The Secrets of Tree Taylor (21 page)

As the week wore on, life got back to normal. At the pool, the only thing anybody wanted to talk about was the steam engine show. At home, Eileen moved on to the respiratory system. Mom experimented with chili recipes and worked on our prairie dresses. Dad barbecued hamburgers on the grill, and we ate as if nobody had ever threatened to nominate Mom for Worst Mother of the Year.

I kept writing, clinging to my latest writer’s quote, which was from Epictetus, who Eileen the Know-It-All said was a Greek philosopher:

I started recording Mrs. Kinney’s odd facts about faraway places. She’d come up with the great idea of taking Gary
to different places in his mind each month. We’d settled on Romania for July because she knew a dragon story from there. Plus, she said Romanians used to believe it was dangerous to sleep with your mouth open because your mouse-shaped soul might escape. And tickling used to be outlawed in Romania. I was getting quite a collection. Nothing Walter Cronkite would have bothered with, but at least I was writing.

Then on Saturday, everything changed.

It was the hottest day yet, and the pool had been packed all afternoon. Sarah volunteered for the evening shift, but I was itching to get back to kitchen air-conditioning.

Even the fast bike ride home did nothing to cool me off. The house was quiet, except for the banging of pots and pans. I headed for the kitchen, eager to feel that cold breeze on my hot face.

Mom was washing strawberry pans from the garden. Her apron covered her navy pedal pushers and a sleeveless shirt that tied in front.

A bowl of fresh-picked berries sat beside the sink. I popped a couple into my mouth. “Hey, Mom. Don’t mind if I snarf a few, do you?”

Mom didn’t look up from her Brillo pad. “Why should I mind? Not that it would matter what I mind or don’t mind around here.” She was scrubbing the silver off her pans.

I took another handful of berries and moved over to the AC. I had to kneel on the booth seat and turn one of the vents down. The second that air hit my face, summer disappeared. My head froze. I’d waited all day for this.

A pan banged. Then another. Something was definitely going on.

“Um … Anything I can do, Mom?”

“I think you’ve done enough, thank you. And now, so has your father.”

“Dad? Did he do something? Did I?” I backed out of the booth, hoping to make a clean getaway.

Mom harrumphed, then muttered, “Lucky me—two writers in the family.”

The phone rang. When Mom made no move to get it, I did.

“Don’t answer that!” She kept picking stems from the berries, twisting her spoon a lot harder than she needed to.

The phone kept ringing. Ten, eleven, twelve times.

“I’m never answering that phone again,” Mom announced. “Never ever!”

I spied Eileen down the hall, slipping into her bedroom. She motioned for me to come.

I made my escape and tiptoed to Eileen’s room. Maybe she could clue me in on Mom’s weirdness.

My sister’s room was exactly what you’d expect. Powder-blue wallpaper with silver-white flowers covered all four walls. Lace curtains, blue-and-white flowery bedspread, white shelves with figurines and trinkets she’d picked up on vacations. All clothing was folded in her dresser or hanging in her closet, even though Mom’s inspection wasn’t until Monday.

“What’s up with Mom?” I asked, once safely inside. I started to sit on her bed, which was made, of course.

Eileen gasped like I’d just come from a round of mud
wrestling. Then she changed her mind. “That’s okay. Go ahead and sit down.” She plopped onto the bed next to me.

Midge jumped up and joined us. I scratched her ears and let her lick my nose.

I was in Eileen’s room, by invitation. She was letting me sit on her bed with Midge. Whatever was wrong, it had to be bad. “They’re getting a divorce.” I said it but didn’t really mean it. My parents were the last people who’d divorce. Still, Alicia’s parents got a divorce, and she was in my class. Her parents had played bridge with ours. So it wasn’t impossible.

“No,” Eileen said. “But there was some serious yelling going on a while ago. Dad left the house. Said he needed to check on the garden.”

“Ouch. What happened?”

Eileen reached under her pillow and brought out a copy of the
Kansas City Star
. “Butch came by an hour ago and gave me this. He said he didn’t want his parents to see it. But he thought I should.”

“What’s in it?” I could not imagine anything that would fit the description of something Eileen should see that Butch’s parents shouldn’t.

