Birds of Summer Read online

  Oriole did come home fairly soon that day, but after that she started being away more and more often. At first she offered a variety of flimsy excuses, but after a while she said she had a job.

  “I’m working for the Fishers,” she said. “I’m helping them plant the new greenhouses that Angelo and Bart built.”

  That left several questions without answers. Like—how long it took eight people—four Fishers, three weirdos and Oriole, to plant three greenhouses. And there was also another question that wasn’t asked or answered, and that was just what it was that the Fishers were planting. Summer was afraid to ask that one. Afraid, first of all that Oriole would lie to her, and even more afraid of what the answer might be if, by some chance, she decided to tell the truth. So she kept her suspicions strictly to herself. She didn’t even write to Grant about it.

  She hadn’t, in fact, written to Grant for almost three weeks. Not since the day she’d had the disaster with Pardell. It was possible that she never would anymore. Not that she’d made any definite decision about it, because she hadn’t. However writing to a nonexistent person was a habit one might be expected to outgrow at some point, and it was beginning to look as if that time had come.

  Then on May thirty-first Oriole stayed out all night; and when she strolled in at eight-thirty in the morning, Summer yelled at her and there was another violent argument. That night Summer wrote to Grant again.

  She said she’d worked late and decided to spend the night at the Fishers’, and all I said was, “With who?” and she got mad and said I was worse than her parents used to be and that she didn’t see how she could have produced such an up-tight hung-up kid, and if she’d known how I was going to turn out she would have abandoned me on the doorstep of some stuffy Orange County reactionaries. So I said, no, she wouldn’t, because she’d never had enough money for a ticket to Orange County in her whole life, and she said that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Money That’s what she always says when we fight. That I’m really angry at her because she doesn’t have “a legally wedded sugar daddy with a high-salaried nine-to-five job and a ticky-tacky split-level house and all the rest of the establishment crap.” There’s no use arguing with her when she gets on that kick so I just came in here and locked the door.

  But that’s not it. It’s not money that I want. At least, it’s not just money. I want a lot more than that. What I want is—something else, but whatever it is, it’s not here. And as soon as I get a chance I’m going to get the hell out of Alvarro Bay and go looking for it.

  The next day Oriole was cringingly conciliatory. Summer despised her for it, and herself for causing it. The whole scene was giving her a stomachache, so she said she was sorry and Oriole looked delighted and said she was sorry too and why didn’t the three of them go into town and see if they could find somebody who would trade some food stamps for enough money to buy three tickets to Superman II. Sparrow jumped up and down and yelled, “Goody! Goody!” but Summer said, “Thanks just the same but I’d prefer to skip it, unless you can get Superman to keep us from having to live on stale bread for two days like we did last month.”

  So Oriole said, “Okay, forget it.” But afterwards Summer was sorry she hadn’t taken her up on the offer because Oriole went out by herself and didn’t come back until almost morning, and after that she quit trying to cover up and make excuses. Just like always, when she had a new man, she forgot about everybody and everything else. She was away from home most of the time; and when she was there, she was always listening for the sound of the pickup’s horn blaring away—two shorts and two longs—from way out on the road.

  It had happened before with Danny and Mike and Jim and Rif and etc., but this time there was one difference. The others had all spent a lot of time at the trailer, even the ones who never actually moved in; but this new one, this Angelo creep, never came any closer than the end of the path. At least not since Cerbe chased him up the madrone. That was one thing, Summer supposed, she had to be thankful for, and it was obviously Cerbe who got the credit.

  At school things had been all right. Facing Pardell again after the fiasco about the letter hadn’t been easy; but he’d never mentioned it in any way, and after a while she stopped watching to see if he was going to treat her any differently. If anything had changed at all, it was just that she thought she noticed more times when he did his “private message” bit with her, catching her eye when something was significant or funny—like the time he asked if anyone had read “The Highway Man,” and Brownwood said he’d read the first few chapters.

