The Summer of Letting Go

by Gae Polisner

  She turns around and holds a finger to her lips and whispers, “We can’t just sit around worrying, now can we? And it hasn’t happened since. So, knock wood, Francesca, the child seems perfectly fine, doesn’t he? And he takes the medication, so there’s that. But, just in case, I did something silly.” She giggles, almost embarrassedly. “Wait till you see. I went out and bought a statue of Saint Florian. I had to search high and low for one, but I found it and I put it next to his crib. It’s been in his room ever since.” She shrugs and turns the knob to Frankie’s closed bedroom door. “Maybe my grandmother knew something.”

  She opens the door, and Potato rushes in and jumps up onto Frankie’s bed. “Frankie,” she says, “you know you’re not supposed to close the door.”

  The room is big and messy, but meticulously decorated in deep blues, greens, yellows, and oranges. Frogs are everywhere, tree frogs and bullfrogs and tropical frogs, painted on walls, printed across borders, stuffed on his bed and on chairs. It takes my breath away.

  “Frankie?” Mrs. Schyler says. He’s nowhere to be seen.

  She rolls her eyes and nods at the dog, who jumps down from the bed and runs to the far corner, to a small fort made from blankets and sheets pulled over the top of some chairs. Potato stands nose to blanket, tail wagging.

  “Frankie, I said we need to go! I told you an hour ago to get ready.”

  The blankets rustle.

  “Frankie!”

  Potato dashes under now, taking the blanket with him, unveiling Frankie crunched in a ball, like Toto unveiling the Wizard. Frankie shoves him away. “Hey, dumb Tato! No fair!” He starts to pull the blanket back over himself, but stops when he sees me. He stands up. “What taked you so long, Beans?”

  “I’ve been here, Frankie,” I say.

  “Beans?” Mrs. Schyler raises her eyebrows.

  Now I roll my eyes. “A nickname my dad gave me.”

  Frankie walks over and sits on his bed, and Potato jumps back up with him. He pats the dog’s head. Mrs. Schyler walks to a laundry basket in the corner and retrieves some clothes.

  “Would you mind getting him dressed, Francesca?” She hands me the pile and glances at her watch. “I really need to get you kids off to the club.”

  I nod and she wanders out. I sit on the bed next to Frankie.

  And that’s when I see it, the little ivory statue of Saint Florian. He’s ugly, wears a long flowing robe and a pointed hat, and holds a bucket and a flag with a cross on it. The patron saint of harvests, fires, and drowning.

  My heart nearly stops, because I’ve seen him before. A bigger version, the first and only time that I went there.

  On my mother’s desk. At the Drowning Foundation.

  Next to a photograph of Simon.

  twenty-one

  On the way to the club, Mrs. Schyler seems distracted and frazzled. It’s as if she has two different sides; one second she’s chatty and reassuring, the next she’s a flighty, disastrous mess. Maybe it wears on her, dealing with Frankie all on her own.

  Speaking of which. He taps on the back of my seat with his foot. “You promised, remember? First let us go to the playground, right, Beans?”

  I twist around and give him a look. After all, it was his fault we never made it to the playground the other day. He’s the one who went diving into the pool. He’s the one who scared me half to death.

  His eyes meet mine. He smiles angelically, like Simon used to.

  Mrs. Schyler glances at him in the rearview mirror. “Now listen good, Frankie. You’d better be behaving yourself.”

  • • •

  I tell Frankie we need to put our stuff down first, so we bring our bags to the pool and Frankie gets towels and lays them on the same chairs as Monday to stake them out. The pool area is empty, not even Peter Pintero yet. It’s nearly ten a.m. I wonder if he’s late.

  I also wonder if Mrs. Merrill will be coming today, then remember my new resolve about having undistracted focus, so I make a mental note to cut it out with the worrying about sneaky Mrs. Merrill. I need to do what I’m being paid for, which is keep an eye on Frankie Sky. Which is not exactly easy, to say the least.

  As soon as we reach the playground, Frankie breaks free and makes a beeline for the merry-go-round. Not the ride-on-a-horse kind, but the platform-with-the-handles-you-pull-as-you-run-then-jump-on-once-it’s-spinning kind.

