Summer at Meadow Wood

by Amy Rebecca Tan

  Jordana ripped open her manila envelope and pulled out color pages of Broadway stars that had been cut out of a celebrity magazine. She also got magazine pages of other pop stars and actors.

  “Yes! My mom’s the best!” Jordana squealed and hugged her treasure to herself. “These are going up now.” She hopped up from her bed and started clawing through her cubby in search of her duct tape, which was supersize and neon pink so shouldn’t have been that hard to find.

  Chieko left Jordana’s cot, clearly disappointed with the loot, and asked me who my letters were from.

  “Don’t know yet,” I answered. I tried to sound calm and cool and not the way I actually felt, which was like a tornado was ripping through my insides. One of the letters addressed to me was in my mom’s perfect cursive writing. The other envelope had lettering that looked like chicken scratch, which I recognized immediately as my dad’s.

  I had to take deep breaths and swallow slowly a few times to make sure I wouldn’t hurl up the tuna salad sandwich I’d had for lunch. As if Carly being rushed to the hospital wasn’t traumatic enough for one day, now I had both of my parents in my hands, with no idea at all what was waiting for me inside their envelopes.

  I had never been afraid of a letter before in my life.

  I decided to read my dad’s first. There was no return address on the envelope, and it was written on hotel stationery, the hotel chain he always stayed in for work.

  Dear Vic,

  How are you? How’s camp? I hope you’re having fun with Carly and the crew and you’re having nice weather. I wanted to let you know that I’m not staying at home right now. Your mom and I are having some problems, so I moved out. You know my cell number—I’m sure Brenda will let you call if you need me. Give Freddy a hug for me. I know you’re taking good care of him when you see him on Sundays.

  Love,

  Dad

  P.S. I won’t make it to Visiting Day this year. I have a business meeting in California that same weekend. Your mom will be up to see you, though.

  I read it three times in a row, searching for any hint of emotion about what was happening. I couldn’t find a shred. The letter was so short and simple that I knew my seventh grade language arts teacher would write in the margin, in her favorite purple ink, Expand on your theme. Give supporting evidence. And she would definitely have a comment on his lack of transitions. He went right from the weather to moving out like that was a completely normal sequence of topics.

  I read the letter a fourth time. If my dad wasn’t coming to Meadow Wood for Visiting Day, that meant he wasn’t going to Forest Lake, either. Freddy would be devastated. What kind of parent tossed that piece of information in a P.S.? A P.S. was for comments like, Saw the funniest commercial and thought of you, or Been reading the dictionary so I can destroy you in Scrabble! My dad’s P.S. would make the Guinness World Records for the worst P.S. in recorded history.

  But at least he wrote.

  I knew how much my dad hated writing letters. I usually got only two letters from him each summer—one before Visiting Day and one after. I wondered if I’d get a third one this year in place of the visit on Visiting Day.

  Probably not.

  I couldn’t figure out if I should cry or punch something. Part of me wanted to feel bad for him, because of what my mom did, but the other part of me was furious that he’d let it happen, that he didn’t sound upset about leaving us, that, in a way, he had already been gone for a very long time.

  My eyes drifted over to my mom’s letter, which was staring at me with its fancy handwriting on its fancy ivory stationery. The stamp was a pink heart with the word FOREVER printed underneath.

  Which made me think of marriage vows.

  Which made me think of irony.

  Which made me think of Vera, since she was the youngest person I had ever heard in my life use the word irony in conversation.

  And thinking of Vera reminded me that I couldn’t fix a problem without first naming it. I still wasn’t ready to talk about it with anyone, but I could at least read what my mom had to say about it.

  I took a deep breath and let it go, then picked up the letter and slid my finger under the seal. I didn’t know if I’d find an apology or an explanation or an excuse inside, but after my dad’s letter, I knew not to expect much.

  Dear Vic,

  Let me start by saying how sorry I am about our phone conversation. I wasn’t expecting your call (excuse) and didn’t handle myself well. I understand you were very angry at the time and I’m hoping that you’re sorry, too.

  I’m also very sorry that you learned about Darrin the way you did (apology). I have to add that it would not have happened if you weren’t reading my email, though. Please know I was going to tell you about him after camp.

  Your father and I are currently separated. We need to figure out where we are going from here (explanation). He left and I don’t know where he is, so if you hear from him, I would appreciate you letting me know. There are some matters he is not legally allowed to walk away from. I am very sorry if this puts you in an uncomfortable position, but I need this help from you. Because Freddy is only eight, I don’t think he needs to know about this. I realize I can’t stop you from telling him, but I hope you will respect my wishes and let him enjoy his summer at Forest Lake.

  I spoke with Brenda and she has agreed to let you call me from the office if you have any news of your father.

  I am sorry for all of this, Vic. I really am.

  I love you.

  Love,

  Mom

  As mad as I was, I couldn’t stop my eyes from welling up as I read the words I love you.

  But then I kept reading.

  My mom had also included a P.S.

  P.S. Please understand that I won’t be able to come up for Visiting Day for you or Freddy. I don’t have the finances in place to support the travel and hotel stay.

