The Great Good Summer (5 page)

So we do. We sit on the steps of Second Baptist that are so hot, they almost burn the backs of my legs, and we open up Paul's notebook, and we start to figure things out, like how much money we need and what we'll tell our parents and what we'll do when we arrive in the panhandle of Florida. (
If
we arrive in the panhandle of Florida.)

I tell Paul that's another not-good thing about The Great Good Bible Church of Panhandle Florida: “It should be called The Great Good Bible Church of THE Panhandle OF Florida. Shouldn't it? It's THE Panhandle! That's the sort of mistake that would drive Mrs. Murray half-crazy—”

And then I interrupt myself. “Oh, gosh. Wait a minute,” I say. “What about the Murrays? Mrs. Murray's expecting me, every day but Tuesdays. She needs me,
and I'll be letting her down if I'm suddenly not there.”

“Now, that's kind of funny,” says Paul.

“What?”

“That you're more worried about Mrs. Murray than you are about your own dad.”

And Paul's right. I'm not really thinking too much about Daddy, because if I think about Daddy, I think about getting caught—as a runaway, for goodness' sake—and that gives me the chill-bumps. Plus, it doesn't seem to me that Daddy (or God, for that matter) has done such a great job of looking after Mama lately, which is why it's been left completely up to me. Well, me and Science Boy here, if that's not the strangest thing.

“Okay, fine,” I say. “Mrs. Murray will be fine. She's resourceful.” Which was another one of our vocab words this year, by the way. Plus, she is. “Now, here's what I think, Paul Dobbs . . .”

And this idea comes out of my mouth before it's even really solid in my head. “If we're going all the way to Florida,” I say, “I think we better go see the space shuttle too. I mean, that's where they keep it, right? Or where they keep
them
, since there are a few of them, like you told me? If you're gonna kiss space good-bye after all these years of loving it so much you wanted to marry it, then it
seems like you oughta break up in person. Right?”

I turn to look at Paul, sitting so close to me that we're practically stuck together. I want to see what he thinks of my half-cocked idea. And wow. I promise you that right that very minute? His eyes start to shine again. Like stars.

Chapter Eight

B
efore leaving for the Murrays' in the morning, I pack my school backpack with a few pairs of underwear; my toothbrush, hairbrush, and some hairbands; two hundred and sixty dollars in babysitting money; and a box of granola bars Daddy brought home with the shopping yesterday.

When we said good-bye outside the church last night, Paul told me to be ready to go at a moment's notice, “So that as soon as I get the money I need, we can take off.”

I was about to tell him to stop being pushy, but then I thought I probably wouldn't step one foot outside of Loomer, Texas, without Paul being a little pushy, so I said okay. And here I am, packing. I shiver when I zip up my bag, and my brain says,
No, no!
but then I interrupt myself and think,
Yes.

I look around my room to distract myself—the room Mama let me decorate in third grade—and lordamercy, I have grown so deathly ill of this pink. It's like bubble gum stuck in Hello Kitty's fur, and when I get back home with Mama, I'm gonna ask if we can do something about it.

“When I get back home,” is what I said to myself, which means it's not just Paul who's 100 percent serious anymore. Who cares if the farthest I've ever been is Galveston? I'm going to find my mama in Florida. I just am. Yes, yes, no matter what, yes.

I run downstairs into the kitchen and grab Mama's medicines off the counter. And there, behind the bag, quietly plugged in next to the toaster, is her phone. When she first left, we thought she'd taken it with her. I called her every day, partly just to hear her voice on the voice mail but also so that she'd hear mine. Then Daddy found the phone sitting in her makeup drawer in the bathroom.

“Doesn't have her phone, hasn't used her credit card, and must not care that we don't know where in the world she's gone,” said Daddy when he brought the phone downstairs and tossed it on the counter.

I looked at it after he'd left the room. There were a whole bunch of messages on it, and the battery was nearly dead. I stopped calling, and it's been here waiting on the counter, plugged in, ever since.

