Read Online The Great Good Summer by Liz Garton Scanlon - Free Book Online

that is your own best self, to figure out what to do and when to do it.”
    She sets Lucy down and spreads more toast.
    I can’t help but think that if Mama’d listened to the voice inside instead of the voice that was Hallelujah Dave’s, I wouldn’t be fixing to skip out on Mrs. Murray and her babies like I am.
    â€œAnd the rest of the time,” she says, in one of her rushy-talky streams, “you have to learn to live with the mystery. There’s not a way around that, no matter how old you are.”
    â€œMy problem is, I’ve got a lot of voices inside,” I say. “They interrupt one another all the time.”
    Mrs. Murray laughs. “Oh, Ivy. You’re a lot like me. That’s what breathing’s for. And meditating, or praying. To calm down those voices and see if you can hear a single one, clear as a bell.”
    Maybe poor Mama has the same problem I have withhearing a single voice. Although, you’d think with all of her praying, she’d have found it by now.
    â€œBells make music,” says Devon, and he starts banging on the cabinets and stomping his feet in a little dance. Mrs. Murray laughs again.

    I’m pushing Devon in the swing chair when Lucy runs down the hallway into her mama and daddy’s bedroom. I don’t know why it feels a little harder to keep track of the babies here at home than it does at the park. Maybe because I don’t have remote control flying machines to keep them entertained. Maybe because I keep thinking of my packed backpack waiting in my room at home. Maybe because I keep thinking of Paul.
    I’m realizing that I’m sad about the airspace closing, and about Paul selling his planes—not just for him but for me and for the Murray babies too. We got to love the whole thing nearly as much as he did, I think. And now here we are stuck at home, indoors, with blocks and puzzles and the swing chair, and we’re all a little out of sorts.
    â€œStay swinging,” I say to Devon, and I follow Lucy, even though it feels kind of private to march into Mr. and Mrs. Murray’s room. Lucy toddles through the bedroom into the closet, and when I catch up with her, sheis next to the dirty clothes hamper and a big jumbled box of shoes.
    â€œWhatcha doing, Luce?” I ask.
    Lucy turns around, and I see behind her a little nightstand with a tall purple candle in the middle, and some smooth stones, and a fat pretty pinecone standing on end. And there are three tiny pictures in frames—blurry old-fashioned black-and-white ones—and a silver baby rattle and a statue of Buddha. I mean, I think it’s Buddha because it doesn’t look like Gandhi, and I don’t think they make statues of Gandhi anyway.
    I wish I could ask Mrs. Murray about all this, but I shouldn’t have let Lucy make it all the way down the hall away from me in the first place, and I shouldn’t be snooping around in the Murrays’ bedroom closet either. But suddenly and more than anything, I want to know what you’re supposed to do with a little nightstand and a purple candle and a statue of Buddha. Is there something holy or magic here that might help me find my mama, or even help me know if what I’m about to do is right or wrong? I stand stock-still for a second and stare at the pretty little altar, waiting.
    â€œIvy,” says Lucy, and she pulls on my fingers, away from what I’m trying to understand.
    â€œRight. C’mon, Lucy. Let’s go.” I swoop her up and turn around, and back we go to Devon, who is yelling from the swing, “Down, Ivy. Down, down, right this minute down!”
    And as I listen to him with one ear and Lucy with the other, I think about Mrs. Murray and the voices in her head, and I wonder if that’s one of the great-good things about Buddha. Maybe he helps a person hear things, clear as a bell.

    The home phone rings and rings as I unlock the back door of our house. I