  Frankie climbs on, grabs the handles, and yells, “Turn it, Beans, please!” He leans way back, face tilted to the sky.

  I grab a handle and start to run. It takes me a few laps to get it moving decently, and several more to get it going at a good speed.

  “Faster!” he yells, head back, eyes closed, his tongue stuck out in the air.

  “What are you doing, Frankie?”

  “Am tasting the wind, Beans! It is cold and minty like this!”

  “Hah, Frankie!”

  I let go and stare at him as he whips past me in circles, his blond curls like Simon’s, blowing free in the wind. Simon. Is Frankie Sky part of him? Or is that totally crazy? I sit on the ground and close my eyes against the dizzying circles that spin in front of me and inside my head.

  When the merry-go-round stops, Frankie looks down at me, disappointed. “Hey, Beans. Can you please do it again?”

  “Okay, Frankie, sorry.”

  I stand and start to run again, this time in the opposite direction. Frankie says, “You, too, Beans, you come be with me when it’s fasty fast, because that will be lots of fun!”

  I shake thoughts of Simon away and work to gain speed, faster and faster until I’m running like mad, then jump on next to him and throw my own head back in the wind. I stick my tongue out like he did.

  “Is it good, Beans?” he asks.

  “Yes, Frankie. It’s really, really good.”

  twenty-two

  “Hey, Frankie, that you?”

  I startle and look to my right. I’ve been lost in thought, staring blankly across at Mrs. Merrill’s house.

  Bradley Stephenson approaches, stands at the curb—my curb—a hand cupped to his eyes, squinting at me. My heart pounds so hard, I’m sure he can hear it from there.

  “Me? Yeah.”

  He walks across the lawn—my lawn—smiling at me.

  “Thought so. Cool. I didn’t know you lived here.”

  “All my life.”

  He sits on the stoop. My stoop. Next to me. I try to tamp down the fire that’s spreading up my neck to my cheeks. “What are you doing here?”

  “Heading to Zette’s,” he says, but I know where he lives, and my street is out of his way from there.

  Stop it, Francesca! Maybe he wasn’t coming from there.

  “Oh, right, sure,” I say.

  “So, how’s your summer going? I heard you got a job.” He smells good, like soap and guy things, which isn’t helping to steady my nerves.

  “Yeah. Mother’s helper. For a boy who lives over on Sycamore Street.” I try to get words out, say something smart, but it’s hard to think through my pulse beating crazily in my brain. “And the money is good, so that’s cool. How about you? Keeping busy?”

  Keeping busy? Dumb. Idiotic. I’m a moron.

  “Yeah. I just got back from my cousins’. They have a really nice house in Pennsylvania. It’s on a lake. We did the whole barbecue/fireworks thing. And fished and stuff, you know.”

  “Oh, right, Zette told me.”

  He looks at me, and I quickly look away.

  “Oh, and get this,” he says. “So every morning we’d go out and swim in the lake. And there was this big nest near the lake. I mean, really big.” He stretches his arms out to show me, and his hand touches my arm. Electric currents zip through me. “Sorry,” he says, moving it away. “Anyway, my little cousin says that a brown pelican is living there, and I tell him he’s wrong, because I kind of know this stuff, and I know pelicans only live in Florida and tropical places. But then I’m swimming, and the next thing you know, this huge brown bird goes flying over. Clearl
y, it’s a pelican, with that big bucket beak and everything. Like this.” He scoops his hand under his chin and laughs. “It was crazy, Frankie, I’m telling you.”

  I don’t know what to say. I almost can’t breathe sitting next to him. I want to say something deep and smart and meaningful, and then my mind goes to Lisette’s text, and I realize I should ask him about reincarnation.

  I’m about to, but he shrugs and stands, suddenly looking embarrassed. “I don’t know why I told you that story,” he says. “You’re probably thinking I’m weird. Lisette would. But, anyway, I guess you had to be there.”

  I want to jump up and tell him he’s not weird, not weird at all, and that I totally get it, so not to go, because if anyone understands, I do. I understand completely. But my words are stuck, and, anyway, he’s already walking away.

  “Good seeing you,” he says, turning back once as he heads across the grass.

  My heart crushes. I had so much more I wanted to say.

  “Yeah,” I say instead.

