The Sunflower Forest (17 page)

‘This is America,’ she whispered. ‘O’Malley, he said I was safe here.’

‘Oh Mama, you
are
safe. Oh cripes, Mama, don’t cry like that. Don’t.’

‘I thought I was safe.’

‘Oh Jesus. Oh God. Mama, stop it. Mama, don’t. You’re making me upset. See me? Look what you’re doing. Do you want me to cry too? Mama, don’t. I love you. Don’t. Please stop.’

‘They cannot take you away in America. O’Malley, he tells me this. He says I’m safe. I believed him.’

‘Oh, do believe him. He’s right. I’m sorry. Honest, I am. I was just running off at the mouth. I was upset and I just said what came into my head. Forgive me, Mama. I’m sorry.’

Tearfully, she looked over at me. ‘You won’t let them rape me again, will you?’ Her voice had grown very small. ‘Oh please, they won’t rape me again, will they?’

‘Oh Mama,
no
!’ I reached to hug her, to cling to her.

She was sobbing.

‘He said I was safe. I believed him. Oh please, please, don’t let them come again. Please. Please don’t let them come. I thought I was safe.’

I felt like hell. Like shit. Why had I done that? Of all the stupid, half-assed things I could have said, why had I chosen to say what I did?

I pleaded with her to calm down, but she grew more and more agitated. She went on and on and on about being safe in America where the police could not come into your home and get you, where doctors could not lock you up without your permission. Clutching the material in my blouse, her fingers going white with the strength of her grasp, she begged me to protect her. And I, hideously frightened myself, still kneeling on the floor beside her, began to cry too, too panicked to pull myself together. Like Pandora, I had no idea how to get the lid back on what I’d opened.

I couldn’t calm her down on my own. Even after I had managed to get her out of the kitchen and upstairs to the safety of her own bed, she couldn’t stop crying. She sobbed hysterically, and I heard myself screaming at her to stop. Finally, I went into the bathroom and sorted through the bottles in the medicine chest. Some of the prescriptions were ancient. I uncapped them, smelled them, rolled a few tablets out into my palm before throwing the majority of them into the toilet. At last I came across a name I recognized. It was a tranquillizer prescribed by our old doctor in Nebraska. The label said take two, so I took out four pills. I went downstairs with them, mashed them up, dissolved them in milk. I added a little chocolate syrup and took the glass back upstairs. She had a hard time drinking it, and I worried that it might taste too awful. But in the end she got it down. Then I stayed with her on the bed and rubbed her shoulders, hoping she wasn’t so tense that she’d throw the medication up.

When the pills began to take effect, I went downstairs again. I located
The Lark Ascending
, took it from the record cabinet and put it on the phonograph. I turned the volume up so loudly that the high, melancholy wail of the violin pierced every small corner of the house and the floor vibrated with the deeper sounds of the other instruments.

‘Listen, Mama. It’s Elek’s violin. Do you hear it?’ I sat on the bed beside her and ran my fingers through her hair, working the long strands out across the leg of my jeans. ‘Everything’s going to be OK, isn’t it, Mama? I won’t let anything happen to you. You don’t have to worry about anything. You can just relax. Me and Daddy and Megan, we love you. We’ll always take care of you. No matter what. So you never have to worry. Just listen. Listen to Elek’s violin.’

She closed her eyes. I lay down not so much beside her as on top of her. She was on her left side, and I lay with my two hands locked over her right shoulder, my face pressed tightly against her arm. The music swelled around us. Exhausted, we both fell asleep.

The phone was ringing.

I sat up groggily. What time was it? It could have been any hour of the day or night as far as I was concerned. Dazed with the unexpected deepness of my sleep, I felt completely disoriented.

The phone persisted. I leaned across Mama to turn the clock on the bedside table toward me. It was just after four in the afternoon. With slow, heavy movements I got out of bed.

‘Mrs O’Malley?’ the voice said a little impatiently when I finally picked up the receiver.

‘No, I’m sorry. This is Lesley. My mother isn’t available right now. Who’s this?’