I don't know if it'd officially be considered stealing to take it, but it seems like a good idea either way. Mama shouldn't have gone all the way to Florida without a phone, and neither should we.

I don't have a phone of my own. Daddy says that Loomer's so small, you can just holler if you need something. Which isn't true, but I'm too busy trying to talk him into a dog, which I want more than a phone, and I can only fight so many battles at one time.

So Mama's phone will do. I grab it, shut it down to save power, and grab the charger out of the wall too. Then I notice the coffee cup in the sink. Daddy left early to put on a new roof—on another one of the houses damaged by the wildfires. “I'd never be grateful for someone's misfortune,” he always says when he heads off for these jobs, “but I'm grateful for good work.” And the fires made a whole lot of good work. That's just the truth. (It's also ironic, seeing as how they're the same fires that drove Mama half-crazy and all the way to Florida, but he never mentions that.)

Anyway, here I am packing to run away, with Daddy off at work and his coffee cup sitting in the sink like it's a totally ordinary normal old day. He has no idea. It's enough to give me the shivers again.

“Ivy, honey,” says Mrs. Murray as we're putting together today's snacks, “I am going to work at the library today, so you and Lucy and Devon can stay and play here for a
change. It'll help me focus, and you all maybe could use a day of being a little lazy. Is that all right?”

“Sure, we'll play here. It'll be fun. Won't it be fun, little bugs?” I pull Lucy up onto my hip and kiss her fat, happy cheek just a tidge longer than usual, since I know I'm gonna miss her when I'm gone. Mrs. Murray keeps cutting up fruit while Lucy and I watch.

“You do such a good job with them, Ivy. You are a natural. You know how to tend to them. I didn't know what to do with babies when I first had mine, but with you it just seems to be in your blood.”

Which is kind of a funny thing to say to a girl whose own mother is off rolling around on the floor of a church in Florida instead of taking care of her family here at home. But still, it's nice, and it makes me feel bad again about leaving them with no warning at all.

“I don't think I'm that good at it, really,” I say. “I mean, I'm only with them for a few hours, and you're their mom. You're with them all the time. That's a whole lot. I mean, I can't imagine how you know when you're ready to do that kind of thing. Y'know, get married and have babies and everything?”

“Mommy, peanut butter!” Lucy reaches toward Mrs. Murray, who takes her from my arms and pops a little
square of peanut butter toast right into her mouth. Then she breathes a deep breath and turns back to me.

“Well,
that
is a mystery,” says Mrs. Murray. “You never really know, sweet girl. There is so, so much in this world—both good and bad—that you never really know. You just have to learn to listen to that voice inside, the voice in you that is your own best self, to figure out what to do and when to do it.”

She sets Lucy down and spreads more toast.

I can't help but think that if Mama'd listened to the voice inside instead of the voice that was Hallelujah Dave's, I wouldn't be fixing to skip out on Mrs. Murray and her babies like I am.

“And the rest of the time,” she says, in one of her rushy-talky streams, “you have to learn to live with the mystery. There's not a way around that, no matter how old you are.”

“My problem is, I've got a lot of voices inside,” I say. “They interrupt one another all the time.”

Mrs. Murray laughs. “Oh, Ivy. You're a lot like me. That's what breathing's for. And meditating, or praying. To calm down those voices and see if you can hear a single one, clear as a bell.”

Maybe poor Mama has the same problem I have with
hearing a single voice. Although, you'd think with all of her praying, she'd have found it by now.

“Bells make music,” says Devon, and he starts banging on the cabinets and stomping his feet in a little dance. Mrs. Murray laughs again.

I'm pushing Devon in the swing chair when Lucy runs down the hallway into her mama and daddy's bedroom. I don't know why it feels a little harder to keep track of the babies here at home than it does at the park. Maybe because I don't have remote control flying machines to keep them entertained. Maybe because I keep thinking of my packed backpack waiting in my room at home. Maybe because I keep thinking of Paul.

