It’s Labor Day weekend and we’re camping. When we used to camp with Mom, we’d hike and do scavenger hunts and collect shells and tell ghost stories. Now, without Mom, we’re sitting at the campsite, writing in our psychiatrist journals. We’re not even sitting around a campfire, because we have no campfire. Mom was the one good at fires. The wood they sell here is all giant logs with no kindling and we have no ax. Mom would have found a way to make a fire with just a match and a tree, but none of us can. We have seven logs lying in the firepit. I guess we’ll just go in the tent when it gets dark, like we did last night.
We arrived at three minutes to sundown yesterday because Dad forgot that Mom isn’t around to pack for us. He thought we could just grab some ice bags and be on our way. But there’s no point in ice without food and a cooler. We shopped for burgers and corn on the cob. Then we packed our clothes and found the tent—which was in the very back of the shed and smells like the cats have peed on it. By the time we got here it was almost dark.
It’s a good thing Mom booked the site last year, because there was a long lineup of campers waiting for cancellations. There were cars packed to the roof with sleeping bags and beach umbrellas, with grumpy tired people leaning against them scowling. They’d gone to all the trouble of packing when they didn’t even have a campsite. They gave us dirty looks as we drove in. If we’d been one hour later, the park authorities would have given away our site.
I helped Dad set up the tent, but that was a Mom thing too. Dad was swearing by the time we put on the fly. Dad never used to swear. Mom sometimes swore when she drove, even if there were no snakes in the car. That was a joke, but probably not a very funny one.
Last night we went to sleep as soon as the tent was up because we’d forgotten the flashlights, so we couldn’t read or play cards. This morning we bought lights for each of us, and charcoal for the barbecue, so today we’re doing really well.
Dad made burgers for supper tonight, and they were delicious. They were the most expensive kind of burger in the grocery store, called Thick and Juicy Sirloin Patties. Mom used to buy Extra Lean Beef Burgers, which are okay but nowhere near as good as the ones Dad bought. Once Mom bought Cheesy Tuna Fish Burgers. How gross is that?
We had a perfect day on the beach today, swimming and building sandcastles and burying Dad in the sand. Sammy brought his boats and his kites, and all his sand toys. The kid is totally organized for someone insane. Dad and I are like dogs. We hear, “Let’s go camping!” and we run to the car. Sammy’s like Mom. He packs intelligent things that are actually useful on a beach.
We took his boats into the water and sailed them back to shore about five hundred times. Sammy wore his life jacket in the lake, and he didn’t seem too scared. He’s not a bad swimmer, but he’s afraid to get his face wet, so he’d panic and drown if he didn’t have a jacket on. He looks like one of those old ladies you see in swimming pools craning their necks out of the water because they don’t want to get their hair wet. They all have the same hairdo, those old ladies— it’s always short gray hair in curls. You never see old ladies with straight hair. Never.
The boats sailed away from us once, and we followed them down the beach and saw Karen’s mom. She was sitting on a lawn chair reading a magazine. When she saw me she stuck her cigarette in the sand to put it out. There were cigarette butts all around her chair, like a hundred of them poking through the sand. It was totally gross.
I asked her if Karen was here. She said she didn’t know where Karen was. I said, “Do you mean you don’t know where Karen is on the beach or you don’t know where Karen is in the world?” She said, “Where on the beach?” like it was a question. Far off in the water, a girl with brown braids played with a beach ball. It might have been Karen, but she never waved back, so who knows?
I’m going to walk around the campsites tonight to see if I can find her. It’s not like I’m stalking her. I just want to know if she’s here and if she knows who her homeroom teacher is. School starts on Tuesday.
Simpson’s cross-boundary transfer came through, so he’ll be at my school this year, even though his mom’s house is in a different school district. I went to their new house yesterday before soccer. It’s really nice. It’s in a new development with no trees and small yards, where you get lost going for a walk because everything looks the same, like a robot made it, and you can’t find any landmarks. But once you’re locked up tight in the house, it’s great. The basement is a giant playroom, with a wide-screen tv and an Xbox. It’s too bad it’s so far from our house.
Simpson’s mom was happy to have me over. She showed me the insides of her kitchen cupboards. Mom used to do that kind of thing, like show me pillows she’d bought for the couch. I’d say, “Mom, I don’t care about stuff like that.” She’d say, “Josh, I don’t care about the attack and defense powers of every World of Warcraft hero you ever made, but I still listen politely because it’s important to you.” That’s true— except they’re not actually heroes, they’re just characters, but the principle’s the same. I told Simpson’s mom her cupboards were awesome.
