A Different Kind of Summer

“I’d love to do it! I can start right now.”

“You can start after exams,” Iris said.

“Next week, then. How much would I make, Mrs. Sinclair?”

“Molly! She’ll do it as a favor, Gwyn. What are neighbors for?”

“I’m paying five dollars an hour now.”

“No way, no way.” Iris reached into her pocket for her cigarettes again. “She doesn’t need five dollars an hour. If you insist on paying her, pay her something reasonable. Two dollars. That’s plenty.”

“Five times twenty,” Molly said softly. She got a faraway look while she did the math. “That’s… that’s eighty dollars a week! Oh, I’m so going shopping.” She gave a little jump. “I can get a new dress for the year-end dance!”

“You see why I want her to study? It’s one hundred dollars, Molly. Five times two and move the decimal, for heaven’s sake.” Iris tapped Gwyn’s arm. “Four dollars, and that’s final.”

Gwyn tried not to listen to Molly and Iris negotiating how much Molly should be paid and whether she should get a bank account and how much she should put away for her education. She hoped this was a good idea. As hard as it was going to be to call Mrs. Henderson with the news, it would be even harder to make the same kind of call to Molly.

AFTER WASHING DIRT from Chris’s bites and applying a first dose of antibiotic ointment Gwyn took store-bought salad and a ready-cooked chicken from the fridge and arranged them on the table, moving aside all the cardboard ice core samples he’d brought with him.

“Is Molly instead of Mrs. Henderson?” he asked as he pulled out his chair and climbed onto it. “Or would Mrs. Henderson still come sometimes?”

“Instead of.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“I don’t like Mrs. Henderson.”

“You never told me that before. Why don’t you like her?”

He shrugged, lifting far more lettuce onto his plate than he would ever eat. Gwyn watched, thinking about nanny cams and horror stories she’d read in the paper. She repeated, “Why don’t you like Mrs. Henderson?”

“She’s grumpy.”

Gwyn couldn’t deny that. “Grumpy, how?”

He started putting some of the lettuce back in the salad bowl.

“You can’t do that, Chris. Go ahead for now, but in general you can’t. Once you touch food you have to keep it. Grumpy like yelling? Spanking?”

“Like I better stay out of the way. Can I have a drumstick?”

She turned the plate so the drumstick was in easy reach. Grumpy like he’d better stay out of the way? A child in his own home feeling in the way. She should have realized. She had realized. She should have acted sooner.

“Chris, I wish we didn’t need a babysitter, but we do for now. So after this will you promise to tell me if there’s ever a problem? If the sitter’s grumpy—let’s say grumpier than I am—or keeps the TV on all the time or makes you feel like you’d better stay out of her way. Will you tell me?”

“Okay. Mom, don’t you think there’d be worms in those mammoth steaks?”

“Chris!” Her sharp tone startled both of them. “Not while we’re eating. I mean it.” He’d been talking about the mammoth all week, now with the added detail about the buttercups and the ten-thousand-year-old steak dinner. She was tired of hearing about the mammoth and she was especially tired of hearing about its meat.

He stared silently at his plate and used a pointy carrot stick to poke at a tomato wedge. “Ms. Gibson says I don’t need to know about climate change yet.”

“I agree.” Scientists could argue about whether or not the climate was changing all they liked, but little children shouldn’t have to think about it.

“That’s what she calls it. Climate change. Plenty of time for that in high school, she says.”

Chris heard that a lot, whenever he wanted to know things like why humans couldn’t get to Mars or whether bacteria felt it when you took antibiotics. It was one of the drawbacks of kindergarten.

“And what did you think of that answer?”

“Well, I’m kind of wondering about it now.”

“Maybe you weren’t doing the lesson she gave you.”

Chris jabbed the tomato again.

“Ah-hah.”

“It was folk dancing.”

“Not your favorite thing.”

“Not my anything!” His carrot broke, sending the tomato wedge across his plate. “She wants to see you.”

Gwyn stopped eating. “Did she say why?”

“Nope.” He stood up and dug around in his pockets, then handed Gwyn a crumpled envelope. She slipped a finger under the flap and tore. The paper had been folded neatly to begin with, but Chris’s pocket had added lots of wrinkles.