It was the secretary from Megan’s school. She wanted my mother, and when I explained that Mama wasn’t there to be talked to, she wanted to know when Mama would be home. I explained that my mother was ill and not able to come to the phone. In that case she wanted my father. I said he was at work. She asked for his telephone number there.

Within minutes my father rang. What was Mama doing? he asked. Sleepy, I replied and didn’t go into details. Would I please come get him in the car? he asked. He had to go over to Megan’s school immediately. I asked what was wrong. It seemed a day for wrong things. My father replied that he didn’t know for sure.

When we arrived at the school, the principal shook hands with my father. Megan was sitting in the front office. Scrunched down in a plastic chair, she did not acknowledge our arrival. Instead, she picked at a scab on her arm.

The principal invited my father into his little office and for the first time seemed aware of my presence. Would I mind waiting outside, please? He motioned to Megan. She could go with me.

Shoulders up, head down, long dark hair lying over her like a cloak, Megan looked like a trapped elf, miserably ensnared in this room of plastic chairs and fluorescent lights. Full of unexpected sympathy for her, I went over and put my arm around her shoulder. She pulled away. Sliding off the chair, she left ahead of me and went into the corridor.

The school was old, built sometime around the turn of the century when the town was thriving. On the inside over the vast entrance was a huge carved wooden panel inscribed PROGRESS and depicting the pioneers on their way west. I studied it for a few minutes before sitting down on the bench beside the door. Megan made a point of sitting on the other bench instead of beside me.

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘How come they called Daddy out of work then?’

‘How come you don’t stick your head in a hole, Lesley?’

‘You might as well tell me. Dad will anyway.’

She raised her head slightly to glare at me before turning her attention back to the sore on her arm.

‘So?’ I asked.

‘I got a swat.’

‘You did? Cripes, Megs. What for?’

‘Nothing,’ she said and pulled up the scab. She studied it.

‘I hate to inform you of this, Megs, but they don’t generally give swats for nothing.’

‘Buzz off, Lesley.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Nothing, I said.’ And that was the end of the conversation.

Dad came out about twenty minutes later. The principal put his hand under Megan’s chin and lifted her face. She wouldn’t be doing something like that again, would she? No, Megan muttered in an almost inaudible voice. Was she sorry? Yes, she said in the same tone.

My father got into the car in silence. About halfway home he looked over at Megan in the front seat beside him. ‘Whatever made you do that?’ he asked. I still didn’t know what she had done.

Megan shrugged.

‘Listen, don’t shrug at me when I ask you a civil question, young lady. I’m not at all happy with you. You’re in enough trouble as it is.’

‘Well, they said it wasn’t true,’ she replied in a defensive tone. ‘They were teasing me. I didn’t mean to hit him that hard. That was an accident. I just meant to hit him a little. Just to sort of knock him down. To make him stop.’

My father sighed.

‘Him getting hurt like that, that was an accident, Daddy. I tried to explain to Mr Gaines. I didn’t mean for him to hit his head. It was
his
stupid fault for doing that. I just wanted him to shut up. He kept saying it wasn’t true.’

‘But Meggie,’ Dad said, ‘it
wasn’t
true.’

Megan did not answer.

My father pulled into the driveway and stopped the car but he didn’t get out. Instead, he removed the keys from the ignition and laid them on the dashboard. He turned in his seat, leaning back against the car door. Megan remained pinioned by her seat belt.

‘It wasn’t true, was it, Megs?’

‘I didn’t mean for the kid to be hurt. I said I didn’t. Why doesn’t anyone believe me?’

‘I believe you. But that’s not what I’m asking. Frankly, Megan, I don’t care anything about that child. That’s a whole other matter. And I’ll take your word it was an accident. You shouldn’t have been fighting in the first place, because you know better. But, like I said, that’s another matter. What I care about is this other thing. About what got you into this mess to begin with. That’s what I want answers for.’

Megan unbuckled her seat belt.

‘No. You stay right here. We’re not going into the house and upset your mother with this kind of talk.’

Megan sank deeper into her seat.

‘So?’

‘It was true,’ she said in a tiny but defiant voice.

‘Megan.’

‘It
is
true. You said so yourself.’

‘I said nothing of the kind.’

