Into the Wind Page 2

  And I’d tell her, even if things, like math, didn’t go so well.

  But then came an afternoon when Mom was in her bedroom when I came home. I went upstairs and knocked softly on the door. There was a pause, like she was waking up. Through the door, I asked, “You okay? Are you sick?”

  Her voice came almost word by word. “No… I’m… not sick”

  “Can I make you a cup of tea?”

  “That’s nice. No. Thanks. I’ll… be out… soon.”

  Eventually, when she did come out, she was still in her nightgown, but with her arms hanging down like long sticks, her hair messy, her eyes dark and hollow, and her voice so flat and weak that I could hardly hear it. She blinked and then said as if she was surprised and confused, “Oh. Rusty. It’s you. Home? From school? Already?”

  In the week after that, she sometimes came out of her room, but sometimes didn’t, and I ate my snack by myself. That was when Dad talked with Dr. Murphy on his phone and took Mom to the Island Medical Center, where she got some medicine. That was also when I started watering Mom’s garden because she seemed to have forgotten about it. And that was when Lizzy started cooking suppers—another thing Mom seemed to have forgotten. When he’d get home from work, Dad would go upstairs to their bedroom and shut the door. Lizzy and I would hear them talking up there, mostly Dad talking softly. Eventually, both of them would come slowly downstairs, and Dad, making a tight-lipped smile, would be holding Mom’s hand. She’d be dressed, but her shirttails might not be tucked in straight and her hair would hang like seaweed. She seemed to shuffle more than walk, like someone moving in shoes without any laces. And here was the worst thing of all: She couldn’t look into our eyes.

  Slouched at the table, she barely ate or said a word. And then one evening in the middle of June, as we were finishing our macaroni and cheese that Lizzy had made, Mom dropped her fork, put her face in her hands, and just started sobbing. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” was all she said, as Dad, with his hand around her waist, helped her back up to their bedroom, where he stayed the rest of that evening and night—the first night I’d ever gone to bed without someone saying goodnight.

  The next day, Dad didn’t go to work at all, and when I came home from school, I could hear him on his phone in their bedroom, with the door closed and his voice low. There were words that I understood and others that I didn’t: “Residential treatment and therapy.” “So far away?” “How long?” “How much?” “A loan?” “Remortgage the house.” “Of course we’ll do what we have to.”

  “What’s wrong with Mom?” I asked that night when I was in bed and he came into my room.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, like he did when I was younger. “I’m not sure.” His voice was tired. “I think she’s very sad.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said again.

  “Is this what happened to Jimmy Dawes’s dad?” Jimmy was a kid in my grade, whose father went away on a trip and never came back, except once to get his clothes.

  “No,” Dad said. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Was it something I did? Or Lizzy?”

  He leaned over and put his arms around me, so tight that I could smell the hardware store, that sawdust smell, in the folds of his shirt. “No,” he said. “Don’t even think that. It’s not because of either of you guys. That I’m sure of. Believe me.”

  Through the open window beside my bed, I could hear the hush-hush of lapping waves, like the sound you hear inside a seashell, which is really the beat of your own heart. “What’s going to happen?”

  “We’re going to try to make things better, get some more help. Doctor Murphy said Mom needs special doctors. So I’ve made an appointment over on the mainland. I’m going to take her there early in the morning.”

  “Can we come, Lizzy and me?”

  “Probably not. It’s far away. Besides, it’s a school day for you.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “Tomorrow evening.”

  “Will Mom be with you?”

  He let out a long breath and ran his hand through his sandy hair. “I’m not sure. She may need to stay there a while. But in time things should get better.” He looked at me closely. “Okay?”

