The Summer of the Swans

by Betsy Byars

“No, I don’t say that. Honestly, Sara, you—”

  “And then do you say, ‘And while I’m telling you about my retarded brother, I’ll also tell you about my real hung-up sister’?” She moved the leaf to her lips and blew against it angrily.

  “No, I don’t say that because you’re not all that fascinating, if you want to know the truth. Anyway, Arnold Hampton’s father happens to be a pediatrician and Arnold is sincerely interested in working with boys like Charlie. He is even helping start a camp which Charlie may get to go to next summer, and all because I talked to him in my psychology class.” She sighed. “You’re impossible, you know that? I can’t imagine why I even try to tell you anything.”

  “Well, Charlie’s our problem.”

  “He’s everybody’s. There is no—Oh, here comes Frank.” She broke off and got to her feet. “Tell Aunt Willie I’ll be home later.”

  She started quickly down the walk, waving to the boy who was making his way slowly up the street on a green motor scooter.

  Chapter Four

  “Wait, wait, you wait.” Aunt Willie came onto the porch drying her hands on a dish towel. She stood at the top of the steps until Frank, a thin boy with red hair, brought the motor scooter to a stop. As he kicked down the stand she called out, “Frank, listen, save yourself some steps. Wanda’s not going anywhere on that motorcycle.”

  “Aw, Aunt Willie,” Frank said. He opened the gate and came slowly up the walk. “All we’re going to do is go down to the lake. We don’t even have to get on the highway for that.”

  “No motorcycles,” she said. “You go break your neck if you want to. That’s not my business. Wanda, left in my care, is not going to break her neck on any motorcycle.”

  “Nobody’s going to break his neck. We’re just going to have a very uneventful ride down the road to the lake. Then we’re going to turn around and have a very uneventful ride back.”

  “No.”

  “I tell you what,” Frank said. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

  “What deal?”

  “Have you ever been on a motor scooter?”

  “Me? I never even rode on a bicycle.”

  “Try it. Come on. I’ll ride you down to the Tennents’ house and back. Then if you think it’s not safe, you say to me, ‘Frank, it’s not safe,’ and I’ll take my motor scooter and ride off into the sunset.”

  She hesitated. There was something about a ride that appealed to her.

  Sara said against the rhododendron leaf, “I don’t think you ought to. You’re too old to be riding up and down the street on a motor scooter.”

  She knew instantly she had said the wrong thing, for at once Aunt Willie turned to her angrily. “Too old!” She faced Sara with indignation. “I am barely forty years old. May I grow a beard if I’m not.” She stepped closer, her voice rising. “Who says I’m so old?” She held the dish towel in front of her, like a matador taunting a bull. The dish towel flicked the air once.

  “Nobody said anything,” Sara said wearily. She threw the leaf down and brushed it off the steps with her foot.

  “Then where did all this talk about my age come from, I’d like to know?”

  “Anyway,” Frank interrupted, “you’re not too old to ride a motor scooter.”

  “I’ll do it.” She threw the dish towel across the chair and went down the steps. “I may break my neck but I’ll do it.”

  “Hold on tight, Aunt Willie,” Wanda called.

  “Hold on! Listen, my hands never held on to anything the way I’m going to hold on to this motorcycle.” She laughed, then said to Frank, “I never rode on one of these before, believe me.”

  “It’s just like a motorized baby carriage, Aunt Willie.”

  “Huh!”

  “This ought to be good,” Wanda said. She called, “Hey, Charlie,” waited until he looked out from the tent, and then said, “Watch Aunt Willie. She’s going to ride the motor scooter.”

  Charlie watched Aunt Willie settle herself sidesaddle on the back of the scooter.

  “Ready?” Frank asked.

  “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, believe me, go on, go on.”

  Her words rose into a piercing scream as Frank moved the scooter forward, turned, and then started down the hill. Her scream, shrill as a bird’s cry, hung in the still air. “Frank, Frank, Frank, Frankeeeeee!”

