She might actually be there. I want to go there tomorrow.”

  Dad came into his office and was pointing at his watch. “I’m expecting a call,” he said.

  “My father says I have to go to the library with someone.” Claire drew a long breath. “Will you go with me, Katie?”

  “I don’t know if I can,” I said. I pressed the phone against my cheek. “Are we still able to do normal things?” I asked Dad.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  I told him about Claire and the library. I didn’t tell him about Claire’s horrible plans for Ms. Morgan. “Of course you can do things like that,” he said. In a few moments, we had it worked out. Mr. Plummer would take us at ten. Dad would get us at noon.

  As soon as I put down the phone, it rang again. Dad picked it up. “Hello, Sadie,” he said. He started writing on a piece of paper.

  “I’ll see you at 10:30 tomorrow,” I heard him say. I joined Tyler on the couch. We wrapped one of Grandma’s knitted blankets around us.

  “I don’t want to move to Portland,” I said.

  “Me, neither,” Tyler said. He leaned against me and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

  Dad came back and sat beside us. “This won’t be so bad,” he said. “We can help each other make it work.”

  “What about Sierra?” I asked. “If we move, I’ll never see her again.”

  “We’ll make sure you get together for visits,” Dad said.

  Tyler looked up into Dad’s face. “If Mommy was here, we wouldn’t have to move. Mommy wouldn’t let us move.”

  Dad set down his mug and pulled Tyler into his lap. “Your mommy could give us lessons on moving. She’s traveling all the time.”

  “She should stop that,” Tyler said. “Let’s ask her to come home.”

  “Your mom and I don’t live together anymore.”

  Dad rubbed his chin on Tyler’s head. “If you lived with your mom, you wouldn’t be with me. I would miss you too much.”

  I sighed. “Everything is awful,” I said. “I think we need
something to take our mind off our troubles,” Dad said. “Let’s watch a movie.”

  Chapter 7

  What Happened at the Library

  “TYLER IS COMING WITH us?” Claire backed up against her dad’s car as if blocking it from us. She was wearing her sunglasses and a blue beret. Over her navy tights, she had on a long, pale-blue shirt with a wide belt.

  “If he’s with us, the house will stay cleaner.” I didn’t tell her the house needed to be clean so that Sadie, the real estate agent, would like it.

  Claire frowned at Tyler. “Keep your shoes off the back seat,” she said.

  “Actually,” I said, “he has to ride in his car seat. My dad is bringing it over.”

  Tyler stuck out his lower lip. “I’m going to read big books at the library.”

  “I am going to read poems,” Claire said with a toss of her blond curls. She smoothed her blue shirt. “These are poet clothes I’m wearing.”

  “That looks like your dad’s shirt,” I said. “The sleeves are too long.”

  Claire rolled the sleeves up some more.

  “Potes are silly.” Tyler smoothed his own red shirt and tugged on his shorts.

  Five-year-olds don’t know what poets are, I thought, as we watched Dad fasten Tyler’s car seat into the Plummer’s car. Ms. Morgan had read poems to us at school. She would think it was great—Claire being a poet.

  “Have a good time,” Dad said. He ran back across the street. He had half an hour to finish tidying the house. Would the real estate person wear her stupid hat when she came to our house? Would our front yard have a For Sale sign on it when we got back?

  Claire got into the front seat of her car and held up the litter bag. “If you have anything to throw away, it goes in here,” she said. She held the bag in front of Tyler for a long time. Tyler stared out the window and wouldn’t look at her.

  “We keep our car spotless,” Claire said.

  That was true. Claire’s car looked brand-new. Ours had a brown stain in the front where Dad had spilled coffee, and a green stain in the back where Tyler threw up once after eating spinach.

  “Good morning,” Mr. Plummer said. “I’ve been pruning the roses. Big job.” He slid into the front seat and checked his watch. “The library opens in three minutes.”

  “I’m going to read all kinds of poetry,” Claire said. “And then, I’ll write some.”

  “A good thing to do,” Mr. Plummer said, glancing into the rearview mirror as he backed out of the driveway. “Reading good poetry trains your ear.”

  I pictured Claire’s ear holding a pencil and giggled.

  Claire frowned at me. I giggled again. When we walked into the library, tons of people were already there. “I have to find out where they keep the poetry,” Claire said. She went toward the librarian’s desk, her head turning back and forth like a robot’s head. I figured she was looking for Ms. Morgan—the real reason we were there.

  Tyler tugged me into the children’s section and rushed toward the shelves of picture books. “See you later,” he called.

  “Stay in the children’s area,” I told him.

  “I don’t want children’s poetry,” Claire was saying to the man at the reference desk. “I want grown-up poetry.” He told her to go up the stairs and to the left.

  “I’m looking for art books,” I said to him. “Grown-up ones.”

  “Art books?” Claire turned back to me.

  “Ms. Morgan likes artists, too,” I said.

  “You didn’t wear the right clothes,” she said, looking at my shorts and T-shirt.

  “Artists can wear anything they want,” I told her.

  The man wrote down directions to the art section.

  “There are some good books in the children’s room, as well,” he said, “if these don’t work for you.”

  As we climbed the stairs, I planned my next bird picture. I could give it to Ms. Morgan when school started up next fall. I stubbed my toe on the next step as I remembered we might not be here next fall. We might be living in Portland. Ms. Morgan might be living at Claire’s!

  Claire stopped to peer over the railing to the ground floor. “You can see more people from up here.”

