The Middle of Somewhere (4 page)

My first thought:
Wow, just what I was thinking!
Minus Gee, though. I couldn't see Pop consenting to a road trip with a hyperactive seven-year-old. But Kent Clark says to zap negative thoughts, so I took out my imaginary zapper and fired away while Mama explained that she wasn't exactly trying to get rid of us, but—

“The doctor told me the quickest way to recover would be complete and total rest—but the doctor doesn't know Gee, does he? Complete and total rest, my foot! Also, it would be a perfect opportunity for Lyddie and me to get a head start on the projects we want to sell at craft shows this fall. And the trip would be good for you, Ronnie. Because first, if you stay here you'll have almost all the responsibility of looking out for Gee, and that's no way to spend a summer vacation.” (At this, I nodded so hard my neck hurt.) “Two, you'd get to know your grandfather better. Three, you'd get to see more of the country, even if it's just Kansas. Oh, and four, you'd get to take a trip in a real RV, instead of just mooning over the pictures and diagrams you bring home from the state fair.”

Bottom line: her dream was to start her own craft business and mine was to take an RV trip. We'd kill two dreams
with one stone. I was sold, but: “Do you think Pop'll go for it?”

She smiled and leaned back on the pillows. “He's not the only one with plans.”

Her plan involved a big buildup. First, we'd learn all we could about Pop's wind-prospecting business. Second, figure out how I could help him in it. And finally, keep Gee under wraps as much as possible, because my little brother in full ADHD mode could scare off a saint. It was a big job, especially the last part. But we got a boost from the Partly Baptist Church, because their Vacation Bible School started that very morning.

We let Gee sleep in as late as possible, and right after breakfast I walked him to church. Even taking the long way, he was the first to arrive, not counting the teachers and their kids. I signed him up before anyone could have second thoughts, then rushed home to make myself obviously useful while listening in on conversations like this:

MAMA: So you're planning to travel all over western Kansas looking for the windiest spots to build power farms?

POP: That's it in a nutshell. Check for velocity, sustainability, shifts, and gusts. I find a spot and set up a meteorological mast—or met mast, as we say in the business— attach a weather vane on top and an anemometer to do the measuring, then I go back and check on it for three or four days. What that does … [explain, explain]

MAMA: (after the explaining is over) And how do you keep track of all that information?

POP: Ah. The university is supposed to give me a
laptop to run the data, but I hate trying to figure out computer programs. Not looking forward to that.

MAMA: By the way, did I show you Ronnie's last report card? All As in math, and her teacher told me she's at the top of her class in computer skills. …

That's me—world-class record-keeper and number-cruncher. Plus, I'm very neat and systematic—Exacto-girl. “Hey, Pop, I'm organizing my room. Come see what I plan to do with my closet!”

After Vacation Bible School, my job was to keep Gee away from Pop so it wouldn't be so obvious what a challenge he presented. Gee spent most of the afternoon with neighborhood kids, but it was exhausting to be on full radar alert. Tuesday was better—that is, until the end.

Tuesday morning I finished cleaning up Mama's bedroom while Pop fixed the leaky faucet in the kitchen and replaced the torn screen on the storm door. After lunch, he dropped Gee and me off at the Polk County Library and went on down to Springfield to shop for his Kansas expedition. While Gee interrupted story hour with goofy questions, I found some books on alternative power and meteorology. Then we walked to the pool, and even though Pop picked us up later than he said he would, I was sweet as cherry pie all the way home. And made sure he saw me reading my books. I even thought of some questions to ask him and listened all the way through his explanations.

While washing up after dinner (which I cooked), I heard him say, “That Ronnie … she's pretty sharp. I never thought a twelve-year-old kid could be so interested in weather.”

“Sometimes she reminds me of you, Dad,” my mother replied. “She has goals and ambitions coming out the wazoo. You know what she wanted for her birthday? Her very own business cards.”

“No kidding?” Pop sounded impressed. “How many kids would think of that?”

