“What puffing thing?”
“She’d pucker her lips and make this little puffing noise. She wouldn’t even be doing anything strenuous, she’d just be sitting in her wheelchair, puffing.”
“No.”
“I catch myself doing it all the time. It’s like this.” Bonnie demonstrates. Her eyes glaze over, she furrows her brow and expulses tiny bursts of air through vigorously puckered lips.
“I don’t remember her doing that.”
“She did! I’m telling you. And there are these shapes my mouth takes, these tensions, I can feel it. It’s all muscular, like muscle memory, only maybe it’s genetic memory, maybe there are delayed mannerism genes that manifest after x number of years, like the genes that cause your hair to turn gray or make you get cancer.”
“Bee, I think you’re imagining things.”
“What if I have it?”
“You mean the MS.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not genetic, Bonnie. It’s not inherited.”
“They say that, but do they really know? They don’t. They don’t know anything.”
“I’m pretty sure they know it’s not inherited, B. You don’t have it.”
Suddenly Bonnie’s face goes hard and clenched. “I’ve never understood that,” she says, and then quickly averts her eyes to a place next to Larken’s feet—as if she reined in her vaporizing superpowers just in time.
“Understood what?”
“Why I remember so much more about her than you do. You’re the oldest. You should remember everything.”
Larken takes a breath. Bonnie is still looking at the floor. “I remember things, Bon. I just remember different things than you do.”
Bonnie gets quiet. She does this, falling suddenly silent in the middle of a lively conversation. She might not speak again for the rest of the day. With Bonnie, language exerts itself in bursts, and then, as if the effort has been all too much, goes into hiding. Or maybe she reverts to another kind of language, a wordless language, one in which Larken is not fluent.
“You didn’t have to wait,” Bonnie says coldly. “I’m not going in the car.” No matter how many times Larken has been on the receiving end of her sister’s mercurial nature, it still stings: a piercing hot/cold that is the precursor of both frostbite and third-degree burn. “I’ll meet you there,” she calls, just before the screen door slams, and then she’s gone.
Bonnie has her own way of characterizing the unique cries of birds, often assigning words to their songs.
“Oh? Over heeee-re!” say the cardinals. “Hurry hurry hurry hurry hurry!” Another bird sounds like Groucho Marx, chasing a giggling, buxom woman and reaching lewdly for her broad-beamed bottom: “Walka walka walka walka walka.” The gossiping birds say, “Really? Really?! Tell me tell me tell me tell me,” while others impress upon their children the need for careful mastication—the birdsong equivalent of human mothers who remind their offspring over and over again that their stomachs don’t have teeth: “Chew chew chew chew chew!”
There are grumpy, nay-saying, pessimistic birds—“Nonononononononono.”—and birds who’ve escaped from Saturday morning cartoons—“Beebeep. Beebeep.” Some sound as though they’re toasting their families at a holiday meal: “Cheers! Cheers!” and others sound the way purring cats would sound if only they could sing. There’s a gawky, yodeling quality to the cries of migrating geese; they’re like sweet, pubescent boys whose voices crack at life’s most embarrassing moments. Some birds sound like pull toys, others like a playing card stuck in the spokes of a spinning bicycle wheel. Meadowlark songs are intricate and hard to textualize; Bonnie has yet to come up with something satisfactory for them, but she will. Robins, for all their plump-bosomed beauty, emit a sudden, startled cry; they always sound cautionary and frazzled to Bonnie, like overextended, philanthropic socialites in dire need of a day at the spa.
She loves them all, even the ones whose voices are less melodious: birds who sound like the unoiled hinges of porch screen doors, birds whose voices are metallic and fricative, like the ratchets the Labenz boys use to tighten car parts at the Texaco. And of course, the woodpeckers—many of whom, each spring, try to attract mates by pounding incessantly on the roof of Bonnie’s woodshed home. She loves them especially for their persistence and foolishness.
But there is one birdsong Bonnie especially loves: This bird sounds as though it’s calling a wayward child with a two-syllable name home to supper.
