Secret Summers. Glynda Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ all. When it did ring perhaps two minutes past, I slid along the couch on which I’d been sitting watching Bewitched on TV to get farther away from the black instrument on the end table.

      “Hello?” Mom said, then, “Just fine, Claire. How are you, yourself?” She listened for a moment then, “Yes, he’s right here.” She handed the receiver to me. I took it, thinking that was a funny way to talk to somebody you hadn’t seen for almost ten years.

      “Hello,” I said.

      “My darling!”

      I could not have described Aunt Claire’s voice then nor can I now. I’d have thought with a name like that, almost Clara, she’d sound like somebody’s grandmother. She sounded a good deal like Mom I guess, but while Mom sounded bothered, cross sometimes, sort of pinched, Aunt Claire sounded like Mom might have as a high school girl off on a prank, like stealing the principal’s pants when he wasn’t looking.

      “Hi,” I said again.

      “Well,” said she, “have you thought it over?”

      While I’d thought about little else since opening her letter, I couldn’t say I’d actually thought it over because I knew in my heart it wasn’t really my decision to make.

      “I guess,” I said largely because I’d been raised not to hurt older people’s feelings. ”If Mom thinks it’s a good idea.”

      “Oh,” Claire said as if we’d been planning this for months, “Cloudia knows we’ll have a great time together.” Some rattling on her end of the line. “Let me show you something,” she said, some more rattling, then what may have been the sound of a window opening. ”Listen to this. There, can you hear it?” Off in the distance was a roaring sound. ”That’s the mighty Pacific,” she declared. “Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

      In short, that was how I ended up at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport less than a week later with a ticket, which had magically appeared shortly after the letter itself—or perhaps with it—I never knew.

      It was the first time I’d flown. I would arrive in Portland six hours after departing Michigan, allowing for the three hours gained flying West. Mom checked my battered black suitcase at the baggage counter. I expected until the last moment that mom would change her mind and take me back home, but she walked me onto the plane, keeping her face turned away from me, and when she bent to kiss me good-bye, I saw she’d been crying.

      “Tell your Aunt Claire to have you call me as soon as you get there,” she commanded, and before I could say more than, “See you in a few weeks,” she was gone, running down the aisle of the plane, and I was doing all I could not to run after her.

      “Ninian,” the stewardess said. Mom had handed me to her as we were boarding. ”That’s an interesting name. Traveling all by yourself!” She hurried off.

      The way she said “interesting” showed me that, like most people, she thought Ninian was a girl’s name. Grandpa Halley had said Ninian was the name of the saint who brought Christianity to the Scots as Patrick did to the Irish. Nobody knows what day is especially his though, so nobody wears orange on that day.

      Mrs. Falahee had given everybody a little diary notebook on the last day of school, saying that we were to write an account of our experiences over the summer. She said she’d be in touch with our sixth grade teachers next year no matter where we went and it would count on our grades. I don’t think anybody really believed her. But then you could never tell with teachers. Sitting there in the plane seat next to an empty place and a strange lady who had little to say, I wrote

       I’m flying from Detroit, Michigan to Portland, Oregon today. I’ve drawn a line on my map between the two cities and it is 11 inches long. This is the first time I’ve flown. I’ve never met this aunt before or don’t remember her at least, and I hope she likes me. I still can’t believe Mom’s making me do this!

      The lady sitting next to me read through two whole books between Detroit and Chicago, but that was okay because I didn’t feel much like talking anyhow. In Chicago I had to change planes. The stewardesses helped me catch the next flight. Everybody was nice, but I felt mostly like bawling, though the idea of being ten miles above the ground and going 600 miles an hour was pretty thrilling. On the way to Chicago, I could only get glimpses out the window past the lady’s book, so when I got on the new plane, I scooted over into the window seat without asking. Somewhere over Wisconsin, I guess, the stewardess asked me what I’d like to drink as she laid down a tray in front of me of Salisbury steak with gravy, whipped potatoes, and peas and baby onions with a little cup of apple-something for dessert. In the Twin Cities, I picked up a new seatmate, an off-duty pilot flying to Seattle. We talked about airplanes, rockets, time zones, longitudes and latitudes, what it was like where I lived, how nice Seattle was in the summer, rain or shine.

      It was foggy getting into Seattle and I couldn’t see much, so I pulled out one of the books Mom had let me pack in my red-and-black-checkered satchel, a collection of science fiction stories compiled by Isaac Asimov. I read the first story about alien kids and a strange TV-like device that could make you see, hear, smell, and even feel what was happening on the screen, then most of the way through to a story about a magician’s son who refused to study magic but insisted on doing accounting instead. It seemed we’d hardly gotten clear from Seattle when the plane was descending again for the landing in Portland.

      I was shaking a little as the stewardess walked me down the steps of the plane into the Portland airport.

      Frivolity

      Drawing near to the Continental Airlines counter, I almost cried out, at first thinking Mom was there waiting for me. My aunt swept me into her arms. Barbara, the stewardess, smiled knowingly as if she’d made some kind of match for life between me and this strange yet so familiar lady. Then she hurried off.

      “Good Heavens,” Aunt Claire said, releasing me at last. ”You look just like,” then she hesitated before saying, “your mother,” like maybe she’d started to say something else. Aunt Claire wore a long, cream-colored dress, the kind they call a sheath, with a light green sweater over it. Her hair, the same shade as mine, was long and free flowing. There was a tiny silver figure at her throat on a choker chain, and she wore several rings on her fingers with stone settings: blue, green yellow, orange. ”Well,” she said, “time to go fight with baggage.” She planted me in a chair with my bag and her purse and, taking my claim check, hurried to collect my suitcase. I figured I could have done that for myself, but maybe it was like so much else, a grown-up thing that I wasn’t allowed to do on my own.

      About a half hour later, we were finally in Aunt Claire’s red Thunderbird convertible heading west out of town.

      Aunt Claire spread a map on the dashboard, holding it open with one hand. ”Here,” she said, putting an apple-colored finger nail on the spot where it said Portland. ”This is where we are now.” She moved the finger to the left and downward to where the blue of ocean water showed. ”We’re headed down here. So we’ll go like this.” Beginning again at Portland, she traced downward to Salem, over through Dallas, Monmouth, Philomath and Toledo then on to Newport and thence southward along the coast to a non-definite series of landmarks and local place names by the sea. ”And here,” she said, moving toward an evident representation of a lighthouse and a habitat for sea lions, “is where your poor old broken down aunt makes her humble habitation.”

      I couldn’t help grinning at her dark red hair, piercing blue eyes, and creamy skin. Living only with women as I had since about age five, gives one, I think, a sense of attractiveness СКАЧАТЬ