  Summer turned sixteen on the last day of the month, and that was a change for the better. It seemed like growing up had been taking forever, and she’d been anxious to get on with it for as long as she could remember. There was another small change for the better, too, during that last month of school. Sparrow finally quit begging to go to the Fishers’. At first when Oriole started going there every day, Sparrow wanted to go along, but after a while she had given up. The fierce dog and Jerry’s bad mood and even Angelo and Bart hadn’t discouraged her, but what did make a difference was the fact that Oriole, who was now in a position to know, said that Marina had not come home—and Sparrow believed her.

  Summer was glad she no longer had to watch Sparrow to keep her from sneaking off up the hill; but at the same time it worried her a little that, at the age of seven, Sparrow still believed everything Oriole said. At seven Summer had already known better for quite a while.

  6

  ROSE EARLY AND OFF down the road to catch the early coach. The weather, which has been unseasonably cold, has turned fine, and I greatly enjoyed the brief communion with nature that the walk provided. Having arrived at my place of employment, I set about my customary duties and the day progressed normally until, during my noontime repast, when my employer …”

  “OKAY! OKAY CERBE! COME find me.”

  Cerbe, who had been sitting obediently at the foot of the trailer steps with his head cocked and his ears twitching, leaped to his feet and dashed around the corner. A moment later there was a sharp bark, a delighted squeal and Sparrow appeared, skipping happily with Cerbe gamboling beside her. “He found me. He found me, Summer. I was hiding behind the watertank, and he just sniffed right across the yard and found me, as quick as anything.” She threw her arms around the dog’s neck and hugged him so enthusiastically she tipped them both over. On his back, with his big feet waving in the air, Cerbe growled with mock ferocity, grabbed Sparrow’s skinny little arm in his huge jaws and held it very gently while she squealed with excitement.

  “Look, Summer. Cerbe’s biting me. Don’t you want to see how Cerbe’s biting me?”

  Summer sighed. “Do I have a choice?” she said. Closing her binder and putting her pen behind her ear, she leaned back against the trailer’s screen door and turned her full attention to the dusty battle at her feet. “You’re getting filthy,” she said mildly.

  “I know.” Sparrow got to her feet and made an ineffectual attempt to dust off her jeans. “Hide-and-go seek is a filthy game. What are you writing, Summer?”

  “Nothing. I’m not writing anything. I gave up. It’s hard to write at a wrestling match.” Actually, she hadn’t stopped just because of the noisy game. If she were really into writing, it took more than Sparrow’s chatter to spoil her concentration. Part of it was probably the weather. “What is so rare as a day in June,” Pardell had recited last week on the first day of June; and today was another rare one—soft and green and golden, and so alive with growth you could almost hear it. Lifting her face to the sun, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift. The writing could wait. She wasn’t going to turn it in anyway.

  Pardell had given the assignment, an extra credit one for people who needed to improve their grade, in connection with a project on journal writers. He’d started by reading excerpts from the writings of people like Franklin and Pepys and Boswell, and then he’d had everyone write a paragraph in the style of one of the diarists. He read some o
f those paragraphs, and everyone had guessed which famous journal-keeper the writer had been trying to imitate. The extra credit assignment was to keep a journal about the events of the following week. Since she didn’t need the grade, Summer hadn’t intended to do it—until the week turned out to be one of the most important of her entire life. It had all begun at noon on Saturday.

  She had sensed a difference as soon as she walked into the Ranch kitchen. Nan was at the table and, as usual, she insisted that Summer join her, but she seemed quieter than usual as if something was on her mind. It wasn’t until lunchtime that it all came out. They were eating their chicken salad and bran muffins at the wrought iron table in the patio when Nan suddenly said, “Well, we’ve had an exciting time around here since last weekend. Richard came home last Tuesday with some incredible news and by Thursday we’d made the decision. We’re going back to Connecticut.”

  “Going back to Connecticut?” Summer said. “But what about …” What she was really thinking was, “What about my bank account?” but what she said was, “What about the horses?”

