Birds of Summer

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  But there was another part that watched Sparrow’s happy face and, in imagination, changed it to the way it would look after the truth was told. And it was that part that finally won. Summer would join the liars. The only remaining problem was just which lies would be most useful, and how to get Oriole to limit herself to those. There would have to be a conference with Oriole before she had a chance to talk to Sparrow, which meant some kind of a ruse would be necessary.

  As soon as they turned off the road, Summer lagged behind and then suddenly darted off the path. Hidden in a thick clump of rhododendron, she waited until Sparrow came back looking for her. “Summer. Summer.” Sparrow’s voice was plaintive. “Where’d you go? Stop hiding from me.” Suddenly her voice brightened. “Are we playing a game, Summer? Are we playing hide and seek? Okay, here I come.” After Sparrow had gone past, Summer made her way back to the path and then ran. When she reached the trailer, she found Oriole sitting on the front steps.

  She’d planned to lie, all right. Even though her pale skin looked blotchy around her eyes and nose—a sure sign she’d been crying—she smiled when she saw Summer, a typical Oriole smile, wide-eyed and deceptively innocent.

  “Hi,” she said. “I found your note. I hope Sparrow didn’t make a nuisance of herself.”

  “Listen,” Summer said. “Sparrow’ll be here in a minute. I know what happened to Cerbe, but she doesn’t.”

  Oriole’s face disintegrated into undisguised horror before she got it under control and produced a more or less convincing portrayal of resigned grief. “It must have been a car,” she said. “Angelo and I found him when—”

  “No!” Summer said. “I know who killed him and where he was killed and it wasn’t on the road. But I don’t want Sparrow to know. Let’s just say we don’t know where he is. When she notices he’s missing, we’ll just say we don’t know where he went. Okay? That way she’ll get used to the idea that he’s gone a little at a time.”

  Oriole’s eyes were glassy. “She didn’t see him?” she asked. “This morning?”

  “No. I found him first and buried him, before she woke up.”

  “Oh, baby,” Oriole’s face crumpled, and tears filled her eyes. She held out her arms, but Summer moved away. “It wasn’t Angelo’s fault,” Oriole said. He was just walking back to the trailer with me and Cerbe attacked him. He had to protect himself.”

  “With a gun? How come he was carrying a gun?”

  “Summer. Why’d you run off from me?”

  Sparrow was running across the clearing, and there was only time to whisper, “We don’t know where he is. Okay?” before she reached the trailer.

  “Hi,” Sparrow said to Oriole. “Did you read our note? I got to go with Summer. And Mrs. Oliver says I can go again next Saturday, and …” her face puckered with sudden concern. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter, Oriole?”

  “Nothing,” Oriole said. “Some dust blew in my eyes. I’d better go in and wash my face.”

  There was no chance to say anymore. Sparrow did all the talking during dinner, telling Oriole about her day at the ranch, babbling about the “king’s palace house” and the horses and the peacocks. The peacocks had obviously made the biggest impression. It seemed that Sparrow had always thought of them as fairy tale animals like dragons and unicorns, and even though she’d seen their feathers she never really believed that they were still around in person. So seeing them at the Olivers had really blown her mind. It was almost dark before she suddenly looked around and said, “Hey, where’s Cerbe?”

  Oriole looked at Summer—leaving the lying to her. “Ask Oriole,” she wanted to say. “Ask your mother where Cerbe is.” But she didn’t. Instead she said, “I don’t know. Probably he’s out chasing rabbits again. Why don’t you go call him.” Sparrow stood outside the trailer calling for a long time.

  Sunday was dark and gloomy. A heavy low-flying fog resisted the sun’s efforts to burn it away, and the air was damp and chill. Inside the trailer another kind of chill had to be camouflaged for Sparrow’s sake, but it remained just below the surface of every contact between Summer and Oriole. Sparrow must have felt it because she was whiny and clingy, as she always was when people were fighting. And now and then when Sparrow was momentarily out of hearing, the chill turned into fire and flamed out into the open. Particularly every time Sparrow went out to stand on the step and call for Cerbe.

