by Sarah Willis
“Shhh,” she says. “Now calm down. It’s okay. You’re okay. Shhh,” and then she pulls Brenda into a hug and just holds her while Brenda cries. Megan looks pretty scared and she goes over to my mother, who puts an arm around her too, so they’re all kind of hugging each other. My dad puts his hand on Robert’s shoulder. I don’t know what to do, but my legs are shaking so bad I want to sit, but it seems wrong to sit when I just heard about three kids getting killed, so I don’t. I try to picture the face of any of these kids, but I can’t. Finally Brenda stops crying so loudly, although she’s still crying some, and my mother leads her to a chair and sits her down.
“This is very sad news, Brenda. You don’t have to tell us anything more right now, all right? Just sit quietly. Can I get you a glass of water?”
Brenda shakes her head no. “We have to go to church now.”
“But is that a good idea? You are so upset. Maybe you should …”
“No, we got to go.”
“Well, maybe it’s not such a good idea for Tamara, Robert, and Megan to come today.”
“No, they can come,” Brenda gulps. “That’s why I came. To get them.”
My mother looks at us. Part of me doesn’t want to go now, but I’m not going to admit it. “I’ll go,” I say.
Robert and Megan decide to stay home. They both look like they’re a bit afraid of Brenda right now. She does look pretty scary. She stands up and holds out her hand, so I take it, and we walk across the road, get in the car, where everyone else is waiting, and drive to church.
On the way there Mr. Murphy tells us Jimmy Hills had been drinking, and the car had been going over a hundred miles an hour. Mrs. Murphy says this should be a lesson for us all. “I can’t imagine the pain the Hills must be suffering right now.” Then suddenly she turns to Rusty, her face so contorted she looks like her eyes might fly out of her head, and says, “Don’t you ever do anything so stupid, do you hear me!”
Rusty bends his head down and says, “Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Murphy turns back around, facing forward. She makes this sound like sucking in a lot of air, and then her shoulders start to shake. Mr. Murphy takes one hand from the wheel and puts it on her shoulder. He doesn’t say anything. Neither does anyone else.
Church is different this time because instead of everyone having peaceful looks on their faces, they are all red-eyed and teary, and everyone hugs each other tightly and they don’t let go for a long while. No one hugs me, but they look at me with such kindness, as if the loss of three children makes them like me more. I am not a stranger, or a new neighbor, but a child close to the same age as the ones who got killed, and I fit into their lives in a different way now. I feel somehow more valuable. I don’t know if I should. I should feel sad and I should be crying, but all I feel is warm. Sitting in our pew I am scrunched up tight between Brenda and her mother, because there are more people in church today than ever before, but instead of feeling uncomfortable, I feel cozy and almost sleepy.
The service is held pretty much like it had been before, except when it comes time for people to mention who we should pray for, the minister talks about the three children who were killed, and everyone cries again, except me, and I think maybe I should fake it, but I can’t, so I just look down in my lap for a long time. Then we sing and pray and sing and the minister tells his Bible story, which of course has got to do with Jesus dying so we can be saved, and then his personal story, which is about an afternoon he spent with Jimmy Hills when they were doing some kind of Clean Up the Town Day, and, of course, the minister cries and gets everybody going again, and even I’m beginning to feel weepy, even though it’s a funny feeling because it’s not for the dead kids but for the people in the church. Then the minister raises his hands and everyone sings. We pray and sing and it’s over. It’s very quiet. It’s like after the siren went off at school and we were waiting to breathe again. Waiting to know we could.
No one gets into their cars. Little groups form and talk softly. I stand with the Murphys and two other families. The mothers plan on making chicken casserole and other things to take to the families that lost their children, while the fathers say something should be done about the sharp curve on Route 17. All the kids say the same thing: “I can’t believe it.” “Can you believe it?” I guess they have to say this over and over so they can believe it.