  At the first cry Charlie staggered to his feet, staring in alarm at Aunt Willie disappearing down the hill. He pulled on one side of the tent as he got to his feet, causing the other to snap loose at the ground and hang limp from the line. He stumbled, then regained his balance.

  Wanda saw him and said, “It’s all right, Charlie, she’s having a good time. She likes it. It’s all right.” She crossed the yard, took him by the hand, and led him to the steps. “What have you got all over yourself?”

  “It’s a gross red sucker,” Sara said. “It’s all over me too.”

  “Come on over to the spigot and let me wash your hands. See, Aunt Willie’s coming back now.”

  In front of the Tennents’ house Frank was swinging the scooter around, pivoting on one foot, and Aunt Willie stopped screaming long enough to call to the Tennents, “Bernie, Midge, look who’s on a motorcycle!” Then she began screaming again as Frank started the uphill climb. As they came to a stop Aunt Willie’s cries changed to laughter. “Huh, old woman, am I! Old woman!” Still laughing, she stepped off the scooter.

  “You’re all right, Aunt Willie,” Frank said. Sensing a moment of advantage, Wanda moved down the walk. She was shaking the water from her hands. “So can I go, Aunt Willie?”

  “Oh, go on, go on,” she said, half laughing, half scolding. “It’s your own neck. Go on, break your own neck if you want to.”

  “It’s not her neck you have to worry about, it’s my arms,” Frank said. “Honest, Aunt Willie, there’s not a drop of blood circulating in them.”

  “Oh, go on, go on with you.”

  “Come on, Little One,” Frank said to Wanda.

  Aunt Willie came and stood by Sara, and they watched Wanda climb on the back of the motor scooter. As Wanda and Frank drove off, Aunt Willie laughed again and said, “Next thing, you’ll be going off with some boy on a motorcycle.”

  Sara had been smiling, but at once she stopped and looked down at her hands. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

  “Huh! It will happen, you’ll see. You’ll be just like Wanda. You’ll be—”

  “Don’t you see that I’m nothing like Wanda at all?” She sat down abruptly and put her lips against her knees. “We are so different. Wanda is a hundred times prettier than I am.”

  “You are just alike, you two. Sometimes in the kitchen I hear you and I think I’m hearing Wanda. That’s how alike you are. May my ears fall off if I can hear the difference.”

  “Maybe our voices are alike, but that’s all. I can make my voice sound like a hundred different people. Listen to this and guess who it is. ‘N-B-C! Beautiful downtown Burbank.’ ”

  “I’m not in the mood for a guessing game. I’m in the mood to get back to our original conversation. It’s not how you look that’s important, let me tell you. I had a sister so beautiful you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Who?”

  “Frances, that’s who.”

  “She wasn’t all that beautiful. I’ve seen her and—”

  “When she was young she was. So beautiful you wouldn’t believe it, but such a devil, and—”

  “It is too important how you look. Parents are always saying it’s not how you look that counts. I’ve heard that all my life. It doesn’t matter how you look. It doesn’t matter how you look. Huh! If you want to find out how much it matters, just let your hair get too long or put on too much eye makeup and listen to the screams.” She got up abruptly and said, “I think I’ll walk over and see the swans myself. ”

  “Well, I have not finished with this conversation yet, young lady.”

  Sara turned and looked at Aunt Willie, waited wi
th her hands jammed into her back pockets.

  “Oh, never mind,” Aunt Willie said, picking up her dish towel and shaking it. “I might as well hold a conversation with this towel as with you when you get that look on your face. Go on and see the swans.” She broke off. “Hey, Charlie, you want to go with Sara to see the swans?”

  “He’ll get too tired,” Sara said.

  “So walk slow.”

  “I never get to do anything by myself I have to take him everywhere. I have him all day and Wanda all night. In all this whole house I have one drawer to myself. One drawer.”

  “Get up, Charlie. Sara’s going to take you to see the swans.”

  Sara looked down into his eyes and said, “Oh, come on,” and drew him to his feet.

  “Wait, there’s some bread from supper.” Aunt Willie ran into the house and came back with four rolls. “Take them. Here. Let Charlie feed the swans.”

