Summerlings by Lisa Howorth

Author:Lisa Howorth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

9

I spent the last day of the beach trip lying in the cottage hammock, my multitude of bloody scrapes painted with mercurochrome, nursing a hangover. I got a lot of treats and attention. Carline played my favorite 45s, and Liz and Dad played cards and Monopoly with me. I was amazed that no one was mad at me for drowning.

* * *

—

Back at home, I continued to recuperate. I was really sore and had a cough. I was dying to tell the boys about my drowning and about the pirate vinegaroon, and I was mad that Brickie had taken the Post to work before I could look for a photo. And, of course, I had the rubber to show off—Liz had found my bathing suit washed up on the beach but fortunately hadn’t checked the pocket. Dimma, concerned about my cough, was making me stay inside and rest and wouldn’t even let the boys come see me. I shouldn’t have told her that a sand crab or a minnow had probably gone down my windpipe. But I was still feeling rough enough that a day of incarceration didn’t seem so terrible.

Liz hadn’t teased me—yet—about what had happened, especially about losing my bathing suit, which I took to be a measure of how scared she’d been. She didn’t even tell our grandparents, because it would have gotten Daddy in trouble. Dad had immediately told Dimma that I’d “had an accident.” I guess he’d had to tell Dimma something because of what I was calling my “open wounds,” but he’d simply explained, “John got a little scragged by a wave.” Dimma seemed concerned, but thank God hadn’t wanted to give me an enema and had only said, “Well, I’m sure he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to.” Daddy had let it go at that.

“If you’re still coughing tomorrow, we’re going to see Dr. Spire,” Dimma said that evening. Dr. Spire meant shots, and maybe taking off my pants. I whined, struggling to suppress a cough, “No, Dimma! If there’s a sand crab in my lungs he’s dead by now.”

“Never mind,” she said sternly. “And either you let your grandfather get that splinter out of your foot now, or Dr. Spire can do it tomorrow. It looks infected.”

“No, it’s not! It’s better and I can feel it coming out.”

“You heard me,” she said, and gave me a goodbye kiss.

“Thanks a lot, dear,” Brickie said to her sarcastically. He looked at me and shook his head.

Dimma was going out for the evening—playing bridge, I guess, although I noticed she’d forgotten her score pad, which she never was without. She looked pretty in her new dress from Claire Dratch, a pale-aqua shirtwaist with small bronze polka dots, which seemed dressed up for bridge. I don’t know where Liz was—spending the night with a friend, supposedly, but she most likely had sneaked up to the Youth Center on Wisconsin to hear a band, or make out.

Brickie and I were having what he called

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