Dandelion Summer

by Lisa Wingate

  She lifted a hand from the steering wheel long enough to swipe the back of a wrist across her brow and tuck spirals of thick, dark hair behind her ear. For a moment, I thought she wouldn’t answer at all. Perhaps this was to be a silent kidnapping now. Then she gripped the steering wheel again, the set of her jaw hard, resolute. “They said the Surveyor would sink under the moon dust, but it didn’t, did it?”

  Her point dawned in my mind like the earth rising slowly, large and blue, over the lunar surface. Only impossible journeys achieve the impossible.

  I felt myself acquiescing, giving in, against all good sense. “True enough.” Caution began to fall away as we worked a path through the traffic, creeping toward the unknown like a rocket moving toward the launchpad on crawlers, the progress so slow it could barely be seen with the naked eye. But beneath what could be seen, there was an anticipation of fire, speed, discovery. One last journey into the unknown. One last mission impossible in my life.

  Beside me, my copilot allowed a self-satisfied smirk. She’d won, of course, and she was delighted. “Don’t worry, J. Norm. I’ll take care of you.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” I rested my head against the seat back. “Kidnapping is illegal, you know.” My eyes fell closed just as her smirk became a genuine smile.

  My mind drifted away to visions of Camelot, but slowly Camelot became another place, a space deeper within me, the memories in light and shadow, like a forest floor with sunbeams filtering through here and there, burning off the murk. I was on a wide front porch with tall white pillars. Cecile sat on the porch swing, balancing the baby on her knee as she helped Emma, the quiet one, to weave a chain of dandelions and daisies. Nearby, Erin created a rhythmic tap, tap, tap with her skipping rope at the top of the steps, while Johnny rode a squatty metal baby scooter to the gate and back along the front walk. Seeds with feathery white sails tumbled from Emma’s gathering of flowers and slid across the porch, swirling in the whip of air from Erin’s rope, then sailing away. I watched the lacy parachutes travel, rising slowly at first, then launching toward faraway places, at the mercy of wind and water. I yearned to follow those seeds, to fly away from that house and the terrible things that were happening there. Watching the girls run and play, I felt envy, then sadness. They’ll be next, I thought. Their time will come. My body ached in so many places, but the bruises on my soul yielded a deeper pain.

  There were burns of some sort on my wrists, red and angry and new. Even though it was summer, I wore long sleeves to cover them. Rubbing the fabric that hid the wounds, I glared through the screen door, hated the woman upstairs in her gauzy white nightgown. I hated her because she didn’t stop it from happening.

  I hated her, and yet I wanted her love. . . .

  When I woke, a breeze was sliding softly over my skin, cooling the perspiration on the back of my neck. The car clicked steadily over joints in the concrete, so that I knew before coming fully to consciousness that we had left the traffic behind. Outside the car, there were no sounds of the city—just the occasional hum and swish of a car passing in the other direction, and the gentle rocking of an old two-lane highway.

  A thought troubled my mind, a leftover corollary to the dream, I supposed. Given the bit of text we’d seen on the Internet, it was likely this trip would prove that the twin girls in my dream, the toddler boy, the baby, and Cecile, were all dead. The victims of a tragedy of such a monumental proportion that it lived for years hidden inside me, and found light only in the memoirs of some person who’d published a book about the history of a little timber town in the Piney Woods.

  How much time had passed after that day on the porch, when I’d stood stiff and sore, hiding my bruises as the girls blithely skipped rope and gathered flowers? How much time before the fire? It couldn’t have been long. The legs I’d seen when I looked down at my feet were the wiry, suntanned legs of a boy, narrow cords of muscle winding into knobby knees. I must have been at least five, perhaps even six. I was seven or eight when my mother argued with Frances about sending me to the first grade at St. Clare’s school, and by then I’d been with her long enough that she’d taught me my letters and numbers at home. We’d moved from Houston to Dallas, and I knew my way around the house. It was my home. I felt settled there.

  Was the memory of the dandelion chain, of that quiet day on the porch, my last memory in the house with the seven chairs?

