The Sunflower Forest (27 page)

‘Megs, that still doesn’t make it your fault.’

‘But if I hadn’t done that, it wouldn’t have happened. We’d be like always, except that I was so selfish.’

‘Don’t think of it that way, Meggie. Mama probably would have done it anyway. She was kind of desperate, Megs. Don’t go blaming yourself, because I think maybe it would have happened anyway. It wasn’t your fault.’

Wearily, Megan rubbed her eyes. She was exhausted. Pressing the tiger cat over her face, she closed her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them again. ‘Maybe it’s going to be me who’ll go to Hell. For being selfish and making it so Mama could go kill all those people.’

‘Megan, it’s not your fault.’

‘You don’t know how God feels,’ she said quietly. ‘You just never really know about those things.’

Mama died.

At 5.35 in the morning, which was the first day of May, my mother died quietly in her sleep. She had been awake most of the night before, talking to my father about ordinary things, about how Megan was doing at school, which wasn’t very well, about the weather, which was humid in Wichita for that time of year, and about Dad, who was getting a rash from the socks he had on. Her throat was sore from the gastric tube, and he was feeding her hard candies to ease the roughness. The fluid in the suction jar had turned the colour of cherry Life Savers. Then sometime in the wee hours, Mama went to sleep.

My father had believed that she was improving. She was so alert, so talkative, that he’d assumed the worst was behind them. When he reached over to pull up the blankets about five, she felt cold to him, but he didn’t think much about it. The night was chilly. So, instead of calling a nurse, he’d pulled back the covers to steal a few moments in bed with her. I suppose it was the best way for her to die, in the warmth of my father’s arms.

After such a fiery life, she died so quietly that, had there not been a monitor on, they would not have realized what was happening. She was never conscious again; she never stirred, she never spoke. That was my father’s single greatest regret, that Mama’s last words to him had been in conversation about a rash on his feet. But maybe that too was best, that my mother at least could die surrounded by only small, mundane concerns.

My father came weeping into our house the next morning. Walking through the hall and into the kichen, he dropped into his chair at the table. He wept not in the way I’d thought a man would cry, but in tiny, high-pitched sobs. His shoulders shook, and none of us could comfort him.

While Megan and my Aunt Caroline joined Dad in the kitchen, I walked first into the living room and then eventually outside on to the front steps. Sitting down on the top step, I braced my chin in my hands and looked out across the street. They were all crying, all three of them, including my Auntie Caroline, who probably had never loved my mother a day in her life. I sat outside on the step, empty. I remained there, conscious and breathing, and was without any life whatsoever inside myself.

I sat and wondered where things went now, without my mother. I wondered where I would be in the summer or the next year or in ten years. I wondered how things would ever become ordinary again when it seemed suddenly possible that they never could be. And in a small corner of my mind, I wondered about Mama, about where her irreligious soul had gone. Hell? Did you really go to Hell for not believing in Jesus? For killing people? If you went for anything, it would undoubtedly be for that. I tried to picture her, cold and still. I had seen corpses at the nursing home, old men and women, their mouths gone slack in death. But not my mama.

I thought too about Klaus who had caused it all and had escaped everything, even the sweet agony of loving Mama. It could so easily have been me, if I had simply been born first instead of third. It could have been me, spirited away, living, and loving other people and never realizing the anguish my existence had caused, never knowing people had died for me.

M
y father and I got into an argument the evening of the same day Mama died. It started off over something entirely irrelevant to the events surrounding us. Megan had a dental appointment on Friday. It was Tuesday evening, and I said I didn’t think she should have to go. We still weren’t certain when Mama’s funeral was going to be, and what with all the brouhaha over the murders and all, I told Dad I didn’t think we needed to subject Megs to a trip to the dentist’s on top of everything. My father refused to consider having her miss it. She was just going to have her teeth cleaned and fluoridated, he said, nothing unpleasant, and as hard as that dentist’s office was to get into, he wasn’t about to cancel for no reason at all.

It was that statement which triggered the argument, when he said for no reason at all. Did he really think that what had happened to us was no reason at all to cancel a dental appointment? I asked, my voice too loud. Then I said he never could get his priorities right anyway. He yelled back that I was too young to understand, and besides, since when had he been obliged to check with me about Megan’s teeth? What business was it of mine? That was when Auntie Caroline, hearing all the noise, came to the door of the study. She told us to shut up, in the name of God. Poor Mara, she said, she was hardly dead and here we were screeching like gulls over garbage about a check-up at the dentist’s. That caused us both to yell at her. I’m not sure why. Perhaps just because she said Mama was dead. Saying it outright sounded obscene to me. But we broke the argument off, Dad and I, although the anger remained unspent.

Paul came over the next morning. Since it was a Wednesday, I knew he’d cut school. We sat down on the front step.

‘I wanted to come over before this,’ he said to me, ‘but my mom wouldn’t let me. I wanted to come over and say how sorry I was.’