  When he left, I heard the lapping waves again, and tried to keep my mind on them. Out at the marina, there’d be lots of sailboats, some tied in slips and others moored in the moonlit water. It’d look like a forest of masts sticking up, with lines, or ropes, crisscrossing the sky and silver-blue light on the decks and railings. The sails would be rolled up tight. The breeze would be warm, the water covered in dimples. The halyards, the lines that raise the sails, would clink-clink against the masts. And that soft, slow rocking, rocking…

  The next morning, Dad led Mom down the stairs, while Lizzy and I ate our cereal in the kitchen. He was carrying Mom’s small, black

  suitcase, and she was wearing her gray pants and a sweater with the buttons in the wrong holes. She looked thin. The pants hung loosely around her hips, and she moved like she might break. From the hall closet, Dad got her raincoat and put it over her shoulders. I hadn’t even noticed it was raining. “I’ll be back for supper,” he said. “Make sure the door is shut when you leave for school. Come give Mom a kiss.”

  She bent toward us. We kissed her, but she didn’t seem to see us. She seemed to be half-asleep. Then together they turned toward the front door, Dad with a pale look on his face, the suitcase in one hand, and his other holding Mom’s elbow. The screen door screeeked and smacked. Their slow steps went down the porch stairs, and soon we heard the car doors open and close.

  For some reason, Lizzy and I didn’t, or couldn’t, get up from the table. We seemed to be watching a movie at the same time that we were in it, and the movie just kept going and going. I

  wanted to run down to the car and yell “Stop!” I wanted to beat on the car window. I wanted the movie to go in reverse and for Mom and Dad to walk back up the stairs and into the kitchen, where Dad would put down the suitcase. But all Lizzy and I could do was look at our cereal bowls, at the two empty chairs on either end of the table, at the stove and the door, while we listened to the car start, shift into forward, and the windshield wipers slap. We heard the car pull away, turn down 3rd Street, the shishing sound of tires on wet pavement, and then all those sounds were gone. Ten minutes later, it was our turn to move. We didn’t look at each other. We put on raincoats and threw our backpacks over our shoulders, as the long, low blast of the ferry horn echoed and echoed. It was the 7:15, the first ferry of the day, heading off toward the mainland. We shut the door behind us and walked toward school. That’s when Lizzy, my evil sister, grabbed my hand and held it tight, and I didn’t even try to pull it away.

  • • •

  After supper, Dad came home with just his keys in his hand and his eyes very sad. “She’s

  going to be okay,” he said to me and Lizzy, trying to reassure us, but none of us slept well that night. In fact, sometime after 2 a.m., I got a strange scary taste, like metal, in my mouth, and I couldn’t stop my legs and arms from shaking. I got up and opened the little door to the storage area behind the low wall on one side of my room. I crawled in and curled up in the piles of folded winter clothes, the knitted hats, scarves, and sweaters. Some of them were Mom’s and smelled like her—a little like Ivory soap, a little like her tea.

  And that’s where I found myself, right there in the storage area, when I woke up the next morning. Dad was on his knees peering in at me. “Russ, what in the world are you doing in there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  But I think he knew. Because when he came home that evening, he came straight to the work shed in our backyard, where I was putting off my homework and avoiding the kids at the park who already were saying, “Hey, my dad saw your mom on the ferry. She going nuts?” I was nailing pieces of scrap wood together for no


  particular reason, except that I wanted to hammer something. Bam! Bam-Bam!

  Dad shut the double doors behind him. He was tired from his day’s work and everything else.

  In his quiet way, he came up alongside me at the workbench and put his hand on my shoulder. I stopped hammering. He asked me if those were 12 penny nails, and he asked me about my day at school. “Anything new?”

  “Not much.” At the moment, school and all

  the end-of-year tests were the farthest things from

  my mind.

  Then out of the blue, he said, “I had an interesting conversation today with Mr. Clark, who came into the store to buy a sprinkler. He asked how we were doing and, because he’s a neighbor, I went ahead and told him that we were having a tough time. He said he was sorry. And then it occurred to me to ask if he had any plans for that sailboat of his, you know, the one that’s been lying in the ivy behind his house for a couple of years. He said no, that actually he’d forgotten all about it. So I mentioned that I knew someone who might be interested in it, and I think he figured out what I was driving at, because the next thing he said was, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea. If Rusty wants to fix up the boat, and if he’ll take good care of it, well, I’d like him to have it. And sail it. He can keep it if he wants. I’d rather see that boat right side up in the water than upside down in my yard.’” Dad rubbed his jaw with his hand. “So what do you think, Russ?”