Eileen handed the paper to me. “There.” She poked at the third column, the letters to the editor section. There were three letters, one circled.

It was a poem: “The Casualties Were Light.” And below it was the byline: “By Frank R. Taylor, M.D.”

“Outtasight!” Dad had a byline in the
Kansas City Star
!

“Go on. Read it.” Eileen dropped back onto her pillow.

I read aloud.

The poem went on for five stanzas, with the two-line “chorus” repeated after each verse. I could hardly finish reading it. My throat went dry. I pictured the scenes in Vietnam and the scenes at home, where families got the news that their loved ones had been killed.

Dad’s poem made mine sound like a car commercial. I didn’t think I’d ever been prouder of my dad, and not just because it was such a well-written poem.

When I looked up, Eileen was lying on her back, her arm crooked over her face so I couldn’t see her eyes. I knew she wouldn’t feel the way I did about Dad’s poem. She cared what other people thought of Dad. She’d care what Butch thought, and he was the one who’d hidden the paper from his dad.

“Was Butch upset about the Vietnam stuff?” I asked.

She didn’t take her arm off her face. “Oh, I don’t know. He didn’t come right out and call Dad a Communist.”

“He better not!”

“He wouldn’t. He doesn’t care about politics. I was hoping
he’d ask me to the movies tonight. I thought that was why he stopped by.”

“I’m sorry.” I thought about
Dr. No
and Ray and wished again that he’d invited me along to see it. I wondered if he’d meant what he said about me coming to the drive-in with them next time.

I lay down on my back next to Eileen, my head on her second pillow. Midge curled between us, and her wagging tail smacked my cheek so I had to scoot over. “Remember how we used to go to movies when we were kids? Dad dropped us off every Saturday, and we wouldn’t know what was playing until we got there.”

“Usually a Ma and Pa Kettle film,” Eileen muttered.

I laughed. She was right. “Or Jerry Lewis. Or a Western. Why doesn’t Hamilton have its own picture show anymore?”

She stuck her arm in the air and waved. “Because bye-bye, shoe factory, I suppose. Or maybe one too many Ma and Pa Kettle adventures.” She paused. “I really wanted to see
West Side Story
, but Butch hates musicals.”

“I wanted to see
Dr. No
,” I complained. “But did anybody ask me?
No, Doctor
.”

Eileen laughed. We used to talk like this a lot. I didn’t know when that stopped. I missed it.

“I’ve been talking to Ray at the pool lately,” I ventured.

Eileen propped her head up on one elbow so she was looking right at me. “Tree! Ray Miller?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice going, Tree. He’s the cutest guy in your class, you know?”

“I’ve kind of noticed.”

“So what are you guys talking about?” she asked, like she was really interested—no teasing in her voice.

“Music mostly. School some. Movies today.”

“Ah. So he’s
Dr. No
?”

“Yes.”

She rolled back onto her back. “What is wrong with that entire sex?”

I was a little surprised to hear Eileen say the “s-e-x” word, even in this context. “You’re asking me?”

“Boys,” Eileen muttered. “Who needs them?”

“Exactly.”

In the background, I’d been hearing the phone ring a dozen times. Mom still wasn’t answering.

“Exactly!” Eileen sat up straight and punched her pillow. “Come on, Tree! We don’t need men. We’re going to the movies!”

“We are?” I couldn’t remember the last time we’d gone to the movies together.

“Absolutely! You and I are going to see
West Side Story
tonight.” She hopped off the bed and picked up her hairbrush. “Why not?” She took a seat at her dressing table, an item of furniture she chose when I chose a desk for my room, which was why Eileen did most of her studying at the kitchen table.

I was getting psyched, even though I didn’t know anything about
West Side Story
. “Cool. But aren’t you afraid somebody will see us out together, without dates on a Saturday night?”

“Nah.” Then just when I was starting to get an all-new
picture of my sister, she added, “A musical at the Cameron drive-in? Trust me. Nobody will see us.”

Still, it was neat going to the movies with my big sis. Definitely better than sticking around for the upcoming home show with Frank and Helen Taylor.