  “Well, what happens now,” Summer said once while Sparrow’s high-pitched wobbly call echoed and reechoed from the front steps. “Now that he’s gotten rid of Cerbe is he going to move in here?”

  “Oh, Summer. Don’t!” Oriole said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he did move in. You’re always worrying about expenses, and all and he—”

  “Oh! Does Angelo have a lot of money?”

  “Well, not at the moment, but he will have before long.”

  A lot of Oriole’s boyfriends had been just about to strike it rich—as sculptors or herb doctors or rock stars or whatever, but none of them had ever done it. And if Angelo’s prospects were any better, it simply meant that Summer’s worst suspicions were justified. But all she said was, “Where have I heard that before?”

  At first Oriole was patient, guiltily patient, but after a while she began to get angry, and late in the afternoon she walked out. It happened while Sparrow was out looking for Cerbe for about the tenth time. They’d been arguing about Angelo again, and Summer said, “Well, all I can say is, if he moves in I’m leaving.” At that point Oriole said, “No, I’m leaving.” And she got her purse and left.

  Summer knew she’d come back. She always did. But at three o’clock in the morning, when she finally returned, Summer was still awake—and the next day was Monday, the first day of the job at Pardells’. Summer had to be in Alvarro Bay by eight o’clock.

  It was a funny feeling, knocking on the door and having Pardell open it. It was like that with teachers. You knew they had lives outside of the classroom, but somehow it always gave you an odd, disoriented feeling to see them in other situations. When Pardell came to the door clutching a dishtowel and a frying pan and looking disheveled, Summer suddenly felt tongue-tied. She needn’t have worried though. She didn’t have to say anything. He did all the talking.

  “Come in. Come in,” he said, leading the way toward the kitchen. “That is, if you can get in. Meg’s been gone for three days, and I’ve lost six pounds and two major appliances. I meant to have things straightened up a bit before I left, but I ought to be on the road in ten minutes—and look at it!”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Summer said, grinning.

  “I know—but you don’t remember where,” Pardell said. “Look. Do what you can. I won’t expect a miracle. Meg’s due to be discharged from the hospital at ten-thirty so we won’t be back until midafternoon. If you could just get the dishes done—and I’m afraid the service porch is going to need some attention.”

  He wasn’t kidding about the service porch. It seemed that he’d put about three times too much detergent in the washing machine, and it had erupted like a sudsy volcano soaking several piles of dirty clothes, a stack of newspapers and the cat’s bed.

  Pardell disappeared then, and she attacked the service porch problem, starting a load of wash and hanging the cat’s bed out to dry on the porch railing while the cat, an enormous orange tiger-stripe, watched suspiciously. She was surveying the kitchen, wondering where to begin, when Pardell struggled through on his way to the garage carrying some blankets and a wheelchair. “From Hertz-rent-a-chair,” he said. “Let us put you in the driver’s seat. Meg didn’t want it, but the doctor insisted she use one until the cast comes off.”

  Summer ran to hold doors open for him while he maneuvered through the still-soggy service porch and into his old Toyota station wagon. Then she went back to face the disaster area in the kitchen.

  The biggest problem was finding things. It became apparent immediately that the trouble was mo
re deep-seated than could be accounted for by Meg’s three-day absence. It was obvious that Meg, herself, was no organizer. Cleaning equipment was scattered haphazardly all over the house, and the broom closet was full of music manuscripts. In spite of the fact that it wasn’t a third the size of the Olivers’, the Pardells’ little house was at least twice as hard to clean. But, using a system worked out in her two years at the Olivers’, Summer went at each room methodically, and by the time the Pardells pulled into the driveway some hours later, things were looking a lot better. Even Meg, pale and tired-looking and wearing a huge cast on her left leg, said she couldn’t believe her eyes. And after he’d wheeled her into the bedroom, Pardell went through the house yelling, “Amazing. Incredible.” and “Beyond all expectations.” Summer couldn’t help feeling good about it.