  “If we can find a place with a stable, I’ll probably take Scimitar and Greybird with me, but I’m afraid we’ll have to sell the others. You see, there’s been a decision to enlarge the New York plant, and Richard will have to be there full time for at least a year. Now that I’ve made the decision, I feel very good about it. California has been good for us but our roots are back East—family and many old friends. But we’ll miss this place tremendously—and the horses and all our special California friends.” She reached out and put her big smooth hand with its heavy rings over Summer’s. “We’re going to miss you, my dear. As a matter of fact, Richard and I were discussing the possibility of taking you with us.”

  “With you?” This time there was absolutely no pretense in Summer’s reaction—her astonishment was real and complete. “But …but …” she stammered and then, stupidly, “Clear to Connecticut? But where would I live?”

  “Why, with us, of course. Summer, dear …” Nan leaned forward, and her smile said she was going to talk about something personal.

  Summer felt herself tensing. She knew that kind of smile—smugly sympathetic. People had smiled at her like that before, and it usually meant they were getting ready to say something about Oriole. Not kids so much. Some kids thought there would be advantages to living with a mother like Oriole. But adults usually mentioned Oriole in the same tone of voice they used when there’d been a death in the family or someone had come down with an incurable disease.

  “We’ve made some discreet inquiries, dear,” Nan said. “Of course we’d heard rumors before, but we wanted to know a bit more about your background.”

  Summer managed to control her face, but as usual her body betrayed her—stiffening and pulling away. Nan smiled understandingly. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It doesn’t change our opinion of you in the slightest. In fact, quite the contrary. We think you deserve even more credit than we’d realized. Richard kept saying that it reminded him of his Grandfather Mahoney’s story—a case of God-given gumption against all odds. What we’ve been thinking is that we’d just continue as we have here, except that you’d be living in, which would mean that you could spread the work out and do a bit every day after school instead of just on Saturdays.” Nan’s smile was wide-screen benevolent. “I know,” she said. “You must be feeling quite overwhelmed. You don’t need to decide right away. We won’t even be putting the house on the market for several weeks, so in the meantime we’ll go on just as before. But you think about it, won’t you?”

  Summer said she would. She thought about it all the rest of the day while she dusted the gleaming furniture and vacuumed the deep soft rugs and swept the peacock droppings off the patio. And the more she thought about it, the angrier she became. Nan’s unspoken comments about Oriole made her angry, and the “discreet inquiries” made her angrier, and the “God-given gumption” made her angriest of all. But before she went home that afternoon, when she told Nan good-by, she gave her a sincere, serious smile and said she was still thinking about it.

  That much was true. She had thought about nothing else all afternoon, and on the way home she was still thinking about it. But what wasn’t true was the implication that she was undecided. Not that there weren’t aspects of Nan’s offer that intrigued her. She had to admit to that and even to a long-standing fantasy in which she was, in some vague, undefined way, a part of the Oliver’s peacock world. But the part she’d envisioned herself playing in that world was not that of live-in maid and certainly not in Connecticut—three thousand miles away from Sparrow and Oriole. Her answer would be no. All that remained was how to say it so that the Olivers wouldn’t be angry. She wanted to keep the job as long as possible.

  That had been the first event that had made the past week one that almost demanded to be recorded, and the second one took place only a few days later. It began with Pardell asking her to stay after class again. Even though there was no reason that she could think of and certainly no possibility of another misplaced letter, she had been uneasy. As she waited for the rest of the class to file out, she could feel the fluttery tightness beginning in her stomach.

  “Well,” Pardell said, when the other students had all gone, “don’t look so apprehensive. There’s no problem. It’s just that I’m about to offer you a summer job.”

  “A job,” she repeated blankly, wiped out by surprise.

