The Sunflower Forest

by Torey Hayden

  ‘You’re imagining this, Mama,’ I said, bringing my voice down to normal volume. ‘It’s only in your mind. Just the way that whole deal about Uncle Paddy cheating Dad out of that money was. Just the way it was on Stuart Avenue. Remember that? Remember when you kept thinking you heard rats in my closet when we lived on Stuart Avenue? Remember how Daddy kept taking you up there and setting all those traps that never caught anything? But oh no, you wouldn’t believe him. Oh no. No matter what he did, no matter how much I loved it there, we had to move. Rats would get into Megan’s bassinet, you said. What a stupid idea, Mama. How would they get into a bassinet? What would rats want with Megan anyhow? But would you believe that?’

  Ignoring me, she squeezed past and went to the far counter to pick up her cigarettes.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you like this, Mama, but somebody’s got to sooner or later.’

  She pulled the wrapper off the packet of cigarettes and knocked one across her fingers. She searched around for the matches.

  ‘You know what’s going to happen, if you keep making a nuisance of yourself with your stupid notions? They’re going to cause trouble, those Watermans. They’re not like Daddy and me. They’re not going to just put up with you. And they’ll have a right, if you keep bothering them.’

  Still no response.

  ‘You heard what he said. They’re going to call the police next time.’

  She paused, cigarette in hand, unlit match in the other.

  ‘They’ll call the police, and who will go out and get you then? It sure won’t be Daddy or me. It’ll be some policeman.’

  ‘The police can’t arrest you in America,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Mama, the police in America sure can arrest you, if you go around trying to make other people’s children believe they belong to you. That’s wrong. Just think how you’d feel if someone were doing that to Meggie. What you’re doing to that little boy – that’s against the law in anybody’s country.’

  She set the match down a moment and ran her fingers through the hair near her left temple. Her lips pursed into a thoughtful expression. She then picked up the match again and lit it.

  ‘I hate to be the one to talk to you like this, Mama, but if Daddy won’t, then I will. If you keep this up, the police’ll come and arrest you. And if you don’t stop altogether, they’re going to put you in jail or something. Or in the state hospital. They’ll say Daddy and I can’t control you and they’ll put you in Larned and there won’t be a single thing we can do about it. Those are the consequences for doing stupid things like this.’

  Her eyes dilated. The pupils expanded nearly to the edges of her irises, eclipsing the blue. Thank God, something’s finally gotten through to her, I was thinking, and I relaxed back against the counter. She was standing stock still. She’d lit the match but had frozen somewhere mid-move. The match burned down, and she dropped it on to the Formica counter top. We both watched it burn out.

  ‘So, you got to promise me, Mama, that this is the end of this nonsense and you won’t go out there again.’

  She had begun to shake. The cigarette, still between her fingers, twiddled.

  ‘I’m not trying to scare you, Mama. I just want you to understand how things really are. Try to think of it as being Megan. Imagine how awful we’d feel if someone kept coming around, talking to her. Don’t you understand how the Watermans must be feeling? Try to put yourself in their shoes. That’s all I’m trying to point out.’

  The shaking continued.

  ‘So, look, just promise me, OK? I got to know you mean it. Promise me. Say, “Lesley, I promise I’m not going to go out there to the Watermans again. I’m not going to bug Toby Waterman any more.” Tell me that. Promise me.’

  The unlit cigarette tumbled from her grasp and rolled across the counter. Hands clasped together, she brought them up over her mouth.

  ‘OK, look, I’m sorry. Don’t get upset about it. I just wanted you to understand the consequences, that’s all. But don’t worry about them. Just promise me that you won’t bother the Watermans any more and then nothing will happen.’

  No response. I reached my arm around her shoulder and gave her a little hug to reassure her. I wanted her to realize that I wasn’t angry with her any more, that the things I had said had been simply for her own good, because I loved her and didn’t want her to get into trouble. People have to be honest sometimes.

  But she could not stop shaking. Within moments she was shaking so hard that she shook me too.

  ‘Look, Mama, I said I’m sorry. I am. Don’t get all upset about it. Don’t worry.’

