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

expected.
    â€œYou’re praying? Daddy, explain to me why you are praying,” I say. “What can God do about any of this? Aren’t you the least bit mad at God? We wouldn’t be in this fix in the first place if it weren’t for God.”
    Daddy’s mouth actually falls open, and I have to admit I’m surprising myself too, but what’s a prayer gonna do for us right now? “We’ve gone to church all our livelong days,” I say, “and put our collection money in the basket, and volunteered in the food pantry, and still here we are, Mama run off to Florida without her pills, us left behind to worry, and nothing but a postcard in more than a month! Do you think that’s truly and indeed the best that God can do?”
    â€œIvy. You stop right this second,” says Daddy, his mouth back under his control. He drops the towel and the postcard and slams his hands on the tabletop. “You—”
    But I don’t let him finish. Words come out of me, hard and fast, like a drum beating. I can’t help it.
    â€œIf I were you,” I shout, “I’d be mad at God and mad at Mama, too! She ran off, Daddy—at least that’s what people are saying. Do you know that, that people think Mama ran off? Is it true? Did Mama run off with Hallelujah Dave?” And right as I say it, I get the meaning I’d been missing all along. Maybe Mama really, truly did run off, y’know, with Hallelujah Dave. Like, not as a preacher so much as a boyfriend.
    I swallow to keep my heart from coming up through my throat.
    Daddy doesn’t say a word at first. And then his voice is low and quaky—really quaky—like we’re driving on a gravel road instead of sitting at the kitchen table. “Don’t let’s make things worse than they are by saying things about God you’ll regret later on, Ivy Green. We need God, you and me, now more than ever, and I think we’d be wise not to take our anger out on the wrong guy.” Which I take to mean that Daddy is mad at someone, whether he’s saying so or not.
    Also? He doesn’t tell me I’m wrong about Mama, not at all. He just pulls out a chair and sits down heavily, rightnext to me, close enough that I can still feel the quaking.
    â€œDaddy?” I say, kind of sorry-like. ’Cause I’m starting to think maybe he’s the wrong guy to be mad at too, if you know what I mean.
    â€œIvy, your mama saw those piney woods burn down to the ground, and her daddy’s church burnt right along with them, and it about broke her heart. Most people would’ve lost faith, but not Diana. She was not gonna stop praying just ’cause God is hard to understand. She just set out to pray harder. I’ve got to believe that’s what she’s doing now, and I’ve got to believe that’s what we should be doing too.”
    Daddy picks the postcard back up and holds it between his two hands like it’s an extra hand—like it’s Mama’s hand—as if he’s gonna put Mama herself right smack in the middle of his prayer. He looks so sad, I just don’t have the heart to fight him any further, so I hop up to fill a pot with water.
    â€œOkay, Daddy. Okay,” I say. “We’re tired and hungry, right? So, what about that pasta? Should we go for the fancy kind since we heard from Mama? To sort of . . . cele­brate?”
    â€œCelebratory pasta.” Daddy laughs a tired but not-mad Daddy laugh and lets the card drop out of his hands ontothe table. “You are my kinda girl, Ivy Green. My kinda girl.”
    So we cook the fancy pasta, which just means ordinary old noodles but with butter and canned clams on top, and we talk about everything except for Mama as we eat. It’s a nice night. But in the back of my head, quiet as a mouse, is a little voice that says, Daddy may not be mad at God, but I am. And I’m pretty sure I’m mad