A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl

by Jean Thompson

  The trouble came when he got older and the music got angrier, louder. His music turned into this whole mangy way of life, drugs included.

  Growing up, they were always buddies. He’d taught his son how to throw a ball, how to hammer a nail. People used to say they looked exactly alike. What the hell happened to kids? How did they go from the babies you held next to your heart to . . . Jesus Christ.

  On a previous occasion, his son had attacked him physically. It was on record; the police had been involved. It was after this that he had purchased a firearm. It was entirely for the purpose of protection. He wasn’t some gun nut.

  His son had not been living at the house. He lived here and there, one place or another. He led an irregular life, as you would expect of someone who abused drugs. The same with work. Nothing seemed to last very long for him or provided him with much of a living. Music sure wasn’t making him rich. It was a source of many of their disagreements. Money, and why his son was so careless and indifferent about it. Not to mention drugs, the money that went to buy drugs and was worse than wasted, worse than sending it down a sewer. Money they had spent on rehab and counseling, another waste.

  His son had come to the house late, a little after ten. He was not expected there. They had argued. He could not remember exactly what was said. By that time all their arguments were connected, so that it was like trying to unsnarl a knot, pulling and tugging until you found a loose place. So that a complaint by one of them would lead to an accusation by the other, and so on.

  His son had been agitated and upset. He had talked about his mother. That much he remembered, because it had been so infuriating. He had said intolerable things about his father’s lack of care and consideration. Did he think he was the only one who grieved for her? That was what their argument had become. Who missed her most, loved her the most.

  He kept the gun upstairs. He must have gone up and found it and brought it back down. There were actions, and sequences of actions, which were unclear to him. He must have felt threatened. It was reasonable to feel that way. He did not know how they had ended up outside. Perhaps one of them had chased the other. He had no memory of being outside. He was inside, in the kitchen, drinking orange juice from the container in the refrigerator.

  His son had been shot once in the chest. He must have been the one to shoot him. There was no other explanation. It must have been cold outside, so he had come back in. He was in the kitchen, drinking orange juice from the container in the refrigerator. The police had come to the door, beating and pounding and shouting. They had found the gun on the middle shelf of the refrigerator, where he’d set it down.

  He did not think he was a bad person. He was a person who had made a bad mistake.

  He had done it, there was no question. He had not meant to do it. This was his only son, his boy. He was so very sorry. He couldn’t account for it. He really wished he could remember more, explain it right.

  part three

  THE GIRL OF MY DREAMS

  The blue of her eyes and

  the gold of her hair

  are a blend of the western sky

  And the moonlight beams

  On the girl of my dreams

  She’s the sweetheart of Sigma Chi

  “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi”

  Byron D. Stokes and F. Dudleigh Vernor, 1911

  I. GRACE

  Her grandfather’s archive was brought to Grace in sealed, dust proofed, and cataloged boxes. She was given white cotton gloves to wear and cautioned that if she wished to take notes, only pencils were allowed. The room was kept chilly, since heat was one of the enemies of preservation. A state-of-the-art HVAC system monitored humidity and kept out pollutants. Nothing had been exposed to light since it had been deposited. “How long is everything supposed to last?” Grace marveled, and the archivist said they were aiming for the half-life of plutonium, which was twenty-four thousand years. She added, quickly, that this was an archivist joke.

  Everything was ordered and recorded and there was a digitized guide to the contents. Grace went through the guide and located what she was looking for, but she asked the archivist if she might browse a bit. “Of course,” the woman said. “You should take as long as you need.” Grace thought the archivist was probably trying to be nice to her, because of everything that had happened. It was unavoidable and it wasn’t all bad, but she would be glad to get away from it.

  She was leaving town, in a little more than a month. It had all come together fast. She had an old college friend who lived in Oregon, in Eugene, and she would go there first, and then to California, to another friend who lived in Santa Rosa, and see if either place suited her enough to settle there. She didn’t expect to be coming back, not to live, at least.

