The Summer of the Swans (3 page)

“It is too important how you look. Parents are always saying it’s not how you look that counts. I’ve heard that all my life. It doesn’t matter how you look. It doesn’t matter how you look. Huh! If you want to find out how much it matters, just let your hair get too long or put on too much eye makeup and listen to the screams.” She got up abruptly and said, “I think I’ll walk over and see the swans myself. ”

“Well, I have not finished with this conversation yet, young lady.”

Sara turned and looked at Aunt Willie, waited with her hands jammed into her back pockets.

“Oh, never mind,” Aunt Willie said, picking up her dish towel and shaking it. “I might as well hold a conversation with this towel as with you when you get that look on your face. Go on and see the swans.” She broke off. “Hey, Charlie, you want to go with Sara to see the swans?”

“He’ll get too tired,” Sara said.

“So walk slow.”

“I never get to do anything by myself I have to take him everywhere. I have him all day and Wanda all night. In all this whole house I have one drawer to myself.
One drawer.”

“Get up, Charlie. Sara’s going to take you to see the swans.”

Sara looked down into his eyes and said, “Oh, come on,” and drew him to his feet.

“Wait, there’s some bread from supper.” Aunt Willie ran into the house and came back with four rolls. “Take them. Here. Let Charlie feed the swans.”

“Well, come on, Charlie, or it’s going to be dark before we get there.”

“Don’t you rush him along, hear me, Sara?”

“I won’t.”

Holding Sara’s hand, Charlie went slowly down the walk. He hesitated at the gate and then moved with her onto the sidewalk. As they walked down the hill, his feet made a continuous scratching sound on the concrete.

W
hen they were out of earshot Sara said, “Aunt Willie thinks she knows everything. I get so sick of hearing how I am exactly like Wanda when Wanda is beautiful. I think she’s just beautiful. If I could look like anyone in the world, I would want to look like her.” She kicked at some high grass by the sidewalk. “And it does too matter how you look, I can tell you that.” She walked ahead angrily for a few steps, then waited for Charlie and took his hand again.

“I think how you look is the most important thing in the world. If you
look
cute, you
are
cute; if you
look
smart, you
are
smart, and if you don’t look like anything, then you aren’t anything.

“I wrote a theme on that one time in school, about looks being the most important thing in the world, and I got a D—a
D!
Which is a terrible grade.

“After class the teacher called me up and told me the same old business about looks not being important, and how some of the ugliest people in the world were the smartest and kindest and cleverest.”

They walked past the Tennents’ house just as someone inside turned on the television, and they heard Eddie Albert singing, “Greeeeeeen acres is—” before it was turned down. Charlie paused a moment, recognizing the beginning of one of his favorite programs, looked up at Sara, and waited.

“Come on,” Sara said. “And then there was this girl in my English class named Thelma Louise and she wrote a paper entitled ‘Making People Happy’ and she got an A. An A! Which is as good as you can get. It was sickening. Thelma Louise is a beautiful girl with blond hair and naturally curly eyelashes, so what does she know? Anyway, one time Hazel went over to Thelma Louise’s, and she said the rug was worn thin in front of the mirror in Thelma Louise’s room because Thelma Louise stood there all the time watching herself.”

She sighed and continued to walk. Most of the houses were set close together as if huddled for safety, and on either side of the houses the West Virginia hills rose, black now in the early evening shadows. The hills were as they had been for hundreds of years, rugged forest land, except that strip mining had begun on the hills to the north, and the trees and earth had been hacked away, leaving unnatural cliffs of pale washed earth.

Sara paused. They were now in front of Mary Weicek’s house and she said, “Stop a minute. I’ve got to speak to Mary.” She could hear Mary’s record player, and she longed to be up in Mary’s room, leaning back against the pink dotted bedspread listening to Mary’s endless collection of records. “Mary!” she called. “You want to walk to the pond with me and Charlie and see the swans?”

Mary came to the window. “Wait, I’m coming out.”

