Summer of the Gypsy Moths (9 page)

W
e ran out of food that week. On Tuesday, I looked into the refrigerator and found it was empty—really, truly empty. The coffee cake was in the freezer, and it was going to stay there. There were still a few things in the cupboard, but they were the kinds of things people picked up on the spur of the moment and then later looked at and wondered what the heck they'd been thinking. Anchovy paste. Dried mushrooms. A jar of capers, which looked and tasted like little sour olives. Just looking in those cupboards made my stomach twist over to gnaw on itself.

I carried the rest of the hurricane food up from the
cellar, except for the Crisco—what would anyone want with Crisco, anyway? My first instinct was to ration it out, figure out how much of what things we should eat each day and explain it to Angel. But I remembered Angel snapping at me about my rules, and suddenly, I was sick of them too.

I picked a lettuce and a handful of pea pods from the garden, baked the tiny ham with both cans of baked beans, and made the cornbread mix into muffins. Angel pushed the green stuff off her plate, but she ate everything else. We emptied our plates and filled them again. When we were finished, I gave Angel the bad news.

“What do you mean ‘out of food'?” she asked.

“I mean the leftovers here will feed us tomorrow. There's still one can of tomato soup. There's a stick of butter in the freezer. Oh, some maple syrup. And that's all.”

“So now what?”

“We go to the store.”

Angel's face broke into a hopeful smile. I followed her gaze to Louise's car keys hanging by the door.

“No,” I said firmly. “We walk.”

Angel gaped at me. “It's got to be ten miles away!”

“Maybe five,” I said. “And five back, carrying groceries. But we have to do it.”

Angel poked around in her pocket and fished out a Dum Dum. She got up, laid the lollipop on the cutting
board, and sawed it in half. She gave me the half with the stick. “Now we're out of food,” she said.

The next day, we emptied Louise's bingo money out of her Earl Grey tea tin and left. As we stepped outside, the sunlight actually seemed to flare, as if someone had clicked the brightness dial up a notch. It made me wish I was wearing a ski mask.

“Act normal,” Angel said, so I figured she was feeling overexposed, too.

We set out, sweating from almost the first step. Angel wasn't in the mood for talking, but every once in a while, she'd try out a grocery list.

“Lasagna. With garlic bread. And I want some cookies.”

“We'd be lucky to get one meal's worth out of eleven dollars.”

“And seventy cents.”

“Huh? Oh, fine…eleven dollars and seventy cents. It's not much, Angel. With that little money, you have to stick with the basics.”

“How come you know this stuff, anyway?”

“I just do.” Because if I hadn't figured out how to stretch grocery money, my mother and I would have starved.

“How about hot dogs and chips? Those have to be cheap.”

“Better,” I said. “Maybe three meals.”

She pulled ahead of me and growled over her shoulder. Like it was my fault how much food cost.

“Sorry, Angel. Potatoes, rice, oatmeal. Eggs.”

“I don't eat eggs,” Angel snapped.

“Fine. Beans are cheap protein, too.”

Angel turned back to stare at me. “What are you, fifty?”

I hung my head. “I know.”

We trudged on. Sweat plastered my hair to the back of my neck, darkened my T-shirt, stung my eyes. Finally, after what seemed like hours, Angel stopped and pointed.

Civilization. A post office, a nail place, and a little gift shop together in a cluster, and just beyond that…Stop & Shop.

“Food!” Angel started to trot. She turned back when I didn't follow. “Come on!”

A gray car was idling at the entrance to the post office. It was plain as a stone, but I couldn't tear my eyes from it. Its directional blinked steadily, like a red beating heart. It made me think of Louise, of her heart that had stopped beating, but that wasn't what upset me.

“Come
on
. We're almost there,” Angel called.

“That car.”

“What about it?”

“It's waiting for us.”

“You're paranoid.”

But just then, the woman driver ducked into her rear-view to wave at us.

“Oh, crap, oh, crap,” Angel muttered.

I watched, frozen, as the woman signaled a van to pass around her and then began to back up slowly.

It was Ms. Richardson. She bobbed her head to smile at us. “Hi, girls. Stella, I was just thinking about you. I got a couple of novels in I think you're going to love. I'll put them aside for September. How's your summer going?”