  A surge of anger churned through my insides, like fire was pumping through my veins instead of blood. She wasn’t coming to see us on Visiting Day? And she decided to include that important information in a P.S., just like Dad? Maybe they were meant for each other, after all. I could already imagine the letters they would send each other through their lawyers. My mom’s would say, P.S. If you’re late with child support, I’ll have you arrested, and his would say, P.S. I’m keeping the house. You’ll have to vacate by Wednesday.

  Now I knew I wanted to punch something, but before I could, the screen door closed gently and Holly appeared in the doorway.

  We all stopped what we were doing.

  Chieko followed Holly to our room.

  No one said a word, not even Jordana.

  “Carly broke her collarbone. Straight through. I saw the X-ray.”

  Jaida A and Jaida C gasped at the same time.

  I took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds as I listened.

  “Her parents are on their way. They want to take her home to see a specialist. The doctor here says she’ll need four weeks to heal, maybe more.”

  My tuna salad started to swim around my gut again and I closed my eyes, pushing my hand against my stomach to stop all the motion. There was more talking, but I didn’t hear it. I was busy trying to erase the image of a straight white bone snapped in two. That had to hurt like crazy.

  I interrupted someone to ask, “How is she doing?”

  “Better now.” Holly’s face relaxed a bit as she said this. “They gave her medicine for the pain and put her in a brace. She’ll be okay.”

  “Let’s make her something,” Jaida C called out.

  “Let’s make a gigantic get well card,” Jaida A suggested.

  “Arts and crafts has poster board. I’ll snag some,” Chieko said, and left immediately.

  “And we can use some of these.” Jordana held up the magazine pages she had just received in her package. “We can collage some on.”

  The Jaidas plopped onto Jordana’s bed and started choosing which hot guys they wanted to cut ou
t and what to write in speech bubbles above their heads.

  “Thanks for taking care of her, Holly,” I said as she turned to leave.

  “Of course,” Holly answered me. “I hate that she’s leaving. Her riding was really coming along. I’m gonna miss her.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

  I collapsed back on my bed and threw my arms over my face. Five more weeks of camp without my best friend and no family on Visiting Day. I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed my hands into them until I saw specks of color bloom and explode in the darkness, like July 10 fireworks. I tuned out the chatter of my bunkmates and sank into the realization that my summer couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  Day 21—Friday Evening

  After dinner I begged Chieko to let me skip evening activity, which happened to be our first social with Forest Lake. The dance was from eight to ten in our rec hall and I wanted to spend my night watching Jordana flirt about as much as I wanted to revisit the dentist who fixed my broken tooth four years ago. The fact that Chieko agreed showed just how bad she felt for me about losing Carly.

  Once everyone in Yarrow was primped and gone—Jaida C had gone to Marigold to do hair after she did Jaida A’s and Jordana’s—I stretched out on my cot and tried to dive back into Chieko’s Eleanor Roosevelt book. It was hard to concentrate, though. The music in the rec hall was pumping so loud I could hear it through the walls of the cabin. It was mostly just bass and beat, like listening to someone’s heart through a stethoscope. It also wasn’t helping that Carly’s bed above me was stripped bare. There would be no more bed tents. Her parents had been only two hours away, vacationing in Vermont, when they got the call from Brenda. They drove straight here, packed up all of Carly’s stuff, and whisked her out of the hospital in a blink.

  I didn’t get to say goodbye.

  None of us did.

  After reading the same sentence four times in a row and absorbing none of it, I realized reading wasn’t going to work right now. I got up, tucked the paperback in my back pocket like Chieko did, grabbed a flashlight, and walked out of Yarrow. The mosquitoes swarmed around me as if they were having their own social, dancing around me in twos and threes. I slapped at them as I walked.

  I remembered the small bugs I saw Earl picking off his lettuce leaves and wondered if frogs ate those. I’d have to ask Vera. For now, I headed to the trash area behind the dining hall and started searching for insects for Jolly. I quickly found two grubs in the dirt but realized I had nothing to put them in, and there was no way I was going to palm those suckers all the way to Chicory. Grubs were called grubs for a reason—they were 110 percent grubby gross.

  I walked over to the recycling dumpster and found an empty plastic tub that would work as a bug carrier. I killed a mosquito on my arm and dropped it into the tub, not sure if it was a food option for Jolly or not. I returned to my twin grubs on the ground and wondered how I was going to get them into the tub without touching them.

  I picked up two short twigs and tried using them as chopsticks. I was pretty good at them, but I still couldn’t get them to work on the bugs. Next I tried one stick in each hand so I could use them like salad tongs, but the grub kept falling before I could get it into the container. After too many minutes of this, I got so frustrated that I flicked the stick under the grub to get some lift, but the stick snapped and the disgusting grub and tons of dirt flew into my face instead.

  I gasped as gobs of damp earth hit my eyes. I blinked furiously while I clawed dirt off my cheeks and out of my hair and spat grit out of my mouth. Then I slumped down on my butt, kicked the stupid tub away with a grunt, and bawled my eyes out.