Dear Mrs. Sinclair,

Do you have time for a quick chat tomorrow? Before school, during recess in the morning or afternoon, at lunch hour or after school all work for me. Please call.

Five options. The only way Ms. Gibson could have made a parent-teacher meeting sound more urgent would have been to show up on the doorstep. Gwyn was off work the next day, so any of the times would suit her. She could walk to school with Chris and meet with the teacher before afternoon classes.

“Does she say why in there?” Chris asked.

“Not even a hint.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong. Least I don’t think so. Other than not dancing. Elliott danced but he kept kicking Drew on purpose. That’s worse, isn’t it?”

“Maybe she wants to tell me about something you did right.”

Chris looked surprised at the possibility. “I don’t think I did anything right, either.”

CHAPTER FOUR

GWYN BACKED INTO the child-size seat her son’s teacher offered. Her knees wouldn’t fit under the table, so she sat sideways, hands folded on her lap.

Across the table Ms. Gibson arranged a file folder, a piece of paper and a pen. She gave a bright, cool smile. “What a day! And it’s only half over.”

Gwyn smiled back cautiously. “Busy?”

“It’s an energetic group. Don’t misunderstand me—we like that! Energy is good. But with end of the year excitement added, and all our special activities, some of the children get a little out of hand.”

Gwyn wondered if Chris had got out of hand. It was hard to imagine.

“Of course, we don’t need to worry about that with Christopher. He’s a very serious little boy.” She paused for an unamused smile. “I’m concerned about that swelling on his arm. A mosquito bite, he says.”

He says? Didn’t she believe him? “It’s infected. I’ve started using an antibacterial ointment. It should clear up quickly.”

“That’s good to hear.” Ms. Gibson moved one corner of the paper an inch to the side, then back again. She looked up with an expression of polite inquiry. “Is everything all right at home?”

The nervous fluttering in Gwyn’s stomach, active since she’d arrived at the school, intensified. “I think so.”

“Chris seems tightly wound lately. More than usual.”

More than usual. He always had something on his mind. Did that mean he was always tightly wound? More than the other kids? Enough that it was a problem? “He’s never been a lighthearted child. That’s just the way he is. Right now he’s worried about the weather.”

“Climate change,” the teacher said. Her tone reminded Gwyn of a television psychiatrist or detective, skeptical, leaving the door open for the truth. She turned the folder in front of her around so Gwyn could see it upside up, and spread out the papers it held. Drawing after drawing of Earth, seen from space. “This is how he’s spending his time. He hasn’t even been interested in playing at recess.”

Gwyn pulled the file closer. Chris liked drawing planets and rocket ships at home, but there were at least fifty pictures here, all the same. An uneven circle, an approximation of the continents, blue water, green land. “There’s no white for ice.”

“I don’t think this is about ice.”

“He didn’t tell you he’s afraid there’s going to be an ice age?” Gwyn explained about the movie again, feeling even guiltier this time. “Then he saw a video at the museum about the continents moving and changing over aeons. He didn’t like it—the idea that things haven’t always been the same.”

“Children need security. Consistency.”

Gwyn nodded, but her uneasiness grew. “He told me he was avoiding doing some of the lessons.”

“That isn’t my main concern. The term is nearly over but we have next year to consider. We want Chris to have a good start in the fall.” They both watched Ms. Gibson’s pencil tap one of the drawings. “I know you’re a single mother.”

Gwyn tensed at the teacher’s tone. “I’m raising my son alone.”

“Yes,” Ms. Gibson agreed. She smiled. “It must be very difficult.”

“Raising a child can be difficult for anyone.”

The teacher nodded. She kept nodding, with a concerned frown, biting her lip thoughtfully. Then she made her point. “I wonder…if you might be relying on Chris a bit too much?”

“Relying?”

“Without another adult in the house to share the responsibility. Maybe you lean on your son. It happens.”

Gwyn hadn’t realized she’d stood up until the teacher did, too. “It doesn’t happen in my house.”

“Mrs. Sinclair, I only want to help.”

Gwyn tried counting to ten, but she didn’t get further than three. “I’ll tell Chris to dance when you want him to dance and color when you want him to color. But the next time you want to discuss what’s going on with him, don’t call me in here and then presume to tell me about us. You don’t know anything about us.”

