A Summer to Die (7 page)

"Meg," he said suddenly, gulping his own tea. "I'll make a deal with you!"

I laughed. People say that to me at school, and it means that they want to copy my algebra homework, and in return I get the Hostess Twinkie from their lunch.

"Remember I told you that I had bought a camera in Germany?"

I nodded.

"It's a fine camera," Will said. "The best made, and of course something like that doesn't diminish with age. I don't know why I haven't used it in so long, except that I lost my enthusiasm for a lot of things when Margaret died. And that," he said
gruffly, "is the last thing she would have wanted.

"But I'm going to get it out of the attic. The camera, and four lenses, and a set of filters that go with it. I want you to use it."

The hot fudge started up again. My own camera has just one lens, which can't be removed. I've read about using other kinds of lenses and filters, but I've never had a chance to try.

"I don't know what to say," I told him, and it was true. "What could I possibly do in return?"

"Oh, don't worry about
that!
" laughed Will. "I said I'd make a deal with you. I'm not going to let you off easily, either. In return, I want you to teach me to use the darkroom. Let me borrow your little camera while you're using mine, and we'll set up a regular schedule for lessons. I'll warn you that it's been a long time since I've undertaken to learn anything new. But my eyesight is good, and my hands are steady, still."

"But, Will," I wailed. "I'm only thirteen years old! I've never taught anybody anything!"

Will looked at me very sternly. "My dear Meg," he said, "Mozart wrote his first composition when he was five. Age is a meaningless commodity in most instances. Don't underrate yourself. Now is it a deal?"

I sat there for a moment, looking at my empty mug. Then I shook his hand. He was right; his
hands were firm and strong and steady. "It's a deal, Will," I said.

I remembered the Easter egg. In a way it seemed almost silly, now, but I brought out the little box and gave it to him. He held the egg up gravely and examined the design; his eyes lit up with recognition.

"
Myristica fragrant,
" he pronounced solemnly. "Nutmeg. Am I right?"

I grinned at him and nodded. "I don't know about the mistica, or whatever you said, but it's nutmeg. You're right."

He put the egg into a shallow pewter bowl, and took it to the living room. After he had put the bowl on a small pine table by the window, both of us stood in the room and looked at it. The blue of the egg was the same muted blue as the oriental rug; the rust and green shades seemed to reflect the colors of the old wood and the hanging, well-tended plants. It was perfect there; Will didn't even have to say so. We just looked at it together as the April sunlight from the window fell onto the bowl and the fragile oval shell, outlined their shadows on the polished table, and then brightened a rectangle on the pattern of the carpet.

"Now, scoot," said Will. "I have to deal with my radiator."

I was just at the end of his muddy driveway, and his head was back under the hood of the truck, when I remembered. I turned and called to him.

"Will? I forgot to ask you about the big house!"

He brought his head out and groaned. "And I forgot to tell you my surprise!"

So I went back for a minute. I sat on the front steps and scratched Tip beside his ear, while Will pulled the radiator hoses off—"rotten old things," he said to them. "Why do you do this to me every spring?"—and told me about the house. My question, it turned out, was the same as his surprise.

"I was right here last month," he said, "with my head under the hood, as usual. The battery then, of course. And a car drove up with a young couple in it. They asked if I knew anything about that house.

"In the past year, at least ten people have asked me about the house, but they've always been the wrong people. Don't ask me how I know that. It's just something I can feel. And when this young couple—Ben and Maria, their names are—got out of their car, I could tell they were the right ones.

"Ben helped me clean the leads to the battery, and Maria went in the kitchen and made tea for the three of us. By the time Ben and I had washed our hands and finished our tea, I had rented the house to them. When you know it's the right people, it's as easy as that.

"They don't have much money. He's a student
still, at Harvard, and he said he was looking for a quiet place for the summer, to write his thesis."

I groaned. Next thing you knew, this whole valley would be noisy from the sound of typewriters. Will laughed; he'd had the same thought.

"But in return for the summer in the house, they're going to fix the place up. He's been working weekends ever since I told them they could have the house. The roof needs work; the wiring needs work; the plumbing needs work. Well, you know what it's like when you get old with no one to take care of you!"

We laughed together. I could tell already that I would like Ben and Maria, because Will did.

"And Maria's going to put in a garden when the ground thaws," he continued. "They'll be moving in officially quite soon, I think. And I've told them about you. They're looking forward to having you stop in, Meg."

Then Will looked a little sheepish, the first time I'd ever seen him look that way. "But I forgot to ask them something," he confessed.

"What?"

He looked in several other directions before he answered. He was embarrassed. Finally he explained, "I forgot to ask them if they're married."

I burst out laughing. "Oh, Will," I said, "do you think it matters?"

He looked as if it hadn't occurred to him that it might not matter. "Well," he said finally, "I can tell you that it would have mattered to
Margaret.
But, well, I guess maybe you're right, Meg. I guess it doesn't really matter to me."

Then he wiped his hands on his rag and grinned. "It might matter to their child, though. From the looks of it, there's going to be a baby coming this summer."

A baby. That was a strange thing to think about. I'm not overly fond of babies. Molly adores them. She says she's going to have at least six someday herself, even though I keep telling her that's environmentally absurd.

I told Molly about it on the phone that night, and she was thrilled at the thought of having a baby in the house across the field. Her voice sounded good, stronger than it has since she got sick. I've talked to her on the phone a lot, and sometimes she's sounded tired and depressed. But now she's feeling well again, and she's looking forward to coming home.

