The Sunflower Forest (18 page)

‘Lesley’s swearing!’ Megan sang out in delight.

That did it. I had had it with the entire rotten day. Reaching my foot out, I curled it around the rung of her chair and yanked. Hard. The chair toppled and Megan with it. She came crashing down, her chin hitting against the edge of the table. She screamed.

Confusion erupted, and both my parents were on their feet.

‘Well, it’s not my fault! The little snot’s there bugging me the whole lousy meal. Why don’t you ever make her mind! She’s throwing the goddamned potatoes, and you and Mama sit there like a couple of lumps on a log.’

‘You are excused to your room,’ my father said.

Mama was on the other side of the table, cuddling Megan against her breast. Megan’s lip was cut, and Mama knelt, cupping her hand to catch the blood. Resentful, I glared at her. I would have preferred to see her have a spell than hold Megan.

‘I said, you are excused.’ My father was standing beside me. We were very nearly the same height. If anything, I was slightly taller. But I could see I was better off obeying him.

I stomped up to my room. Once there I slammed the door shut. No one downstairs responded to the noise, so I opened it and slammed it again. As hard as I could. Still no response. So I stormed over to the bed and flopped down. Why did he get so mad at me? Megan was the one throwing the stupid potatoes. I examined the spot on my shirt where the first wad of potatoes had hit. The area was dry and crusty. If I scraped it off, it wasn’t going to show. That made me even angrier.

I thought I was going to explode. It was an actual physical sensation, pushing upward and outward through my torso. I looked around the room. Spying the novel lying open on the bedside table, I lunged at it and flung it across the room. There. See how I like your dim-witted gift? I raced after it, picked it up and threw it again. I kicked it. Then I kicked the wall. Hard. And again. Paint chipped off the woodwork.

I paused a moment, regarding the mopboard and feeling the heady rush of loosened anger. What I really wanted to do was destroy something of Megan’s. Roaring out of my room and into hers, I was confronted with her usual clutter of toys and clothes. Groping in the half-light, I found her tiger cat. Amidst the rest of the mess, it had been carefully tucked into her doll’s bed. I snatched it up. Stupid Megan, nearly ten years old and still sleeping with a stuffed animal.

Where would my parents have been, I thought, if Megan had been born first and not me? What would Dad do with no one to take care of Mama for him all the time? No slave labour around the house?

Fiercely, I stalked out of the room, taking the tiger cat with me. I was going to hide it from her. I would hide it and never give it back. She could cry and cry and I wouldn’t tell her where I’d put it. Dropping the stuffed animal, I kicked it like a football. It hit the far wall and fell with a muffled thunk on to my dresser. I would flush it in the toilet. Ruin it for ever. I grabbed one stuffed leg and flung the animal against the door. I stepped on it, right in the belly. I would toss it on the roof. Then nobody could get it down because we didn’t have a long enough ladder. Then it’d be gone for good.

Bending down, I picked it up. Megan called it Big Cattie. Trust Megan to think up an original name like that. Big Cattie. I touched the fur. It was soft. Mama had bought it for Megan. It was made by Steiff and it’d cost a lot of money. Far more money than we could afford to spend on toys. But Mama bought it anyway, making us all eat hamburger for God knows how long. She’d had a Steiff rabbit in the same shape when she was a little girl, she explained. Mutti’s mother had sent it from Meissen one year for her birthday. Mama had named it Hansi. She didn’t know what had happened to it. Although she’d searched through the house when she and Daddy went back after the war, she’d never found it.

I stroked the fur. It was so soft. I hugged it. Smoothing back the big round ears, I examined it carefully. Its face was remarkably realistic. All Megan’s loving attention hadn’t harmed it yet.

Mama had bought it for her the year Megs was held back in school. I wasn’t allowed to say she flunked. Mama became furious with me when I said Megan had flunked. She hadn’t. Mama was adamant about that. Megan was just littler than most of the kids, Mama said, because her birthday was in August and that made her the baby in the class and didn’t give her a fair chance. Besides, we had just moved during that summer, and the school Megan had gone to in Washington wasn’t very good, Mama told me. So that was the reason the school people in North Platte thought Megan ought to go into first grade again instead of second. And Mama bought Megan Big Cattie because Megan was still crying about it in the night.