  Was I prepared to discover that it was the last day or week or month that those children, with their wide blue eyes and deep red hair, or Cecile, with her large, kind hands and her patient smile, lived upon this earth? Was a memory like that worth regaining? Would I be allowing those ghosts into my life only so that they could haunt me?

  The mother who’d raised me to adulthood, my mother, had loved me, as had my father in his own stoic way. What they’d done to hide the past, they’d undoubtedly done for my benefit. What they’d kept hidden was perhaps better left in the dark.

  Yet I felt compelled to find the truth. I felt the questions calling to me.

  Yawning and stretching, I straightened in my seat, looking out the open window, watching stands of spring clover and primrose sway in the muted evening light. In a pasture, a lone white horse grazed, unperturbed by our passing. Nearby, tall pines towered above a farmhouse with green asbestos siding. We’d come quite a ways already. We were into the pines.

  Behind the wheel, Epiphany appeared relaxed, one hand resting in her lap, as if she’d become fully accustomed to the pilot’s chair while I slept in suspended animation. My body was stiff, the bones in my spine popping like the pods on the purple hull peas Mother’s Polish cook had shelled on the back porch when I was a boy.

  “You done complaining?” Epiphany asked. “Because if you’re not, you can just go on back to sleep.”

  “Where are we?” I surveyed the passing territory, looking for road signs or landmarks. Did Epiphany have any idea where we were? Before leaving my house, I’d briefly shown her the map, told her we would take I-20 east, but I’d given her no instructions after that. We weren’t on I-20 anymore.

  She didn’t appear the least bit worried that we might be lost. “We been out of Dallas a couple hours, at least. I think it’s about fifty miles more to Groveland.”

  “Fifty miles?” Good gumption, I’d slept almost the entire trip! “Are you certain? You should have awakened me so that I could help you with the route.”

  She cast a sideways glance and held it a bit too long, actually. We drifted onto the shoulder, then veered back to the road. Fortunately, there weren’t any lumber trucks coming. “You were getting kidnapped, remember? Besides, I can read a map.” She patted the atlas lying open on the console between us. “My mama liked to hit the road a lot. Sometimes she took me with her.”

  I studied her for a moment, wondering at the meaning of those words. “Where did you stay the rest of the time?” I was almost afraid to ask.

  “Wherever, kind of.” She didn’t offer any further information, and I felt the need to pry.

  “And you lived where, before this?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, lots of places, but right before Dallas, I was in a little town out by Abilene. You wouldn’t know it. I told you about Mrs. Lora, my teacher from seventh grade, didn’t I? I stayed on with her after Mama ran across Russ and moved to Dallas. They wanted, like, time alone, and anyway, Mrs. Lora needed somebody to help around the house and the garden and stuff.”

  “So you just lived with this woman while your mother moved away?” The concept was appalling. What sort of parent would leave a child behind that way?

  Epiphany shrugged. “Yeah, sure. It worked out. I would’ve stayed there through high school, but Mrs. Lora’s diabetes got her and she was really sick, and then she died. So I had to come here. I liked the school there a lot. I mean, I was like a little brown bug in a bucket of milk, but at least you didn’t have to worry about getting jumped in the bathroom. I hate the school here. I’m not going back. I’ll get a GED or something, if I
have to.” Swallowing hard, she tipped her face away, as if she hadn’t meant to reveal that much information. Clearly, though, it had been on her mind.

  “You’re far too smart to be settling for your GED,” I pointed out. “There are your college exams to think about, scholarships and applications. Your future. I’ve seen you whip through your algebra homework. Few students have that ability. If this school administration won’t see to it that you have the opportunities you deserve, then there are other schools.”

  She laughed, a soft, rueful sound. “Yeah, all that stuff takes money,” she said softly.