"It's a drag, being here," she said. "Even though there are some good-looking doctors."

That made me laugh. I knew she was feeling normal again if she was noticing the doctors.

I told her how much Will liked his photographs, and that he was going to let me use his German camera.

"Hey, Meg?" she asked. "Do me a favor?"

"Sure." Usually I wouldn't say "sure" without knowing what the favor was; but what the heck, she'd been pretty sick.

"Would you take my picture when I get home? I want a really good one, to give Tierney for his birthday this summer."

"Molly, I'll make you look like a movie star," I told her, and she giggled before she hung up.

Will Banks is learning to use the darkroom, and he's fantastic. Ben and Maria have moved into the house, and they're terrific. Molly is home, and she's being thoroughly unbearable.

Well, as they say, two out of three isn't bad.

I suppose you can't really blame Molly for being a pain. She was awfully sick; no one knows that better than I do. I don't think the sight of her lying there in all that blood will ever go out of my mind.

But apparently she got used to being the center of 74
attention in the hospital. Who wouldn't, with all those specialists around? Still, here she is at home, and supposedly well—or why would they have discharged her from the hospital?—and she acts as if everyone should still be at her beck and call. And my parents put up with it; that's the amazing thing.

"Could I have a tuna fish sandwich?" asked Molly at lunchtime, the day after she came home. She was lying on the couch in the kitchen, in a pose like Playmate of the Month, except that she was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

"Do you want lettuce?" my mother asked her, scurrying to get the bread and mayonnaise. For pete's sake. Do you want lettuce. Two months ago she would have said, "Make it yourself, madam." That's what she would
still
say, to me.

And after all that, Molly didn't even eat the sandwich. She came to the table, ate two bites, and then drifted back to the couch and said she wasn't hungry after all.

"Are you sure you're feeling all right, dear?" asked Mom.

"Quit bugging me, will you?" said Molly, and she stormed off to our room, slammed the door (which fell open again; Molly will never learn that the door to our room is totally useless in a tantrum) and took a nap for the rest of the afternoon.

Molly never used to be like that.
I
used to be like that, sometimes, and I hated myself when I was. Now Molly is that way, and I find myself hating her, or at least hating what has happened to her to make her different.

My parents don't say a word. That's different, too. In the past, when one of us was grouchy, my mother always said and did things that were both understanding and funny, so that we would start to laugh and whatever was making us irritable would just disappear in a comfortable way. Or Dad would be very stern. He says he doesn't have time to waste on rudeness. "Shape up," he would say. And we would shape up, because he didn't leave any choice.

But now Mom doesn't chuckle and tease when Molly is awful. Dad doesn't lay down the law. Instead, Mom gets worried and confused, which makes things worse. Dad gets tense and silent and goes off to his study without saying anything. It's as if an upsetting stranger has moved in with us, and no one knows what to do about it.

Part of why Molly is being so obnoxious, I think, is because she doesn't look very good, and it was always so important to Molly to look pretty. But she lost weight while she was in the hospital (because the food was so dreadful, she says), so that now her face is thinner than it used to be. And more pale. The paleness, I guess, is because she had to have the
blood transfusions, and it probably takes the red blood cells a while to build up again.

Worst of all, for Molly, her hair is falling out. That's because of the pills she has to take, my parents said. One of the side effects is that your hair falls out! I told her that there might be medicines with
worse
side effects, like making your nose fall off, but no one thought that was very funny. My mother told her that when she is able to stop taking the medicine, after a while, her hair will grow back thicker and curlier than it was before, but when Mom said that, Molly just said, "Great," very sarcastically and kept staring at her comb full of blond strands. Then Mom said that if it got worse, they would buy her a wig, and Molly said, "Oh,
gross!
" and stomped off to our bedroom.

So things are kind of difficult at our house now. Molly can't go back to school until she gains a little weight and gets her color back. She says she won't go back to school
anyway
if her hair keeps falling out. Mom and Dad don't say much about school. They're depressed about the whole thing, I can tell.

It will just take time. If we're all patient and wait, everything will be the same as it used to be, I know.

Will Banks is very kind to Molly. He comes to the house three evenings a week to work in the darkroom, and he always brings something for her: a library book to read, or a candy bar, some little thing like that. One night he brought a handful of pussy willows that he had found behind his house: the first ones of spring, and Molly was thrilled. It was the first time I'd seen her really happy about something for a long time.

"Oh, Will," she said softly, "they're beautiful." She held them against her cheek and rubbed the softness like a kitten. We were sitting in the kitchen, and I took a small vase and ran some water into it.

"No water, Meg," said Will. "If you put pussy willows in water, they'll blossom and then die. Just put them in the vase alone, and they'll stay beautiful forever."

There's so much I don't know. I gave Molly the vase, without water, and she arranged the pussy willows in it; she took them up to our room and put them on the table beside her bed. That night, after we were in bed and Molly was already asleep, I looked over, and the moonlight was across the table and across Molly; behind her, on the wall, was the shadow of pussy willows.

It's not surprising that Will knows so much about so many things, because he has an incredible memory. When we began working together in the darkroom, I showed him, first, the basic procedures for developing film. I only showed him once. Then
he did it himself, developing a toll that he had shot of his truck and his dog, using his own camera to make sure it was working properly before he gave it to me. He remembered everything: the temperatures, the proportions of chemicals, the timing right down to the second. His negatives were perfect. The pictures weren't great, because, as he said, he'd been "just fooling around, wanting to get the feel of the camera again," but they were technically perfect, developed exactly right.