As Simple as It Seems Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn’t help being the way he was,” she said, “but mean is mean, and no amount of nice can fix it.”
    Mean is mean. The words echoed in my head. Didn’t my mother realize when she said that no amount of nice could fix what was wrong with Teddy, she might as well have been talking about me?

CHAPTER FIVE
Doghouse
    My summers had always revolved around spending time with Annie. As soon as school let out, we would put our heads together and come up with a project. One summer we made a fort, complete with curtains and real shingles on the roof. Another time we set up a little flower stand on the sidewalk in front of the post office and sold bouquets of Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susans that we’d gathered in the big meadow behind Annie’s house.
    That summer between fifth and sixth grade, Annie and her new best friend, Heather, had decided to be junior counselors at a Y camp in the Poconos. Although I was relieved that I would be spared the sight of them whispering and giggling together for two whole months, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself without Annie to keep me company.
    For the first few days of vacation I hung around at home reading and watching TV and not even bothering to get dressed. Sometimes, when I started feeling stir-crazy, I’d go out in the backyard and throw a ball for Jack.
    Like all the dogs we ever had, Jack came to us from the shelter. Somebody had found him lying in the road. He was in terrible shape, his back left leg so badly broken Dr. Finn had to operate and take it off. When nobody showed up to claim him, my mother agreed to foster him at home, and he’d been ours ever since. He was a great dog, bighearted and friendly. His only shortcoming was a passion for chasing skunks, which meant there was a permanent stink to him that no amount of tomato juice or peppermint soap could get out. My father built him a doghouse out in the yard so he wouldn’t smell up the house, but my mother always took pity on him and let Jack come inside anyway.
    Ever since school had let out, my mother had been driving me crazy trying to come up with “fun” things we could do together—planting a rock garden, making strawberry jam—but I didn’t feel like doing anything, especially not with her. Everything she did and said rubbed me the wrong way, and when she didn’t letup, I would lose my temper.
    Sometimes I said hurtful things, sometimes I just yelled. I always felt bad afterward, but what did she expect? She’d said it herself: Mean is mean, and no amount of nice can fix it.
    â€œFourth of July’s coming up, Verbie. Why don’t we drive over to Pennsylvania and get some sparklers? We could pick up a couple of sandwiches at that wonderful little deli in Riley and eat lunch down by the river,” she suggested one day while she was unloading the dishwasher.
    â€œI’m too old for sparklers,” I told her, biting at a hangnail on my thumb.
    â€œAre you too old for ham and cheese too?” she teased.
    â€œNo, but what’s the point of driving all the way to Pennsylvania to get a sandwich you could make for yourself in two minutes at home?”
    â€œWhat about trying to line up some babysitting work?” she said. “Summer people are always looking for sitters, and I hear they pay very well.”
    â€œI don’t like babies,” I told her, “or flatlanders.”
    â€œVerbena,” my mother scolded, “you know how I feel about that word.”
    Flatlander was an unflattering term the locals usedto describe the summer people who came up to the Catskill Mountains from New York City to vacation. Flatlanders drove expensive cars, threw cash around like Monopoly money, and turned their noses up at the cheese selection in the deli case at Peck’s. Nobody liked them, but everybody pretended to. My father said that was because people in Clydesdale knew which side their bread