Read Summer of the Gypsy Moths Online
Authors: Sara Pennypacker
Summer of the Gypsy Moths
To the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts,
where this book was born
The earth spins at a thousand miles an hour. Sometimesâ¦
“Hey, those were mine!”
“Oh, crap!”
It's hard to sleep with a dead person sprawled outâ¦
There sure was a lot to do. We laid outâ¦
“For real?”
“Jesus querido!” Angel dropped the shovel.
George dropped us off and went to start the lawn.
George had dug three big holes in a row forâ¦
When Angel came downstairs Monday morning, ten minutes before theâ¦
Friday morning, no more school. As soon as I gotâ¦
Saturday morning, the phone rang and I jumped up.
By noon on Sunday, all three families had packed upâ¦
We ran out of food that week. On Tuesday, Iâ¦
Saturday morning I actually woke up to the sound ofâ¦
Cleaning those cottages took all the tricks I knew, andâ¦
“I caught Treb digging like crazy earlier. Right where thoseâ¦
I went outside to put my letter in the mailbox,â¦
Monday evening, I took the first babysitting job. It wasâ¦
When I got home from the beach Thursday afternoon, Iâ¦
There were only two cottages to clean that second changeover,â¦
“Well?” Angel asked, for the third or fourth or tenthâ¦
“We eat relish,” Angel said from her perch on theâ¦
Thursday morning, I woke up stuck to the sheets inâ¦
That afternoon, Mrs. Sandpiper called me to babysit.
Friday was hot again, although clear, not sticky. The rentersâ¦
Saturday morning, as if she'd been doing it all along,â¦
Angel lay sprawled across the bed in a jumble ofâ¦
We were separated in the police station.
I almost didn't recognize George. He wore a suit andâ¦
T
he earth spins at a thousand miles an hour. Sometimes when I remember this, it's all I can do to stay uprightâthe urge to flatten myself to the ground and clutch hold is that strong. Because, gravity? Oh, gravity is no match for a force that equals ten simultaneous hurricanes. No, if we aren't all flung off the earth like so many water droplets off a cartoon dog's back, it must be because people are connected somehow. I like to imagine the ties between us as strands of spider silk: practically invisible, maybe, but strong as steel. I figure the trick is to spin out enough of them to weave ourselves into a net.
Discovering one of these ties feels so goodâas if I'm settling more safely into the earth, as if my bones are made of iron and my blood is melted lead. Because I never know when I'm going to find one, I'm always on the lookout. The whole time I lived with Louise, I was watching.
Finally, on the last day of her lifeâin the last hour before she died, most likelyâI found one. Actually, Louise found it. She threw it out like a lifeline. I grabbed.
Â
“Fix yourself some breakfast, then help me unload the car, Stella. I went down to the Agway yesterday, got some fertilizer and mulch for my blueberries.”
“I love blueberries,” I said. “So does my mom.” I pulled a box of pancakes out of the freezer and braced for the sarcastic remark about my mother I figured was coming.
Louise grabbed the box and clattered the last two pancakes onto a plate. “Puh,” she muttered. Puh, I'd noticed, was the start of a lot of her conversations. As though she'd taken in a mouthful of road dust and had to spit it out before she could form any words.
“Puh,” she started again. “You're telling me. That girl was crazy for blueberries.” She winced when she realized what she'd said, and frowned over at me to see if she had to apologize. But I didn't react. My mother wasn't crazy. That wasn't it.
“What I mean is, she was always hounding me to buy 'em. Course, they cost an arm and a leg out of season; I didn't have enough money to go buying 'em whenever she got a whim.” She shoved the plate into the microwave and stabbed the Start button extra hard, to show me how she felt about things. Then she stopped. She pushed aside the curtains over the sink to gaze out the window, and when she turned back, her face had softened to almost pretty. For the first time, I could see how she and my grandmother could have been sisters.
“Out there,” she said. “Past the garden. You see those bushes?”
I stepped beside her and nodded. I saw bushesâtwenty or thirty at least. They didn't impress me much, I have to say.
“Your mother helped me plant 'em. Because she loved 'em so much. Couldn't have been more than eight or nine, but she worked like a little trouper. Never quit. Three different highbush varieties. I got Pipkins for muffinsâ¦.”
