The Summer of Letting Go

by Gae Polisner

  Just as I’m about to be sensible and quit, I see it there, a few more search results below:

  Brown Pelican Resurrection/downsouthlifemagazine.com . . . people have associated the pelican with themes of sacrifice and rebirth . . .

  I click on the link. It takes me to a photo of the soaring bird, and underneath:

  Pelican Spirit guide: the Pelican is a symbol of rebirth, resurrection, forgiveness.

  When a Pelican crosses your path:

  • Forgive yourself

  • Let go of things you can’t change, be they mental, material, or emotional.

  I ex out of the screens, my breath rapid and shallow, my mind racing, and stare at my desktop, a photograph of Lisette and me from last New Year’s Eve. We were at her house, a party her brother was having. We have glow sticks and noisemakers, and there are bits of confetti in our hair. And I can see it now clearly, how happy Lisette is, and how sad I am, even when I think that I’m celebrating.

  I stare at the girl on the screen. At me. I’m not Lisette, not blond and curvy and carefree. But I’m not bad; maybe I’m even pretty. But my eyes are so very sad.

  When a pelican crosses your path, forgive yourself.

  Oh, how I wish that I could. But I can’t, because I know. I know only one single thing:

  It was easy. I was supposed to be watching.

  Not shell-hunting.

  Not getting grapes.

  Not walking away.

  I was supposed to be watching Simon.

  That’s all I had to do.

  thirty-one

  Monday after lunch, Frankie and I head to the playground.

  We’re swinging on the swings when I see Bradley Stephenson walk in. Right there in front of me, strolling through the gate to the playground. My heart does loop-de-loops like one of those old-fashioned acrobat squeeze toys.

  I drag my feet in the dirt to slow down. If only I could get my heart to do the same. He walks over, hands jammed in his pockets, a sheepish smile on his face.

  “Hey,” he says. “Peter told me you come over here from the club sometimes.”

  Peter? What could he have said to Peter? Why would he say he was looking for me? Speaking of which, why is he here looking for me?

  “Who is this, Beans?” Frankie slows his swing next to mine. I’ve forgotten he’s even there. I turn and give him a look because he called me Beans. He never remembers it’s private.

  Bradley raises an eyebrow as if he’s waiting for me to answer.

  “Just a friend, Frankie,” I say. “What’s up?” It comes out casual, which is good. Way more nonchalant than I feel. I try to gauge his face. Is he mad? Maybe he came here to tell me to stay away, to stop throwing myself at him.

  Did I throw myself at him?

  “I just wanted to apologize. For the other day, you know. It was my fault.” He looks at Frankie. “Could we go and talk for a minute?”

  Go where?

  “No. I’ve got to watch Frankie,” I say.

  “It’ll just take a second. Please?”

  I look at the sandbox. “Frankie, can you play in the sandbox for a minute? If you dig the roads and make hills, we’ll get sticks after to make houses and bridges, like the other day?”

  “Yep, I remember,” he says.

  He heads to the sandbox and starts digging. I look at Bradley. “He’s not usually so agreeable,” I say.

  We walk a few feet to a large tree that shades the far edge of the sandbox, and Bradley leans against it. We can talk here, half-hidden, but I can still see Frankie at the other end okay. My hands sweat and my heart beats like crazy again. I’ve moved too close, and take a step backward, but he catches my wrist. “Wait, stay here, Frankie,” he says.

  I can feel the current from his hand to my wrist, warm and buzzing and good.

  Frog, I say in my head, do not eat the cookies! Absolutely, positively no cookies.

  “So, listen, Frankie . . .”

  It kills me when he says my name.

  “Yeah?”

  He laughs self-consciously. “I’m not sure, actually. It’s just that—well, first, I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. You were upset Saturday, and I really didn’t mean to do that. I’m not like that at all. But I like you, too. I want you to know that. I mean, I really, really like you. So, I wasn’t just using you, I swear.”

  Does he mean it? How can he? He’s with Lisette. How can he possibly like me instead?

  “But anyway,” he says, “I know it was wrong. And I promise it won’t happen again.”

  “Oh.” My mind screams ten different responses, none of which is the right thing to say. “Well, good, thanks,” I finally choose.