  That was the one advantage working for the Pardells had over working for the Olivers. You worked twice as hard and got paid less, but the Pardells certainly knew how to make you feel good about it. And looking ahead at the summer that was just beginning, Summer could guess that things to feel good about were going to be in short supply.

  8

  I SAID I WOULD leave and I haven’t, so I suppose they think that sooner or later I’ll start speaking to him. But I won’t. He usually tries to make a joke of it, like trying to trick me into answering when he says something to me. But it’s been over a month now, and I haven’t said one word to him.

  Oriole’s finally stopped arguing with me about it. At first she kept trying to convince me that he was really a great guy, and then she gave up on that and began about what a hard life he’d had and how he’d had to be hard and tough in order to survive. She gave up on that too after a while and just quit mentioning him at all. Sometimes I think she’s beginning to see what he’s really like. He hasn’t been here at the trailer as much lately. For a while I thought maybe he didn’t actually move in because of me, but now I doubt it.

  Lately I’ve begun to think Oriole has been trying to keep him away from me and Sparrow, but there’s more to it than that. He’s still here sometimes during the day, but when it begins to get dark, he usually goes back to the Fishers’. Like there was something he had to do there after the sun goes down. Sometimes Oriole goes with him, and sometimes she doesn’t.

  During the week I’ve been taking Sparrow with me when I go to work at the Pardells’. There’s a summer program at the school for kids her age, and she spends the morning there. Then she goes to play at one of her friends’ houses or else comes back to the Pardells’ and waits for me. Of course she goes with me every Saturday when I go to Crown Ridge. So Oriole and the Creep have the trailer to themselves during the day if they want it. But when night falls, he always seems to go back to his lair—like a vampire in reverse.

  I still have this feeling that something is about to happen, although the summer’s one-third over already and everything’s pretty much the same. Not that I’ve been worrying very much about it—with the two jobs there hasn’t been the time—but it’s still there at the back of my mind—a feeling that there’s going to be a big change. I don’t know what kind of one though. Right at the present it doesn’t look as if there will be any changes because of the Olivers.

  Sparrow rolled over, stretched and opened her eyes, blinking at the light. “Summer! Aren’t you ever going to go to sleep? The light’s keeping me awake.” Actually she’d been sleeping peacefully for at least an hour.

  Summer smiled at her. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I was just about to stop. So quit whining.” She got up to put the letter in the box, and by the time she was back Sparrow was asleep again. She didn’t even wake up when Summer shoved her over to her own side of the bed. She said something but it must have been part of a dream, because it was about Marina. Summer sighed. She’d been carrying on about Marina again lately, pestering Summer to get the Fishers to let her visit.

  It was a bright night, the radiance of an almost full moon turning everything—even the interior of the trailer—into scenes of eerie beauty; scenes that persisted even after Summer determinedly closed her eyes. Moonlit landscapes that shifted and mutated into first one familiar setting and then another.

  The breakfast room at Crown Ridge—with Richard reading the morning paper and Nan supervising as Sparrow arranged a bouquet of gladiolas in a large ceramic vase. From where she was working at the kitchen sink, Summer could see and hear as Nan enthused over Sparrow’s efforts and then invited Richard to enthuse, too—over the artistic arrangement supposedly but also, quite obviously, over Sparrow herself. It didn’t work, however. Richard said yes, the flowers were nice, and went back to his paper. Whatever Nan was planning for Sparrow, and Summer felt quite certain she was planning something, it was pretty clear that Richard wasn’t ready to go along with Nan’s scenario. While he had stopped arguing that Sparrow ought to be left at home, on the grounds that she would interfere with Summer’s work, he continued to show very little interest in Sparrow herself. And it was apparent to Summer that Nan’s transparent efforts to make him feel as she did about Sparrow were doing more harm than good.

  And at the Pardells’? The only change threatening there was the fact that Meg’s cast was due to come off sometime in July and the job would probably be over. Six hours a day, five days a week was adding up to a lot more money than she’d ever been able to earn before. And when the job ended, the rapid growth of the bank account would end too, and that would be too bad.