  The conversation ended there. For a time, we drove in silence. I watched towering pines pass, and drank in the scents of grass, and water, and wildflowers growing along the roadsides. As always, my mind was plotting ahead, considering the possible ramifications and the odd practicalities of this trip—overnight accommodations being one. The library and any type of downtown stores or historical museums would be closed by this time of the evening. We’d need a hotel of some sort. I could hardly share a room with a young girl to whom I wasn’t related. . . .

  “J. Norm, the gas thingy’s on empty.” Epiphany broke into my thoughts. “You want me to stop up there?” She pointed ahead to a small gas station at a crossroads.

  “That will be fine.” I scooted upward in my seat as we came closer to the store. A small picnic area beckoned from the shade of some magnolia trees off to one side. “Let’s get gas, then buy ice-cream bars. We can sit outside and take a little time to enjoy the evening breeze. I need to stretch my legs a bit.”

  “ ’Kay.” Navigating into the parking lot, Epiphany smiled. “Like a picnic, huh?”

  “Like a picnic,” I agreed, thinking back. When the children were small, Annalee found any opportunity to stop off at picnic grounds while we were traveling. Against my admonitions that a restaurant would be faster and easier, she packed coolers and sandwiches, and searched for roadside parks or other points of interest. Those trips off the map tended to frustrate me, as I’d already precalculated the mileage to our destination, our expected arrival time, and roughly the delay afforded by stops for gas and, with two small children, restroom breaks. Long lunches with cement dinosaurs, Viking rune stones, Joshua trees, and the world’s largest ball of twine weren’t anywhere on my agenda. It’s a vacation, Annalee would say. It’s about discovering what there is to see. No sense rushing from here to there.

  But the world’s largest ball of twine? I’d counter.

  Annalee would only laugh and flap a hand at me, her bracelets jingling. I want to see it all. . . .

  I would have missed so many things, so many of the best things, had it not been for Annalee. I would have worried and calculated and scheduled my way past the grandeur of ordinary life.

  I exited the car, determined not to fret my way through this trip, this adventure with Epiphany.

  As it turned out, the stopover created a worry of its own, however. After pumping the gas, we went inside to pay, and I asked the woman at the counter if she knew of a place to stay in Groveland. She gave me an odd look, her eyes sliding from me to Epiphany and back. Her brows, penciled on in high arches, lowered over buggy eyes that were lined with thin red veins, as if she spent too much time looking into things that were none of her affair. “You and her?” she asked incredulously, the words cool and unwelcoming, accusatory in a way that sent a bead of discomfort down my spine.

  “Yes, a room for each of us,” I stipulated as Epiphany wandered to the candy counter to look at chocolate bars.

  Grabbing a notepad from behind the cash register, the woman wrote, Pine View Motel, and handed it to me. “You on the road to someplace?” The butt of the pen tapped the counter, and her gaze slid toward Epiphany again.

  I willed myself not to seem uncomfortable, but I was. I hadn’t anticipated a reaction like this one. What if something was afoot and we were yet unaware of it? What if some sort of missing persons alert had been broadcast regarding the two of us? Was the woman behind the cash register trying to decide where she’d seen us before? Slowly connecting the dots?

  “Yes. I’m on my way to see family.” I thought it best, then, that the woman not know that our destination was less than thirty miles down the road. “In . . . Florida. Lake Poinsett.”

  “Long trip.” The clerk continued eyeballing Epiphany as I handed over the money for our purchases, then received change. I would have sworn that she sneaked a glance inside my wallet, too, as if everything about us were of above-normal interest.

  I took our ice-cream bars and drinks, and we hurried out the door. We didn’t stay for a picnic. Back in the car, Epiphany gave the store a narrow-eyed glare as we circled the parking lot. “Yeah, she was wondering if I was gonna steal a candy bar.”

  “Going to. It’s two words.” I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder, though I half expected the woman to be standing in the doorway, taking down our license plate number. “I fear she thought I was some sort of dirty old man or the like.”

  “Ffff!” Epiphany scoffed. “J. Norm, you’re too old for somebody to think you’re a dirty old man.”

  As was often the case with Epiphany, I was stumped as to how to reply to the comment. “Well, certainly all that scrutiny wasn’t only over candy bars. And aside from that, she was looking at us before you moved to the candy counter.”