“Fine,” we said at once. Angel straightened up, but I just kept grinning into the car like an idiot. “Fine. Fine. It's fine,” I kept on, kicking into nervous blabber mode.

“So, are you going far? Can I give you a ride?” the librarian asked.

“No thanks, we're all set.” Angel patted the car's fender and backed away.

But I absolutely could not help myself. “We're just going in there, into that gift shop. The Salty Cod. Going to get a present for my great-aunt—she loves the stuff in there. That's why we're walking, so she won't know about it. It's a surprise present!” I could feel Angel's eyes burning holes in me, but could I stop? No. “We're doing great, having a great summer, everything's great.”

“You live down near Mill River Beach, right?”

“Yep, that's where we live.” I chirped it. I heard it as if I
was standing next to myself, horrified—a chirp. “With my great-aunt. We're getting her a present!”

“That's a long way in this heat,” Ms. Richardson said. “Tell you what. I'm just running into the post office. You girls get your gift and then I'll give you a ride back.”

“No, that's okay,” Angel started.

“Great!” my blabber self practically yelled. “That'd be
great
, thanks!”

The librarian smiled and pulled in to park. I could feel Angel steaming beside me.

“We can see the Stop & Shop,” she hissed. “We were that close.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I can actually read the signs in the window. Corn, six ears for a buck ninety-nine. Corn would have been good.”

“I couldn't help it. I got nervous. I'm
sorry
.”

Angel threw her hands around, as if she were clutching for the words to adequately describe what a jerk I was. Finally she shook her head and stormed off to the gift shop. I followed her up and down the aisles, miserable.

There was food there, at least. Among the painted-shell ashtrays, lighthouse sweatshirts, and rubber lobsters, Angel picked up two boxes of saltwater taffy and slammed them on the counter.

 

It's really, really awful to be hungry.

Out in the garden, the plants seemed to tease me with their not-ready-to-eat food. At the beach, people unwrapped granola bars and shook out Cheez-Its and popped grapes and guzzled lemonade all around me. As I passed by them, I knew I was eyeing their picnics exactly like a hungry gull, but I couldn't turn away. In my books, every scene involved a meal. Back at the house, every magazine was suddenly full of recipes, and the television shows became nothing more than ads for restaurants and junk food, with scenes of people eating in between. The evenings were the worst, when the families drifted out of the cottages, the mothers doling out snacks and the fathers sizzling burgers on the grills. The smell of meat drove me out of my mind.

I thought back to the report the Family Services lady had read in court, about how my mother had left me without food. It wasn't true. There were boxes of spaghetti and jars of sauce, and a bag of apples. I would have been so happy with that much food now.

The low point came on Thursday night. Earlier, I'd watched the twin boys eating slices of watermelon and then pelting each other with the rinds. After all the renters were safely inside, I'd taken a casual stroll over the lawn. I knelt down when I came upon a rind, pretending to pick something off my sandal. I found three of them. They
were covered in sand and ants, but I picked them up. Inside I washed them off and split them with Angel, eating them down to the hard green skin.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Tomorrow we walk to the store again. I won't wreck it.”

But Friday it poured all day.

By noon, Angel and I were ready to eat our shoes. I splashed out to the garden and picked off a handful of half-grown string beans, then hunted through the cupboard again, just in case we'd missed something. We had. When I pulled out the jug of maple syrup, thinking that maybe Angel would eat the string beans if they were sweet, I found half a package of stale croutons. I poured hot water over them and stirred them up with the maple syrup. Angel came in and I handed her a bowl. “It's like oatmeal,” I said, and pushed some string beans toward her. Angel ate everything without a word. And that was the saddest thing of all.

S
aturday morning I actually woke up to the sound of my stomach growling. I started to get up, but I fell back from dizziness. I rolled over and got to my feet carefully and dressed.

Voices floated from the cottages—the families were up early packing, getting ready to leave. Angel came downstairs and looked at me hopefully. I shook my head. We sat down to wait, tortured by the smell of bacon and toast.

At nine thirty, we settled ourselves beside the
LINGER LONGER
sign. The families were all outside stuffing their cars and lashing down bikes and clicking kids into boosters
and car seats. One by one, a parent from each cottage came over to return their keys. I had worried that someone would ask to see Louise, but everybody seemed pretty frazzled. They said, “Sorry not to meet her,” “Maybe we'll be back next year,” and “Hope she's getting around better soon.”