  “Well, come on, Charlie, or it’s going to be dark before we get there.”

  “Don’t you rush him along, hear me, Sara?”

  “I won’t.”

  Holding Sara’s hand, Charlie went slowly down the walk. He hesitated at the gate and then moved with her onto the sidewalk. As they walked down the hill, his feet made a continuous scratching sound on the concrete.

  Chapter Five

  When they were out of earshot Sara said, “Aunt Willie thinks she knows everything. I get so sick of hearing how I am exactly like Wanda when Wanda is beautiful. I think she’s just beautiful. If I could look like anyone in the world, I would want to look like her.” She kicked at some high grass by the sidewalk. “And it does too matter how you look, I can tell you that.” She walked ahead angrily for a few steps, then waited for Charlie and took his hand again.

  “I think how you look is the most important thing in the world. If you look cute, you are cute; if you look smart, you are smart, and if you don’t look like anything, then you aren’t anything.

  “I wrote a theme on that one time in school, about looks being the most important thing in the world, and I got a D—a D! Which is a terrible grade.

  “After class the teacher called me up and told me the same old business about looks not being important, and how some of the ugliest people in the world were the smartest and kindest and cleverest.”

  They walked past the Tennents’ house just as someone inside turned on the television, and they heard Eddie Albert singing, “Greeeeeeen acres is—” before it was turned down. Charlie paused a moment, recognizing the beginning of one of his favorite programs, looked up at Sara, and waited.

  “Come on,” Sara said. “And then there was this girl in my English class named Thelma Louise and she wrote a paper entitled ‘Making People Happy’ and she got an A. An A! Which is as good as you can get. It was sickening. Thelma Louise is a beautiful girl with blond hair and naturally curly eyelashes, so what does she know? Anyway, one time Hazel went over to Thelma Louise’s, and she said the rug was worn thin in front of the mirror in Thelma Louise’s room because Thelma Louise stood there all the time watching herself.”

  She sighed and continued to walk. Most of the houses were set close together as if huddled for safety, and on either side of the houses the West Virginia hills rose, black now in the early evening shadows. The hills were as they had been for hundreds of years, rugged forest land, except that strip mining had begun on the hills to the north, and the trees and earth had been hacked away, leaving unnatural cliffs of pale washed earth.

  Sara paused. They were now in front of Mary Weicek’s house and she said, “Stop a minute. I’ve got to speak to Mary.” She could hear Mary’s record player, and she longed to be up in Mary’s room, leaning back against the pink dotted bedspread listening to Mary’s endless collection of records. “Mary!” she called. “You want to walk to the pond with me and Charlie and see the swans?”

  Mary came to the window. “Wait, I’m coming out.”

  Sara waited on the sidewalk until Mary came out into the yard. “I can’t go because my cousin’s here and she’s going to cut my hair,” Mary said, “but did you get your dress yesterday?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? I thought your aunt said you could.”

  “She did, but when we got in the store and she saw how much it cost she said it was foolish to pay so much for a dress when she could make me one just like it.”

  “Disappointment.”

  “Yes, because unfortunately she can’t make one just like it, she can only make one kind of like it. You remember how the stripes came together diagonally in the front of that dress? Well, she already has mine cut out and I can see that not one stripe meets.”

  “Oh, Sara.”

  “I could see when she was cutting it that the stripes weren’t going to meet and I kept saying, ‘It’s not right, Aunt Willie, the stripes aren’t going to meet,’ and all the while I’m screaming, the scissors are flashing and she is muttering, ‘The stripes will meet, the stripes will meet,’ and then she holds it up in great triumph and not one stripe meets.”

  “That’s awful, because I remember thinking when you showed me the dress that it was the way the stripes met that looked so good.”

  “I am aware of that. It now makes me look like one half of my body is about two inches lower than the other half.”

  “Listen, come on in and watch my cousin cut my hair, can you?”

  “I better not. I promised Aunt Willie I’d take Charlie to see the swans.”