I loved drive-ins. Nobody yelled at you for talking, crunching popcorn too loud, or laughing in the wrong places.

Eileen held up a strand of hair and ran a comb from tip to scalp, teasing her poof back. “I’ll ask Dad for the car.”

I was getting psyched. “Buddy’s the perfect drive-in car.” We’d had our blue-and-white station wagon since the days when Dad drove us to the drive-in to see Disney cartoon movies.

“It’ll start getting dark in an hour,” Eileen said. “We should get going so we can get a good spot.”

“And we don’t want to miss previews.” I would have loved a whole night with nothing but previews. Previews were like promises. Glimpses of the future.

“Then scoot!” Eileen commanded, but in a good way. “I have to change.”

As I exited the queen’s room, I heard the front door open.

I hustled up the hallway just as Dad eased the front door
shut behind him. “Dad,” I whispered, in case he was still hiding out.

He was standing barely inside the door, like this wasn’t his house and he wasn’t sure he’d be welcome.

I crossed over to him. And without thinking about it, I hugged him.

We rarely hugged in our house. We loved each other plenty, and all that. It just felt funny to hug or kiss. My parents hadn’t hugged their parents—maybe the lean-forward-and-pat-arms kind of hug if they hadn’t seen each other for a while. My friends didn’t hug their parents, either.

But I hugged my dad as he stood in the doorway. And I whispered, “I think it’s a great poem, Dad. A really wonderful poem.”

At first, I was the sole hugger, hanging on by myself. Then slowly, I felt Dad’s arms wrap around me. “Thanks, Tree. I guess that makes two of us. But if I were you, I’d keep my opinion to myself.”

I let go and ran over to the window to get my writer’s notebook. I had to flip through pages to find the right one. “I have a quote for you.” I showed it to him. “I forgot to write down who said it.” I let Dad read it for himself:

Dad laughed. “Well, we’ve certainly nailed that one, haven’t we, Tree?”

Mom appeared from the kitchen in her apron. And her
scowl. “Nice you made it back, Frank. You missed a few phone calls. I stopped answering after an old woman, who neglected to give her name, suggested we move the family to Russia with the other Communists.”

Eileen came bounding up the hall. She looked good enough to go on a date with Butch. She’d pinned up part of her hair and left the rest in a flip, like Jackie Kennedy. She’d changed into pink pedal pushers and a sleeveless pink mohair top, with a pink scarf around her neck. Her pill-bag purse matched her white sandals. She’d put on pink lipstick and blue eye shadow. “Tree and I want to go to a movie.
West Side Story
is playing at the Cameron drive-in.” She casually tied a three-cornered scarf over her hair. “Can we borrow the car? We’ll come straight home.”

I caught Mom looking to Dad for the answer.

Dad grinned, and I was sure he was going to say yes.

“No,” he answered.

“No? Why not?” Eileen demanded.

“You can’t borrow the car because
I’m
driving all of us to the drive-in.” He walked over and untied Mom’s apron. “Come on. We’ll get hot dogs there. We could all use a night out.” The phone rang again. “Especially tonight.”

Mom took her apron from Dad’s fingers. She started folding it, and for a second, nobody said a word. I was afraid she was going to put the kibosh on the whole thing. Then she wadded up her apron and zinged it back into the kitchen. I heard it hit its target, the telephone. “Let’s blow this firetrap!” she shouted. “Last one to the car’s a rotten Commie!”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Dad pulled up to the drive-in ticket booth. He paid the carload fee and thanked the attendant, a wrinkled man whose fingers looked like rawhide sticks.

“Drive up front, Frank,” Mom said.

Dad weaved past sedans and VW bugs crammed with big families. One row looked like couples only. I couldn’t believe so many people had come to a musical.

“There!” Mom pointed to the second row, off to the right, a good place to see the screen but a long way from the snack bar.

Dad shut off the engine. He was almost too far from the speaker pole, where two clunky metal speakers hung—one for the front, one for the back. You needed the speakers if you wanted sound to go with the picture on the giant screen. Luckily, the cords stretched just far enough. Dad hung one speaker over his half-opened window and turned the volume knob.