All-Season Edie Read Free

it: I decide to get up really early and take a boat out on the water and—and what? I start thinking about the fish again. Are there really fish down there? The old man at the office will know. I look into the water again and see sand and realize I’m coming up to the reeds.
    They’re taller than I am in the pedal boat, like a floating forest. They’d make a wonderful place to hide. I imagine hiding in the reeds at night with a flashlight and a chocolate bar or some cheese. I imagine sleeping in a sleeping bag down in the bottom of a boat in the reeds, listening to the lapping tongues of the water and the rustling tongues of the reeds murmuring to each other, hearing the sad bird who only sings at night. I look down at the pedals and think it’ll have to be a rowboat, which reminds me of the boy sleeping in the rowboat tied up at the jetty. Strange.
    Beyond the reeds chuckles a river that maybe can, maybe can’t be navigated in a pedal boat. On the opposite shore, large trees with tangled roots overhang the water, trailing long shawls of moss. All of these things look very interesting, but just then a cloud passes over the sun, and a breeze pushes long wrinkles across the lake. It’s cold and maybe it’s time for lunch anyway. When I get back to the jetty, the rowboat is still there, but the fat boy is gone. I lock up the pedal boat and return the key and the life preserver to the office and forget to ask about the fish. I only remember when we sit down for lunch, which is cheese sandwiches and dill pickles and grape juice.
    â€œDad,” I say, “are there fish in the lake?”
    Dad, who has spent the morning in a deck chair under the pines reading the newspaper and drinking coffee from a green ceramic mug, looks a little dazed. “Fish?” he says, looking over the tops of his reading glasses. “Oh, I imagine.” Which is a silly answer, since I can imagine them perfectly well on my own. What I want to know is whether they’re really there. Hopeless.
    After lunch, I decide to go for a swim. Dad gives me a long lecture about the dangers of going swimming right after a heavy meal, which I listen to impatiently. By the time he finishes, enough time has elapsed that I won’t get a cramp and drown or whatever it is that’s supposed to happen. “Everyone expects me to drown today,” I inform Mom testily, digging through my bag for my towel. It’s a nice big scratchy towel with orange and white stripes. I don’t like soft cushy towels: They get the water off, but they don’t make you feel dry.
    I race for the door, but Mom stops me. “Edie,” Mom says, and I do a squirmy little impatient dance. Mom has a blue plastic bottle in her hand. “Just stand still while I put some sunblock on you,” she says. “It’s dangerous to get too much sun.”
    â€œWhy?” Mom pours the coconut-smelling white lotion onto her hands and rubs them together. “Cold, cold,” I add, dancing up and down as Mom rubs the lotion briskly into my back.
    â€œYou could get sunburnt. You could get headaches. You could get skin cancer. Too Much Sun Is A Bad Thing.” Mom makes it sound very official, like Are Those Hands Clean? and How Many Times, Young Lady? and Not Until You’ve Eaten Your Vegetables. “What about your sunhat?” Mom’s voice pursues me down the path. Whew—got away just in time.
    Down by the jetty I find a big stick, which becomes my trident since I’m Neptune, God of the Sea. I stab at the little tadpoles and scatter them. “Ha ha ha,” I laugh in my deepest God of the Sea voice, until it occurs to me that I don’t really want to spike a tadpole. So I throw the stick away and float on my back and spit mouthfuls of water into the air like the beluga whales at the aquarium. Then I spend the rest of the afternoon lying on my towel under the trees, reading my book as the shadows slowly