  There was even some money. Her uncle Mark had explained it to her, how her mother’s portion of her grandparents’ estate was settled on her children. Her surviving child, that is, herself. The old house had finally sold. The sensational events involving her family had generated a certain interest. Buyers saw opportunities. It was a complicated and awful sort of good luck and Grace had given up trying to decide just how bad she ought to feel about it.

  Her grandfather’s materials were stored in glassine folders and wrapped in acid-free paper. Here were his diplomas and credentials, letters of appointment, his legal correspondence. His honors and promotions. Speeches he had given, newspaper articles that someone had clipped and saved, most probably her grandmother. Pictures of him that Grace remembered seeing before, as a child, images that she had forgotten she’d forgotten, until she held them in her gloved hands. Her grandfather in a long overcoat and a fedora, leaning on the hood of what was probably his first car, a dark, beetle-shaped Chevy. Part of a group portrait of his law school class. Her grandmother, neither young nor old, unsmiling, standing next to him and wearing a gardenia corsage. In this picture her grandfather was looking down on her with an expression that suggested wariness.

  And here was the letter she’d been looking for typed on university letterhead, the printing small and gray. Dated 1952, addressed to Dear Andrew, and signed with a squiggle, Bob. Thanking him for taking over the care and management of the “living memorial to that earlier generation who have made the supreme sacrifice.” The solemn importance of which her grandfather was uniquely suited to appreciate.

  Attached to this letter, an even older paper, written in careful script in brown ink—or ink that had faded to brown—a map showing the placement of the trees. One hundred and seventy-three of them, each of them honoring a university student or staff member who had died in the Great War.

  The trees had been planted in 1920. By the time her grandfather took over their care, they would have been fully grown. They wouldn’t have needed the kind of nursing along that you did with new trees. Most likely her grandfather’s duty was an honorary one, and workers had done whatever inspection or pruning was required. Still, he had undertaken it. Perhaps he had sought it out, seen it as important. He’d been a soldier himself. A new war always took the place of the old one.

  Each tree was labeled with a name. Privates first class and sergeants, mostly. A few captains. One major. She read through each name. Charles, Robert, Vaughn, Frances. Later, when the stadium was built, the names would be carved in the stone columns. But the trees had come first.

  The trees had been laid out in lines along several blocks, surrounding a field identified as the parade ground. Grace didn’t think there was a parade ground anymore. But the street names were the same, and the day after she visited the archives, she went in search of it.

  It took her a while to orient herself. Buildings had gone up on the east and west sides, and to the south was a parking lot. There was still a green field in the center, currently in use as a soccer field. Indian or Pakistani boys from the residence halls across the street were playing a match.

  The trees had not fared well. Either they had died away on their own, or else they’d been taken down for the new construction. Th
ere was only one line of trees, shading the sidewalk along one block, but none of them looked to be close to a hundred years old. Grace parked her car and got out to examine them. She walked along the tree line, each tree in its tidy circle of mulch. It was May and they were beginning to leaf out. What kind were they anyway? Honey locusts, she thought. She knew that honey locusts had been planted to replace all the elms that had died from Dutch elm disease. Maybe the original trees had been elms. The papers in the archive hadn’t said.

  It was disappointing, but what did you expect? Grace reached the end of the tree line and turned to head back to her car. Then she saw it, just to the side of the redbrick gymnasium, which was itself now nearly as old as the Great War. A large, spreading tree, slightly offset from the line of other trees, growing in its own island of grass, surrounded by post and chain fencing.

  She felt sure it was one of the memorial trees. She stepped carefully over the chain fence and put her hand on the tree’s trunk. She only knew the easiest trees, oaks and maples. This was something else. There was probably someone in charge of trees who could tell her, if she made an effort. She wondered which of the names on the list it had been intended to honor. She could go back and find that out also. But for right now it was enough to stand next to it and touch its cool, rough bark, and send her thoughts back to that distant war, and the young man who had died, or perhaps all the young men who had died, and her grandfather, who might have stood where Grace did now, resting his hand on the tree’s living skin.