I crossed my arms over my knees and rested my chin on them. On the other side of the street, Mrs Beckerman was washing her windows. There were red tulips blooming in her flower bed, and she was being careful to move the stepladder so as to avoid hitting them. She was fat, so it seemed a ludicrous scene to me. ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ was running through my mind.

‘I guess sorry is what you say,’ Paul added. ‘I wasn’t exactly sure. I’ve been sitting at home thinking about it. God, Les, you can’t imagine how I’ve been thinking about it.’

‘I can imagine,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he replied after a pause, ‘I suppose you can.’

Silence. I was surprised how easy it was to lose myself in something as tedious as watching Mrs Beckerman wash her windows. But I could. I could watch her and think of absolutely nothing else at all.

‘But I
am
sorry, Les.’

I nodded.

Silence again. The postman was coming down the street on the other side. I transferred my attention to him as he went from house to house. Would someone think to send us sympathy cards for Mama’s death? Did you do that when a person was killed by the police?

‘Did you know Mama died?’ I asked Paul.

‘Yes, I read it in the paper.’

The postman was whistling ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’.

‘I feel terrible, Lesley,’ Paul said. ‘I loved your mother. I really did. She was super. I thought she was one of the greatest people I’d ever met in my entire life.’

‘Toby Waterman thought so too.’

Paul said nothing else. The postman reached the Beckermans. Mrs Beckerman climbed laboriously down off her ladder, stepped carefully through the tulips and waddled over to the front gate. Good morning! Nice day! the postman was saying cheerfully. I think they were both aware of us sitting over on the step and, while dying to exchange the latest gossip about what was going on over here, didn’t dare to. I saw them glance in our direction before turning their heads away. Their voices dropped. How amazingly cruel people could be without ever intending it.

‘I understand,’ Paul said.

‘Understand what?’ I saw the postman flip through his letters for Mrs Beckerman.

‘Understand why your mother did it. I mean, I can see what happened. I can see how she came to feel that way.’

Mrs Beckerman was holding up one of the letters to see through the envelope. It was probably a letter from her son, Sidney. She used to tell Mama that Sidney was always taking up with the wrong girls. She never knew how a nice boy like Sidney could have such lousy taste.

‘It’s not a crime really, I think,’ Paul said. ‘Not the way robbing a 7-Eleven and then gunning down the cashier is. What your mother did was different.’

‘You couldn’t tell a policeman that.’

‘But it
was
different. She had a reason.’

‘So does the guy sticking up the 7-Eleven.’

‘No, Les, this is different. What she did, well, in its own way it was sort of honourable. You know what I mean? It was like she was going out there and saving him. She wasn’t going to let him be raised a Nazi, to grow up in that kind of world. It’s almost, well, noble.’

‘There’s nothing noble about murdering people, Paul. She
killed
the Watermans. They’re dead. It isn’t some show on TV.’

‘But she believed in what she was doing. She thought he was her son. She
believed
they were Nazis. She just thought death was better for him. And that’s noble, if you really think about it.’ He shrugged. ‘Wrong maybe, but still noble.’

Sitting back, I glanced over at him, wondering how the conversation had gotten to where it had without my noticing it. How had we come to the point where Paul was defending my mother and I was on the opposite side?

‘You don’t know anything about it, Paul.’

‘Well, I mean, I was just thinking about it.’

‘Paul, I said you don’t know anything about it. You don’t know what my mother was like. You don’t know anything about living with her. About what she went through in the war and how all these years afterward, we’re still suffering from it. Even me and Megs, who had nothing to do with it. You live over on Cedar Street in a great big lawyer’s house. You’ve got two cars and your brother’s got his own stereo set right in his room. And you’ve got dogs. We couldn’t ever have a dog after Piffi. After Piffi got run over. By a garbage truck, of all things. Great big hulking monster and he gets himself run over by a shitty garbage truck. And my mama was so upset that Dad wouldn’t let us ever have a dog again. You know how bad I’ve wanted a dog all this time? Do you know? I was only twelve years old when Piffi got hit, and Dad wouldn’t let us get another dog. He said it upset Mama too much to lose things. I was twelve and I’ve been wanting a goddamned dog every day of my life for the last six years. But we couldn’t have one. And you have two.’

‘Oh Les,’ he said gently and reached an arm out to put around my shoulder.

I jerked back. ‘So how can you know anything? You don’t. You don’t have the faintest clue.’

‘
Lesley
.’

‘It’s my stupid father’s fault. He never stopped to think about us. He never did anything in his whole life but worry about Mama. And then all he did was worry. He never
did
anything. He could have stopped this. He could have taken her somewhere or moved us or got her some help. Cripes, even having her locked up is better than having her dead. He could have changed things. He could have stopped her somehow, and then she would have been alive.’

Paul was still trying to put his arm around me. I was shouting. I knew I was. I knew Mrs Beckerman had paused from her window cleaning. Probably the postman had stopped too. But what the hell? They already assumed we were all nuts over here anyway. We might as well give them the show they expected.

