As Simple as It Seems (11 page)

My grandpa Colty died on the same day I was born, and I don't believe that was an accident. I think he knew I was going to need all the help I could get navigating what lay ahead for me. Whether or not he gave me his soul is something I may never know for sure, but that summer between fifth and sixth grade when I was trying to find myself, it gave me great comfort to know that either way, he still would have been my grandfather.

 

Because of the rain, the Fourth of July fireworks display was postponed until the following Saturday. That morning Pooch showed up on our doorstep bright and early.

“Good morning, Robert,” my mother said when she
opened the door to let him in. “You're just in time for pancakes.”

Pooch had been coming over to our house every day since he'd gotten out of the hospital. My mother absolutely adored him—except for his nickname. She didn't like the story about how he had gotten it—she thought it was mean—so she refused to call him Pooch, insisting instead on Robert.

“Do you want real maple syrup, or do you prefer the store-bought kind, Robert?” my mother called from the kitchen.

“Store-bought, please!” he called back.

“Did you remember to take your pill?” I asked him as we walked to the kitchen together.

Pooch grinned.

“You guys sure are alike,” he said. “Like two peas in a pod.”

My mother looked over at me and we both smiled. There were plenty of things she and I didn't see eye to eye on, but I was beginning to understand that in all the ways that really mattered, we were more alike than I had ever realized.

“Take your medicine,” I told Pooch.

“Aye aye, Captain,” he said.

Pooch pulled his allergy medicine out of his pocket, flipped the cap off the plastic bottle, and popped a pill into his mouth. If he forgot to take his medicine before he came over to our house, he would spend the whole time sneezing. Our house wasn't dusty, but it was full of all kinds of other things that Pooch was allergic to, including the little bunny with the missing ears.

“Where is she?” he asked, looking around.

“Where do you think?” I said, pointing to the corner.

Jack was lying curled up on the rug, with the bunny sleeping between his paws. They had become fast friends and were never far from each other. Pooch bent down and patted Jack on the head, then gently picked up the bunny.

“Who's the cutest little thing in the whole wide world?” he cooed, rubbing the soft brown fur against his cheek.

“Turn it down a notch, Pooch,” I told him. “Otherwise, I'm warning you, I'm gonna be sick.”

“Well she
is
the cutest thing,” he said, “Look at her. Who could resist that face?”

“I feel sorry for her,” I said. “We should never have let you pick out her name. She's
brown
, in case you haven't noticed.”

“So what,” he said, putting the bunny back down on the rug, “Tofu's a perfect name for a bunny. And you never know—she might turn white later on when she gets older.”

“You don't know much about animals, do you?” I said.

 

After breakfast, Pooch and I went out in the yard.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“We could pick blackberries,” he said. “Your mom said if we got enough, she'd make a pie. Your mom sure is nice.”

I had been worried at first, what Pooch would make of my mother, she was so different from his mom. But they hit it off right away. In fact sometimes it seemed like he came over as much to see my mother as to see me. She thought he was “cute as a button” and he didn't mind it one bit that she liked to feed him. I don't think Shari minded that either. I was glad that Pooch and my mom got along, and I was glad she had someone else to fuss over other than me, but I have to admit, every now and then I did feel a little jealous. It's a wonderful thing, knowing that you're somebody's whole world, and I had no intention of sharing that place in my mother's heart, even with Pooch.

It was a perfect day for berry picking, sunny but not too hot.

“There's a bucket in the garage,” I said to Pooch. “Come on.”

The blackberries were plentiful and we laughed and joked as we moved from bush to bush working together to fill the silver bucket to the top.

“Did you know that you can die from having the hiccups for too long?” Pooch told me, tossing a berry up in the air and trying to catch it in his mouth. “I read it in a book.”

“Did you know that you can die from reading too many books?” I said.

Pooch looked at me.

“Are you grumpy today?” he asked.