  * * *

  Les Moore said, “I guess you went a little crazy. Everything with your family was pretty crazy. I’m sorry about them. So now you’re done with me, well OK. I hope you’ll miss me a little. Hey, it wasn’t love, but it wasn’t bad.”

  * * *

  Before her grandparents’ house sold, Grace went through the last stray items that had been left behind in the garage and the basement, things her mother had sorted through but hadn’t been able to either throw out or find space for at home. Among these were the framed mirrors and pictures. Grace found her grandmother’s print of Guernica and took it out of its frame, thinking that the frame, at least, was worth saving. A small envelope fell out of the backing. Inside it was a single sheet of lined notebook paper, covered with spiky, earnest handwriting.

  Dear Professor,

  I know, you are not a real professor, but maybe you are one by now, ha!

  I hope the history people know how to find you if you are not there. How are you? It’s me, your old pal. It sure has been a long time, so I apologize for not writing until now. Anyway you know that writing is not my best subject. I hope things are good with you. I am pretty good. I am married and have three boys. My wife and I still farm but I am mostly busy with the equipment sales and service which I have had for twelve years now. It is a pistol and it keeps me running. My dad passed away but my mother is still with us Thank God. I am busy and happy in my life but I still think about you sometimes. I am sorry that after the time we spent together I just up and left and I hope I did not leave you in a bad spot. I was so young and dumb. Now I am old and dumb, ha! Because my life right now is very good but maybe it all could have turned out different and you and me might have had a good life too. Even if I was not your best student! So I want you to know I think of you and I hope you think of me if you have the time. God bless.

  Very truly yours,

  Russell Hatch

  January 10, 1961

  The garden would be dedicated before it was entirely finished, since there were still plantings to go in, and some of the brickwork needed completion. But enough was done so that you could see the shape and plan of it, and how it would grow. At the last possible minute before the official opening, the plaque that had been commissioned arrived and was installed on a brick column at the entrance:

  IN LOVING MEMORY OF

  LAURA WISE ARNOLD

  AND

  MICHAEL ARNOLD

  A lot of people had made donations through the GoFundMe page. Grace was kept busy tracking them and writing thank-yous and talking every day to the park district about one or another thing that needed to be done or redone. It was fortunate that she had been thinking about the garden ever since her mother died, about what her mother would have wanted and how it might be arranged. It was fortunate that she had talked to the park district last summer and knew what was needed for a proposal, for pricing and budgeting. Once she had the money in hand, they were able to make things happen quickly.

  They had broken ground in March. Dry weather that month helped the construction along, just as the rain in April was good for the plants. May was all about pushing to get things done. Grace surprised herself with a previously unsuspected efficiency. She made phone calls and called again when people didn’t respond. She visited the site and made sure the workers were actually at work. Sometimes after they’d left for the day she went back with a spade and did some of the digging herself. It felt good to dig until her muscles were ropy and sore and her head was free of thought.

  A doctor had prescribed sleeping pills, and it was made clear that if she felt the need, other soothing pharmaceuticals were available to her. The pills made her head feel as if it was stuffed with cotton and she gave up on them after two nights. It was easier to stay awake and commune with her ghosts.

  Now it was early June. There had been some days of chilly rain, but the weather had cleared and was holding. The night before the opening, Grace walked through the garden, liking what she saw. A low brick wall enclosed the space. Existing shade trees had been left in place beyond this border, so that the effect was that of coming into a sunlit glade. Trimmed boxwood hedges set off the different beds, a formal element, but within the beds themselves there were casual plantings, flowers and shrubs that were meant to mingle and grow dense. Roses and Shasta daisies, daylilies and Orientals, bee balm. Vining honeysuckle trained over a trellis, hydrangeas in different forms. Blazing star. Iris, phlox, black-eyed Susan, peonies. Chrysanthemums for fall color and spaces left for the spring bulbs that would go in later, daffodils and tulips and hyacinths. White and magenta coneflowers, purple salvia, painted daisies, ornamental grasses with seed heads that looked like fine sprays of water. Witch hazel, dogwood, dwarf forsythia. Some of it wouldn’t bloom until the following year, so annuals filled in the bare spots for now, red and white and pink petunias, verbena, blue Angelonia, Dragon Wing begonias. A grape arbor to one side, the new vines pruned back and ready to climb. And although lilacs made for painful memories, Grace had made sure that some of her grandmother’s old-fashioned favorites were included.