  ‘He said I was safe here,’ she said in a hoarse voice. Lowering her head, she clasped her hands on either side of her face.

  ‘Mama, listen to me, all right? Don’t shake. Come on now, quit shaking. Nothing’s the matter. Nothing’s happened yet, has it? I was only telling you. I know it’s hard for you, Mama. I know you wish the little boy was yours. I can understand that. But get hold of yourself a little bit, can you? Don’t shake.’

  The tears were there then, over her cheeks.

  ‘Mama.’ It was more of a moan than a word. ‘Oh, Mama, for Pete’s sake, listen to me, would you? I’m sorry. Let’s just forget what I said, OK? Here, sit down. Let me help you. Do you want a cup of coffee? Shall I fix you some coffee?’ I almost had to push her down into the chair. Her muscles were iron hard beneath my fingers. ‘Mama,’ I said, coming down on my knees beside the chair. ‘Look at me. I love you. We all love you, Mama. And we won’t let anything happen to you. You know that. I was just talking. Trying to make you understand.’

  ‘This is America,’ she whispered. ‘O’Malley, he said I was safe here.’

  ‘Oh Mama, you are safe. Oh cripes, Mama, don’t cry like that. Don’t.’

  ‘I thought I was safe.’

  ‘Oh Jesus. Oh God. Mama, stop it. Mama, don’t. You’re making me upset. See me? Look what you’re doing. Do you want me to cry too? Mama, don’t. I love you. Don’t. Please stop.’

  ‘They cannot take you away in America. O’Malley, he tells me this. He says I’m safe. I believed him.’

  ‘Oh, do believe him. He’s right. I’m sorry. Honest, I am. I was just running off at the mouth. I was upset and I just said what came into my head. Forgive me, Mama. I’m sorry.’

  Tearfully, she looked over at me. ‘You won’t let them rape me again, will you?’ Her voice had grown very small. ‘Oh please, they won’t rape me again, will they?’

  ‘Oh Mama, no!’ I reached to hug her, to cling to her.

  She was sobbing.

  ‘He said I was safe. I believed him. Oh please, please, don’t let them come again. Please. Please don’t let them come. I thought I was safe.’

  I felt like hell. Like shit. Why had I done that? Of all the stupid, half-assed things I could have said, why had I chosen to say what I did?

  I pleaded with her to calm down, but she grew more and more agitated. She went on and on and on about being safe in America where the police could not come into your home and get you, where doctors could not lock you up without your permission. Clutching the material in my blouse, her fingers going white with the strength of her grasp, she begged me to protect her. And I, hideously frightened myself, still kneeling on the floor beside her, began to cry too, too panicked to pull myself together. Like Pandora, I had no idea how to get the lid back on what I’d opened.

  I couldn’t calm her down on my own. Even after I had managed to get her out of the kitchen and upstairs to the safety of her own bed, she couldn’t stop crying. She sobbed hysterically, and I heard myself screaming at her to stop. Finally, I went into the bathroom and sorted through the bottles in the medicine chest. Some of the prescriptions were ancient. I uncapped them, smelled them, rolled a few tablets out into my palm before throwing the majority of them into the toilet. At last I came across a name I recognized. It was a tranquillizer prescribed by our old doctor in Nebraska. The label said take two, so I took out four pills. I went downs
tairs with them, mashed them up, dissolved them in milk. I added a little chocolate syrup and took the glass back upstairs. She had a hard time drinking it, and I worried that it might taste too awful. But in the end she got it down. Then I stayed with her on the bed and rubbed her shoulders, hoping she wasn’t so tense that she’d throw the medication up.

  When the pills began to take effect, I went downstairs again. I located The Lark Ascending, took it from the record cabinet and put it on the phonograph. I turned the volume up so loudly that the high, melancholy wail of the violin pierced every small corner of the house and the floor vibrated with the deeper sounds of the other instruments.