  I thought of all the boats I’d seen but never set foot on. Mostly they were the summer people’s boats: the ones in their private slips, the ones racing, impossibly tilted way out on the bay, and the ones drifting around their mooring buoys.

  “I’ve never fixed up a boat before,” I said. “I don’t know how to sail either.”

  “Well, you could learn,” Dad said. “You’re old enough. You could start by reading some books.

  It might be a good thing to try.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Meeting on

  Bayshore Street

  In case you don’t know, summer school is one of the worst things ever invented. It’s torture. Not only does everyone think you’re stupid, and not only do you have to spend your weekday mornings at school, but you have to do it after your classmates have cleaned out their lockers and said “Have a great summer! See you in sixth grade!” and when everyone else is on vacation, or at camp, or just hanging out. Outside the classroom windows, I could see kids playing softball, running around with their shirts off. I could hear them yelling, “safe!” or “out!” or “I’ve got it!” while right in front of me and those four other guys, Mrs. Kaminski was scribbling numbers on the board, with the skin on her upper arm wobbling like Jell-O.

  Anyways, three or four days after I saw that old lady Hazel on the dock, I was walking home alone from school, and you might imagine how lousy I felt. Lizzy was at camp. I had a long homework assignment, and I’d just called to check in with Dad, who as usual was too busy at work to come home for lunch. Sometimes I’d stop by my friend Walter’s house, where his mom would make us grilled cheese sandwiches, and then we’d play his video games or ping-pong in his garage, or go down to the dock to do some things on my boat. Each of us is the sort of friend you have when you don’t have other friends. Right above his forehead, Walter has a cowlick that makes his hair look funny, and he’s as skinny as me—and even shorter. We steer clear of the kids who are good at sports. We’re in the same grade. We’ve stuck together. But two days before, I’d

  gotten mad at him for tracking mud into my boat. He’d gone home all ticked off, calling me “crabby and cranky.” Then he went off to sleep-away camp in Vermont for six weeks, and now it seemed like I was the only person left in the world. I was going home to make myself a sandwich and see what was on TV.

  But as I turned onto Bayshore Street around a high stone wall, I practically collided with Hazel, who was coming around the corner in her wheelchair. If I’d known she was coming before she saw me, I would have turned down a side street. Instead, we both stopped. She was wearing those same rubber-soled shoes, but with brown pants and a loose, cream-colored shirt with a collar. Her hair was

  neatly combed and pulled into a bun on the back of her head, and she had a watermelon strapped on her lap with her seat belt.

  “Hey kid!” she said. “What a surprise! What’s up? Where are you going?”

  It occurred to me to say None of your business, but it’s hard to say that to someone in a wheelchair, even if it’s someone like Hazel. “Home. For lunch,” I said and started walking again in that direction.

  “Wait! So am I! Why don’t you come along? How does egg salad sound? And here’s dessert!” She pointed to the watermelon. “I can’t eat this all by myself.”

  The watermelon made me pause, but then I kept walking.

  “Hold on, Rusty!” She was speaking quickly now, her words tumbling out and running all together: “Look, I’m sorry about the other day. I got carried away. I just saw you in your boat, and I had a picture that I couldn’t get out of my head. I wanted to go sailing again. Just one more time…”

  I stopped about twenty feet away and

  turned to face her. She’d moved her wheels to keep me in view.

  “… But I had no business badgering you like that,” she went on. “It’s your boat to do anything you want with. What was I thinking? I’m sorry. I really am.”