“I understand this is tough, but we need to think about Chris’s best interests.”

“We?” It was all Gwyn could say. The past six years crowded to the front of her mind. Ms. Gibson wasn’t anywhere in them. Not when Chris was born, not when he cried with colic, not when he took his first steps or read his first words or suffered through chicken pox or cut his head on the banister and needed stitches. Not when he blew out birthday candles, either, and not when his face lit with wonder at finding a full stocking on Christmas morning.

Her anger began to fade. Ms. Gibson hadn’t imagined the problem. Hadn’t caused it, either. “I appreciate your concern for Chris. You’re right, he is tightly wound.” At the moment, so was she. She had to stop and catch her breath. “Other than that, you’re completely wrong. You need to learn not to jump to conclusions about people.”

“Then let’s discuss what you think the—”

“Thank you, Ms. Gibson, but I’ll take care of my son.”

THOSE LAST ANGRY WORDS followed Gwyn out of the school and down the sidewalk. In the middle of the night with an hours-old baby sleeping in the cot beside her bed she’d whispered that promise. I’ll take care of you, sweetheart.

She would have been lost without Iris. Iris had known the significance of the car in the driveway and the uniformed officers who’d come to the door. Before that day they’d been polite neighbors; after, firm friends. Iris had helped get the nursery ready and driven her to the hospital when the labor pains began, did the laundry, rocked the baby so Gwyn could get some sleep.

But Gwyn had found her balance. Learned how to get through the days and nights. How to take care of this whole new mysterious human. How to make room for aching, bursting love when she was already full of gnawing grief.

Lean on Chris? On a five-year-old? Rely on him for what?

There was that comment in Johansson’s about running out of money. He’d looked worried then. She’d have to be careful about that sort of thing—thinking out loud, especially about ideas a child might not understand.

With a sudden pang, she wished she could speak to her mother. Even after so long that feeling sometimes hit hard. Seven years. That was a big chunk of her life but it still seemed ridiculous that there wasn’t a place to go and her mother would be there. “The teacher said what?” she could imagine her saying. “Leaning? How silly!” When her father came in they’d go over the conversation again. He’d give her a hug and tell her what a great mom she was.

It was harder to know how Duncan would react. They’d barely lived together. Never been parents together. What would he think about his son drawing Earth over and over, fifty times, more? All she could picture was him laughing or wrapping his arms around Chris, or both, and the problem going away.

Not like the man they’d run into by the mammoth painting. He’d made it worse.

Without noticing, she’d gone past her house all the way to the corner. A bus was coming. She decided to zip downtown, tell that David person what he’d done with his measured voice and his kind expression, and zip back before school was out.

She fumed all the way to the museum. At the admissions booth she described the man she and Chris had met during their last visit and was directed to his office. She followed the arrows to the administration section, then walked along the hall reading name plates on doors, stopping when she got to D. Bretton, Ph.D. Climatology.

Ph.D. He could still be wrong.

The door opened almost as soon as she knocked. There he stood, taller than she remembered, eyes darker. After a look of surprise, he smiled. It was a very friendly smile and for a moment she wished she was more disposed to like him.

“They said at the front it was all right for me to come through to the offices.”

“Of course. My door’s always open.” He glanced at it, so recently closed, and gave a little shrug. “Figuratively.”

“My son and I were here about a week ago—”

“On Saturday, looking at the mammoth painting. What can I do for you today?”

Too many answers all involving Chris, his drawings and his weather watching jumbled together in her mind. One emerged. Take back what you said. She waited until something more sensible occurred to her. “It’s about our conversation that day.”

He stood back from the door. “Come in, sit down. I’ve made a fresh pot of coffee. Cream or sugar?”

“No, thanks.”

“Just black?”

“I mean no, I won’t have coffee. But thank you.”

It was a small office, crammed with books, papers, boxes and file cabinets. Three computer monitors sat on the desk, all turned on and showing what she thought were radar and satellite images: colored, swirling shapes, one over an outline of North America, another Europe, the third Asia. Behind his desk a map of Canada nearly covered the wall. Red-tipped pins were stuck in from the western border of Alberta to the eastern border of Manitoba. A few were scattered in the north, and in the central parts of the provinces, but they were concentrated heavily in the south.