  ‘Listen, Mama. It’s Elek’s violin. Do you hear it?’ I sat on the bed beside her and ran my fingers through her hair, working the long strands out across the leg of my jeans. ‘Everything’s going to be OK, isn’t it, Mama? I won’t let anything happen to you. You don’t have to worry about anything. You can just relax. Me and Daddy and Megan, we love you. We’ll always take care of you. No matter what. So you never have to worry. Just listen. Listen to Elek’s violin.’

  She closed her eyes. I lay down not so much beside her as on top of her. She was on her left side, and I lay with my two hands locked over her right shoulder, my face pressed tightly against her arm. The music swelled around us. Exhausted, we both fell asleep.

  The phone was ringing.

  I sat up groggily. What time was it? It could have been any hour of the day or night as far as I was concerned. Dazed with the unexpected deepness of my sleep, I felt completely disoriented.

  The phone persisted. I leaned across Mama to turn the clock on the bedside table toward me. It was just after four in the afternoon. With slow, heavy movements I got out of bed.

  ‘Mrs O’Malley?’ the voice said a little impatiently when I finally picked up the receiver.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. This is Lesley. My mother isn’t available right now. Who’s this?’

  It was the secretary from Megan’s school. She wanted my mother, and when I explained that Mama wasn’t there to be talked to, she wanted to know when Mama would be home. I explained that my mother was ill and not able to come to the phone. In that case she wanted my father. I said he was at work. She asked for his telephone number there.

  Within minutes my father rang. What was Mama doing? he asked. Sleepy, I replied and didn’t go into details. Would I please come get him in the car? he asked. He had to go over to Megan’s school immediately. I asked what was wrong. It seemed a day for wrong things. My father replied that he didn’t know for sure.

  When we arrived at the school, the principal shook hands with my father. Megan was sitting in the front office. Scrunched down in a plastic chair, she did not acknowledge our arrival. Instead, she picked at a scab on her arm.

  The principal invited my father into his little office and for the first time seemed aware of my presence. Would I mind waiting outside, please? He motioned to Megan. She could go with me.

  Shoulders up, head down, long dark hair lying over her like a cloak, Megan looked like a trapped elf, miserably ensnared in this room of plastic chairs and fluorescent lights. Full of unexpected sympathy for her, I went over and put my arm around her shoulder. She pulled away. Sliding off the chair, she left ahead of me and went into the corridor.

  The school was old, built sometime around the turn of the century when the town was thriving. On the inside over the vast entrance was a huge carved wooden panel inscribed PROGRESS and depicting the pioneers on their way west. I studied it for a few minutes before sitting down on the bench beside the door. Megan made a point of sitting on the other bench instead of beside me.

  ‘What did you do?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How come they called Daddy out of work then?’

  ‘How come you don’t stick your head in a hole, Lesley?’

  ‘You might as well tell me. Dad will anyway.’

  She raised her head slightly to glare at me before turning her attention back to the sore on her arm.

  ‘So?’ I asked.

  ‘I got a swat.’

  ‘You did? Cripes, Megs. What for?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said and pulled up the scab. She studied it.

  ‘I hate to inform you of this, Megs, but they don’t generally give swats for nothing.’

  ‘Buzz off, Lesley.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Nothing, I said.’ And that was the end of the conversation.

  Dad came out about twenty minutes later. The principal put his hand under Megan’s chin and lifted her face. She wouldn’t be doing something like that again, would she? No, Megan muttered in an almost inaudible voice. Was she sorry? Yes, she said in the same tone.

  My father got into the car in silence. About halfway home he looked over at Megan in the front seat beside him. ‘Whatever made you do that?’ he asked. I still didn’t know what she had done.

  Megan shrugged.

  ‘Listen, don’t shrug at me when I ask you a civil question, young lady. I’m not at all happy with you. You’re in enough trouble as it is.’

  ‘Well, they said it wasn’t true,’ she replied in a defensive tone. ‘They were teasing me. I didn’t mean to hit him that hard. That was an accident. I just meant to hit him a little. Just to sort of knock him down. To make him stop.’

  My father sighed.