  “Right. You see, Meg, my wife, is due to go into the hospital in about two weeks. Nothing serious, just an old knee injury that’s been giving her some trouble recently. But she’ll be in a wheelchair and then on crutches for quite a while, which wouldn’t present any problem except that I’m committed to a summer school stint in Fort Bragg. So we’re going to need someone to stay with her while I’m away and help out around the house. Perhaps you already have plans for the summer but …” He broke off as Summer began to nod.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’d like the job, that is. And no, I don’t have any other plans. That is, I do have a job already but it’s only for weekends, so I could be at your place during the week.”

  Pardell said that was great, and they set up a time for Summer to go over to talk to his wife, and that was it. It wasn’t until she was halfway home that she realized he must have decided to ask her if she wanted the job because of that letter to Grant. There’d been a part in it about her bank account and the job at Crown Ridge Ranch—which obviously was the reason Pardell knew she was into doing housework. It was a disturbing thought. But at least he hadn’t mentioned what had given him the idea. Because if he had mentioned it, she would have had to turn him down.

  Then, two days later, there had been the interview with Meg Pardell. Summer had gone to the house, a small Victorian on the north edge of the village, after picking Sparrow up at the elementary school. She made Sparrow wait for her in the front yard while she went in. She’d known Meg Pardell by sight for a long time—everyone in Alvarro Bay knew everyone else by sight—a small thin woman with a pixie haircut; but it was the first time they’d ever spoken. She turned out to be easy to talk to.

  She led the way into the living room chattering away about how great it was that Summer was going to be able to help them out “I know you’ll do a wonderful job,” she said, smiling in a way that made it easy to smile back.

  “How do you know that?” Summer asked. “Because I’m getting an A in English? I’ve heard that lots of writers are real slobs.”

  “That’s probably true. But I wasn’t basing my expectations on just your English grade. You just seem to me to be the kind of person who does a lot of things well. As a matter of fact, I’ve heard as much. Such information is common knowledge in the school community, you know. By the time a student gets to be your age in a town this small, he or she has been discussed by a lot of teachers—not to mention teachers’ wives and husbands. The rumor is you’re a very competent kid. How about some apple cider?”

  “Oh yeah?” Summe
r said, intrigued. The part about talk and rumors in a small town was certainly true, and teachers probably talked as much or more than anyone else. But she doubted the rest of it. She suspected that when teachers talked about the McIntyre kids, they were mainly interested in things beside grades and schoolwork. Like Mrs. Boswick, the third grade teacher, who happened to see Mr. Boswick talking to Oriole downtown one day and afterwards kept pumping Summer about the men Oriole was seeing.

  “How about some apple cider?” Meg said again.

  “What? Oh, yes please.” Summer said.

  While Meg was in the kitchen, Summer checked out the room. Of medium size, with a high ceiling and long, narrow windows, it was slightly shabby-looking and cluttered with too many bookcases, a huge grand piano, stacks of newspapers and sheet music and various kinds of foreign looking art objects. In spite of the fact that it was much smaller than the Olivers’ house, it looked as if the Pardells’ might turn out to be a lot more work. But it was also going to be five days a week, and the money was going to make a big difference in the growth rate of the bank account.

  When Meg came back with the cider, they discussed hourly rates and a starting date, and then Meg rambled on for quite a while about Jason, the Pardells’ son who was working in Washington D.C., and the operation she was going to have on her knee.

  “It was injured in an automobile accident years ago,” she said, “and it’s been bothering me for a long time, but I kept putting off doing anything about it. I hated to leave Alan alone to cope—he’s a disaster in the kitchen—and to abandon my students for such a long time.” Meg gestured toward the piano. Summer knew about Meg’s piano students. Haley had been one of them, and probably Summer, herself, would have been if Oriole could have afforded it. “But it turns out I’ll only have to be in the hospital for a few days. Of course, I’ll be pretty immobile for a while, but I’ll be able to go on teaching. I’m awfully glad we’re going to have you here to help. As I said, Alan is absolutely useless around the house, and even if he weren’t, he’s going to be very busy this summer. There’s the summer school, and besides he’s had a positive response to one of his queries—on an article he’s been wanting to write about the politics of the classroom—and he needs to get in some time at the typewriter.”