  “Okay, then. I should probably go.”

  “Okay.”

  He lets go of my wrist and starts to walk away, then stops and heads back again. “Oh, crap, I brought you something. I almost forgot.” He reaches in his pocket, pulls out a red crab claw, and holds it out to me. It’s real, not plastic. “It’s from Christmas Island,” he says.

  I take it and reach out to touch his arm, only to thank him, I think, and the next thing I know—I really don’t know how—his arms are around me and his lips are on top of mine.

  Cookies, and cookies, and cookies, and cookies, and cookies.

  When I finally manage to stop us, I’m breathless and light-headed.

  “Oh geez, I swear . . .” he says, but I’m as much to blame as he is.

  “What is wrong with us?” I whisper. “You’re Lisette’s boyfriend. She’s my best friend. This has seriously got to stop.”

  “I know,” he says. I squeeze the claw in my hand and pray that he never leaves. “Can I give you one more kiss good-bye?”

  I don’t say yes, but I don’t say no, either, so he leans in and we kiss some more, and the whole time my mind is screaming, No cookies! but I just keep eating all the crumbs.

  • • •

  When I get home from the club, Mom and Dad are still out, and the driveway across the street is empty. Maybe I’m still high from my encounter with Bradley, or maybe I’ve just gone crazy, but I run up to my room and grab the key, head back across the street, and slip into Mrs. Merrill’s backyard.

  I pass the row of purple hydrangea, climb the few steps up her deck, and stand at her back door.

  Now I’m a liar, a cheat, and a criminal.

  The key goes a quarter of the way in and stops. I pull it out and flip it upside down. It doesn’t go in at all this way. I flip it back and try again.

  The key definitely doesn’t fit.

  Fine. Great. So it isn’t Mrs. Merrill’s key. Now I can add stupid to the growing list of bad things that I am.

  I yank it from where it’s wedged in the lock and turn to leave, but I can’t, because Mrs. Merrill is standing in my way.

  “Francesca? Is there something I can help you with here?”

  I try to process what to do, to say. It startles me that she even knows my name. And then I do the only thing I can do. I burst into a great big, heaping mess of tears.

  Mrs. Merrill sits me down on the steps. “Now, now,” she says, patting my back gently, but she’s impatient, too, annoyed. I can tell that she’s waiting for me to explain. But I can’t. I can’t get any words out through the tears.

  Maybe it’s panic, or maybe it’s all the pressure of the past weeks that comes crashing in on me right here and now, but try as I might, I cannot stop myself from crying. It’s like everything’s gone crazy inside me, and this girl—the one who bribes her way into country clubs uninvited, who kisses her best friend’s boyfriend and likes it, and who sneaks into her neighbor’s backyard to break into her house—I swear she isn’t me. I don’t know who I am.

  Or maybe I do and I just can’t take the truth: that I’m no longer just the girl who let her baby brother die. I’m moving on, even if it means moving on to being someone bold and fearless and wrong, who sneaks into places and steals other people’s boyfriends. And if I’m perfectly honest with myself, I
’d rather be that. Let me lie and thieve and screw up until I rot away in hell, but just don’t let me be no one, nothing, except that other girl. Because that other girl, the sad-eyed one staring back from the photograph on my computer, I don’t want to be her anymore.

  My body shakes with sobs, and all the while Mrs. Merrill keeps her arm around me, and shushes me. “There, there, dear.” When I finally quiet down, she says, “It’s okay, Francesca. I’m sure it’s okay. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  I lift my head from where I’ve leaned it on her shoulder and look up at her. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. There are tear marks on her pretty white top.

  “No worries. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  And maybe it’s something in the way her voice is so soothing, or the fact that she hasn’t called the cops yet to have me arrested, or maybe it’s really that I think Dad must know her and trust her—and, worse, like her enough to be doing whatever it is that he’s doing (or not doing) with her—but I tell her. I tell her every little thing that has happened to me these past weeks, like some crazy floodgate has opened, letting my life rush out in a gushing, unstoppable waterfall.