“I'm grumpy every day,” I said, pushing up my glasses with a knuckle. “In case you haven't noticed,”

“I've noticed,” said Pooch, “but I don't mind. It's part of who you are.”

“Yeah,” I said. “At least for now.”

It took us about forty-five minutes to fill the bucket with berries. We were so busy picking and talking, neither of us realized how far we'd come until Pooch pointed through the trees at a patch of sparkling green. Bonners Lake. We hadn't been back, either one of us,
since the incident in the boat.

“Do you want to go take a look?” I asked him.

“Do you?”

 

The boat was right where we'd left it, the ground around it covered with footprints that told the whole story. In among the big waffle-soled boot prints of the men who'd come to carry Pooch out of the woods, the tracks of my small bare feet were still visible, Jack's paw prints right beside them.

“Do you care if we don't ever come back here again?” I asked Pooch. “It kind of creeps me out. You could have died, you know.”

“I know.”

“I'm glad you didn't die, Pooch.”

“I never told you this,” said Pooch, “but when I found out that you weren't really a ghost, even though I was mad, I was also really happy. I'm glad you didn't die either.”

As we stood looking at the boat, it suddenly dawned on me that the shape of it reminded me of something.

“What would you think about
The Peapod
as a name?” I asked Pooch.

“
The Peapod
?”

He tilted his head to one side, considering. “Now
that you mention it, I guess it does kind of look like one. It's even got a curly rope stem at the tip. Yeah,
The Peapod
would be a good name! If only we had some paint.”

“We do,” I said.

Crouching down beside the bucket, I picked out a handful of the biggest, juiciest blackberries I could find, and holding them between my fingers, I used the purple juice to stain the letters onto the side of the boat.

“What do you think?” I asked Pooch when I was finished.

“Sweet,” he said.

 

That night, after dark, Pooch and I lay next to each other on the blue blanket and watched the fireworks bursting overhead. At the end of the month when he left to go spend time with his father, it broke my heart to see him go. I got a postcard from him about a week later. It was from Fire Island and it had a picture of a boat on it. He'd scratched off the name on the stern and written
SPINACH
in its place. Several days later I got another postcard in the mail, this one from Annie. She was full of complaints about the awful food at camp and the bratty kids in her cabin, and how horrible and boring her whole summer had turned out to be. At the
bottom of the card she had run out of space, so she'd turned it and written the end of her message going up the side. “I miss you, Verbie,” it said. “Love, Annie.”

That August was endlessly rainy, and the mosquitoes were so bad I spent a lot of time cooped up inside the house. My mother and I tangled plenty, but no matter how heated it got, I didn't worry anymore. I knew she wasn't going anywhere, and neither was I.

Sixth grade turned out to be a good year for me. For one thing, I grew five inches. Even better, Heather Merwin got herself a new best friend and things between Annie and me went back to normal. The lilacs bloomed in May the way they were supposed to, and on the last day of school, while Annie sat on the porch steps waiting, my mother took a picture of me standing in front of her roses with a big smile on my face. Years later I can look at that picture and still remember the way I felt as if it were only yesterday. Life is complicated sometimes to be sure, but there are other times, like that day, standing on the near edge of a new July, when life is just as sweet, and good, and simple as it seems.

Fetal alcohol syndrome, or FAS, is the name given to a group of physical and mental birth defects that are caused by drinking alcohol during pregnancy. Once the damage is done, it cannot be undone, but FAS is the only birth defect that can be completely prevented—by not drinking alcohol during pregnancy.

 

(Author's Note: The chapter headings are all names of actual polkas and waltzes that could have been played by the Clydesdale Band.)

SARAH WEEKS
is the critically acclaimed author of many novels and picture books, including
SO B. IT
, which was named to numerous state award lists as well as to the ALA's Notable Children's Book list and YALSA's Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults list. She is one of the founding members of ART—Authors Readers Theater—a troupe that travels across the country performing at conferences of librarians and teachers. You can visit her online at www.sarahweeks.com.

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