I'm realizing that I'm sad about the airspace closing, and about Paul selling his planes—not just for him but for me and for the Murray babies too. We got to love the whole thing nearly as much as he did, I think. And now here we are stuck at home, indoors, with blocks and puzzles and the swing chair, and we're all a little out of sorts.

“Stay swinging,” I say to Devon, and I follow Lucy, even though it feels kind of private to march into Mr. and Mrs. Murray's room. Lucy toddles through the bedroom into the closet, and when I catch up with her, she
is next to the dirty clothes hamper and a big jumbled box of shoes.

“Whatcha doing, Luce?” I ask.

Lucy turns around, and I see behind her a little nightstand with a tall purple candle in the middle, and some smooth stones, and a fat pretty pinecone standing on end. And there are three tiny pictures in frames—blurry old-fashioned black-and-white ones—and a silver baby rattle and a statue of Buddha. I mean, I think it's Buddha because it doesn't look like Gandhi, and I don't think they make statues of Gandhi anyway.

I wish I could ask Mrs. Murray about all this, but I shouldn't have let Lucy make it all the way down the hall away from me in the first place, and I shouldn't be snooping around in the Murrays' bedroom closet either. But suddenly and more than anything, I want to know what you're supposed to do with a little nightstand and a purple candle and a statue of Buddha. Is there something holy or magic here that might help me find my mama, or even help me know if what I'm about to do is right or wrong? I stand stock-still for a second and stare at the pretty little altar, waiting.

“Ivy,” says Lucy, and she pulls on my fingers, away from what I'm trying to understand.

“Right. C'mon, Lucy. Let's go.” I swoop her up and turn around, and back we go to Devon, who is yelling from the swing, “Down, Ivy. Down, down, right this minute down!”

And as I listen to him with one ear and Lucy with the other, I think about Mrs. Murray and the voices in
her
head, and I wonder if that's one of the great-good things about Buddha. Maybe he helps a person hear things, clear as a bell.

The home phone rings and rings as I unlock the back door of our house. I run inside and reach across the kitchen counter to catch it before it goes to voice mail. These days neither Daddy or I is willing to risk letting a phone ring without answering it, because one of these times it's just sure to be Mama.

“Hello?” I'm out of breath.

“Ivy? What's the matter? You sound funny.” Kimmy is like Abby in that even when she's being nice, she doesn't necessarily sound nice. I guess that's one of the reasons they're perfect friends for each other. They can be not-very-nice-seeming together and then tell each other not to worry about it.

“I just got home,” I say. “I rode my bike clear across
town and I'm out of breath. What's up, Kimmy?”

I hold the phone to my ear with my shoulder and pull open the refrigerator, hoping it'll look better than it does. It looks like
everyone
living here is out of town for the summer, not just Mama.

“Wanna go to the pool?” asks Kimmy. “A bunch of us are going. You can ride your bike, or Abby's mom will drive. Either way. Should we pick you up?”

Which I guess is Kimmy's way of deciding that I
am
going, since she didn't exactly wait for me to say yes or no. Which, I have to admit, makes me kind of glad. I tell her I'll ride my bike and I'll be there in a half hour.

The instant we hang up, the phone rings again. I can see from the caller ID that it's just another Loomer number, but still. Daddy says Hallelujah Dave could have a local number, for all we know. We can't be too sure.

But when I pick it up, it's not Mama or Hallelujah Dave. It's Paul.

“You ready?”

My heart starts to thump really hard, in a scary kind of way, like it might pound through the skin in my chest.

Ready?

Does he mean now?

“Do you mean now?” I ask out loud. Would I ever be actually and truly ready to leave a note for Daddy and jump on a bus and go looking for my mama at a church that doesn't have a website or address or proper name or anything?

“Well, not
right
now,” he says. “Not tonight, but what about first thing tomorrow morning? We could take the early bus to Houston and go from there?”