What I can’t believe is what Brenda tells me in the car. That every year some kid gets killed on Route 17. It’s like a curse. I can’t believe they go through something like this every year. I don’t feel so warm and cozy anymore. When I get home I go sit in the bomb shelter by myself. I tell Robert and Megan to get lost. I sit on the concrete floor and look up at the sky, wondering if you could really see a bomb dropping. At what point do you know it is a bomb?
During dinner, I think about all the families carrying casseroles around from door to door. I think about these same families coming to this house just last year, for Timothy, all the food he couldn’t eat. When I go to bed, I tell Timothy I’m sorry he died. And I really am. It’s like I know him, because I talk to him. It’s funny, because I kind of miss him.
My father sells pictures from galleries in New York City, not the big prestigious ones, but galleries all the same. Twice a year he goes to New York to visit the galleries that show his work, and meet with people in the art world. We never go with him, although when he comes back he always says we would have loved it, that he’ll take us next time.
Usually my mother gets quiet in the days before he leaves, but this time, as my father packs canvases into heavy, reinforced cardboard boxes and addresses them to be shipped out, my mother’s not acting different, because she has been quiet for a long time now. She hardly seems to be here at all. My mother is fading like cloth in the sun.
She has always made sure we read, going to great lengths to help us pick out books. Now she drops us at the library and we’re lucky if she comes back in less than a few hours. She just glances at the books we carry. She doesn’t ask us questions about what we’ve read. She doesn’t make Megan read out loud to her, something I always had to do. Megan reads though, it’s about all she does. She’s been reading more and more. She’s taken on my mother’s quiet as a means of communication. Simultaneous non-communication, like nonviolence, a statement in itself.
My mother also used to drop strange mathematical problems, written on torn pieces of paper, onto the kitchen table as I sat bored, as if she were carrying around an algebra question like one carries around a mop or a broom, a useful item to place in idle hands. She used to point out physics laws as we filled glasses with water or heated water for corn.
And, always, she tried to keep us occupied. But now she lets us do whatever we want. She doesn’t care where I go or for how long. The days are long. The only entertainment is ourselves.
From my step I listen to my parents talk about my father going to New York City for a few days. I can’t hear everything they say, because they are talking softly. They must be sitting very closely. “ … just a cold,” I hear my mother say. Then, “It’s important.” Then later, “ … need the money.” I hear my father say something about love, and then my mother say, “ … not now.” I go to my room. I don’t really want to hear any more.
Today, when it is time for my mother to drive my father to the airport, she walks slowly out of the barn, rubbing her eyes. We stand around the car and wait for her. There is manure on her tennis shoes. My father points this out, and she looks down.
“Oh. Well, yes.” She shrugs and gets into the driver’s side of the car. When she turns on the car it makes a deep coughing sound, then I realize it is her.
My father gets in the other side. We are to stay here.
“Be good,” she says. “I’ll be back in three hours. Give your father a kiss.”
He sticks his head out through the open window and we file past him, planting kisses on his cheek.
“You’ll be the man of the house while I’m gone now, Robert. Take go
od care of your mother.”
“Yes, sir,” Robert says in a soft voice, and suddenly I am angry at my father. Robert can’t take care of her. My father should, but he’s leaving for four days.
“Take care of your sister,” my mother says to me.
As they drive off I walk across the road, looking for Rusty.
While my father is in New York City, my mother spends more time at the pond pretending to fish. I have begun to cook dinners. I make Campbell’s tomato soup and tuna casserole, Campbell’s tomato soup and meat loaf, Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and hamburgers. When my mother comes back from the pond she nods a thanks to me, but she doesn’t eat.
At night she coughs for hours. I get on my knees and pray, saying the words out loud. I would shout if I thought that would work better, but I don’t think He’s listening either way.
My father calls and my mother tells him we are all fine. When he talks to me he asks how we are, and I say fine. My mother nods, pleased with my answer. She nods a lot now, rather than speaking. Sometimes a word comes out as a cough and we don’t know what she’s said. She will just wave us away, as if whatever it was wasn’t important enough to repeat.
