Out of the Box(6)

Unless she’s slipped into her Professional Woman mode, the confident, cheerful version reserved for casual friends, marketing clients and people who are more upset than she is.

That must be it, I think. Mom assumes Jeanette is still grieving and heartbroken. Mom is protecting her. She has no idea that my aunt’s as spontaneous and goofy as ever. She doesn’t know that being sad is part of Jeanette’s life right now, but it isn’t running her whole life.

I hear the phone clatter back onto its base in the kitchen, and I jump out of bed, moving around noisily and humming one of the jazz tunes Sarah played for me. I try not to think of what’s probably happening at home right now. Mom’s Professional Woman persona never lasts long when she’s at home, and Dad will be the only one around to talk her through her tears this time. I wonder if they’ll regret letting me stay here for the entire summer, but I’m glad they think Jeanette needs me more than they do.

I pull open the bedroom door and step into the sunny yellow kitchen. I smell pancakes burning. The table is already set. An orange bowl of dusky raspberries sits at the center, next to a Mason jar of yellow roses.

“Good morning,” Jeanette says, waving her pancake flipper at me as smoke drifts up from the frying pan. “Sleep well?”

I nod and stretch. “Have you been up long?”

“Oh, a few hours,” she says, “puttering around.”

I hold my breath. If she mentions my mother’s call, should I say that I overheard it? Would that embarrass her, or would she expect it, since the phone is so close to my bedroom?

She doesn’t bring it up. Maybe she has no idea that, at this very minute, my father is hugging Mom, reassuring her that Jeanette is going through a hard time, telling her she shouldn’t take things so personally.

“Did you see the empty shelf in your bedroom?” Jeanette asks, flipping a blackened pancake onto a stack of slightly more edible-looking ones.

“The shelf in the bookcase?”

She nods. “I cleared it out for library books. I thought we could go this afternoon and get you a card.”

“That,” I say, “is the best news I’ve heard all day.” I never went to the library when I was here before. My time was all about doing things, rather than reading. That was always okay for a few days, but I’m glad it won’t be like that all summer.

I’ve loved books for as long as I can remember. Mom used to spend hours reading to me. I imagined myself into each story, and we talked about our favorite characters the way some people talk about their friends and relatives. On Saturdays, as a special treat, she’d make baked custard for me because that’s what Winnie the Pooh ate.

These days I read whenever I can, and summertime is the only time of year when my life isn’t jammed full of school, French lessons, self-defense classes, violin practice and homework. I can spend entire days with my nose in a book—escaping from Afghanistan, living on the streets of Ethiopia or solving mysteries in Halifax. I leave the rest of the world behind.

“Best news all day, eh?” Jeanette asks. “Well, you have only been up for a few minutes.”

I flash back to the phone conversation. A person can hear way too much in a few minutes, I think. I focus on smiling instead of letting my mind wander back home.





FOUR


Jeanette laughs when she joins Sarah and me in the teen section of the library. “We can come back again in a few days, you know,” she says.

I’ve completely taken over the nearest table, stacking my selections in neat piles: books about accordions, novels, and a bunch of CDs, mostly tango.

“Don’t forget you have to carry all those home in your backpack,” Sarah says, and I freeze. How could I forget about the car thing? I’m so used to taking out twenty books at a time that I totally forgot we walked here. At home, nothing is within walking distance, and there aren’t many sidewalks to walk on anyway.

Jeanette lives a ten-minute walk from downtown Victoria, where the library is. She has a car, but she doesn’t believe in using it unless she absolutely has to. She walks everywhere or rides her bike or takes the bus. (She even got me a bicycle. We agreed that my mother—who calls cycling a head injury waiting to happen—doesn’t have to know.) Normally I don’t mind. I like going slow enough to notice things. Today, the three of us meandered downtown, sniffing big white peonies, waving to a toddler who peered at us from the front window of a house, and stopping to listen to a kid play the violin across from the ivy-covered Empress Hotel. He was playing one of the classical pieces that my teacher asked me to learn last year. Sarah said she liked it. I said I’d take tango any day.