Gently, I held the animal against me, rocking it a little, as Mama was doing downstairs with Megan, cradling her and wiping her bleeding lip.

Then my father walked in. He had not knocked.

I was feeling considerably less angry. My rage had fizzled like a small camp fire after a drenching. In its place was sheer, undiluted misery.

‘Just what is the matter with you, Lesley?’ my father asked. He shut the door firmly behind him.

I had sat down on the bed. I didn’t answer him.

‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

‘Didn’t you see Megan? She was throwing food at me.’

One eyebrow raised. ‘And so you think that gives you the right to half kill her? Honestly, Les, I don’t expect that kind of behaviour from you.’

I pressed the tiger against me, feeling its solid but inanimate weight.

‘Look at me when I’m talking to you.’

I lifted my head.

‘You’re a big girl, Lesley. I don’t expect you to act like a child. Megan’s half your age. But you, you’re growing up. You’re no child.’

I began to cry.

He sputtered. He was angry with me, and I think he had assumed I’d still be angry too. In a gesture of frustration he flapped his hands. Another baffled sputter followed.

‘What
is
the matter with you?’ he asked.

I couldn’t answer.

My father continued to stand over me. Folding his arms, he shook his head. I couldn’t stop crying, so he unfolded them again. There was another disgruntled flap of his hands, and then he sat down on the bed beside me.

‘It’s not all that bad, is it?’ he asked, his voice a little more gentle.

‘I wanted a birthday cake.’

‘A birthday cake? A
birthday
cake? All this is over a birthday cake, Lesley?’

‘Daddy, it is my birthday.’

‘Well, yes, of course it is, but—’

‘Daddy, I just wanted something special. I just wanted someone to do something special for
me
.’

‘Oh honey,’ he said and reached an arm around my shoulder. His sudden tenderness I found harder to bear than his anger. The tears intensified, and I kept the stuffed animal pressed against me like a nursing child.

‘We did get you a present, remember,’ he said, his voice buoyant with mock lightheartedness. ‘You ought to have seen Meggie going down to get that for you. She had it all planned out. Because she knew how long the days have been for you. It was her very own idea.’

I felt like telling him that it was not too difficult to discern that the book had been a nine-year-old’s idea of a present.

I caressed the tiger, pushing its soft ears back. The tears remained, blurring my vision, clogging my throat, running down my cheeks and dripping into the orange plush fur of the stuffed animal.

‘Dad,’ I said, ‘you have to do something.’

‘About Megan?’

I shook my head. ‘No. About Mama. About this. I can’t keep going on like this. I want to go back to school. I want to be with my friends again and be like other kids.’

‘Oh sweetheart, I know it’s hard on you.’ He pulled me over against him with one arm and brought the other up to encircle me. ‘I know you’ve had a lot of responsibility.’

‘But what are we going to do about it? I just can’t stand to go on like this for ever, babysitting Mama.’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ he said and hugged me. He had me almost sitting in his lap, and the tiger cat was squashed in the embrace between us.

‘But what are we going to do?’

‘Shhh. Shh. Don’t cry.’ His arms were strong and solid and warm around me. Against his flannel shirt, I was enveloped in his man’s fragrance, deep and faintly musky with sweat. It was such an evocative scent, bringing with it memories of thousands of childhood hugs. I stirred to speak but he pressed my face down against him. ‘Shhhh. Shh. Shh. You’re just tired, love. It’s been hard and you’re just tired, that’s all.’

‘It isn’t, Daddy.’

‘Hush, lovey. Just relax. I know. I know how you feel. But everything’s OK. Just relax.’

I did relax, and the tears got worse instead of better. I let him hold me. He had a powerful embrace for such a small man. It was easy to listen to him and his tender words, especially then when I was feeling so frail and unprotected. I relaxed into the safe warm strength of his arms much the way I suspect my mother must have done so often when he comforted her.