  Now she came halfway toward me, stopped, and said as if it was some fancy invitation, “Will

  you join me for lunch?” Then she added, “I won’t ask again, even if you say no. I promise.” Her eyes were pouched. Her ankles and shins, in thick, flesh-colored stockings, looked as skinny as pencils. Brown spots, like the ones on old bananas, speckled her knobby hands, which seemed for an instant to shake. She was an old lady in a wheelchair with a watermelon in her lap. There was something at once funny, serious, and sad about her that kept me from turning and leaving. What was I afraid of? Without Walter around, I really didn’t have anything else going on that afternoon. Besides, I love watermelon. And to be honest, I’d been wondering about Hazel, like something I couldn’t get out of my head—or like a pebble stuck in my sneaker. Where exactly did she live? How did she live? And why did she seem so interested in me?

  “All right,” I said. Why not?

  “Thanks,” she replied, more relieved than you’d expect. “My cottage is a little ways down the street here. Where are you coming from?”

  I figured I couldn’t keep this from her much longer. After all, I had my pack, with my huge

  textbook, on my back. So I decided to get it over with: “School,” I said.

  She thought for a second, putting two and two together. “Hmm. That would mean summer school. Let me guess. Math?”

  I nodded, then looked away down the street.

  I expected her to say something that other people always say, like Sorry to hear that or That’s too bad, but she didn’t say anything more about it. She just seemed to be thinking.

  With that over, we turned around, away from the village center, and I walked slowly beside and a half step behind her, as she pushed the rims of her wheels. I wondered about asking if she’d like me to carry the watermelon, but there was a message in the way that she held her chin high and moved steadily down the street: I can manage on my own, thank you very much!

  We came to a crosswalk. “We take a left here,” she said.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Cottage

  Oak Lane is a narrow, dead-end street, where the pavement is bumpy and the sidewalk disappears. On either side are some woods and a few beat-up looking houses, with peeling paint, that are even smaller than ours. Hazel pointed out the trees beside the street—the oaks, maples, and chestnuts—and told me how you can tell the difference between them, not just by their leaves, but by the pattern of their branches, the shape, size, and color of their twigs, and by their barks, whether they’re smooth, roug
h, cracked, or flaking.

  “How do you know all these things?” I asked.

  “Well, you just have to look. Closely, that is. And besides, my name is Hazel, and a hazel is a kind of bushy tree—not just a color. Hazels have smooth bark. The seeds are nuts that you can eat. You’ve heard of hazelnuts, right? Long, long ago, the Celts, who lived in Europe, thought they gave you wisdom. And the leaves have sharp, prickly edges…” She gave me one of her amused glances. “… just like me.”

  I couldn’t see any houses at the end of the street, just some dark woods that didn’t look too inviting. “Your house is down here?” I asked. This was one of those out-of-the-way places on the island that most people don’t know about, or try to avoid.

  “Yup,” she said. “We’ll be there soon.” She steered toward a weedy, crumbling brick path that you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it. It was so narrow that I had to follow her, single file, as it wound slightly uphill and deeper into the thick bushes and trees.

  What am I getting into? I thought as I asked aloud, “How do you do this when there’s snow?”

  Hazel pushed a branch out of her way. “Oh, I have someone shovel me out and put down salt. No problem. It’s not like I’m in the middle of nowhere.”

  At a wooden gate, she picked up a stick leaning on the gatepost and with it lifted the latch. Then she pushed the gate open with the footrest of her wheelchair and rolled through. Up ahead, in a small,

  overgrown yard, I could see her cottage. It could have come from a fairy tale. Long ago, it’d been the gardener’s house on a big farm that “had fallen on hard times,” Hazel said as we passed a tree with little blossoms on it. The cottage was one story, with a mossy slate roof, a tilted stone chimney on one end, and shaggy shingles, some hanging cockeyed like bad teeth. Two tiny windows, each with a box of yellow flowers beneath it, peered out of the front. Between them was a chipped blue door, and on an upturned log beside the door sat a wooden mailbox shaped and painted like a seagull sitting in water. By pulling down its head and beak, Hazel opened the box and took out a newspaper and a few letters. Then she lifted the mailbox and from beneath it, slid out a key to let us into the cottage.