  I watch him walk in the direction of Lisette’s house, wanting to kick myself for being so stupid, then kick myself again for caring. What does it matter what I say, or don’t say, to Bradley Stephenson? What does it matter if he thinks I’m a moron? He’s Lisette’s boyfriend, not mine.

  But why did he come over? Is it so impossible that he could like me?

  I watch until he’s gone from view, then look up at the blue sky above the tree line and imagine how pretty it would be to see a pelican soaring through the leaves. How awesome it would be to be a bird and just be able to fly away.

  My eyes light on the giant old tree on our front lawn. When I was little, Dad would swing me around in front of it, upside down by my feet. I would put my arms out and close my eyes and pretend I was a bold, beautiful hawk flying across the sky.

  Even though it was fun, it was terrifying, too, because what if he let go and my body went sailing through the air and I crashed, headfirst, into its enormous trunk? As Dad would laugh and spin, I’d feel the blood rush to my face, making my cheeks full and my sinuses press down hard. But I’d never tell him to stop, because I wanted to be brave for him.

  I think of Frankie earlier, head tipped back, tongue out, gleeful on the merry-go-round. Making me go up there and spin with him. Making me dive in and swim. Maybe Frankie will force me to be brave again.

  Then again, I wasn’t very brave with Bradley just now. I didn’t even ask him the one thing I wanted to know. Maybe if I wasn’t acting so dumb, hoping for mixed signals where there are none, I could have asked him about reincarnation.

  Why do I get like that around him? Why do I like him so much? I look across at Mrs. Merrill’s house. Ugh, is that what’s going on for Dad?

  I lie back on the cool stoop and close my eyes against all the unanswerable questions.

  Maybe I should just go across the street and talk to her.

  What if I pound on her door and tell her to just leave my dad alone? What if I confront her? But I won’t, because it’s not me. I don’t do those kinds of things. Plus, my father would never speak to me again, and I need him. He’s the only good thing that I have.

  Well, Dad and Frankie. Frankie, who’s almost like having my brother.

  I kiss my fingers and stretch my arm out to place the kiss on Simon’s frog. “Tell me, Simon, what do you think?” I ask out loud. “Do I need to try to stop whatever’s going on over there?”

  As the words leave my mouth, the earth shakes, vibrates under me, a sure sign, but then it’s only my cell phone buzzing from inside my pocket.

  I pull it out, disappointed, and hold it in the air above me. Texts from Lisette:

  So, any news on the you-know-who front?

  p.s. Text me, seriously. I want to know what’s going on.

  p.p.s. Plans this weekend, maybe?

  I look at the time. Bradley will be at Lisette’s any minute. I wonder if he’ll mention he was here.

  I sit up and pull one of Mom’s metallic gazing balls into my hands from where it’s buried in the thick tangle of summer stems and blossoms and hold it in my lap like a crystal ball. It distorts my face like a fun-house mirror. I wish it would give me some answers.

  Like what Frankie Sky has to do with my brother.

  What if Simon did transmigrate? What if Frankie holds a piece of Simon’s soul?

  I lower my face closer and closer, until my eyes glaze over and my features stretch out and disappear. It starts to give me a headache, so I close them altogether and rest my cheek against the ball.

  If some piece of Simon—no, Simon’s very soul—still lives in Frankie Sky, then could I forgive myself, even a little, for letting my baby brother drown?

  twenty-three

  “I seed you from the window, Beans.”

  Frankie stands in the back of Mrs. Schyler’s open hatchback, watching me as I walk up the driveway. He’s dressed in swim trunks and a T-shirt, a life vest already buckled around him. As I approach, he holds a foot in the air to show me. “I gotted new water shoes, Beans.”

  “You can walk on water, then, huh?”

  “No.” He frowns. “That is not how they work.”

  “I know. I was joking, dude.”

  “Yep. I knowed that,” he says.

  He jumps out of the car, grabs my hand, and pulls me toward the house. “We’re going to the beach today. Mommy, too. Even Tato is coming!”

  “Ah.” I stare up at the house. Butterflies flit in my stomach, though whether at the thought of the beach again or the thought of spending an entire day with Mrs. Schyler, I’m not sure.

  “Is to celebrate my swimming! But I still have to keep my vest on.”

  “Good idea,” I say absentmindedly.