(Lar-ken! Gae-lan! Bon-nie!)
It’s a gentle voice—low, calm, patient—and it has the quality of dusk about it, whatever time of day it is heard. These birds always sound far away, too, even when they are near.
It is the faith implicit in these bird voices that Bonnie responds to: No matter how long the children have been gone, no matter how far they have wandered or how many summoning cries have been uttered, they never raise their voices, never feel the need to project their calls in a desperate or territorial manner the way some birds do. These birds know without doubt that, one day, maybe even this day, the lost, the strayed, the self-exiled, the banished … all will return. All will follow their voices and find their way home.
If they have to go to the cemetery, Bonnie feels very strongly that they should at least be allowed to go like children, on their bikes, instead of cooped up in air-conditioned, leather-seated cars, hip to hip with the adults in their tight-fitting shoes and formal clothing. So she’s evolved a new tradition over the years, one that she hopes will survive her: When the Gymanfa is over, she leads a bicycle caravan of children to the cemetery.
Courtney! Tyler! Jason! Kelsey! calls one bird.
It pains Bonnie that none of these children are hers in a biological sense, even though she loves them, even the smart-alecky girls who wear T-shirts with slogans like NOT EVERYTHING IN NEBRASKA IS FLAT and I LOVE MY ATTITUDE PROBLEM. Girls in small towns have to rebel more than girls anywhere else, Bonnie knows, if they are rebellious types. She was not, is not. But if there is anything of rebellion in them, they must do it now, because soon they will come to understand that rebellion is no longer possible, they’ll settle in to lives that have been templated, become bitter. Bonnie has seen it happen. She only wants them to rebel in ways that do not involve alcohol or drugs or reckless driving or promiscuity.
And so, at the end of these seven days, when everyone has had enough of paying attention to her dead father, Bonnie accompanies the children as they all pedal up the slow incline to the cemetery. She does not always take the lead; there are girls and boys in the back who have already started smoking and are out of breath—although they try to make their position in the group seem like choice rather than necessity, their hanging back an example of the particular kind of nonchalance teenagers always believe is unique to them, when in fact it is the one thing they all share.
The little ones adore her. At thirty-one, Bonnie is old enough to be their mother.
Oh, why can’t she conjure a baby out of her own fingertips? Or out of the ionized air on a summer night, right before a storm? Why is there no fairy magic that can birth a child out of an acorn or a leaf? Bonnie thinks it is the worst kind of injustice that babies must be made through human coupling.
“What’s a period?” Bonnie asks Larken.
“What?”
“It’s the dot at the end of a sentence, isn’t it?”
It was two weeks after Hope went up. Bonnie was still in the hospital.
“Who’s been talking about periods?”
“I was pretending to be asleep when these people came in, two men and a woman wearing white coats like Daddy does when he’s at work. Daddy was here, too, and they were talking about periods and how I might not ever get one and then Daddy started to cry. Why would person need a period?”
“Oh.”
“And then I really fell asleep and when I woke up everybody was gone.”
Larken nods.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“He had to go to work. Ga
elan’s in the cafeteria, getting something to eat.”
“Oh.”
“He’ll be up soon and we’ll all have dinner together, okay? I have a surprise for you.”
“They found Mommy!”
“No. No, honey. I just went to the library is all, and brought you some books.”
“But what about my period?”
“Well, something in your insides got hurt when you landed in that tree.”
“Where in my insides?”
Larken swirls her hand vaguely, as if she’s stirring something on the stove. “Around here.”
“In my tummy?”
“No, not exactly. A little lower than your tummy.”
“I feel much better now.”
“I know. And we’re all so happy about that. But the doctors say that …”
“Physicians, you mean.”
“What?”
“Daddy says there are all kinds of doctors.”
“Right. Physicians.” Larken’s voice sounds funny, like she’s a soprano instead of an alto.
“So what’s wrong with my insides?”
“Nothing, Bon-bon. Really. Why don’t I read to you for a while?”