‘You did too,’ she said, tears beginning. ‘You said Mama was strong and brave. You said so yourself. It
could
have been true. You weren’t there either, so you don’t know.’

The story she had been spreading around school about my mother was dramatic and wildly heroic, about how Mama had been imprisoned during the war, how she had single-handedly fought off the worst advances of the SS, how she had saved so many Jews’ lives that the prime minister of Israel wanted to give her a medal for it. Mama became Wonder Woman, Golda Meir and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, all rolled into one.

My father was tender with Megan. He reached over and pulled her on to his lap, even though at nine and a half she wasn’t such a little girl any more. My sister wept, still protesting bitterly that her stories
might
have been true, that he didn’t really know for sure because he hadn’t been there either. He kept her head tucked under his chin, his hand pressing against the side of her face, obscuring most of it from my view.

‘It was a nice story,’ he said to her gently, ‘but it’s just for us. Not for the children at school.’

‘It’s true,’ she sobbed. ‘I just wanted it to be true.’

T
he seventeenth of April was my birthday. By then I had been home with Mama for seven school days. No one said anything about it any more. Each morning my father seemed to take it for granted that I’d stay.

The night before my birthday had been a bad one. My mother had been awake through most of it, pacing in the silent house. She refused to talk to us about Toby but she’d not given him up. My father had heard her in the night and had come downstairs to discover her dressed and putting on her shoes. So he had stayed awake. Somewhere in the wee hours Mama had finally fallen asleep on the couch in the living room. She was still sleeping there when I came down for breakfast at about seven. Dad, his eyes red rimmed with weariness, was sitting in the kitchen with the newspaper and a cup of coffee.

Megan was there too. She had her feet twined around the rungs of her chair and was rocking herself back and forth on the chair’s back legs. ‘Happy birthday!’ she shouted jubilantly. ‘Happy birthday to you!’ She proceeded to sing with all the tunefulness of an intoxicated sparrow until my father told her to be careful not to wake Mama.

At my place at the table there was a package wrapped in wrinkled white tissue paper. I sat down and began undoing the tape.

‘That’s from Daddy and me both. And Mama too,’ Megan said. ‘I got to choose it. I went downtown all by myself on Monday afternoon and bought it. Did you notice I was gone then? That’s what I was doing.’

It was a book, an extremely thick novel by someone I had never heard of. From the bright orange sticker, not quite fully removed, I could tell Megan had found it on the bargain table at the bookshop.

‘See?’ she said enthusiastically. ‘It’s a book. It’s the biggest book I could find there, except, of course, for the dictionaries.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said, trying not to sound disappointed. I hadn’t had anything special in mind for my birthday. Nonetheless, I had had rather higher hopes than this.

‘I got it for you to read,’ she said. ‘So you’ll have something to do when you’re here all day with Mama. I looked for the thickest book I could find so that it’d last a long time for you.’

I smiled at her. ‘Thank you, Meggie. That really was thoughtful of you.’

Once my father and sister had gone, I cast around the house morosely. I washed up the dishes from breakfast, swept the floor in the kitchen, went upstairs and made all the beds. Housework had developed a magnetic attraction for me since I’d been staying home. It was the only available activity that sufficiently absorbed the long hours.

By ten I had everything done, including having ripped Megan’s bed entirely apart and remade it from scratch because she could never do it right. I’d even dusted over the tops of the curtains.

Mama remained asleep on the couch. Quietly, I walked in to check on her. On her side, one arm extended over the edge of the couch, she slept deeply, the sound of her breathing filling the room.

I watched her.

‘Mama?’

She slept on.

‘It’s my birthday, Mama.’

She wouldn’t remember. She never remembered how old I was. There were more important things on her mind.

There always had been. But I had it better than Megan. At least she remembered I was around. Half the time she acted as if she was genuinely surprised to find Megan there, as if she were some little stranger whom we’d accidentally picked up somewhere.

‘Mama, why don’t you wake up?’

She slept in her clothes, her long hair partly hiding her face. She could have been one of those sleeping princesses from fairy tales, her sleep was so deep, her face so ageless and still. There might as well have been a wall of thorns protecting her.