  I tell this woman who is probably stealing my father away details I wouldn’t share with my parents or even Lisette. About how Simon drowned, and how Mom blames me and hates me, and always has, and always will. About meeting Frankie Sky, who looks so much like Simon, maybe is Simon, or at least maybe holds Simon’s soul. And about Mrs. Schyler, how she drinks and takes pills, but only because she’s sad and alone, because her husband died. About how hard it is to have a best friend who’s so very beautiful when I’m so plain, and how I kissed her boyfriend, and now I keep on kissing him, even though we both know it’s wrong. Because what kind of crazy miracle is it for a guy like Bradley Stephenson to like me in the first place, when he can have anyone he wants, including Lisette? And how I think I may even be in love with him because we have some weird, special, cosmic connection, and so it crushes me, because I know I need to stop and that, sand dollars and pelicans aside, I simply can’t be with him again.

  It all comes out in random, jumbled spurts, some of which start me up crying again. At points, Mrs. Merrill laughs a sweet, sympathetic laugh, or says something simple like “I get that” or “I remember feeling that way, too, I promise you, I do.” But mostly she just listens and strokes my hair until I’m done.

  When I think I’m all cried out, I sit there for I don’t know how long. And just when I think I’ve embarrassed myself enough—can’t embarrass myself any more—I blurt out about her and Dad, in words that turn accusatory and cruel.

  “And the reason I was even at the club, before Frankie and all that, was because I saw you—I saw you with my dad in your house. You have no right! You have no right to be messing with my father! And don’t tell me it wasn’t him, and don’t tell me it was for sugar, because you were wearing a robe . . . and we had sugar, a whole freaking box of it, at home. So don’t even try, because you’re a liar, and he’s lying, and I want you to stay away from him.”

  I burst into a fresh cascade of tears. I want to hit her. I want to hate her. I want to scratch the key across her pretty car. Even as I let her pat my arm.

  I turn to go, but she reaches out and grabs my wrist, not hard, but in a pleading way. Her eyes search mine, but she stays quiet for a painfully long time.

  Finally, she whispers, “I thought that was you I kept seeing at the club.”

  I glare at her, filled with this weird mix of fury and wanting to like her. Maybe because her face looks softer and older in this light, and more sad, like she is also fighting back tears.

  “Well, I know it was wrong to follow you, but I had to. I had to be sure. Because honestly, Mrs. Merrill, if Dad loves you and not Mom anymore, he’ll leave her, and then . . .” But I’m choked up again, can’t finish the words.

  She rubs my shoulder and looks out over her yard. “Now, now, Francesca, that’s not going to happen. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  I hear what she says and register it, for everything it is and that it isn’t. Because she doesn’t deny what I’ve said or contradict me. She doesn’t say she isn’t having an affair with Dad. She doesn’t say he hasn’t been to the club and that there’s nothing going on between them.

  She doesn’t tell me I’m ridiculous, and that everything I thought was all in my head.

  She doesn’t say what I hoped she’d say most of all: that she’s married, and Dad is married, so nothing is, or ever could be, going on. She simply says not to worry. And I hear the omissions loud and clear.

  thirty-two

  Despite all the drama, for a day or two things seem more normal. I work for Mrs. Schyler—full-time now, practically—and try to keep my mind off Bradley. I avoid Lisette, too, and she seems too busy to care. I hope Mrs. Merrill doesn’t tell my dad about what I said, but Dad doesn’t say anything to me, so I guess she’s keeping it to herself.

  As always, being with Frankie Sky helps. He keeps me busy and always knows how to make me laugh.

  Take now, for example, in the chair next to me at the swimming pool. He’s wearing a ridiculous pair of cobalt blue aviator sunglasses.

  “Nice glasses,” I say.

  “Mom broughted them back for me from Cape Cod.”

  “Well, they look good on you.”

  “The guard guy is watching you,” he says.

  I glance up, and he’s right. Peter stares at me from his lifeguard chair. He does that all the time now, since the day of the beach debacle. And, worse, since Bradley’s visit to the playground.

  I want to tell him to quit it and mind his own stupid business, but instead I nod at him, and he looks away. People are seriously weird.

  I look back at Frankie and shrug.

  “You is blue, Beans,” he says. “Blue, blue, blue.”

