Home > The Other Mother(5)

The Other Mother(5)
Author: Matthew Dicks

“No problem,” I say. “Sounds good.”

But it is a problem. The last thing I need is Sarah Flaherty fishing with me. Especially when my mom might be dead and maybe buried in the basement.

 

 

three

 

Sometimes I can want two opposite things at the same time. I don’t know if that’s normal, and I can’t ask anyone if it’s normal. I can ask Jeff about curveballs (which he says he can throw but can’t) or the quadratic formula or cheat codes or even sex with girls, but I can’t ask him if he ever wants something and the opposite thing at the same time. That’s just not a question people ask.

I wish I could, though, because the whole time we were dragging the canoes down to the shore I was thinking about how nice it would be to ride in the canoe with Sarah. Amazing, even. But I knew I would have to ride with Charlie, and not just because he thinks girls have cooties. He and Julia are too young to go in the same boat, and I’m the big brother, so it’s up to me to look after them (something Mom reminds me about a thousand times a week). But I was also happy to be going with Charlie because I was nervous about being alone in a canoe with Sarah. I was worried that I wouldn’t know what to say and afraid that I wouldn’t have anything to say at all.

At the same time, though, a part of me wished that it was just me and Sarah in the canoe.

When you want two opposite things at the same time, you’re never happy no matter what you get.

The pond isn’t like the ones I see in the movies. The water isn’t clear. The sunlight doesn’t twinkle on the ripples. There’s no sandy beach or tire swing. The water is mostly green with lily pads and patches of gunk floating on the surface. I know the gunk is algae, but gunk is a much better word for it. Easier to spell, too.

This is not a swimming pond. It’s not even a sit-by-the-shore pond. Glen calls it a good-for-nothing pond. He’s wrong, but I know why he thinks this. It’s mostly green and gross. It smells a little bit like dead things. It’s the kind of place that adults avoid. All of this is great, though, because it makes the pond ours.

Sarah is sitting in the back of the canoe behind Julia. She’s wearing a flowery bathing-suit top and jean shorts. When she pulled her T-shirt over her head before climbing into the canoe, I knew there would be a bathing-suit top underneath, but still. A girl took her shirt off in front of me. Not a sister. A real girl. It was one of those times when I felt like a secret corner of the world unfolded and made the universe ten times bigger.

I can hear the girls talking across the water. Sarah has never been fishing before, so Julia is explaining the difference between using worms and lures. “Boys like to use lures because it means you get to cast and reel constantly. They love that kind of stuff. Boys can never sit still.” They laugh. I catch a peek at Julia as she turns. She’s beaming. She’s made Sarah Flaherty laugh. I’d be beaming, too. “I use worms because I know how to sit still and be patient,” Julia says. “And because you can catch more fish with worms.”

Julia’s not wrong, but I had never realized this until just now.

I don’t know why Sarah is interested in any of this, but it looks like she’s paying attention. She’s probably just being nice. Girls understand how to be nice much better than boys. They understand how to be fake nice, too. And mean nice. The kind of nice that really hurts. The kind that kills you slowly but can’t be seen and never be proven.

Boys are like rocks. Girls are like shark fins.

Charlie is sitting at the front of our boat. He’s quiet. He has a paddle in his hand, but he’s barely using it. He’s stuck in his head. That’s how Mom describes it. Charlie spends a lot of time stuck in his head. I don’t mind. I get stuck in my head a lot, too. Charlie is a giant pain in the ass, but at times like this, we’re good together. We can just sit and think without talking or annoying each other.

It’s good because even though I know that the other mother is just some weird trick that my brain is playing on me, I can’t stop thinking about her. I can’t understand how I can be so sure that the other mother is really just my mother and at the same time be so sure that she is not. It’s like my brain is divided into two parts. Like it wants two things at the same time. The part of my brain like everyone else’s brain knows that mothers can’t be replaced by identical other mothers, but the part of my brain that makes me different than everyone else knows that the woman making eggs in the kitchen this morning was not my mother.

There’s a rock on the tip of the island where we go ashore. It’s wide and flat and an easy place to beach the canoes. We call it Little Round Top. I have no idea how it got its name. It’s not little, and it’s definitely not round. My uncle called it Little Round Top when he brought me here for the first time five years ago.

It feels like five hundred years ago.

The canoes belong to my aunt and uncle, except that my uncle is dead and my aunt is losing her marbles. “Losing her marbles” is what Asshole Glen says, but I’m not sure if it’s true. She just misses Uncle Norman all the time, and that makes her look a little lost. But missing a person is different than missing parts of your brain, even though it probably looks about the same.

I’ve heard Mom talk about moving Auntie Carole to something called assisted living, but Auntie says no. I don’t blame her. Assisted living sounds like polite prison, but a prison is still a prison, even if it comes with a flower garden and bingo night. I think Auntie Carole knows it too, because she seems to have all her marbles every time Mom brings it up.

I’m glad. As long as she still lives in the big blue house on the pond, we can use the canoes and visit the island whenever we want.

Charlie and I reach the island first. I climb out of the canoe and pull it onto Little Round Top. Charlie is out of the boat fast and running through the forest before I’ve finished tying the boat to a tree. He reminds me of those boys in Lord of the Flies. He’s a quiet kid in the real world, but when he gets to the island, he’s a madman.

“Be careful!” I shout.

“I’m seizing my day!” he shouts back.

A minute later, Sarah and Julia arrive. I splash into the water to help them come ashore. I grab the bow of their canoe and pull. It’s heavy. Heavier than I expected. I want to ask Sarah to climb out so I can drag the boat all the way up the rock, but I don’t. I want to look strong in front of Sarah. It’s ridiculous, because Sarah will never be my girlfriend, no matter how strong I am, but I still want to impress her. Mom would say that I’m “banging my head against a wall,” and it’s true, but I can’t help it. Maybe it’s a guy thing.

I’ve heard that expression lots of times before, too—“It’s a guy thing”—but it’s always said about things that I don’t do. Like collecting baseball cards or making armpit fart noises, which I can’t do even though I’ve practiced for hours.

When we were hiking in New Hampshire last summer, Asshole Glen refused to ask the other hikers where the blue trail started, so it took us over an hour just to get started up the mountain. Julia finally found the marker, though Charlie still claims to this day that he spotted it first. Mom said that not asking for directions is a guy thing.

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