‘We’re so lucky,’ he whispered into my hair. ‘I love you so much. We all love each other. Each one of us. We’re such a lucky family, to have so much love.’

I struggled for a deep breath and kept my eyes closed. I could hear the staticky sound of hairs crinkling as I was pressed tighter against his chest.

‘We’re so lucky,’ he whispered.

What a wizard my father was. Because luckless as I felt, he still made me believe he was right.

T
he next morning while Mama was still asleep, I went down to the bank to cash the bond. For a moment I feared that the man behind the counter was not going to do it. Even worse, I thought he was going to call my father. It’s mine, I told him. My grandma gave it to me. For going to college. It’s in my name and it matures on my eighteenth birthday. Yesterday. I pulled out my driver’s licence and looked him right in the eye as I spoke. Everything I said was the truth anyway.

After several minutes of dithering over it, he went into a back room. When he came out, he asked how I wanted it paid. Did I have an account? No, I replied. I wanted cash. That made him halt again, and once more he disappeared into the back room. Then a second man came out. He asked for identification, where I lived, what kind of banking my parents did. I showed my driver’s licence again and my student ID card. I said my father banked with them but that the money wasn’t supposed to go into his account. It was my money. For college. And I needed it immediately. What about a cashier’s cheque, the first man asked. No, I said. I wanted cash. After more twittering between them and a third disappearance into the back room, they cashed it, I left with ten hundred-dollar bills.

Once outside the bank I fell back against the stone wall and gasped with relief. My hands were shaking. My heart thudded in my throat.

‘Do you sell tickets to Wales?’ I asked. It was the only travel agency in town. The girl behind the counter didn’t look much older than me. Sitting at a typewriter, she was doing her nails. There was no one else in the cramped, cluttered office.

‘Whales? You mean like at Marineland in California?’

‘Wales, not whales. Like in Great Britain. You know. Can I buy a ticket here to go there?’

Confusion still touched her features as she rose from the desk. She fished out a thick book resembling a telephone directory and came over to the high counter where I was standing.

‘When do you want to go? A regularly scheduled flight? Charter? This is the shoulder season. You want it for now or in the high? You want to connect internally?’ she asked, leaning over the book. She was chewing gum with the elegance of a camel.

Staring blankly, I shook my head. I had no clue as to what she was talking about. Carefully, I tried to explain what I wanted, that I needed to get from here to Wales. I tried to tell her the name of the village near Forest of Flowers, but I had no notion of how to spell its lyrical, foreign-sounding name. Which did not matter much since Wales was not listed in her book anyway.

‘You’ll have to go through London,’ she said and popped the gum. Fingers on a pocket calculator, she added sums. ‘$834.97.’ She held up the calculator for me to see.

‘For four?’ I asked.

She laughed. It was a loud, snorty guffaw. ‘Nah. For one.’ When she saw my face, her expression softened. ‘It is terrible, isn’t it?’

‘Can you do it cheaper than that? I have to get there. See, I’m taking my mother …’ I watched her eyes. ‘But I only have a thousand dollars. Isn’t there a cheaper way?’

‘Well,’ she replied, opening the thick directory again. ‘Let me have a look. Can you stop back later? Give me some time to try and figure something out.’

When I returned home, Mama was up. She had washed her hair and was sitting in the sunshine on the back step, towelling it dry. My mother had a fixation about clean hair. Every single day she had to wash it. Sometimes, if she’d been out walking or working in the garden, she washed it twice.

‘Look here, Mama,’ I said and sat down on the step beside her. ‘I have money. For us to go to Wales.’

Her brow furrowed with suspicion when she saw the money.

I laughed. ‘I didn’t rob a bank, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s from my bond. The one Grandma gave me. Remember? It’s a thousand dollars. Look at it. A whole thousand dollars.’

Her forehead was still wrinkled with concern as she reached over and touched the money. I don’t think she’d ever seen that much either.

‘Your grandmother wouldn’t want you spending it this way,’ she said, her voice cautious.

