The Sunflower Forest

by Torey Hayden

  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.

  I didn’t know why I was so mad. It was like the earlier conversation with Paul about dogs. I hadn’t meant that to happen either. I didn’t think I really cared so passionately about not having a dog. If I did, most of the time I hadn’t been aware of it. But at just that instant, when talking with Paul, the dog I’d never gotten seemed at the root of all life’s problems. It was the same way now. The Lark Ascending wasn’t such an illogical choice. It had been Mama’s favourite music. No denying that.

  But I didn’t want it played.

  That music made me see Lébény and the gardens of the estate and the mill pond and the gazebo. One section sounded almost like a folk dance, and when I heard it, I always visualized shadowy, faceless men and women wearing white suits and flowered dresses, like the rich people in The Great Gatsby. They were beautiful and golden dream people, the way I pictured Mama to be in her childhood, before Lebensborn and Ravensbrück and the war. I could not bear the thought of losing those images and remembering The Lark Ascending only as music from my mother’s funeral.

  But there was another part of the piece also, the first part, which I suspect was what Elek was always playing. The later, folksy interlude was orchestrated, but this first part was for violin only. It was a heartbreakingly beautiful solo, the musical ascent of the lark, haunted and lonely, before the verdant tones of the other instruments joined in. Listening to it as a child, I had always counted the seconds, like sheep, waiting for the desolate courage of the violin to be swallowed up by friendlier sounds. Even more than losing the imagery of the graceful dancers, I could not bear to have Mama leave me in the company of that violin.

  But I found no way to explain to my father or my sister what the music did to me. I was without words for it. So, hands in my pockets, I stood alone and stared out the front door.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The funeral was on Friday morning. So Megan did not go to the dentist’s after all. As I was sitting on my bed that morning and putting on my panty hose, I wondered if Dad had remembered to phone Dr Thompson and tell him Megan wasn’t coming; then I was horrified to find myself thinking about such a stupid thing on the morning we were burying my mother.

  We rode to the funeral home in a black limousine, my first ride in such a car. I touched the supple leather by the door and watched the scenery pass by, reflected in the chrome.

  Once there, Auntie Caroline, Dad, Megan and I sat apart from the main room in a small alcove. I had to lean forward to see the other mourners.

  There weren’t many people. Mr Hughson and several of the men from the garage were there. Mr Hughson had on a suit and tie, and his dark hair was slicked straight back; I almost didn’t recognize him, he looked so different. I couldn’t remember the names of most of the men with him. I had only met them a few times. But I saw Bobby was there. Bobby was Mr Hughson’s nephew. He was slightly retarded and had a sweet, anxious face, the sort you see so commonly on people who know they are superfluous. He helped Daddy under the cars sometimes, but mostly he ran errands and made coffee for the other men. I saw Mr and Mrs Reilly, our next-door neighbours, in the second row. Farther back was the checkout lady from the supermarket. Sitting alone way in the back was Paul. I thought at first he must have skipped history again but then, noticing that he was wearing a suit, I realized he m
ust have skipped the whole morning. The only other person there was the police sergeant, the one with the terrible compassion. He saw me looking, and he smiled. Not knowing what else to do, I smiled back.

  What Mama would have thought of the funeral, I couldn’t imagine. I don’t think she would have wanted a service at all, if she’d been given a say in the matter. Mama wasn’t one for ceremonies.

  The funeral director had chosen to use The Lark Ascending and, as I feared, he chose the violin solo. The man who played it I had never seen before. He stood at the front of the room and coaxed the music from the violin very slowly, his eyes closed. He was small and thin and looked foreign to me, like someone from southern Europe. Or maybe he was Jewish. I hoped he was; that would have made Mama happy. With a lover’s touch he drew the notes from the instrument and, trapped in that small room, the thin sound grew achingly sad. I expected to cry then. Megan and Caroline and my father were crying. But I sat, separate and dry eyed and desperately lonesome for Mama, who had left me here and gone away.

  Although my father had tried to keep religion out of the ceremony, he hadn’t been entirely successful. The Lark Ascending had replaced the hymn. A reading from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest had replaced Bible verses. But the man who conducted the service still invoked the name of God. As I listened to him, I wondered what Mama’s real beliefs had been. I didn’t know. It was religion she held in such contempt, but whether or not she thought there was still something or someone responsible for ordering the universe is hard to say. My mother tended to be very vocal about a few things, and it made you believe she was saying a lot, which, I suspect, was what she wanted. But in fact, I think most of her thoughts she kept to herself.