  We pass through the empty living room and into the kitchen, but I don’t see Mrs. Schyler. The counter is littered with stuff—coffee cups, cereal boxes, the canvas beach bag, some of Frankie’s clothes, and an open cooler, the same one they had at the beach last week. Frankie stops in the center of the room and starts fussing with the buckles on his life vest. “Need it off, Beans.”

  “Here, let me help you, Frankie. Where’s your mom, anyway?”

  “She was here, but then she gotted tired and said to wake her when Beans got here.”

  “Oh, okay.” I undo the last buckle and he slips out and tosses it on the chair.

  “Don’t eat it, Tato.” He shakes a finger in the dog’s direction. “Beans, I need to go potty now.”

  I leave him in the bathroom and continue down the hall toward his room. At Mrs. Schyler’s bedroom, I stop. Her door is open, and she’s sprawled across the bed, facedown, in jean shorts and a halter top, a pair of flip-flops near the bed. Not exactly in beach mode.

  I take a few cautious steps in, around laundry baskets and other things strewn about the floor. “Mrs. Schyler, do you want to get up?” I whisper, but her breath is heavy; it’s clear there’s no way she’s waking up right now.

  I turn to her nightstand and read the labels on a few of the prescription bottles lined up there. Diazepam. Imitrex. Prozac. I pick up the last one, Prozac. It’s an antidepressant my mother takes, too.

  “Mrs. Schyler?” I try again, but she doesn’t move.

  I tiptoe over to the bookshelves in the corner and let my eyes scroll across them. There are all sorts of novels, steamy-looking romances with titles like Hearts Afire, Lana’s Secret, Lana’s Revenge, and The Dream Held in Your Eyes. There’s a whole shelf of self-help books. There must be twenty by Deepak Chopra. I take a step closer, my eyes skimming the titles: The Happiness Prescription; Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul. I pull that one down and flip it open.

  Breakthrough #1: Your Physical Body Is a Fiction.

  I close the book. Whatever that means, it terrifies me.

  I slip the book back in its place and look down the line of other titles. The Story of Saints; A Child’s Book of Saints; The Reincarnation of Soul: The Fallacy of Death. I glance at Mrs. Schyler, but she’s still b
reathing deeply, so I grab that last one and turn to the back cover, my eyes frantically reading the words.

  Throughout history, religious scholars have agreed upon the existence of the soul, but differed on what happens to the soul after death. Is the soul inextricably linked to the physical body ceasing upon death? Or rather, is it an autonomous entity surviving a body’s physical demise? In this volume, Dr. Nelson provides strong evidence that the soul is migratory and transferable in nature, and survives death, as we commonly understand that term . . .

  There’s a noise at the door, and I quickly slip the book back on the shelf, but it’s just Potato, tail wagging, Frankie’s life vest clutched in his mouth.

  Behind him, Frankie comes running. “Dumb dog,” he yells, “put that thing down! I tolded you no before!” He stops at the door when he sees me. “Hey, Beans.”

  “Hey, Frankie,” I say, finger to my lips. “I think your mom needs to sleep more.”

  • • •

  Mrs. Schyler wakes up around noon, and we get to the beach by one.

  The day is perfect and clear. We park in lot C, head over the dunes, and set up our blanket several yards from the shore. Mrs. Schyler pulls Frankie over and slathers him with sunblock, then buckles him into his life vest.

  I stare down the beach toward where I hung out with Lisette just last week. We haven’t talked much since then. Probably because I’ve been busy with Frankie and, as I know, Bradley is back from his cousins’. So she’s probably busy with him.

  If only I had talked more the other day. If only he’d stop by again.

  “Francesca, do you need lotion?” Mrs. Schyler taps me with the bottle.

  “Oh, right, thanks.”

  “Here. Let me help you.” She hands Frankie a pail and shovel, and Frankie moves down the beach a little to dig. “Francesca will be right there,” she tells him.

  I kneel, my back to her, and hold up my hair. She rubs the lotion gently over my back and shoulders the way my mother used to do.

  “Thank you for letting me sleep this morning,” she says.

  I think of her earlier, facedown on her bed like my mother used to be so often in the months after Simon died. Her room dark, her shades drawn, as day after day passed by.