  “Well, just come in and see how she’s going to cut it. She has a whole book of hair styles.”

  “Oh, all right, for a minute. Charlie, you sit down right there.” She pointed to the steps. “Right there now and don’t move, hear me? Don’t move off that step. Don’t even stand up.” Then she went in the house with Mary, saying, “I really can’t stay but a minute because I’ve got to take Charlie down to see the swans and then I’ve got to get home in time to dye my tennis shoes—”

  “Which ones?”

  “These, these awful orange things. They make me look like Donald Duck or something.”

  Chapter Six

  Charlie sat in the sudden stillness, hunched over his knees, on the bottom step. The whole world seemed to have been turned off when Sara went into the Weiceks’ house, and he did not move for a long time. The only sound was the ticking of his watch.

  The watch was a great pleasure to him. He had no knowledge of hours or minutes, but he liked to listen to it and to watch the small red hand moving around the dial, counting off the seconds, and it was he who remembered every morning after breakfast to have Aunt Willie wind it for him. Now he rested his arm across his legs and looked at the watch.

  He had a lonely feeling. He got this whenever he was by himself in a strange place, and he turned quickly when he heard the screen door open to see if it was Sara. When he saw Mrs. Weicek and another woman he turned back and looked at his watch. As he bent over, a pale half circle of flesh showed between the back of his shirt and his pants.

  “Who’s the little boy, Allie?”

  Mrs. Weicek said, “That’s Sara’s brother, Charlie. You remember me telling you about him. He’s the one that can’t talk. Hasn’t spoken a word since he was three years old.”

  “Doesn’t talk at all?”

  “If he does, no one’s ever heard him, not since his illness. He can understand what you say to him, and he goes to school, and they say he can write the alphabet, but he can’t talk.”

  Charlie did not hear them. He put his ear against his watch and listened to the sound. There was something about the rhythmic ticking that never failed to soothe him. The watch was a magic charm whose tiny noise and movements could block out the whole clamoring world.

  Mrs. Weicek said, “Ask him what time it is, Ernestine. He is so proud of that watch. Everyone always asks him what time it is.” Then without waiting, she herself said, “What time is it, Charlie? What time is it?”

  He turned and obediently held out the arm with the watch on
it.

  “My goodness, it’s after eight o’clock,” Mrs. Weicek said. “Thank you, Charlie. Charlie keeps everyone informed of the time. We just couldn’t get along without him.”

  The two women sat in the rocking chairs on the porch, moving slowly back and forth. The noise of the chairs and the creaking floor boards made Charlie forget the watch for a moment. He got slowly to his feet and stood looking up the street.

  “Sit down, Charlie, and wait for Sara,” Mrs. Weicek said.

  Without looking at her, he began to walk toward the street.

  “Charlie, Sara wants you to wait for her.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t hear you, Allie.”

  “He hears me all right. Charlie, wait for Sara. Wait now.” Then she called, “Sara, your brother’s leaving.”

  Sara looked out the upstairs window and said, “All right, Charlie, I’m coming. Will you wait for a minute? Mary, I’ve got to go.”

  She ran out of the house and caught Charlie by the arm. “What are you going home for? Don’t you want to see the swans?”

  He stood without looking at her.

  “Honestly, I leave you alone for one second and off you go. Now come on.” She tugged his arm impatiently.

  As they started down the hill together she waved to Mary, who was at the window, and said to Charlie, “I hope the swans are worth all this trouble I’m going to.”

  “We’ll probably get there and they’ll be gone,” she added. They walked in silence. Then Sara said, “Here’s where we cut across the field.” She waited while he stepped carefully over the narrow ditch, and then the two of them walked across the field side by side, Sara kicking her feet restlessly in the deep grass.

  Chapter Seven

  There was something painfully beautiful about the swans. The whiteness, the elegance of them on this dark lake, the incredible ease of their movements made Sara catch her breath as she and Charlie rounded the dump of pines.

  “There they are, Charlie.”

  She could tell the exact moment he saw them because his hand tightened; he really held her hand for the first time since they had left Mary’s. Then he stopped.