‘Grandma’s not here to mind, is she? Besides, you know Grandma: if it’d make me happy, it’d make her happy.’

‘Not this.’ Mama was still touching the money, her fingers gingerly running over the edges of the bills in my hand. ‘What about university? Don’t you want to go to university and study languages?’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll still go. I’ll just have to work, that’s all. But in the meantime, we’ll go to Wales.’

‘But will you still go to university?’ Her eyes were full of concern. ‘It’s very important that you do, you know. I want you to. I went. Popi always said how you should never waste a gift you’ve been given. And he was right. You see, you’re very bright. You’ll go and you’ll finish,
ja
? I didn’t finish. But I want you to.’

‘Yes, Mama, I will. Don’t worry about it, OK?’ I smiled and bumped against her shoulder affectionately. ‘But this money is for us. For you and me and Daddy and Meggie to take a vacation to Forest of Flowers.’

That night Paul came over. He and Gary and Aaron had been out rat shooting earlier in the evening. They would go down to the dump after dark and shine the headlights of the car toward the piles of garbage. Then they’d sit on the hood of the car and pick off rats with their .22s. Paul and Aaron went out two or three times a week in warm weather. Sometimes Aaron’s latest girl friend, Marie, went along with them. But I couldn’t bear even to think about it, much less go. I always felt sorry for the rats.

Paul had let off Aaron and Gary before coming over. But he was still wearing his denim overalls – rat-shooting clothes, he called them – when he arrived.

Mama and Daddy were in the living room playing a game of cards with Megan. I had been upstairs in my room waiting for him. Coming in, Paul sat down on the arm of the couch and watched the game over Megan’s shoulder until she told him to buzz off. He laughed, thumped her playfully on the side of the head and moved over to sit next to Mama.

Paul and my mother got on terrifically well despite my misgivings about her scaring him off with her nutty behaviour. In truth, he seemed to get on better with her than I did. He teased Mama constantly, telling her things like he was going to run away with her to Mexico and leave me behind. Mama would laugh and tell him he was too old for her. Other occasions she could mimic his voice exactly and put him into fits of hysterics. And once when Paul was visiting, she rolled up the legs of her pants and danced in her socks for him. I was embarrassed beyond being able to stay in the room with them, but Paul was laughing and dancing with her.

‘Can I go out?’ I asked my parents. ‘We won’t be long.’ Paul was picking out cards from Mama’s hand and putting them down on the table.

Dad nodded, not paying much attention. Gleefully, he laid down his cards. ‘I’m out. I win.’

Before we left, I made Paul bring the guns in and lean them against the wall by the hall closet. It made me nervous to have them and all the ammunition around me. I told him I certainly was not about to ride all over creation with that stuff in the car. Paul rolled his eyes about it, but he acquiesced.

As soon as we were in the car, we kissed. Paul put his arms around me and pulled me against him. ‘Jesus, it seems like for ever,’ he whispered. We clung to one another in the light-and-shadows darkness created by the streetlight. ‘When are you ever going to come back to school? It seems like you’ve been gone for months.’

‘It feels like months, believe me.’

Another kiss, long and slow and greedy. Then Paul straightened up and put the keys into the ignition. He started the car.

I turned my head to watch our house disappear as the car rounded the corner. ‘This seems like another life.’

‘Where do you want to go?’ Paul asked.

‘This is just like I walk out of one life and into another. And then out of this one and back into that one. You can’t imagine it. It’s like being two people sometimes.’

‘Do you want to go riding? Or shall we do something in particular? Want to go to the Astra? That Burt Reynolds movie’s still on. Aaron’s seen it twice.’

Silence. I hadn’t meant to pay no attention to what he was saying. I turned away from the window and looked at him. The silence suddenly filled with things not being said.

‘So,’ Paul said slowly, ‘how is your mom?’

I shrugged.

‘She isn’t really depressed, is she?’

‘Depression’s tricky, Paul. You can’t always tell when someone’s suffering from it. Believe me. I’m getting to know a lot about these things.’