Sara waited on the sidewalk until Mary came out into the yard. “I can’t go because my cousin’s here and she’s going to cut my hair,” Mary said, “but did you get your dress yesterday?”

“No.”

“Why not? I thought your aunt said you could.”

“She did, but when we got in the store and she saw how much it cost she said it was foolish to pay so much for a dress when she could make me one just like it.”

“Disappointment.”

“Yes, because unfortunately she can’t make one just like it, she can only make one
kind
of like it. You remember how the stripes came together diagonally in the front of that dress? Well, she already has mine cut out and I can see that not one stripe meets.”

“Oh, Sara.”

“I could see when she was cutting it that the stripes weren’t going to meet and I kept saying, ‘It’s not right, Aunt Willie, the stripes aren’t going to meet,’ and all the while I’m screaming, the scissors are flashing and she is muttering, ‘The stripes will meet, the stripes will meet,’ and then she holds it up in great triumph and not one stripe meets.”

“That’s awful, because I remember thinking when you showed me the dress that it was the way the stripes met that looked so good.”

“I am aware of that. It now makes me look like one half of my body is about two inches lower than the other half.”

“Listen, come on in and watch my cousin cut my hair, can you?”

“I better not. I promised Aunt Willie I’d take Charlie to see the swans.”

“Well, just come in and see how she’s going to cut it. She has a whole book of hair styles.”

“Oh, all right, for a minute. Charlie, you sit down right there.” She pointed to the steps. “Right there now and don’t move, hear me? Don’t move off that step. Don’t even stand up.” Then she went in the house with Mary, saying, “I really can’t stay but a minute because I’ve got to take Charlie down to see the swans and then I’ve got to get home in time to dye my tennis shoes—”

“Which ones?”

“These, these awful orange things. They make me look like Donald Duck or something.”

C
harlie sat in the sudden stillness, hunched over his knees, on the bottom step. The whole world seemed to have been turned off when Sara went into the Weiceks’ house, and he did not move for a long time. The only sound was the ticking of his watch.

The watch was a great pleasure to him. He had no knowledge of hours or minutes, but he liked to listen to it and to watch the small red hand moving around the dial, counting off the seconds, and it was he who remembered every morning after breakfast to have Aunt Willie wind it for him. Now he rested his arm across his legs and looked at the watch.

He had a lonely feeling. He got this whenever he was by himself in a strange place, and he turned quickly when he heard the screen door open to see if it was Sara. When he saw Mrs. Weicek and another woman he turned back and looked at his watch. As he bent over, a pale half circle of flesh showed between the back of his shirt and his pants.

“Who’s the little boy, Allie?”

Mrs. Weicek said, “That’s Sara’s brother, Charlie. You remember me telling you about him. He’s the one that can’t talk. Hasn’t spoken a word since he was three years old.”

“Doesn’t talk at all?”

“If he does, no one’s ever heard him, not since his illness. He can understand what you say to him, and he goes to school, and they say he can write the alphabet, but he can’t talk.”

Charlie did not hear them. He put his ear against his watch and listened to the sound. There was something about the rhythmic ticking that never failed to soothe him. The watch was a magic charm whose tiny noise and movements could block out the whole clamoring world.

Mrs. Weicek said, “Ask him what time it is, Ernestine. He is so proud of that watch. Everyone always asks him what time it is.” Then without waiting, she herself said, “What time is it, Charlie? What time is it?”

He turned and obediently held out the arm with the watch on it.

“My goodness, it’s after eight o’clock,” Mrs. Weicek said. “Thank you, Charlie. Charlie keeps everyone informed of the time. We just couldn’t get along without him.”

The two women sat in the rocking chairs on the porch, moving slowly back and forth. The noise of the chairs and the creaking floor boards made Charlie forget the watch for a moment. He got slowly to his feet and stood looking up the street.

“Sit down, Charlie, and wait for Sara,” Mrs. Weicek said.

Without looking at her, he began to walk toward the street.

“Charlie, Sara wants you to wait for her.”

“Maybe he doesn’t hear you, Allie.”

