Out of the Blue (9 page)

“MEGAN!” MUM WAS CALLING
from the deck.

Megan turned, and a breeze caught her hair and blew it across her face. She pushed it away. Yuck. It had bits of leaves and dirt in it.

“Megan! The others have gone into town for ice cream. If you hurry, you can catch them.”

“No, it's okay.”

“What? I can't hear you.”

“It's okay.”

Megan trudged up the beach and climbed the stairs to the deck. Mum was lying on a lounge chair.

Megan pushed open the screen door. “I'm going to wash my hair.”

Mum put down her book. “Oh, Megan, can you leave it until we get home?”

“But it's dirty.”

“It looks okay to me. Just give it a brush.”

Megan turned away sharply and clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth.

“Come on, Megan, chill out.” Mum gave a little smile. “It's just the water situation. We don't want to risk a dry well. You know what happened last year.”

It was so revolting when Mum thought she was being cute by saying things like “chill out.” Megan forgot to stay inside herself. “Yes, I know what happened last summer. I know a lot of things. I guess I'm a know-it-all. I'm sorry you weren't prepared for it.”

Megan walked through the door, letting it slam behind her, stomped through the cottage to the bedroom, heaved that door closed as well, and threw herself on the bottom bunk, facing the wall.

She felt, rather than heard, Mum entering the room. “Megan, I take it you overheard me talking to Marie.”

Megan gave one sharp nod to the rough dark wood of the wall.

“Did you think I was talking about you?”

“Yeah, well, who else?”

“Natalie,” Mum said quietly.

Megan rolled over and sat up so fast she hit her head on the top bunk. “What?”

“Oh, sweetie, are you all right?” Mum came over and put her hand on Megan's head.

“I'm okay.”

Mum sat down on the bed. She had to slump down and put her head sideways to fit. “What I was saying to Marie was about Natalie.”

“Don't you like her?”

“I do like her. Very much. But . . . look, it's kind of gloomy in here. Let's go outside.” Mum unfolded herself and stood up. “Mind your head.”

They sat on the deck, on either end of the lounge. Mum was quiet for a moment. Then she shook her head as though she were shaking something out of her hair. “I do like Natalie. And at the beginning that's all there was to it. She was a wonderful surprise, like a present.”

“That's when you were crying all the time and being gooey and everything.” Anger crept in under Megan's voice.

Mum got pretzel mouth. “Gooey? I guess that's a pretty good description. But then it got more complicated because . . . Oh, I don't know, she's a daughter who's not really a daughter and I don't know if I'm a mother or a friend or what. And, as I was telling Marie, sometimes she bugs the heck out of me.”

“Because she's so smart?”

“Not that really, but she's just so sure of all her opinions. She has positions on everything — politics, the environment. She's probably got a well-thought-out opinion on how to tie your shoelaces. And if I disagree with her, she just rolls over me like a steamroller. I feel flattened. And I know she's got all this education and everything, but, darn it all, sometimes I do know more than she does.”

Mum paused and then smiled. “You know I once nearly said to her, ‘Listen, I'm old enough to be your mother.' And then I remembered. So mostly I say nothing and then I get irritated and then I feel bad. I'm just swimming around in this stew of emotions.”

Megan stared out, past Mum's head, at a high-circling bird. An eagle?

Swimming in stew. Warm and thick and greasy. Pulling your arms through gravy and then your foot would touch a slimy bit of onion. She shuddered.

“What's wrong, you're shivering. Are you cold? Come here.” Mom put her arms around Megan and rested her chin on Megan's head. The lounge chair creaked. The circling bird disappeared into the high sky.

“Goodness, this hair could really do with a bath.”

“Mu-um.” Megan pulled away. “You said it was all right.”

“I wasn't paying attention. Come on, I'll wash it for you like at the hairdresser.”

They went inside and Mum set some water to boil on the kerosene stove. “Have we got shampoo with us?”

“I always have shampoo.” Megan went into the bedroom to dig in her pack.

“And we've got a lemon to squeeze over it at the end,” Mum called after her.

When she got back, Mum had pulled the table up to the sink and rolled a beach towel into a bolster. She helped Megan climb up onto the blue-and-yellow oilcloth.

The table creaked and wobbled a bit, but it was surprisingly comfortable to lie back on the towel cushion. Mum spread Megan's hair out in a fan and ran her finger gently across Megan's forehead. “You did give yourself a nasty crack. I think you might be outgrowing the bunk beds.” Mum poured a dipper of water over Megan's head. “Warm enough?”

“Hmmm.”

Megan closed her eyes. Shampoo, rinse, shampoo, rinse. Mum was slower than Nicholas the hairdresser, and gentler. Megan floated, giving her head away to someone else to take care of.

Mum started talking as though she were in the middle of a conversation. “But you know what the strangest thing is? For years after I gave up Natalie for adoption I used to invent stories about her. How she was learning to walk and starting kindergarten and all that. Over the years I created this make-believe person.”

“Like Brunty?”

Mum laughed. “Brunty! That's exactly it. I haven't thought of Brunty in years. Do you remember the time you made us get a booster seat for Brunty in that Chinese restaurant?”

Megan shook her head. What did she remember about Brunty? A vague feeling of sitting in the bath and seeing Brunty on the edge of the tub.

“And then there was the time that Brunty made you bury Talking Doll in the compost bin. Brunty had a very large personality for someone who was invisible.”

Megan smiled. Mum remembered more about Brunty than she did. All in the story together.

The lemon juice ran over Megan's head like cool fingers.

“Anyway, when the real Natalie turned up, one of the things that happened was that I had to say goodbye to the imaginary child who disappeared. And I missed her. Silly, eh, missing someone who never existed?”

Megan reached into her pocket and fingered the piece of green glass that wasn't an emerald.

She felt the rough corner of the towel circling her ears and then Mum's hand on the back of her neck. She sat up and Mum wound a towel turban around her head.

“Come on, you can dry your hair in the sun.”

Megan lay on the deck and brushed her hair out over the edge, upside down. The sun warmed the back of her neck, and the sharp smell of lemon tickled her nose. She heard a soft
fwap
and she flipped her hair right side up and turned around. Mum was fast asleep, one arm flopping beside the lounge chair, and her book lying open on the deck, its pages riffling in the breeze.

Megan picked up the book, stretched, and wandered inside. She did a headstand on the fat arm of the couch and then toppled over onto the soft cushions and did a somersault, finishing up with her chin on the arm next to the window. On the windowsill lay the blue fish float, in its nest of net and shells.

She picked it up and looked through it, out the window. Blue distorto world. She held it up to the sun. The little pockmarks on its surface reminded her of something. The moon, that was it. It was like the craters of the moon, seen through a telescope.

Natalie would see that. Except she wouldn't say, “the moon.” She would say, “our moon,” because she thought about so many other moons and suns.

Megan rolled the cool ball along the inside of her arm, across her blackberry-bush injury, a path of tiny red dots. She thought of the float coming loose from some fisherman's net near Japan and floating thousands of miles across the ocean, bobbing along blue in the sun or tossed in waves. Tossed off the white edge of waves but never breaking. Passing by driftwood and seaweed and floating birds until it reached the shore and hid under a salal bush to wait for her.

My moon, our moon. Of course. A perfect wedding present.

Triing
. The sounds of a bicycle bell and laughing voices floated in through the window. A wedding present from her, and from Betsy. They could wrap it in layers and layers of tissue paper and put it in a big box. They could hide it one last time.

They wouldn't tell Mum. It would be a surprise. A secret. Just a short-kept one. The best kind.

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