  “Not when I’m with you, Frankie.”

  He frowns and moves the sunglasses off and on his eyes. “No, Beans is blue. Really. I can see her.”

  “I know, Frankie. I was making a joke. Blue means the color, but it also means sad. And I’m never sad when I’m with you.”

  He pushes the glasses down again and makes a funny face at me. I giggle, and he smiles back.

  “Beans is blue, but not blue, right?”

  “Right,” I say, leaning across to push the glasses up the bridge of his nose.

  The sunglasses are a gift from Mrs. Schyler’s new boyfriend, the friend of Mr. Schyler’s from the army who lives in Cape Cod. I’m glad I encouraged her. Mrs. Schyler seems like a different person already. More relaxed and less tired than before. Plus, the busier she is, the more hours she needs me for Frankie. And Frankie’s the one thing that makes me completely happy.

  “Hey, you want to go to the playground, Frankie?”

  “No,” he says, “not now.”

  “You want to swim?”

  “Okay, sure.”

  I help Frankie swap out his blue sunglasses for green goggles. We wade into the shallow end together, holding hands, taking the steps slowly because the air is hot and the water feels especially cold. Frankie shivers a little and doesn’t go splashing off like a wild man like he usually does, but instead hangs by me on the steps.

  Finally he ducks under, and I watch him swim back and forth across the width of the pool. After a few laps, I glance toward the back of the pool area for Mrs. Merrill. Her chair is empty. No big surprise there, I suppose. She’ll probably never set foot here again.

  Frankie crosses back to me again, his little arms and legs moving in perfect froglike motions. I wade down the last step and take off after him when he turns, catching up so we swim side by side. It’s a wonder to me that I stayed out of the water for so many years. And a bigger wonder that I’ve made it back in. Underwater is the one place where everything feels light and hopeful and okay.

  When we get out for lunch, the sun is high and the sky is a perfect, cloudless blue. We dry off and put our clothes on
and head inside to the dining room.

  It’s not until afterward, as we step out the back door to the pool, that I notice a lock on Mrs. Merrill’s cabana door. Of course! Now I remember seeing her pull a key for it from her bag that very first day I was here. That weird small key goes to this door.

  “Beans?” Frankie pulls on me. “What’s wrong?”

  I look at his worried face, and suddenly it’s more important to make him happy than to fret about what it means that Dad has the key to some cabana. Besides, what does it matter if Dad runs off with Mrs. Merrill? Will anything actually change? It’s not like Mom seems happier because Dad comes home every day. How could I blame him if he left?

  “Nothing, Frankie,” I say, steering him toward our chairs. “Everything is okay.” And, miraculously, at least for the moment, it is.

  • • •

  The next afternoon, I sit on the stoop and pull out my cell phone. It was buzzing all day at the club. Probably another text from Lisette. She keeps sending them, just a few words, a smiley face, or a “hey.” I’ve barely paid attention. Let her think I’m still mad about Peter instead of feeling guilty because of Bradley.

  I scroll through:

  Beans, everything okay? U barely answer my calls. :(

  Hey. Seriously. Am starting 2 worry about u. Pls call. Is all ok with ur Dad?

  BEEAAANNNSSS!!!! >:(

  Hey, Bradley says he saw you! Pretty funny. :)

  Pretty funny? Is that her interpretation, or is that what he told her? Is that all he thought that it was? I tell myself he had to say something lame to cover, but still, my heart breaks a little anyway.

  K, r u mad at me? >:( I’m sorry about Peter. Will u ever forgive me? I want 2 c u before I go to Bible Camp. Leaving tomorrow. Did u forget? Days & days of nothing but the outdoorsy woods. Are u seriously not gonna say good-bye?

  Bible Camp! I’d almost forgotten. Every year, Lisette and her brothers go with their parents for two weeks at the end of each July for a retreat. The camp’s in Maine, and Pastor Sutter is one of the main counselors. Kids come from all over the country. Now that they’re older, Lisette and her brothers help run things. Lisette’s gone every summer as far back as I can remember. The camp is by a lake, rustic, with wooden bunks and outhouses, and not a piece of electronic equipment allowed. Unless you sneak it in, which Lisette always does.