“He hears me all right. Charlie, wait for Sara. Wait now.” Then she called, “Sara, your brother’s leaving.”

Sara looked out the upstairs window and said, “All right, Charlie, I’m coming. Will you wait for a minute? Mary, I’ve got to go.”

She ran out of the house and caught Charlie by the arm. “What are you going home for? Don’t you want to see the swans?”

He stood without looking at her.

“Honestly, I leave you alone for one second and off you go. Now come on.” She tugged his arm impatiently.

As they started down the hill together she waved to Mary, who was at the window, and said to Charlie, “I hope the swans are worth all this trouble I’m going to.”

“We’ll probably get there and they’ll be gone,” she added. They walked in silence. Then Sara said, “Here’s where we cut across the field.” She waited while he stepped carefully over the narrow ditch, and then the two of them walked across the field side by side, Sara kicking her feet restlessly in the deep grass.

T
here was something painfully beautiful about the swans. The whiteness, the elegance of them on this dark lake, the incredible ease of their movements made Sara catch her breath as she and Charlie rounded the dump of pines.

“There they are, Charlie.”

She could tell the exact moment he saw them because his hand tightened; he really held her hand for the first time since they had left Mary’s. Then he stopped.

“There are the swans.”

The six swans seemed motionless on the water, their necks all arched at the same angle, so that it seemed there was only one swan mirrored five times.

“There are the swans,” she said again. She felt she would like to stand there pointing out the swans to Charlie for the rest of the summer. She watched as they drifted slowly across the water.

“Hey, Sara!”

She looked across the lake and saw Wanda and Frank, who had come by the road. “Sara, listen, tell Aunt Willie that Frank and I are going over to his sister’s to see her new baby.”

“All right.”

“I’ll be home at eleven.”

She watched as Wanda and Frank got back on the motor scooter. At the roar of the scooter, the startled swans changed direction and moved toward Sara. She and Charlie walked closer to the lake.

“The swans are coming over here, Charlie. They see you, I believe.”

They watched in silence for a moment as the sound of the scooter faded. Then Sara sat down on the grass, crossed her legs yoga style, and picked out a stick which was wedged inside one of the orange tennis shoes.

“Sit down, Charlie. Don’t just stand there.”

Awkwardly, with his legs angled out in front of him, he sat on the grass. Sara pulled off a piece of a roll and tossed it to the swans. “Now they’ll come over here,” she said. “They love bread.”

She paused, put a piece of roll into her own mouth, and sat chewing for a moment.

“I saw the swans when they flew here, did you know that, Charlie? I was out on our porch last Friday and I looked up, and they were coming over the house and they looked so funny, like frying pans with their necks stretched out.” She handed him a roll. “Here. Give the swans something to eat. Look, watch me. Like that.”

She watched him, then said, “No, Charlie, small pieces, because swans get things caught in their throats easily. No, that’s
too
little. That’s just a crumb. Like
that.”

She watched while he threw the bread into the pond, then said, “You know where the swans live most of the time? At the university, which is a big school, and right in the middle of this university is a lake and that’s where the swans live. Only sometimes, for no reason, the swans decide to fly away, and off they go to another pond or another lake. This one isn’t half as pretty as the lake at the university, but here they are.”

She handed Charlie another roll. “Anyway, that’s what Wanda thinks, because the swans at the university are gone.”

Charlie turned, motioned that he wanted another roll for the swans, and she gave him the last one. He threw it into the water in four large pieces and put out his hand for another.

“No more. That’s all.” She showed him her empty hands.

One of the swans dived under the water and rose to shake its feathers. Then it moved across the water. Slowly the other swans followed, dipping their long necks far into the water to catch any remaining pieces of bread.

Sara leaned forward and put her hands on Charlie’s shoulders. His body felt soft, as if the muscles had never been used. “The swans are exactly alike,” she said. “Exactly. No one can tell them apart. ”

She began to rub Charlie’s back slowly, carefully. Then she stopped abruptly and clapped him on the shoulders. “Well, let’s go home.”