  Of course, the work wasn’t easy. Trying to introduce some kind of order into a household consisting of Alan and Meg Pardell was turning out to be an almost superhuman task. The trouble was they were too much alike. In some ways they were both organized and efficient and competent—Alan with words and Meg with music. But where taking care of a house and car and their personal belongings were concerned they were both borderline retarded.

  When a day at the Pardells’ ended—a day of cleaning and shopping and finding things and putting them back in their right places and making lunch for Meg and herself and ushering in and out Meg’s piano students and finding more things and putting them back in their right places, Summer would go home at three-thirty in the afternoon leaving things in fairly good order. But after Alan had made dinner and breakfast, with Meg coaching from her wheelchair, and dashed off to work … in the wheezy old car when it was running and on the bus when it wouldn’t—Summer would return to find a shambles. A special kind of Pardellian shambles in which almost any article, including the large cat, could suddenly disappear as if into a maelstrom. And on Mondays, after two days of Pardells’ housekeeping, you needed a map to find your way to the kitchen.

  There were also some other aspects of life at the Pardells’ for which an outsider needed a map, or if not a map at least a list of the rules of the game. Because, without instructions, you were likely to think that the Pardells were both absolutely insane, instead of just mildly crazy.

  One of their games concerned their disorganized lifestyle. The game plan seemed to be that they each claimed to be the soul of efficiency and blamed all their problems on the other. Pardell blamed all his disasters in the kitchen on the haphazard system he’d inherited from Meg, and Meg claimed she was keeping track of the things he’d lost. She was always saying, “I’ve counted, you know. I know exactly how many household items Alan has lost during our entire marriage. It’s over three thousand now. Three thousand and eighty-three, to be exact.” The amount varied since she had a poor memory for numbers, but it was generally somewhere in the thousands. And when Pardell told stories about burned meals and fungus gardens in the refrigerator, Meg would mention the time when she’d left him baby-sitting and he’d misplaced the baby.

  There was another game about how Meg would have been a concert pianist if she hadn’t married Alan—and then Pardell would tell about how he gave up his career as a serious writer to marry Meg.

  There was also an Odious game. Odious was the orange tomcat. Both Alan and Meg pretended to hate him and bla
me his presence in the house on each other. They each had a large repertoire of disgusting cat stories, which they often told at the very moment they were allowing Odious to climb all over them or sneak things off their plates at the table.

  It took Summer a while to understand how the Pardells really felt about Odious, and about a lot of other things. Or at least to find out that they didn’t really feel the way they said they did. She found the fact that she couldn’t ever count on either of them meaning exactly what they said either frustrating or funny, depending on her frame of mind.

  It must have been somewhere around ten o’clock when Summer’s mind quit dredging up real Oliver and Pardell memories and shifted down into dreamed-up ones. She’d been very tired that night, and she must have been sleeping deeply because she was only vaguely aware of Sparrow’s climbing over her. Ordinarily, Sparrow on her way to the bathroom, half-awake and clumsy, managed to knee her in the stomach, get tangled in her hair and, in general, thoroughly wake her up. But this time she barely registered Sparrow’s departure. It was quite a while later that she suddenly came fully awake knowing that a great deal of time had passed and Sparrow hadn’t returned. And also knowing in some strange interior way that something was very wrong.

  It took only a minute to confirm her sudden conviction that she was all alone in the trailer. The bathroom was empty, and so was Oriole’s bedroom. She still hadn’t returned from the Fishers’, or wherever she went almost every night with Angelo. And where Sparrow had gone was easy to guess. She’d had that dream again and had gone looking for Marina. For several minutes Summer stood on the front steps calling—just as Sparrow still called almost every day for Cerbe—and just as uselessly. In the moon-bright forest stillness, the sound of her own voice frightened her—a long throbbing wail like the cry of a lost animal. Then she ran back to the bedroom, pulled on jeans, shoes and a jacket, grabbed her flashlight and ran down the path toward the road and the Fishers’.