Sunday, the Fourth of July, the Murphys drive us into town, where we eat cotton candy, hot dogs, and candied apples, listening to the school band blare out the national anthem. Mr. Murphy hobbles around the crowded park by the lake. Every time I see him, some man is slapping him on the back or shaking his hand. He eats three elephant ears that I know about, probably more. Mrs. Murphy is quiet and whispers into other ladies’ ears, cupping a hand to her mouth. I see the Burns, and recognize some kids from school, who wave and shout hello as if they are actually thrilled to see me. They don’t come over to talk. When we sit on the blanket by the lake to watch the fireworks, Mr. Murphy stretches both legs out straight in front of him and Brenda lies down with her head in his lap. He hollers as the fireworks explode, echoing light and sound off the dark water of the lake. Even Mrs. Murphy gasps and claps as the fireworks blossom in cracks and booms and shower down almost onto our heads. “Oh, look at that one!” she says. “Did you see that?” As if we could have missed it. My mother doesn’t come.
Robert, Megan, and I go with my mother to the airport to pick up my father. The airport has a small waiting room with plastic chairs, and some offices in back. That’s the whole airport. I have never flown before—in an airplane—and my heart pounds with the rumble of the airplanes taking off and landing. I don’t believe in airplanes. I don’t believe they are possible. I’m an airplane atheist, but, here they are, right in front of my eyes, lifting up into the sky, staying up in the sky, traveling long distances through the clouds.
I want to go inside the waiting room, where my mother sits, and tell her that airplanes exist. I want her to understand how impossible things can happen. I want her to believe in God, because I think He is punishing her. I don’t like Him one bit, but I am beginning to believe.
My father’s plane lands, a small twelve-seater with Allegheny Air printed on its white rivet-covered body. A man in a uniform and earmuffs pushes a staircase up to the plane, and then the plane door swings open. The first person out is my father. He stands on the top step and looks around—not for us, but for the view, taking in the countryside from a new angle. I can see his fingers twitch for a pen or brush. A lady from behind taps him on the shoulder, and he moves down the steps, to us.
His face changes from a grin to a puzzled frown as he sees my mother. He has been gone only four days, but during that time my mother has lost the ability to pretend she is well.
“Are you all right?” he asks, placing the back of his hand to her forehead.
“I have an appointment with the doctor. Tomorrow,” she says.
His white eyebrows raise up like albino caterpillars arching. His eyes widen. I hold my breath. I don’t believe what I heard. I can never remember my mother seeing a doctor, except when she was pregnant.
“What time?” he asks. We are still standing by the airplane. People walk by us and stare at my mother.
“Eleven.”
“I’ll take you.”
“Thank you.” They are very polite. I want to scream.
In the car she asks him how it was in New York City.
“Great. Great. I should have taken you all. Renny loved the new stuff. He says it will really sell. He even wants me to sell a few sketches, before I get to the oils, but I don’t know. Renny found me a gallery, but they’re right in the middle of renovating. I’ll have a show with just one other man, who does paintings of buildings. Almost my own show. In about a month.”
There is silence for a minute. He must be expecting my mother to say something, but she’s just nodding. He finally figures out that’s all he’s going to get. He clears his throat.
“I’ll have to go back. I have to see the space. I won’t let them hang my paintings without me. You know that. But it’s all pretty exciting. Huh, kids?” He asks us, since he needs to hear somebody say something.
“Sure is, Dad,” Robert says. No one else speaks. It’s very quiet in the car.
My sister coughs, just a quick clear bark of a cough, but my mother jerks and swerves the car into the center lane. A car horn blares at us as she pulls back into the right lane. I have grabbed my brother’s hand. I let go.