‘I’m eighteen. I’m an adult today, Mama. You hear that? I’m grown up now.’

She never stirred. I did not even ripple the surface. She caused us all that trouble and then could sleep like a baby.

Despondent, I turned and went upstairs. Alone in my room I picked up the book Megan had bought me. Sitting down on the bed, I paged through it. The loneliness would not go away.

A short time later the doorbell rang. I went downstairs with a certain amount of hesitation, still afraid I would find Toby Waterman there.

Miss Harrich stood on the front porch.

‘Hello, Lesley.’

I smiled and nodded.

She had a yellow legal pad and some files in her arms. ‘I was out and I thought I would stop by to see how you are. You’ve been absent quite a while now.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But my dad’s been calling the attendance office every day.’

‘I just thought I’d—’

‘I’m not skipping, Miss Harrich. My father’s called and told them each morning. See, my mother’s ill. I have to stay home with her.’

‘How is your mother?’

I shrugged. ‘All right.’

‘Is she improving?’

‘Yeah. Sort of.’

Then there was a pause. I didn’t know what she wanted or what she thought might be wrong with Mama. I prayed she wouldn’t ask any specific questions that would force me to lie.

‘I do hope she’s feeling better,’ Miss Harrich said.

What occurred to me as we stood in the doorway talking was that Miss Harrich was probably about the same age as my mother. It was a bizarre thought. I could never imagine my mama dressed in a tweed suit, standing on someone’s doorstep, passing the time of day. By the same token I couldn’t picture Miss Harrich in the war, although I realized that she must have in some way experienced the war too.

‘Well,’ said Miss Harrich after a while, ‘I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I don’t want you to miss too much school, not with graduation and everything.’

‘I won’t.’

‘All right then. Goodbye, Lesley,’ she said. She turned and started down the sidewalk.

‘Miss Harrich?’

She paused and looked back.

I regarded her, my tongue tied.

‘Have a nice day, Lesley.’ She began to turn away again.

‘Miss Harrich, it’s my birthday today. I’m eighteen.’

She smiled. ‘Happy birthday, Lesley.’

Afterward I sat on my bed in my room and read Megan’s novel. It wasn’t such a horrible book. It had a fantastic amount of passionate sex and really dirty talk in it, so if you were sufficiently bored, it was almost interesting. At least the sexy parts were. About 12.30 I heard the shower running. I stuck a pencil in the book to mark the place and went downstairs to make something to eat.

‘Mama, did you know it’s my birthday today?’ I asked at lunch.

She smiled. ‘Happy birthday, baby.’

‘Well, what I was thinking was that since it’s my birthday and I’m eighteen, you know that bond? That money Grandma O’Malley put in the bank for me? That bond matures today. I can cash it now. And I was thinking that what I might do is take the money out and use it to take us to Wales.’

Mama looked up sharply from her tuna fish.

‘You know. To Forest of Flowers. It’d only be for a vacation. There’s no way for us to live there or anything. But we could go visit. Would you like that?’

‘Your grandmother’s bond?’ Mama asked.

‘Yes, you remember? The one that she gave me when I was little.’

Mama guffawed into her sandwich. ‘She’d turn over in her grave if you spent that money on me. She’d turn right over.’

I ignored that comment, true as it probably was. ‘It’s a thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money, isn’t it? And we could have a nice long vacation. Just us. Just you and Daddy and me and Megs. Over at Forest of Flowers. Does that sound good? Would you like to do it, Mama?’

She turned her head and looked toward the kitchen window. She smiled. ‘There’d be rhododendrons in May,’ she said, her voice dreamy. ‘Did I ever tell you about the rhododendrons? They grow wild. All up the sides of the mountains. Everywhere, rhododendrons.’

‘We could go see them.’

‘I miss so much from there.’ She sighed. ‘This is a good country but it isn’t the same. I miss so much.’

I leaned forward to touch her hand. ‘I don’t really care what Grandma would think. It’s my money now and I can do as I want with it. And I want to take you to Wales.’