  This wasn’t what summer vacation was supposed to be. My list of horribleness was just way too long:

  My mom was cheating on my dad.

  My dad had taken off and disappeared.

  My brother and I had been shipped away for two months.

  My mom apparently had no money.

  My parents were not coming on Visiting Day.

  My best camp friend had left for the summer.

  My evening activity was scavenging for bugs so I could feed my gifted camp sister’s secret pet.

  If there was a rock bottom, I was several grimy, grungy, rotten feet beneath it.

  So I cried.

  I cried until my face was soaked and my eyes were puffy and I thought I didn’t have a single tear left in me.

  And then I cried some more.

  When I finally ran out of tears, I wiped my face on my T-shirt and exhaled long and loud and hard.

  The grubs were gone and I wasn’t going to look for them.

  “Stupid frog food,” I muttered.

  Which made me think of Jolly.

  Which made me think of Vera.

  Which made me think again about what her mom said: to fix a problem you had to name it.

  “Okay, Miss Smarty-Pants,” I said to no one, “we’ll do it your way.”

  So I named it.

  “My summer totally sucks,” I said out loud to the empty space around me.

  I ran through my long list of horribleness again, but this time I said it all out loud instead of inside my head. I belted out my problems in a voice that was angry and sad and scared all at the same time, and when I was finished, I had to admit that I felt a lot better than I did before my bug-flinging breakdown.

  My problems were out there now, floating around in the clean New Hampshire air. Maybe now I would finally be able to get a good look at them and tackle them from the other side.

  I suddenly wanted to know more about Eleanor and this magical inspiration Chieko said she would give me. I was ready to know more. The book was still in my back pocket, so I wiped my face again on my T-shirt, retrieved the empty tub to drop back in the dumpster, and headed across camp to my rock.

  Day 21—Friday Evening

  The sky was lit up with stars, but they weren’t strong enough to break through the ceiling of leaves that hung over my rock. I switched on my flashlight and shined it over the tree trunks that circled me. The grooves in the bark stood out more in the dark, the browns richer and the shadows deeper. Limbs looked like arms reaching out to their neighbors, and leaves looked like hands holding on to a friend. I realized that the trees weren’t all that different from the plants Earl kept in neat rows behind his cabin. Trees took their time also, each small moment growing on the next.

  I had about an hour before I’d have to return to Yarrow and listen to Jordana complain about her brother blocking all her fun at the social. I opened my book and started to read. It took only a few pages of reading to learn that Eleanor was an orphan by the time she was ten years old. First her mom died—the mom that Chieko said wasn’t so great to Eleanor—and then a couple of years later her dad died, too.

  Both parents gone. Just like that.

  I couldn’t relate. I had one great brother and two less-than-perfect parents who I knew loved me. Compared to what Eleanor had to deal with, my family situation didn’t seem so bad at all. Maybe Chieko felt the same way, because she had underlined a lot on this page of the book.

  I finished that chapter and read the next one, too, which described the school in England Eleanor was sent to and the amazing student she became there. Then I put the book on my lap and rubbed my eyes. The sky was almost completely black now.

  I flashed my light around me again and saw details I’d never noticed before. I saw how a broken limb from a tree had patched itself and how a new limb was growing somewhere else. I saw how a plant curved and reached itself around a stump to find its way to better light. I saw life surviving and thriving all around me.

  Maybe it was just because I had let myself bawl my brains out, or because I had finally named my problems out loud, or because I was light-headed from excessive blood loss to mosquitoes, but I definitely felt a certain peace at that moment. I felt like all that was wrong in my world could be made right somehow, if I just gave it a chance.

  My book slipped off my lap then an
d landed on something that crinkled like plastic. I didn’t need my flashlight to know it was my Kit Kat wrapper. It had been picked clean and torn in two but was still bright red and easy to identify. I hopped off my rock, collected the trash, and picked up my Eleanor book, which had landed open, facedown. I smoothed out the pages and brushed off the dirt, but stopped as my eyes caught something written by hand on the last page: “My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.”

  It was Chieko’s handwriting. Under the quote she had written Eleanor with a question mark, and then the name of some website where she must have found the quote. It definitely sounded like something Eleanor would say.

  And if anyone knew how to pull themselves out of the depths, it would be Eleanor.

  I read the sentence again.

  I read the sentence out loud.

  I let the words soak into my brain.

  I repeated them over and over as I clutched the book to my chest.

  And I knew what I was going to do.

  Day 22—Saturday

  “I figured you could use some help,” I said.

  Earl, who was bent over a row of lettuce, cutting and bagging in the dark, jumped and dropped what he was holding.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized immediately.

  “Dang it, girl!” he said, turning toward me, his hand across his chest like he was about to say the Pledge of Allegiance. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.”

  He lifted his second hand to join his first, like he was manually holding his heart inside his body. “What are you even doin’ here? It’s five o’clock in the morning. There are roosters still sleeping.” His voice was agitated, higher than normal. He stood up and shook out his legs, his knees cracking inside his jeans.