Two cars pulled out, waving, and then the woman from the last family came over, holding a badminton racquet. “I'm sorry,” she said. “My boys seem to have…restrung it.”

“That's okay, it happens all the time here,” I said. “Kids on vacation, you know.”

She pressed a twenty-dollar bill into my hand. “Well, this is to replace it,” she said. Then she fished a card from her pocketbook. “My friend's a physical therapist in Boston. Fabulous, a genius with backs.” Then she recited a list of things that could go wrong after an injury, which was a lot. I agreed that Louise certainly didn't need any spinal alignment troubles after all this and promised to give her the card.

Then the woman sprang away to chase after one of her twins who had escaped, wrestled him back into the car, and they took off, too.

I turned to Angel. “Want to each take a cottage, or—”

“Do them together,” Angel chose in a flash, with panic in her eyes. “I don't remember any of what he said.”

I went inside to get the phone—since my mom hadn't called for the past two Saturdays, she'd surely call today. It got reception as far as the picnic table, so that's where I left it.

Then Angel and I opened up Tern. In the kitchen, I opened the refrigerator out of habit. “Angel!” I cried. “Come here. Now!”

Angel came skidding in. “
Ô Jesus querido!
” she whispered prayerfully, gaping at the open refrigerator like she was witnessing a miracle.

We tore into that food like wild dogs at a dump. We ate the two hot dogs cold in three gulps, shook clumps of fried clams into our mouths straight from the containers, and scooped up spoonfuls of cream cheese. I opened the cupboards and found more treasure: a bagel, half a box of spaghetti, a handful of pretzels, some cereal that had gotten stale in the sea air. The freezer held three Popsicles, a couple of fish sticks, and a can of limeade.

Angel and I ate until we didn't want any more. In less than two weeks, I had forgotten what it felt like to have enough to eat. The warm spreading feeling of fullness.

Finally, we packed the rest of the food into a bag. We thought of it at the same time and ran to Gull.

There wasn't a lot of anything: a single sad slice of bologna curling brown at the rim, three of cheese, a
half-finished container of strawberry yogurt, a wedge of cantaloupe, a bag with broken cookie pieces in the bottom, and three hamburger rolls. But taken together they'd seem like a feast tomorrow.

Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Sandpiper had decided not to cook on their vacation—their cupboards were empty, but the refrigerator held restaurant leftovers: a piece of pizza, half a shrimp salad sandwich, an egg roll, and a full carton of pad Thai. “
Ô Jesus querido
, we're saved,” Angel said, filling a bag.

It was in Sandpiper that we found the first tip. A twenty-dollar bill under the salt shaker, folded into a scribbled thank-you note. We checked the other cottages. Tern produced another twenty, on the bureau between the twin beds. Gull had a ten on the coffee table.

“Cheapskates,” Angel muttered. But she was smiling. Fifty dollars—seventy with the racquet money. We brought the money and the food back to our house, along with a suit jacket Mr. Gull had left and a pair of swim fins from Sandpiper, and stashed it. And then we went back over to Tern and got to work.

It was a good thing there were only three cottages to clean that first time. Angel stood in the doorway and threw up her hands, so it was clear I would have to give her directions. First off, I sent her to strip the beds. She did that,
but when I came in, all the sheets were lying on the floor in a heap.

“Now you take them to our house,” I prodded her. “And you come back with the extra sets that are in the closet where we put them last week.”

Angel did that. But again, I had to tell her the next step. “Now we make the beds.”

She was just as hopeless at the cleaning. I handed her a broom and told her to straighten up the living room and sweep while I got started in the kitchen. I washed the dishes, shook the crumbs from the toaster, hung up fresh dish towels, tied up the trash. I was about to start on the counters when I noticed Angel was still in the living room.

Nothing looked different.

“What have you been doing?” I asked.

Angel looked insulted.

“You didn't even sweep.”

“I swept,” Angel said.

I looked down at the floor. There were broom marks in the sand and dust. “You pushed the dirt around, that's all. The point was to get it out of here.”

“Well, you should have told me that,” Angel huffed.

At first I thought she was just being Angel. But then I thought about it—her mother had died when she was a baby and her father when she was seven. She'd been in six
different homes since then. I guess there was a lot of stuff she could have missed.