‘He should have done something. He just wouldn’t because
he
didn’t want to get hurt. Not because of Mama. Mama was strong. Things hurt her but she survived. It was
him
. He couldn’t bear to see her unhappy. Even when something made her really happy first, he couldn’t stand it if she got unhappy from it afterward. She would have loved another dog. She wouldn’t have needed to go find some strange kid to dream up as a son. But Daddy refused. No matter how many times I asked him for a dog, he said no. And Mama wanted one too. She knew things died. Jesus Christ, she knew that better than any of us. He could have given her a dog. Or at least he could have given me one.’

‘Look, Les, I am sorry,’ Paul replied. He had given up trying to touch me and sat apart on the other side of the step.

‘Go away,’ I said. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Just go away and leave me alone.’

‘OK,’ he said, rising. ‘I have to get back anyway. I skipped history.’ Reaching down, he touched the top of my head. ‘I’ll see you later, all right? When you’re feeling better.’

‘Just go away.’

That afternoon I was lying across my bed and reading when Megan came to the door. She still had her virus or whatever it was, so she’d slouched around the house most of the day in her pyjamas. I was neither in a more benevolent mood than earlier nor ecstatically happy to see her in my room, because she never seemed to have much warning before she vomited. If she got sick in my room, I told her, I was going to make her clean it up herself.

She came in anyway and sat down on the bed with me. She leaned back against the wall. ‘Where’s Mama’s recording of
The Lark Ascending
?’

‘Probably in the record cabinet,’ I said without looking up from the book. I didn’t bother to stop reading.

‘No, it’s not. I’ve already looked. It’s not in there, and Auntie Caroline doesn’t know where it is either. I asked her.’

‘Well, neither do I.’

‘Where do you think it might be?’

‘Megs, believe it or not, I’m trying to read. I don’t want to talk. So beat it, all right?’

She scooted around and leaned back against my pillow. This put her feet nearly into my face, and they smelled. Megan was at that age when she wouldn’t bathe for a month, if no one made her. I thumped her ankles. This caused her to flex her knees and pull her feet away.

‘My stomach still hurts,’ she said pensively and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I wonder if it’s going to get better.’

‘Probably not,’ I said, keeping a finger under the line I was reading in an attempt to cope with the distraction.

‘Lesley, that’s not a funny thing to say.’

I kept reading.

‘What’s the matter with you anyway?’

‘You, mostly. Because you keep annoying me. I said I wanted to read, not talk.’

‘Oh,’ she replied, as if it were a new idea. She lay a few minutes in silence. ‘Les, you want to know what I was thinking?’

‘Hardly.’

‘Well, I was looking for
The Lark Ascending
so that we could give it to the mortuary man when he comes over. I want them to play it at Mama’s funeral.’

I looked up. ‘Megan, it’s too long. Besides, they don’t play music like that at people’s funerals.’

‘Why not? It’s Mama’s favourite piece. She liked that better than any other music there is. So I think they ought to. It would make Mama happy.’

‘Mama’s hardly going to care now, Megs.’

Abruptly, she sat up. ‘I just can’t figure you out lately. You’re being horrible to everybody. I just can’t understand what’s the matter with you.’

It was
The Lark Ascending
that got us into trouble again that evening at the dinner table. For the first time since Monday lunch Megan had rejoined us for a meal. Her illness hadn’t seriously affected her appetite, which made me feel that she was doing it all for sympathy. I grew angry because no one seemed to care that she was just making it up for attention. Then she started in on
The Lark Ascending
issue again.

‘Can we have it, Daddy?’ she asked him.

‘That’s not the kind of music they play at funerals, dumb-head,’ I said. ‘I’ve already told you that.’

‘I’m asking Daddy, Lesley. Not you.’

‘You can’t let her, Dad.’

‘I found the record,’ Megan added. ‘It was down behind the record player. So, I thought when the man from the funeral home comes over, Daddy, that I could give it to him and he could listen to it. And if it’s too long, he could use part of it.’

‘Oh honestly, Megan,’ I said. ‘What a stupid idea. You are such an idiot. No wonder you flunked first grade.’

‘It is
not
a stupid idea!’ Megan shouted. She rose up in her chair and waved her fork menacingly at me. ‘You’re the one who’s stupid, because that’s Mama’s favourite piece of music. I want her to hear it one last time. And it’s a
good
idea.’ She turned to my father. ‘Tell her, Dad. Tell her it isn’t a stupid idea, because it isn’t.’

Both my father and Auntie Caroline sat with stunned expressions on their faces. Our argument had escalated into a shouting match before either of them had caught up with what was happening.

Then Dad brought his hand down on the table in one loud crash. The dishes all clattered. Gravy spilled on to the tablecloth. Without saying a word, he looked in my direction and pointed to the door. There was a long, loud, deafening silence as I sat and debated whether or not to challenge him. But I decided against it. Throwing my fork down in disgust, I rose and stormed out.

I didn’t go upstairs, which is where my father intended me to go. Instead, I went to the front door. Hands in my pockets, I gazed through the screen door at the street and Mrs Beckerman’s red tulips.