“Does Daddy say it, too? That there’s something wrong inside?”
“What would you like to hear? I brought Goodnight, Moon.”
“That’s a baby book.”
“All right, then, how about Babar? I got lots of Babar books.”
“It’s about babies, isn’t it?” Bonnie says. “The thing they say is wrong with me. Mommy told me.”
“What?”
“She did. When I saw her in the sky. She told me, and she said they’re all wrong. I’ll be able to have all the babies I want when I’m ready. I just have to wait for the right time.”
Being steadfast and stubborn by nature—and not unlike her older sister in that way—Bonnie is still waiting.
Another bird is calling: Ashlee! Jordan! Chloe! Michael!
Bonnie looks toward the bird’s voice and sees that one child has strayed from the group (how did she miss this?) and has headed off on a side road. This happens sometimes, the appearance of a little wayward sheep, although usually Bonnie sees it well before it actually occurs. Different things cause this: a fight, a dare, a duel, an insult. Hurt feelings drive them away. It’s rare for a child in Emlyn Springs to go off on his or her own, and those who do, Bonnie keeps a careful eye on. Perhaps one of the others, yes, one of the bullying types has said something unkind or threatening and Bonnie will deal with her later. But now she must go retrieve the wayward one.
She puts an older, reliable girl in charge of the pack and follows the child.
There he is, just ahead, but going so fast. How is this possible? Bonnie’s legs are longer, she is pedaling easily as quickly and furiously as he is. She shifts gears. The grade of the terrain angles slightly up, and Bonnie’s legs start to burn with the effort; her breath grows ragged.
The child is almost out of sight, looking more and more like a mirage. Bonnie is panting hard now. How far have they come? How long have they been riding? The last bits of light are disappearing behind a stand of silhouetted trees.
She is pedaling in a field, the terrain bumpy and still wet from the soaking it got a week ago. She has her eyes on the child, so when her bike slams into something, she is unprepared. The rear end of the bike tips up as the front wheel comes to a stop, and Bonnie is thrown off.
And then the child is there, standing over her. Except he’s not a child.
“Doc Williams?” Bonnie murmurs. He kneels, his face so close that she can almost make out his features, even though it is now quite dark. He lifts her head gently and tips the contents of a bottle of spring water into her mouth. She takes some; a bit dribbles down her chin. After a few more sips, she asks, “Where is your bike?”
He doesn’t speak. He hands her a flashlight. He points. She sits up, shining the light in the direction he indicates, back and forth, tracing arcs across the harvested fields, the flattened stalks. She squints. “I don’t see it.”
When she turns around, he is gone. But she hears the soft motion of wheels and the rustling of wings. He has left his flashlight behind. She takes it into the field. There is something important waiting for her here.
Bonnie wakes herself up.
She knows where she is. She knows too that a change of view, taking a look at something from a different angle, can make all the difference. All the houses on her street look out onto the same park, but she knows—because she has been a guest in the living room of each one of those houses—that each house affords a different view. She notices a different set of details from the Parrys’ front porch than she does from the McClures’ or Thomases’ or the Williamses’, so that her eyes never become dead to what is familiar.
It’s like berry picking: If you stand in the same place, you’ll find good berries. You will plunder what you see. But if you adjust your body even slightly, adjust your level by kneeling or squatting, move even one degree around the berry cane, then a different berry will be revealed, one that you never would have believed you could have missed, its color is so vivid, it is so perfectly ripe.
Bonnie lying on the ground sees something in this field she has missed, something curved and black, submerged—and yet emerging: Paul Bunyan’s pocket change, a giant coin that’s been stuffed into the slot of a too-full piggy bank. Bonnie uses her hands to scoop some dirt away.
It’s a wheel.
Heart racing, she keeps digging. The earth here is still pliable. She’ll dig as long as it takes to pull up this artifact. She knows what it represents: Proof. A sign. A message.
She’ll dig forever if she has to.