I gave her a quick lesson in basic sweeping and dustpan techniques, and Angel frowned, but she listened. “Also,” I said, “see how everything is jumbled up here on the coffee table? If you pile the puzzles neatly, biggest on the bottom, and put the deck of cards on top, stack the coasters, and put the magazines back on the shelf, it just looks neater. And anything that wasn't here last week—the gum wrapper, the slipper shells, the hair elastic—goes. Okay?”

“Okay,” Angel said, her fists balled at her side.

I should have paid more attention to that—her balled-up fists. Instead, I made up a bucket of cleaning solution and laid a sponge beside it. “Go over to Plover, see how we left it last week. Study the counters. Memorize them. Then come back here and get rid of everything you didn't see over there. Put it away or throw it away. Then wash everything—the counters, the cabinets, the refrigerator, the stove, everything. Okay?”

I left Angel and marched into the bathroom and looked around at the mess. The first thing I noticed was a problem with the shower curtain liner. I went over to our house for a quick consultation with Heloise, then grabbed a pair of scissors and came back to Tern.

Angel came in as I was finishing. Her hair and T-shirt
were sopping, and there were streaks of soap down her face. “Nothing's getting cleaner!” she wailed. Then she noticed what I was doing. “You're cutting the shower curtain.”

“Just the bottom three inches,” I explained. “See how it was getting mold spots? That's from sitting with water on it. You cut off the bottom with pinking shears so it makes a zigzag edge and the water drips off—see, it's easy!”

Something came over Angel then, like a tornado, springing from nowhere but her dark heart, I guess.

“No!” she yelled. “It's not easy!
This
is easy!” She grabbed the liner and jerked it down, hard. Three rings tore off, and she yanked it again and again, until it lay crumpled in the shower stall. “None of this is easy, Stella! Also, I don't give a crap about it! You act like you're so great because you can clean stuff—big deal! Cleaning isn't magic, you know. It isn't holy.”

She stormed out. I stood beside the shower, shaking.

Another thing about icebergs, I reminded myself: When you see one, you're only seeing a tiny part of it. Most of it hangs deep under the water, cold and quiet and hard, like a fist around its secret heart.

There was tape back at the house, but no way was I going to walk past Angel to get it. Instead, I found some Band-Aids in the medicine cabinet. One by one, I repaired the ripped holes.
Be the iceberg.
As I was finishing, I heard
Angel's voice from the kitchen.

“I found some jelly in the cupboard,” she called.

I pressed my lips together and peeled open another Band-Aid. I was down to the tiny ones now, the ones for little paper cuts.

“I'm eating it right out of the jar.”

I did not care. I was an iceberg.

“With my
fingers
! You should come out and save me from myself.”

I stood and began to hang the liner back up. Angel came in. She held out a spoon and the jar of jelly. “I'm sorry, Stella. It's just…it's just all so hard.”

I ignored her some more.

“I'll go make the beds,” she sighed. “I know how to do that now.”

I shut the door behind her. And then I got to work.

I happen to be very good at cleaning. Not everyone is. Oh, sure, everyone can do a basic job—it's not climbing Mount Everest, or performing brain surgery. But to be really good at it, you have to develop an eye—that's what I call it, anyway, after an art teacher once explained about being an artist. I have developed an eye. That means right away I can see what needs to be done. I can look at a wreck of a countertop and see instantly what's trash, what needs to be put back in its place, what needs to be wiped, and
what just needs straightening.

I scoured that bathroom from top to bottom—because that's how you clean a room, from top to bottom. And the cleaning calmed me down and made me see things clearer, the way it always did.

What I figured out was that Angel was wrong the way I was right-handed and tall—she just was, and there wasn't anything anyone could do about it. So there was no point in explaining that cleaning did solve a lot of things. Why, a little thing like lining up the detergent bottle and the spray cleaner on the kitchen sink could settle you down when you were jittery. That's almost magic. My mother was fine—really almost fine—as long as my grandmother was there, keeping things in order. And if that isn't holy, I don't know what is.

I looked around at the little bathroom, which was gleaming now. The summer-day-at-the-beach, full of broken-things-tell-a-story shells, bathroom.

There was a new broken thing in it now: the shower curtain. I wondered what story George would make up about it. I hoped it would be something better than the truth.

“Angel,” I called. “Let's go do Gull now. You can just watch this time.”