‘Yeah, but come off it, Les. You’re not fooling me. She’s not depressed. Not your mom. Not the way she acts. If she’s depressed, then the rest of us got to be dead by comparison. I know about these things too.’

‘Let’s not spend the whole night discussing my mother, OK? The object of this is for me to get away from Mama for once, not take her with me.’

Paul nodded.

Coming to the end of Third Street, he turned the car out on to the highway. In no time at all we’d left the lights of town behind and were swallowed up in darkness.

‘Let’s not go to Ladder Creek,’ I said.

‘Where do you want to go then?’

I shrugged. ‘Don’t you know anyplace different for a change? I’m tired of going to Ladder Creek all the time.’

‘It probably wouldn’t be much good our going over to my house. Aaron’s got Marie over. And Gary’s there. He’s helping Mom sort her junk out from Dad’s.’

‘I don’t particularly want to go there either. I just want to get away to someplace entirely different. Go somewhere I’ve never been. I’m feeling really bored tonight. I want to get away from all the old stuff.’

The car picked up speed. We were heading westward and there was no one else on the highway for as far as we could see.

‘Aaron’s going to live with my mom after the divorce,’ Paul said.

‘Where are you going to live?’

‘With neither one, thank God. I’m going away to school, remember?’

‘But I mean on vacations and stuff. Where will you go then?’

Paul shrugged. ‘My mom says if I don’t take my telescope with me, then I’m going to have to sell it. She says there won’t be any room for that kind of stuff in her new apartment. I can go back there on vacations. That’s what she said. But I’m not going to have a room of my own. She says there’s no point when I’m gone nine-tenths of the time anyway. So she said the telescope would have to go.’

‘Couldn’t you just dismantle it?’ I asked. ‘We could use the parts on that other telescope. The one you and I are going to build. You know, the big one that we got the lenses for.’

Lifting one hand off the steering wheel, he chewed a hangnail on his little finger. His eyes remained on the road. ‘I don’t know if we’re ever going to get it built.’

‘Sure we will,’ I said.

Neither of us spoke for quite a while. My thoughts were pulled back to the night of Claire’s party and the first time we had gone out. I remembered how riding through the darkness had made me feel so good that night. Ages seemed to have passed since then.

‘We could go to New Mexico,’ I said.

‘Huh?’ He glanced over, perplexed.

‘If we stay on this road. We could go to New Mexico.’

‘We’d go to Colorado first. Actually, if we stayed on this road, we’d end up in California.’

‘Well, we’d go somewhere. Somewhere else besides here. ‘We could go on and on and on and just not turn back.’

Paul looked over. ‘You want to?’ I couldn’t tell if he was serious.

I smiled and lifted my shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

A brief pause followed and I looked out the side window.

‘We could run away,’ I said and my breath fogged the glass in the window. ‘We could go to California and live on the beach. And you could bring your telescope and study the stars and I’d support us by being a beachcomber. And we could forget about everybody except ourselves.’

Paul reached his hand over and took mine. Squeezing it, he smiled at me.

I leaned back against the seat. ‘I got to admit, it’s Mama I want to run away from,’ I said. I stared at the shadowy pattern of dots in the vinyl on the ceiling. ‘I’m so sick to death of my mama and her weird ways.’

Silence.

Around us the plains stretched forever in all directions. It was a clear night and only the stars differentiated the sky from the earth. Occasionally there would be a light near a farmhouse but otherwise, there was nothing but blackness and stars and the small path forged by the headlights.

‘You mind if I say something a little personal, Les?’ Paul asked. His voice was quiet, almost disembodied in the darkness.

‘What’s that?’

‘I think maybe you’re a little too sensitive about your mother.’

‘Let’s not talk about it. I don’t even want to think about Mama tonight.’

‘Yeah, but you are anyway, aren’t you?’ he said. His voice was still very soft. ‘I mean it, Les. I think maybe you’ve gotten too focused on the fact that your mom is different. She is. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, geez, I think it’s fantastic. She’s got all this energy, you know, she’s really alive. A hundred per cent alive. Not like most adults. Sure not like my folks.’