“Tornadoes,” Bretton said.

“We’ve had that many?” There were hundreds of pins. Maybe thousands.

“Not all lately. Since 1868.”

“Still—”

“People are always surprised when they see the map. We’ve had more but because so much of the country is sparsely populated they’re not all reported.” He filled his cup, then held the pot in the air. “You’re sure?”

“No, thanks.” Now that she’d got a whiff of the coffee she wouldn’t have minded a cup, but this wasn’t meant to be a friendly visit.

“It’s shade-grown,” he said, as if that might tempt her. “Knowing rain-forest trees haven’t been cut down makes me feel good about ingesting caffeine.” He smiled. Every time he did that she had to remind herself she didn’t want to smile back. “It makes me feel it’s my duty to drink a whole lot more.”

“I prefer tea.”

“Regular or herbal?” He began looking in containers beside the coffeemaker, then in a couple of desk drawers. “I usually have tea bags. My mother must have used them. We should be able to find you something—”

“Dr. Bretton, really, I don’t want a drink.”

“No? I guess you would have gone to the cafeteria if you were thirsty.” He leaned against a filing cabinet, mug in hand. “But you didn’t. You came here.”

“When we talked before you mentioned a change in the weather.”

“In the climate, yes. As I recall, it was unwelcome information.”

“Unwelcome?” He didn’t need to be so relaxed about it. “How could you scare a little kid like that?”

“I didn’t mean to scare him.”

“You basically told him the world as we know it is doomed!”

“Is that what I did?”

“Excessive warming, glaciers melting, permafrost thawing…”

“I’m sorry if I upset you and your son.” He made a wry face. “Driving people from the museum in a panic isn’t part of our mission statement.”

“We told you about the movie he saw, didn’t we?”

Bretton nodded. “When it first came out it stimulated a lot of questions.”

“Why would it? It was a fantasy.”

“A what-if scenario.”

“What if something impossible happened, you mean?”

“There you have the central question. How impossible is it?”

Now he was being silly, or intentionally annoying. She stood straighter and spoke firmly. “Here’s the central answer. Completely. It’s completely impossible. In spite of that it frightened Chris. We came here to reassure him, to help him separate fact from fiction.”

“That dawned on me a bit late. Our goals are different—”

“You like mixing fact and fiction?”

This time his reply didn’t come as quickly. “I’m here to give people information regardless of its power to reassure.”

He sounded so calm. Scientists sounded like that on TV, too. Even when they were talking about galaxies colliding or the sun fizzling out. What about the children who were walking to school when one of their nifty theories happened?

Angrily she said, “I suppose you’re looking at the big picture. The entire biography of planet Earth—”

His face perked up. “That’s a great way to put it—”

“The mammoth had its moment in time and we’re having ours? To everything there is a season? Do you realize that’s not comforting to a five-year-old?”

“Five! I thought he must be a really little eight.”

She wasn’t getting anywhere. Either she wasn’t saying what she meant or he wasn’t listening. “Everything you told us on Saturday about the climate…Chris has connected it to this frozen, doomed animal, to the doomed people in the movie.”

“I didn’t say humans were going the way of the mammoth. Not yet. We don’t anticipate that sudden or extreme a change.”

A tight knot formed in her stomach. He was doing it again. The kind eyes, the friendly face, the frightening message. “You don’t have kids, do you?”

“I work with them every day. Lots of them. All ages and personalities.” He smiled. “And I vaguely recall being one.”

“Maybe you should try to recall it more clearly.”

His smile faded. “I haven’t missed the fact that you’re angry with me.”

“I’m not—well, I am—but this isn’t about that. I’m not here to let off steam.”

“You’re here to change things.”

Something about the simple statement, something in his voice nearly brought tears to her eyes. That would be the last straw.

She sat in the chair he’d offered when she first came in, and he sat at his desk. If she put her hand out she could touch him. Unexpectedly, she found the closeness comforting. Talk about a fantasy. She wasn’t here to be soothed by dark eyes and a deep voice.