That night, fireflies come out in the thousands, as if they are born in the air as we watch. The whole Murphy family crosses the road to join my family on the side lawn between the house and the barn, a large open space that is now alive with lights. We have never all been together before. Fireflies cruise slowly around and above us. They talk with light and the absence of light. There are so many we can’t move without one brushing through our hair or landing on our clothes.
My father walks over to Mr. Murphy. “Ever seen anything like it?”
“Yeah. Once. A night just like this. When I was twelve. Never forget it. Must be something special about a night like this.”
“Must be,” my father says. This is the most they have ever said to each other that I know about. Now they have nothing left to say and stand in silence.
Brenda and Rusty have brought jelly jars with them. In minutes the jars are crawling with the greenish-yellow glow of trapped fireflies. Megan lies down on the grass and looks up at the sky. “You can’t tell them apart,” she says. “They look like stars. Like shooting stars.”
My mother lies down next to my sister and holds her hand. They lie there whispering to each other. I can hear oohs and aahs. I’d like to lie down with them and hold my mother’s hand, but I’m too old to do that.
Mrs. Murphy stands perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of her. A firefly has landed on her forehead and stays there, blinking. Mrs. Murphy is smiling, a big, wonderful smile. I have never seen her smile before.
Robert runs inside the house and brings out a glass jar. He skips around scooping fireflies out of the air. He has forgotten a lid, so he holds his hand over the top so they won’t escape. “They tickle!” he yells.
I walk over to Helen, who is standing alone, holding out a hand palm up, waiting for a firefly to land. When I get close to her, she puts her arm around my shoulder and pulls me right up next to her. “This is God’s gift to us,” she says. “A tiny piece of heaven, right here on earth. Do you know how lucky we are?”
“Will heaven be like this?” I ask.
“For me it will, Tamara. It will be just like this. And I hope you’ll be there with me.”
That makes me think of heaven as a place, a destination. Two thoughts cross my mind. I picture my family moving there, pulling our stuff behind us in the tag-along trailer, so my father can paint heaven. Then, I wonder, where will we go after heaven?
Robert runs over to me and holds the jar upside down above my head, trying to shake the fireflies out. They only crawl upwards, even though the way out is down. A few fall out on my shoulders, but most stay inside the glass jar. They don’t know any better.
; I walk over to where my mother and sister are lying on the lawn. “Shhh,” my sister says. “She’s asleep.” And she is. In the midst of Helen’s heaven, my mother sleeps.
When Megan was three and a half she woke up one morning pasty white and hot, with a temperature of 103.6 degrees. In Crane, Oregon, we were far from a doctor, and as always, my mother decided to play nurse. She held Megan naked in her arms, a towel underneath her, a cold washcloth on her forehead. We smashed ice with a hammer so Megan could suck on small pieces. Megan stayed hot. For two days she whimpered and cried. My father said we should take her to the hospital; my mother felt the fever would come down any minute. Megan wasn’t throwing up, she was taking liquids, she would be fine. My mother hated doctors.
On the third morning, lying in my mother’s lap, Megan made a strange gasping sound.
“Stuart!” My mother’s voice was tense, just managing to hold in panic. I turned to look just as my sister’s body stiffened, her legs kicking out across my mother’s lap, her shoulders arching back, her head bent backwards against my mother’s left arm. She began to jerk, like a little machine stuck in one motion. I would have laughed, it looked so odd, so absolutely funny, except it was, at the same time, the most frightening thing I have ever seen.
“Get your father,” my mother said. “Get your father,” she repeated sharply, because apparently I didn’t move. I ran, looking over my shoulder at my sister. My mother was holding Megan so she wouldn’t spill out of her lap.
He was outside.
“Something’s wrong with Megan!” I shouted. He dropped his brush and ran past me, into the house. I followed.
Megan was still having spasms, but now tiredly, with a few seconds in between each jerk. Then she shuddered to a stop, a dead stop.
With very little talk we got into the car and took Megan to the hospital. Robert and I were left in the waiting room as the doctor took Megan and my parents through a door and out of sight.