Not many—all my friends at school just said “What's this for?” when I handed out business cards. Like they thought I should have a business or something. Plus, we moved four months later so the address and phone numbers are no good. I crossed out the old info and printed the new by hand, but it looks dorky

“She wants to buy her own car
before
she can legally drive.”

“Huh. So did I.”

“Really? So, did you?” Mom's voice took on that teasing tone she uses to keep a good mood going.

“Not exactly. … Gee's still a handful, isn't he?”

“Now, he's a sweet boy at heart. But sometimes he needs a firm hand, and at the end of a long day I'm just exhausted. He could sure use a father figure. You're a real good influence on him, Dad—I can see it.”

“Well…,” Pop said thoughtfully. “I do what I can.”

It sounded to me like he was softening up. I gave the knives and forks one last rattle under the rinse water and dropped them in the drainer, just in time to hear my mother finish asking, “… take them with you for the next week or so?”

Of course I didn't expect him to say “Hey, that's a great
idea!” But what he said surprised me anyway: “
What
?! Are you crazy?”

Did you ever, as a little kid, start down a really high slide and find yourself going a whole lot faster than you expected? Like it just rained or somebody spilled their French fries on it? That's how I felt, zooming down a slide of negativity. Toward the bottom I was trying to slow myself down, whispering,
Don't take no for an answer, don't take no for an answer, don't take no
—

But
no
is what I kept hearing from the next room.

MAMA: All I ask is that you live up to your responsibility for a change!

POP: What responsibility? They're
your
kids!

MAMA: But I'm
your
kid! I always will be, even though you left when I was thirteen—

POP: Wait a minute. Are you saying it's my fault you're stuck in the middle of Missouri with a couple of kids and a bad knee?

MAMA: Of
course
not! But you're my
father
. Is it too much to expect that you'll be around for me when I need your help?

POP: Where've I been these last three days?

MAMA: Three days once a year—but who's counting? I'm only asking for one or two weeks out of your whole life. And you're not even going that far away! Kansas is right next door. If it doesn't work out you can bring them back anytime—

POP: I'd lose a whole day or more on the job if I did that—

MAMA: What's more important, a job or a human being? These children need you! Just like I did. …

She'd been speaking real firm up to then, with lots of exclamation marks. But all of a sudden her voice choked up and turned weepy: “You could make some effort to pay back … a little of what you took away—”

I peeked around the doorframe. Mama, from her nest of pillows on the sofa, was reaching for a Kleenex. Pop was sitting upright in the recliner, both hands clutching the chair arms. What surprised me was his expression: not angry but desperate, like a cornered fox.

What to do now? My brain was shuffling through ideas when Gee sealed the deal by falling off the top of the RV.

Of course, none of us knew he was even
on
the RV until we heard shouts from the front yard. I know Gee's hurt-screams from his scared-screams, but this was both. Mama jumped up, suddenly remembered her knee, and fell back on the pillows with a gasp of pain. I shot out of the kitchen and through the living room. When I reached the front porch, Pop was right behind me.

What happened was, Gee had tied on his Superman cape (a red towel with a ribbon sewn to it) and gathered some of the neighborhood kids to watch him fly. After climbing to the RV's sundeck, he aimed for an old baby-crib mattress he'd dragged out from the garage. But after Gee's hyperactive-baby abuse, that mattress wasn't up to much. It broke the fall, but only a little more gently than bare concrete. Casey and Judy Lavender were screaming
right along with Gee, and Hunter Rice was on his way up the ladder to try it himself.

I went for Gee; Pop went for Hunter, grabbing him firmly by the belt and setting him on the driveway with a shake. The other kids took off like roaches when you turn the light on. Gee howled all the time I was checking him for broken bones, but stopped when our grandfather knelt down and gave him a look like a hammer gives a nail.

I tried to save the situation. “You shouldn't have been up there without asking Pop's permission.” But even in my sternest voice, it sounded lame. Pop felt Gee over with his lips tucked in tight, and once we were both satisfied that he wasn't hurt—beyond the skinned elbow that missed the mattress—I helped him up and took him to Mama's open arms.