“Don’t you remember how big and shapeless problems seem when you’re small? How dark the dark is, how mysterious time can be?” She didn’t know why it was so important to reach him. “Chris keeps drawing Earth. His teacher showed me a folder full of drawings he’s done in the past week. He watches the weather channel so often he knows all the announcers by their first names. He isn’t into make-believe. Godzilla doesn’t scare him. This scares him.”

“We’ve got ourselves into a scary situation.”

Her butterflies swooped back. “What’s the answer, then? How do I reassure him?”

“I don’t think you do.”

“Of course I do!”

“I can understand that might be a parent’s first reaction. Say it works. How long will it last? Ten minutes, ten days? What happens the next time he’s frightened?”

Gwyn didn’t say what she was thinking. I’d reassure him again.

“Can his father help? Maybe he could give your son a different perspective.”

Even though she’d wished for exactly that, the suggestion annoyed her. “A male-to-male thing. Toughness and courage and sucking it up, stuff I wouldn’t understand.”

“My mother is more from the sucking-it-up school than my father is, but yes, that’s along the lines of what I had in mind.”

He put down his mug and pushed books out of his way so he could lean forward, his forearms on his desk, his hands clasped. It made him look like a family doctor about to say something awful for the patient’s own good.

“When I’m worried I need to take action. Otherwise I’m stuck brooding and I can’t get anywhere brooding. It sounds as if your son might be like that, too. Why not sign him up for our day camp this summer? We’re doing a whole week about climate change.”

He had to be kidding. What had happened to childhood? What about finger puppets? Maybe they did have finger puppets, finger puppets that got walloped by tornadoes and swallowed by glaciers.

“He’s five, remember. He may be bright for his age, but he’s still a child. I don’t want to overwhelm him.”

“Facts can be comforting to children, especially when they’re learning about a serious problem. Then it’s not a nameless monster in the closet. It’s an identifiable question with a list of solutions.”

Finally he’d said something that didn’t give her a stomachache. “Solutions?”

“Well…measures that may ameliorate the situation.”

That made her smile. “Ameliorate. Chris would love that.”

Bretton smiled, too. “Think you’ll sign him up?” When she didn’t answer right away, he added, “It’s not child labor. We have a good time. Kids come back summer after summer. Willingly.”

“Maybe in a year or two.” Or ten.

He looked at her the way Chris sometimes did. As if she’d failed. “That’s your decision, of course.”

Oh, she hated that tone. Her completely wrong decision, he meant.

“There’s a book in our gift shop—”

“About the mammoth. You mentioned it on Saturday.”

“The one I’m thinking of now explains weather systems. It’s meant for young children. It gives a really clear, easy to understand overview.”

She’d had enough. She stood up, wishing she could tell him all the ways he annoyed her. “The books I’m thinking of for my son involve talking spiders and children who play games on flying broomsticks.”

Bretton stood, too. For the first time his voice sounded chilly. “I thought you said he isn’t into make-believe.”

“Maybe he should be.”

“From the little I remember about being a child that isn’t something a parent can force. Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Books like that have a dark side. You might be happier with the old Dick and Jane readers. Did you have those in school? Dick and Jane are never afraid. They just bounce balls, watch Spot run and say, ‘Yes, Mother.’”

Gwyn stared at him until she noticed she wasn’t doing anything but blinking.

He reached into one of his desk drawers and brought out a pamphlet. “Why not take that with you? Just in case.”

From Dinosaurs to Black Holes: Science for the Summer. Inside was a chart with dates and prices. A hundred and fifty dollars a week. They should call it This Week Give Your Kid Nightmares Instead of Meals. She folded it in two and put it in her purse.

“This is more than a job to you, isn’t it, Dr. Bretton? You’re a bit of a zealot.” She’d never used the word in conversation, only in history essays. It fit the occasion nicely. The surprise on his face was worth the trip downtown. “Thank you for your time.”

GWYN’S PLEASURE AT HER EXIT had lasted all of two minutes. Whatever she’d hoped to accomplish by going back to the museum, she hadn’t done it. She’d had some foggy idea that Dr. Bretton would recant if he heard about the folder of drawings, that he had a whole different batch of ideas for five-year-olds who were afraid their world was ending. But no, he had more of the same ideas. Books and day camps full of information to add to Chris’s fears.