I stopped listening for a minute as it hit me again: My mother had lived here. Right. Exactly. Here. Louise had taken in my grandmother and my momâher sister and her nieceâwhen my grandmother's husband left. “Supposed to be just until they got on their feet. Turned into two years,” Louise had said. “Your mother was a handful
even then. It was a long two years.”
I looked around, wondering if she had eaten from these dishes, sat in these chairs. I'd been poking around whenever I could but hadn't found any trace of her yet. It was as if Louise had scrubbed her away, the way she scrubbed her kitchen every morning.
The microwave dinged, but Louise was on a roll. “â¦Northern Beauties for pies,” she was saying. “I'm known for my piesâyou ask anyone.” She tapped a cluster of photos taped to the refrigeratorâpies with blue ribbons hanging next to them. “First prize, four years running. Woulda taken it last year, too, if Ellen Rogers hadn't married herself a judge. No matterâI bring my pies down to the diner, word gets out, the line stretches past the drugstore. George Nickerson would walk a mile on his knees for a slice. Folks think the secret to a great pie is the crust, but no, it's the berries. Store-bought taste like paste. I grow 'em myself, leave 'em set till they're ripe, blue all the way round.”
“That's how I like them, too. No green,” I said. “They look like blue pearls to me, like something a princess in a fairy tale would make a magic necklace out of.”
I didn't tell her the rest: that when I was seven, I had taken a needle and thread and strung my mother a blueberry necklace for her birthday. She'd worn it all day, and
even though it stained her blouse, she'd said it made her feel enchanted. And of course I didn't tell her what had happened that night.
“Puh! I don't know about any magic necklaces,” Louise said. Then she turned and looked at me as if she was seeing me for the first time, even though I'd been living there for almost two months. “But I'll tell you what. If the gypsy moths don't get those bushes, there'll be berries come August. You help me do the work this summerâand it's a lot of work, tending those bushes, I won't kid youâyou help me, and then you get yourself up early enough to beat the birds to pick 'em, and I'll teach you how to make a pie. How's that?” She raised her arms and lurched toward me, then wrapped herself around my shoulders. She pulled away and looked down at her arms as if the hug had been as big a surprise to her as it was to me. She cinched her faded green robe tighter. “I mean, if you want to,” she said. “Puh.”
She turned away to look out at the garden again. “Which reminds me.” She glanced up at the kitchen clock. “Plenty of time before the bus comes. You want berries in August, you come out and help me for five minutes now.”
The microwave dinged again then, but Louise had already scuffed out, the screen door banging her on the butt. She wasn't exactly a fast mover. I followed and paused
on the step. My mother had stood right here twenty summers ago, looking over this same backyard, the same blue water in the distance. The June sunshine prickled my shoulders through my T-shirt, and it occurred to me: My great-aunt had just hugged me. First time.
She popped the trunk on her rusty white Escort. “You gonna just stand there all day, grinning like an idiot? These sacks aren't gonna grow legs.”
Together we hoisted the forty-pound bags of pine bark and fertilizer from the trunk and dragged them one by one to the back of the garden. Seeing her huffing and groaning from the effort, I had an inspiration. As we dropped the last bag, I said, “My mother's still a great workerâreally strong. Once she built this altar thing out of rocks, dragged them all home by herself. She never quit!” Well, until the police came and made her return the rocks, claiming some rule about town property. I kept that part to myself, of course. I nodded over to the cottage colony next door. “It's probably a lot of hard work, being the manager,” I said, all casual. “If my mom lived here, she and I could do all the heavy work for you like nothing. Wouldn't that be great?”
Louise gave another road-dust “Puh!” and rasped in a few breaths with her hand to her chest. “Well,” she admitted, wiping away some hair that had gotten plastered to her sweaty forehead, “having a little help around this place
would certainly be a welcome change.” As if I weren't right there, heaving those bags around with her!
I jumped on the opening. “She'd settle down here, I know it. She was good when we lived with Gram. Just until she gets on her feetâ”
Louise put up a hand. “Don't start, Stella. Too much water under that bridge.”
That was how she ended every conversation about my mother. The funny thing was, my mother had always used the same phrase when I'd asked about Louise. “Why don't we see her? Why don't I know her?” Too much water under that bridge.
“Anyway,” Louise was saying, “last I checked, we've got a full house as it is.”
Angel. I followed Louise back inside, feeling the day cloud over.