  ‘Him getting hurt like that, that was an accident, Daddy. I tried to explain to Mr Gaines. I didn’t mean for him to hit his head. It was his stupid fault for doing that. I just wanted him to shut up. He kept saying it wasn’t true.’

  ‘But Meggie,’ Dad said, ‘it wasn’t true.’

  Megan did not answer.

  My father pulled into the driveway and stopped the car but he didn’t get out. Instead, he removed the keys from the ignition and laid them on the dashboard. He turned in his seat, leaning back against the car door. Megan remained pinioned by her seat belt.

  ‘It wasn’t true, was it, Megs?’

  ‘I didn’t mean for the kid to be hurt. I said I didn’t. Why doesn’t anyone believe me?’

  ‘I believe you. But that’s not what I’m asking. Frankly, Megan, I don’t care anything about that child. That’s a whole other matter. And I’ll take your word it was an accident. You shouldn’t have been fighting in the first place, because you know better. But, like I said, that’s another matter. What I care about is this other thing. About what got you into this mess to begin with. That’s what I want answers for.’

  Megan unbuckled her seat belt.

  ‘No. You stay right here. We’re not going into the house and upset your mother with this kind of talk.’

  Megan sank deeper into her seat.

  ‘So?’

  ‘It was true,’ she said in a tiny but defiant voice.

  ‘Megan.’

  ‘It is true. You said so yourself.’

  ‘I said nothing of the kind.’

  ‘You did too,’ she said, tears beginning. ‘You said Mama was strong and brave. You said so yourself. It could have been true. You weren’t there either, so you don’t know.’

  The story she had been spreading around school about my mother was dramatic and wildly heroic, about how Mama had been imprisoned during the war, how she had single-handedly fought off the worst advances of the SS, how she had saved so many Jews’ lives that the prime minister of Israel wanted to give her a medal for it. Mama became Wonder Woman, Golda Meir and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, all rolled into one.

  My father was tender with Megan. He reached over and pulled her on to his lap, even though at nine and a half she wasn’t such a little girl any more. My sister wept, still protesting bitterly that her stories might have been true, that he didn’t really know for sure because he hadn’t been there either. He kept her head tucked under his chin, his hand pressing against the side of her face, obscuring most of it from my view.

  ‘It was a nice story,’ he said to her gently, ‘but it’s just for us. Not for the
children at school.’

  ‘It’s true,’ she sobbed. ‘I just wanted it to be true.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The seventeenth of April was my birthday. By then I had been home with Mama for seven school days. No one said anything about it any more. Each morning my father seemed to take it for granted that I’d stay.

  The night before my birthday had been a bad one. My mother had been awake through most of it, pacing in the silent house. She refused to talk to us about Toby but she’d not given him up. My father had heard her in the night and had come downstairs to discover her dressed and putting on her shoes. So he had stayed awake. Somewhere in the wee hours Mama had finally fallen asleep on the couch in the living room. She was still sleeping there when I came down for breakfast at about seven. Dad, his eyes red rimmed with weariness, was sitting in the kitchen with the newspaper and a cup of coffee.

  Megan was there too. She had her feet twined around the rungs of her chair and was rocking herself back and forth on the chair’s back legs. ‘Happy birthday!’ she shouted jubilantly. ‘Happy birthday to you!’ She proceeded to sing with all the tunefulness of an intoxicated sparrow until my father told her to be careful not to wake Mama.

  At my place at the table there was a package wrapped in wrinkled white tissue paper. I sat down and began undoing the tape.

  ‘That’s from Daddy and me both. And Mama too,’ Megan said. ‘I got to choose it. I went downtown all by myself on Monday afternoon and bought it. Did you notice I was gone then? That’s what I was doing.’

  It was a book, an extremely thick novel by someone I had never heard of. From the bright orange sticker, not quite fully removed, I could tell Megan had found it on the bargain table at the bookshop.

  ‘See?’ she said enthusiastically. ‘It’s a book. It’s the biggest book I could find there, except, of course, for the dictionaries.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said, trying not to sound disappointed. I hadn’t had anything special in mind for my birthday. Nonetheless, I had had rather higher hopes than this.