Chapter 10
Sister City
He has been praised at length in both religious and secular settings. He’s been serenaded for seventy-two hours straight in the language of his ancestors. He’s been paraded through town, planted in sanctified, heavy, nutrient-rich Nebraska soil, and is now being introduced to the society of dead fathers, learning about possible postmortem pastimes. Everyone who wants to can now speak of Llewellyn Jones in the past tense.
All that’s left to bring the week to an official close is for the church bell to toll midnight.
Viney has changed out of her black dress and is wearing her bathrobe and slippers. She’s feeling that odd combination of exhaustion and restlessness that typically affects the newly bereaved; she can’t keep herself from arranging and rearranging the contents of the refrigerator and freezer. “What in the world am I going to do with all this food?” she reflects, not really expecting an answer.
Neither of the other two people in the kitchen hears her anyway. Like Viney, they’re tired and antsy, durably encased in their own grief. They’re also preoccupied by the absence of a fourth person.
Gaelan is pacing. “You really think she’s okay?” he asks. His voice sounds atypically ineffectual and thin, and his question doesn’t seem to be directed at anyone in particular. “We shouldn’t file a missing persons report or something?”
“I can’t believe she would do this,” Larken hisses. She’s parked at the kitchen table, where she’s demolishing a plate of leftover meat loaf, peas, and cold mashed potatoes. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Ten twenty-three. I think we should consider calling the police.”
Gaelan’s anger often manifests as fear; Larken’s fear often manifests as anger. This tendency goes largely unnoticed.
“I’m telling you kids,” Viney says, “she’s fine. She’ll be back any minute now.”
Larken gets up, taking a forkful of food with her, and stands looking out the kitchen window. Her brother joins her. They are both thinking about the days—how they’re growing shorter—and about the absent one—who was last seen wearing black.
“She knew you were leaving tonight, didn’t she?” Larken asks.
“Yeah,” Gaelan replies. “I told her.”
“I cannot believe she would
do this!” Larken repeats, trying to articulate around a mouthful of peas and potatoes. “I’m so mad I could spit. The selfishness … It’s just incredible.”
“What should we do?” Gaelan asks. “Keep waiting? I’ve gotta get on the road soon so I can catch a couple hours of sleep before going to the station.”
Larken throws her fork down on the table, sending bits of smashed vegetables into orbit. “We’ve been waiting for six goddamn hours,” she announces. “If she wanted to be part of this discussion she should have been here.” Calling across the kitchen as if it were an enormous board room—“Viney! Come sit down with us!”—she resumes her place at the table with the vehemence of a Wall Street mogul orchestrating a corporate takeover.
Gaelan adds, more temperately, “There’re a couple of things we need to talk about.”
“I can listen from over here,” Viney answers. “Go ahead.” She’s trying to consolidate several pounds of elbow macaroni salad into one Tupperware container.
“Okay, then. Larken? You wanna … ?”
Larken sighs. “Right,” she says, tightly. Does she always have to be the one to lead every family discussion? Can’t her brother, just for once, take the initiative? “Viney, we need to talk about Dad’s house.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Ask her about the money,” Gaelan whispers.
“What?”
“You know, about her and Bonnie sharing the … you know …”
“You want me to do this or not?”
“Sorry. No. You go ahead.”
Larken continues. “Dad left the house to the three of us, but Gaelan and I have been talking and we think—”
“Can’t I send some of this food back to Lincoln with you two?” Viney asks. “I’ll never eat all this by myself.”
“We’ll obviously be selling it,” Larken continues, “and we’ll find a time to come back and do that later, but we wanted to ask you—”
“That’s just fine,” Viney says. “There’s no hurry.” In her quest to find room for the enormous tub of macaroni salad, she is extracting all the food from the fridge. A small city composed of buildings with innumerable code violations is forming along the edge of the counter, a doomed skyline of variously sized, precariously balanced Tupperware containers, plastic covered bowls, lidded casserole dishes, cake pans, odd-sized platters, gravy boats. All this food, Viney is thinking. It’s obscene.
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