Dad’s trying to peek at my journal right now. He’s faking a stretch, but his eyes are glued to my book. He must have seen the capital M, so he knows I’m writing something about Mom. I smiled like it was all good, but he’s still trying to peek. I haven’t looked at his journal since that one time. I probably should, to find out if he’s still so sad. I hope not. At least he knows it wasn’t me who put the snake in Mom’s car. And it probably wasn’t Sammy either.
Sam had a great day today. I haven’t seen him so happy in ages. Finally he had some kids to play with. Some of them wanted to steal his toys, but I kept watch. I also stopped Sam from giving all his boats away. That’s the kind of thing he does, thinking everybody’s his friend when really they’re total strangers.
After the boats, we tried flying Sam’s kites, but there wasn’t enough wind, and Sammy kept tripping over people when he ran down the beach for takeoff power. We switched to sand castles. Again I was amazed at Sammy’s awesome packing skills. Not only did he bring his buckets and shovels, but he brought all his little Pokémon figures too. We made a huge sand coliseum, with Pokémon battles in the center and a Pokémon audience around the sides. Two little five-year-olds helped us build it. They must have been neglected children or something, because their parents went to the canteen for an hour while the kids played with us. Sammy was a totally normal boy with them.
Now we’re at our campsite sitting at the picnic table with our journals, using our arms to shield the pages from each other. It’s not like we were all having strong emotions. Dad writes in his journal after supper every day, so we’re sticking with his schedule. “Taking advantage of the light,” Dad called it.
I peeked in Sam’s journal, and it looks like he’s drawing space stuff. Madame Denis said Space is the September theme for her class. I thought that was amazing, because every other kindergarten teacher I know does Apples in September. Not that I actually know any kindergarten teachers, but every year in September I’d see pictures of apples on display outside the kindergarten classes. Madame Denis sounds like a real trailblazer.
It’s good for Sam to put his mind on something besides snakes and dying. Space is an excellent subject. Mom liked space—Sam told Madame Denis that about five thousand times after she said it was their theme.
Once when Mom took us to the Museum of Science and Technology, we went on the Mission to Mars simulator ride three times in a row. We liked it so much the first time that we bought tickets for the next show. It was just as much fun the second time, so we bought more tickets. It wasn’t as much fun the third time. The museum was almost empty that day, so we had to save Mars by ourselves, just me and Sammy and Mom. We held hands and screamed and giggled—except by the third time we were forcing the screams because, really, twice was enough.
Mom used to stargaze through a telescope on the back deck until she left it out one night last fall and somebody stole it. Two summers ago she bought me a Star Tracker to teach me the constellations. It came with a book, a cd and a set of binoculars. You’re supposed to read the book first, then go out at night with the binoculars and a Walkman to find the constellations. You wear headphones while you search the sky. It seemed kind of dangerous to me, since you can’t see or hear anyone on Earth who might be sneaking up on you.
I only tried the Star Tracker for ten minutes. The constellations were too hard to find. They should have connected the stars into simple geometric shapes instead of imagining fancy drawings of guys carrying water buckets that are impossible to see. I only remember the two bears. They don’t look like bears, but they’re easy to find because they contain the dippers, which actually look like dippers. Karen was impressed when I showed her those constellations back in the spring.
Mom’s favorite thing in the night sky was the moon. She always said, “Look at that moon,” every time it was full. She said if you loved someone far away, you could look up at the moon and think about them looking at it too, and feel closer to them. I have no idea what she was talking about when she said that, because as far as I know all the people she loved were right in our house.
She said the moon reminded her of how special the Earth is. It has waterfalls and salt flats and oceans and forests, and plants and animals, and colors and noise, instead of just being a cold rock falling through space without making a sound.
In grade five, I did my science project on the moon. I learned about the different forces pulling it toward the Earth and away from the Earth at the same time, just as the Earth is pulled toward the sun and away from the sun at the same time, so everything keeps going around and around. It’s pretty amazing. When I made my display, Simpson asked me, “Why doesn’t everything just fall through space?” I told him, “Everything is falling through space, man. It’s just that some things are falling together.”
It feels like our lives are like that too. Like we’re all falling through space and being pulled in different directions. In our family, Mom was the sun, and the three of us were planets, and we were safe because even though we were pulled away, Mom swung us back with her gravity. She kept us together and happy, not terrified or even noticing that we were falling through endless space. When she died, we were left hurtling through emptiness. There was a real danger that we might shoot off in our own directions—Dad falling one way and Sammy falling another, and me left alone and spinning. For a while it felt like we were lost.
But now I think the three of us are circling each other. Even if we are hurtling through the universe, and even if there is no sun to swing us back, I don’t think we’re going to fly apart from each other. Maybe we’ll be pulled closer together. We felt closer today, when Sam and I buried Dad in the sand. Even now, hiding our journals from each other, it feels like we’re closer.
Today was a beautiful day. Sammy took imaginary pictures just about every second. Snap, snap, snap.