  The white oak tree on the north side was for Michael.

  The hackberry tree on the south was for her grandfather.

  It was possible that someday her father would walk free and come here. It was possible that someday she would feel differently about this.

  The head gardener was still here, working into the evening, setting up sprinklers and spreading a few last wheelbarrows of mulch. Grace spoke with him and was glad that he seemed pleased with everything. He said that in a year or two, the plantings would start to fill in. By year three, you could expect everything to take off. He’d be taking good care of it, not to worry. Grace said that she planned to be back from time to time and would look forward to seeing how things grew. He said that she’d gotten a good deal for her money and Grace said it was actually a lot of other people’s money and he said then it was an especially good deal. They said good night and Grace drove home through the summer twilight. Fireflies were sparking in the tall grass by the side of the road.

  The garden would outlast the memory of those to whom it was dedicated. When the garden itself was gone, you could hope that someone would plant a new garden.

  The next day Grace met her uncle Mark and aunt Brenda and Dylan and Tracy for an early lunch. Now that they were, in effect, her only family, Grace was trying to like her aunt and cousins a little better. At least the kids were growing out of their carefully maintained b
oredom and occasionally expressing interest in their surroundings. Dylan asked her if she was really going to California. When Grace said she was, he said “Cool,” in the hopeless tone of a boy who was certain he was never going to get laid, since he had been denied access to surfer girls, free and easy hippie girls. Brenda said that she hoped Grace would not experience any earthquakes, the west coast being the place for so many frequent and destructive earthquakes, and Grace said she would be certain to enter only those buildings that had been retrofitted.

  She excused herself and went home to change into a pale green summer dress that she liked because it reminded her of a picture in a book she’d had when she was a little girl, a green-gowned fairy with gauze wings. She didn’t know what had happened to that book. She wished that her mother was here so that she could ask, Do you remember that storybook with the red cover? Do you remember which story it was, the one with the fairy lady? She wished that there was someone left for her, someone who might bear witness to her past.

  The official opening of the garden was at one o’clock, although that was a little silly, opening, since nothing was blockaded off and people had already been checking the place out and wandering around in it for some time now. Grace picked up two sheet cakes she’d ordered at the grocery, along with a case of water bottles, and some fizzy pink nonalcoholic wine. The park district was supplying a long table and tubs of ice. There weren’t going to be any speeches, Grace had insisted on that, but she was determined that there be something in the way of occasion and celebration.

  It was perfect June weather. The air was warm and full of blossom scent, the sky a profound blue, the clouds white and drifting. There had been no way of knowing how many people might show up, or how long they might stay. There had been an article in the newspaper, and a short mention on one of the local television news shows. The parking lot filled up. Grace put Tracy and Dylan in charge of cutting cake slices and pouring drinks. The park district people needed to talk with her about the last-minute maintenance. Other people wanted to tell her how very sorry they were, to inquire after her health and well-being, and others, she suspected, wanted to set eyes on her as the survivor of a tragedy. Her friends ran interference, claiming her whenever the crowd became overwhelming. She was kept busy, distracted, marveling at the number and variety of people, the dense connected web of her family’s history. Here were her mother’s friends, and a younger group of Michael’s, who sat on the grass to one side. Some majestic old couples who navigated the garden paths with canes and had opinions about the plantings. High school teachers of Grace’s and of Michael’s, former bosses, neighbors, schoolmates, people from the near and distant pasts.