Gee burrowed in beside her while I watched her pillowcases get all smeary with blood. Who was going to have to wash them? Me. Mama knew her plan had just gone down the garbage disposal but couldn't quite let it go. She looked up at Pop, who had come in behind me, and sniffed, “All he needs is a firm hand.”

About an hour later, after muttering something about how fish and visitors stink after three days, Pop backed his new RV out of the drive and rolled away.

Mama sighed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Gee's only penalty was going to bed early. Since he sort of sacks out wherever in our two-bedroom house, that meant exile in Mama's room, where he scattered her button collection to make a minefield of her bed.

Meanwhile, I shut myself in my room and opened my journal to where I'd written
Short-term Goals for Kan. Trip
:

1. Learn to organize better by living in RV.
   

2. Study Pop's biz style and method—mentor material?
   

3. See new places.
   

4. Get away from old places!
   

I ripped that page out, wadded it into a ball, and threw it across the room. You never know how much you wanted something until it's jerked away. I'd caught it like a fever: the open road and the rolling wheels and the big blue sky. I wanted to pack up and take myself places where everything I saw would fit somewhere inside me, like all that kitchenware and bedding and little comforts of home squared away inside the RV. Instead, I was looking at a summer that sprawled like Mama's wardrobe, with all the drawers hanging open and clothes spilled. Hello, square one.

On Wednesday, I walked Gee to Vacation Bible School, where his teacher still acted like she was glad to see him. Last year he was kicked out of a VBS in midweek for building a fort out of hymnbooks—which wouldn't have been so bad except that he glued them together. This year all he'd done—so far—was sneak out of class and dive into the baptistery.

Back home, I helped Mama set up a craft center in the living room. That is, I moved furniture and toted boxes while she changed her mind about where she wanted
everything. It was a project I could have got interested in, if I hadn't been working so hard to climb out of my negativity pit.

When things were arranged so that Mama could reach supplies on one side and food and drink on the other, while propping up her bad knee and glancing at the TV, it was time to collect Gee at church.

His teacher met me with a serious look and drew me aside—always a bad sign. “We dealt with this already, but you should tell your mother that Gee bit one of his classmates today.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I used to teach the preschoolers, and they're all little biters, but by second grade they've usually grown out of it.”

Before I could say “Oh” again, she rushed on. “Also, he has a real hard time paying attention. Has your mother looked into that?”

I assured her we'd been looking into that, and she gave Gee an extra-bright smile when saying good-bye to him. “So what's up with the biting?” I asked after we'd walked a block and turned a corner.

Gee, in a sulky mood, kicked a rock. “It's what that dopey-head Travis called me.”

“What did he call you?”

“A dopey-head.”

“Hmm.” Gee gets a lot of that kind of thing. Not that he's stupid, but he has trouble reading because his eyes skip all over the page, and some of the questions and answers he blurts out in class are way beside the point. He also has
anger issues, as dopey-head Travis found out. “Well, next time—”

“Look! A rabbit!”

He took off chasing the bunny, which darted into a culvert. That would have stopped most kids, but not Gee. I barely caught him before he disappeared for good, but not before he got pretty well slimed. “Yuck! When we get home, you've got a date with the garden hose!”

I'd better say this up front: I love my little brother, but it's tough sometimes not to see him as a big negative. Since reading Mr. Clark's book, I've tried to change my thinking. For instance, Gee loves to climb things, so last fall I started a little gutter-cleaning service in our neighborhood in Lee's Summit. I went door-to-door with my business cards one Saturday morning, telling people my brother would scrape the gutters while I cleaned up the soggy leaves and twigs that fell under the eaves. Five customers signed up, mostly elderly people and couples who worked during the day. I didn't mention to them that my brother was only six at the time. In fact, I might have left the impression he was closer to sixteen.

It worked just fine—we'd done three houses at twenty dollars each and Gee wasn't burned-out yet. Then I contracted a two-story house. Gee climbed up like a monkey, but once he was up there he freaked out and I had to call the fire department. Actually, the fire department in Lee's Summit already knew us pretty well.