The Palmer Pool

25 | Sunk

I listened to the gentle patter of raindrops on the roof and stared out at the river while I waited for Pete on a bench in a gazebo.  He had to work that day and we planned to meet for lunch in the park.  I nervously smoothed the fabric of my new blue dress over my legs as I waited and tapped my toes on the floor.

Pete had arranged for me to spend the night before at Joan's house, since his mom was on high alert.  Joan did her best to make my stay comfortable, but the weight of unasked questions hung heavily between us.  She didn't ask me where I lived and why I couldn't stay there or why I had trouble doing things.  I didn't ask her where her mom was or why her sister Lois snuck into the house in the middle of the night to dig through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.   When Joan left for her job as a cashier at the drug store, I left, too.

I wandered up and down side streets in Palmer and came across a brick building I hadn't seen before called The Marquette Inn.  There was a courtyard in the back with beautiful gardens that drew me in, but after ducking through a trellis of white and purple morning glories and walking through an aisle of roses I found something disturbing.

In the center of the courtyard, there was a black bear pacing in a metal cage.  It was smaller than I'd expect a bear to be, with dull fur that was worn away in patches on its feet.  I stepped closer, expecting her to startle, bear her teeth or roar, but she only laid down on the concrete floor and chewed her paws.  When I crouched down near the cage, the bear lazily raised her head and watched me with dim, weary eyes.  Raindrops began to fall on us and I left her to search for shelter.

I'd spent the rest of that rainy morning killing time in the public library searching for answers that I knew couldn't be found.  Standing at a lectern with an oversized dictionary, I'd ask a question in my head, close my eyes, flip some of the slippery, almost transparent pages and jab my finger at the book.

How can I stay here with Pete without ruining my life back home?

Honky-tonk (hon'ke tonk') n.  1.  a cheap disreputable, noisy cabaret or nightclub 2.  a bar, esp. one where country music is played

Let's try this again.  How can I stay here in 1953 for a few months without messing up my life?

Parenthesize (-siz') 1. a) to insert (a word, phrase, etc.) as a parenthesis b) to put into parentheses (see PARENTHESIS, sense 2)  2. to place a parenthesis within

When it was obvious my dictionary oracle wasn't going to solve my dilemma, I sat on a chair tucked away in the shelves, thumbing through a biography that I had no intention of actually reading, letting my eyes jump to the first word I noticed on each page. If I strung the words together, I thought maybe I'd have a solution.  But that strategy was just as useless.

I considered going back home to tell everyone a lie about becoming an exchange student for the school year. I could leave a note saying I'd decided to travel alone for a while, but that was about as bad as simply disappearing; my mom and dad would have a missing person report filed as soon as they found the note. I'd be eighteen in October and technically could be on my own, but leaving for that long with no reasonable explanation would put my relationships, my future, everything at risk. There was no way around it.

I'd woken up that morning feeling suddenly undecided. Once I fell asleep in Lois's old bed, I had a dream that was familiar as it unfolded, like a buried memory resurfacing. I was on Grandpa Walt's old boat with my dad, Grandpa and Jason. The boat was navy blue with two teal stripes along the top edge and a little cabin underneath. It smelled like sun-warmed vinyl cushions, damp beach towels and Coppertone. We were anchored after spending an afternoon swimming and tubing in a shallow area of the river near Stag Island, and I was in the cabin playing with Barbies.