  “Forget it, Claire,” I said. “She’s not here. It’s a crazy idea.”

  Claire sighed. “It was all I could think of. We’ll just have to come back every day until we find her.” We moved to one side so a mother carrying a baby and a huge pile of books could get past us.

  “I’m serious about the art books,” I said, “even if you don’t really care about poetry.”

  “I am very serious,” Claire said. “Ms. Morgan will love having a poet for a daughter.”

  At the top of the stairs we split up. A few minutes later, I found art books. I was surprised! A lot of them were about drawing naked people. A lady with sharp glasses came to look at the art books, too, so I couldn’t even peek into the naked ones.

  Finally, I found a book on how to draw birds. Step-by-step instructions. I went downstairs and checked the big clock in the lobby. The real estate lady was at our house right now. All at once I wanted to be at home. Dad needed me there to remind him that the Portland idea was a bad one.

  In the children’s section, Tyler was sitting in a nest of picture books. His fingers were on the pictures, and he was telling stories about them to a baby snoozing in a stroller beside him. “You can’t take that many books home,” I told him.

  “Be quiet,” he said. “This baby is sleeping. His mother is right over there.” He pointed to a woman who waved and smiled at me.

  I moved down the rows of little-kid books to the novels. I pulled them out and read the first pages and the last pages to see if they were any good. I wondered if there were any books about kids having to move. Probably not. It was too terrible to read about.

  When I checked on him again, Tyler was sitting in the window seat next to a big kid. The flannel shirt looked familiar. Alex Ramirez!

  Alex looked up. “Hi Katie,” he said. “Is this your brother? He sure likes bridges.” He tapped the book that was spread across their laps.

  “Famous Suspension Bridges of the World.”

  “Go away, Katie,” Tyler said. “We’re busy.”

  “Dad told me to check on you a lot,” I told him.

  “I’ll watch him for a while,” Alex said. “He’s pretty fun.”

  “Next bridge,” Tyler said. They both looked down as Alex turned the page.

  As I went upstairs to find Claire, I once again saw the big clock. “You must not move to Portland,” the real estate person might be saying to Dad. She would pull on her feathered hat and wave a big purse at him. “Okay,” Dad would say. And that would be that.

  In the shelves marked “NORTHWEST TRAVEL,” someone with a long, brown ponytail was pulling books off the shelf. Unbelievable! Ms. Morgan was here!

  I scooted out of sight around the corner. The minute she saw her, Claire would start her project—working on Ms. Morgan to be her mother. I had to get Claire out of the library!

  I ducked around the crafts section and into biographies. At last I found her, turning the pages of a fat book.

  “We have to go now,” I told her. “It’s almost noon.”

  She looked at her silver-and-blue watch. “We have ten more minutes.”

  “Dad hates waiting,” I told her. “He gets furious.”

  With a sigh, Claire straightened her blue shirt. She put on her dark glasses and her beret. At last, she turned toward the stairs, but she stopped to peer down every row of books. “I’ve been looking every five minutes,” she said. “I’m so sad she didn’t come.”

  “Come on,” I said as I walked fast to the stairs. Tyler was playing a hide-and-seek game on the computer. It took forever for him to finish. Then Claire and I had to find the books he wanted to take home. “You’re so crabby,” he told me as we finally stood in the check-out line.

  After checking out, I herded Claire and Tyler toward the front doors. We were al
most out! Ms. Morgan would be safe for one more day.

  “Oh my gosh.” Claire screeched to a halt. “There she is!” She raced back across the lobby.

  Ms. Morgan was coming down the stairs. She looked up when she heard Claire’s voice. “What a surprise,” she said, smiling at all of us.

  “Hi, Ms. Morgan,” I called. “We have to go. Dad’s probably out in front right now.” I pushed Tyler through the door.

  “Quit that,” Tyler said, and all his picture books crashed onto my feet. “Quit pushing me,” he yelled.

  In the checkout line, people turned to watch Tyler and me. But Claire stood close to Ms. Morgan, showing her the poetry books. Ms. Morgan smiled and nodded at her.

  Her smile looked very motherly.

  Chapter 8

  A Surprising Invitation

  “HOW COME WE HAVE to wait for Dad out here?” Tyler asked. He dumped his books onto a bench next to the big planter and squinted at the cars going by on Monroe Street. “He’s not even here.”

  “We just have to,” I said. I peeked inside to see Claire and Ms. Morgan still side-by-side in the line. I stacked my books next to Tyler’s and thumped myself down on the bench. I crossed my arms and stared at the library wall. Only Dad could save Ms. Morgan from Claire, I thought, and Dad was always late.

  A few minutes later, Claire and Ms. Morgan joined us on the sunny library terrace. They didn’t look like a mother and daughter yet. They looked ordinary.

  “What are you reading?” Ms. Morgan asked Tyler.

  “Books about mothers,” he answered. He lifted the books up so Ms. Morgan could see the covers. Sure enough, every one of the books was about some kind of mother. Mother owls, mother monkeys, mother chickens, mother cows.

  “Hmm,” Ms. Morgan said, looking into Tyler’s face with a kind smile.

  He grinned at her. “I can read them myself.”

  “Ahem,” I said.

  “I can read big parts of them.” He glared at me, and his red hair bristled in the sunshine.

  “Hello, everyone.” It was Dad, striding up the steps, all dressed up. “Ms. Morgan,” he said with a big smile. “We didn’t expect to run into you today.”