Paul phoned late in the afternoon. His brother Gary had come up unexpectedly from Garden City and they were going rat shooting together at the dump. So, he said apologetically, he wasn’t going to be over. It’s my birthday, I pointed out. Oh come on, he said, he didn’t get to see Gary very often. I didn’t really mind, did I? I did mind. Bored and restless anyway, the thought of being jilted for rats did not please me much. We had a few words, and I hung up angry.

By suppertime I was in a miserable mood. I had pinned my last hope for the day on Dad’s bringing home a birthday cake. It was a stupid thing to want. I didn’t even particularly like the cakes from the supermarket. But I got the desire for one into my head and couldn’t shake it.

Naturally, he came home without one. He hadn’t even bothered to stop and get something special for the meal. Instead we had some truly horrible stuff that comes out of a box and you mix hamburger with it. I helped Mama prepare supper, and all the while I kept hoping someone was going to mention going to get me a birthday cake. I hinted broadly that I wouldn’t mind one, that we didn’t have a thing in the house for dessert. At one point I thought perhaps my father actually had bought a cake and was planning to surprise me with it after we’d eaten. But there was no logical place to hide a cake where I hadn’t looked. I even took the keys to the car and checked the trunk. Nothing.

During the meal Megan occupied herself by making mountains and valleys out of her mashed potatoes and by kicking me under the table.

‘Megan, stop it,’ I said.

‘I’m not doing anything.’

‘You’re kicking me. Now stop it.’

‘I am not.’

‘You are too. Now cut it out.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Megan, you are kicking me in the legs. Now I know if you are or not and you are. So don’t deny it.’

‘Well then, move your dumb legs, Lesley. I got mine right here under my chair and yours are clear over where they don’t belong.’

‘Girls,’ Dad said, ‘be quiet and eat, please.’

Megan kicked my legs again. As she did it, her mouth widened into a smart-alecky little grin.

‘Cut it out, Megan.’

‘I’m not doing anything.’

‘You little snot, you are too. Now stop it. I meant it.’

‘Did you hear that, Mama? Lesley’s calling me names.’

Mama looked over.

‘Girls, mind your own business and eat,’ my father said without even bothering to look up from his plate. The garage had been overbooked, and he’d worked through his lunch hour. So he had come home very hungry. The tone of his voice warned that he was not up to any nonsense from us.

After a few moments Megan picked up a little itty-bitty wad of potatoes on her knife. She held it up so that I could tell what she was going to do with it. Quickly, she glanced to see if either Mama or Daddy was watching. Assured they weren’t, she flicked the knife at me. The potatoes hit my shirt.

‘Daddy!’ I cried. ‘Megan’s throwing food!’

‘Megan Mary,’ my father said and levelled a reptilian glare in her direction.

Wide-eyed innocence was all over Megan’s face.

‘Look, she hit me right on the front of my shirt. And I put this on special today because it’s my birthday. Now Megan’s wrecked it.’

Dad turned from Megan to me. My mother looked over too. Dad said, ‘Lesley, what is the matter with you tonight? All I’ve heard out of you since I’ve walked through the door is bellyaching.’ He looked back at Megan. ‘And you, young lady, don’t you dare let me catch you throwing food. Sit up straight and eat.’

Megan made a face. ‘I don’t like this very well.’

‘Just eat it.’ He reached past her for another slice of bread.

I seethed. It was unfair. It was my birthday, and no one seemed to care. No one did anything special. There should have been a good meal. Something I liked and not some ratty thing out of a box. There should have been
something
special about this day.

Megan stuck out her tongue at me.

‘Megan, just stop it, would you?’

Mama was watching us. I could tell we were right on the verge of giving her a spell. She had that sort of expression on her face. But honestly, at that point I couldn’t have cared less.

When Mama looked away, Megs picked up another little wad of potatoes. She checked to make sure the coast was clear and everyone’s attention was diverted except mine. She waved it on the end of her knife. I gave her my meanest look, meant to scare the hell out of her. She grinned.

Mama looked over. Megan lowered her knife quickly and pretended to eat. I think Mama knew something was going on. She watched Megan carefully for several seconds before turning around to get the coffeepot off the stove.

Whap!
The wad of potatoes sailed across the table and hit me on the neck.

‘You little asshole!’ I shouted.