  Epiphany pulled onto the road. “Norman, you been living in the big city all your life? She was lookin’ at you and wondering, were you my grandpa or did you just pick me up on the side of the road someplace? You go showing up in small towns with a little brown girl, inquiring minds wanna know—get what I mean? Mama and me lived in lots of places like this, and everywhere you go, somebody’s looking and wondering, That her child? Mama hates that. She says it’s embarrassing.”

  A heaviness settled in my chest, and I didn’t reply, but only watched Epiphany navigate the highway as I replayed her words in my mind, searching for any hint of emotion. How would it feel to know that your own mother was embarrassed to be seen with you? What would a lifetime of that do to a child?

  Epiphany continued on, “So, ummm . . . I been thinking, though. Since that lady acted that way and all, maybe when we go in someplace I oughta just call you . . . well, like, Uncle Norm, or maybe Grandpa or something. . . .” Flicking a tentative glance my way, she let the sentence hang unfinished, then added, “I mean, it might make things easier, you know? So people don’t ask questions, but if you don’t want to, it’s okay.” Her mouth pursed as if she’d had a taste of something troublesome, and she swallowed hard. “No big deal, all right?”

  “I think ‘Grandpa’ would do nicely.” I remembered that the ice-cream bars were melting in the bag, and I pulled them out. When I looked up, she was smiling slightly, watching me as if she expected me to say something more. “But don’t be surprised if I don’t think to answer right away. I’ve never been ‘Grandpa’ before.”

  “Well, I’ve never had one before, either.”

  Emotion thickened in my throat, and I swallowed it, unwilling to explore the underlying causes. “Pull over in that gravel patch up there, and we’ll eat our ice cream.”

  “I can eat it and drive.” She reached for the ice-cream bar, and I held it away.

  “Grandpa says no.”

  Snorting, she guided the car onto the wide spot beside the road. “Just ’cuz I call you that name, it doesn’t mean you get to boss me around.” She took the snack from my hand, unwrapped it, and noisily slurped drips before enjoying a first bite. There were times when I suspected that Epiphany had been raised in a barn.

  “On the contrary, it intimates that I am older and wiser.” I reveled in the first taste of my ice-cream sandwich—sugar, chocolate, cholesterol, saturated fat. Heaven. All the joys that had been stolen from me in a quest to force me into a longer life. “Which, indeed, is the case.”

  Epiphany snorted again, choking on a bite. For a moment, I thought I’d have to drag her out of the car and do the Heim
lich. When she recovered, she shook her head. “Man, you’re gonna be hard to live with now, huh?”

  “Perhaps. Going to.”

  We ate our sandwiches in peace, and then continued on our trek. It was after eight o’clock when we reached Groveland. The town was sleepy and quiet, stately old Victorian homes languishing in the shade of towering pines and lofty magnolias as the sun slowly surrendered the day. Yards bloomed with daffodils and iris, and early spring roses painted trellises with impossible bursts of color. The scents in the air, the sound of the tires clicking along in the edges of the gutter, the rocking of the car seemed familiar. Have I a memory of this place? I wondered.

  Passing through downtown, I gazed upward at the buildings, their high brick and stone facades rising against the darkening sky, the years of their establishment, many in the eighteen hundreds, etched in capstones. The buildings had been around much longer than I. The bank building, a tall redbrick structure with ornate parapets at all four corners, caught my gaze. I couldn’t help thinking that I knew the place. An odd feeling of déjà vu crept over me, and then a sense of foreboding.

  A few blocks farther down, we passed the Pine View Motel, a squat motor court of sixties vintage. Judging by the dried-up swimming pool and the aging billboard with forlorn bits of broken neon dangling, the place had seen better days. It had the look of a spot where truckers might come and go at all hours of the night. I could hardly leave a sixteen-year-old girl alone in a room at such a place, and having Epiphany in the room with me was . . . well, improper at best. At worst, it would prove DeRon’s case in the future.