Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  Heating the fry pan to exactly the right temperature is also crucial. Not hot enough: The pancake doesn’t cook through. Too hot: burning, smoke, fire alarms, the need for extinguishers, emergency professionals on the scene! All very exciting, but when the distraction has passed, one is still hungry for pancakes.

  I’ve taken to writing off the first one. In my experience, it is absolutely impossible to produce a perfect pancake the first time. Or even the second, third, fourth … I suppose I’ll keep trying. What else can I do?

  There were two this time. Twins.

  As if losing them one at a time isn’t hell enough.

  As if I need variations on the theme of miscarriage.

  Chapter 11

  As the Crow Flies

  Rise and shine, princess! Daddy says.

  Where are we going? Larken wonders, because his voice has that special sound that means they are taking a trip.

  We’re not going anywhere until you’re ready, screwball! he answers. Look at the time! Rise and shine!

  And then it’s Viney’s voice calling up from the kitchen: “Rise and shine! I fixed breakfast!”

  Larken blinks her eyes, turns to squint at the other twin bed, hoping to find her sister there. It’s still made up, unslept in.

  She feels drugged. Evidence of last night’s criminal behavior—the empty rocky road carton—has been rinsed and flattened and placed in a plastic bag and from there into her suitcase.

  Closing her eyes again, Larken tries to replay the sound of her father’s voice on a going-away morning.

  Wake up, sunshine!

  If they were driving west for a summer vacation, he would burst into her room when it was still dark, bellowing, “Up and at ’em, honey!” and coming over to give her a kiss and tousle her hair. “If we make good time and get to Grand Island by ten-thirty, we can stop for breakfast at Bosselman’s. Come on, now. Let’s hurry!”

  If they were going up to Omaha for the day, to see a movie like How the West Was Won or My Fair Lady, he’d come in singing. “Wake up, princess! Time to put on your new pretty outfit!” and Larken would jump out of bed and find the outfit already laid out for her just as if it were the first day of school.

  Omaha is not so far away, and yet Daddy can never get on the road early enough. They will stop somewhere special for pancakes and bacon and eggs, and at the theater they’ll be treated to glossy souvenir programs and popcorn and candy and pop, and the movie will be so long that there will be an intermission, during which they’ll buy more popcorn, more souvenirs, and then after the movie they’ll have dinner somewhere special, and Daddy will say, “Don’t you want another helping? Everybody order dessert now! Come on, let’s splurge! It’s a special day! No dieting allowed!” And then Mommy will start looking at her watch and saying, “We should leave pretty soon, Llewellyn, we don’t want to be driving back after dark, we don’t want to keep them up too late.”

  Finally they will head home, after dark because Mommy can never get Daddy to leave early enough, and when they arrive Larken will pretend to be asleep because then Daddy will carry her into the house and tuck her into bed and this is the sweetest, best, safest feeling in the world. Things look different at night when her father carries her inside; they have a grainy quality that makes Larken feel as though she herself is in a movie, an old-timey one. It’s as though everything has already happened and she is watching it happen all over again.

  There were so many going-away trips in the beginning, in what Larken has come to think of as the Age of Innocence: before they knew that Hope was sick, when she was just their clumsy, funny mother, always dropping things, always tripping over her feet, and always so sleepy on those rise-and-shine days. “Mommy is just not a morning person,” Hope used to say. “I’m not like Daddy. In the morning, I’m as slow as molasses in January.”

  Larken isn’t ready to get up yet. So she dozes again, hoping to summon a happy-going-away memory. Instead she is visited with a coming-home one.

  It is twilight. They are driving back from spending the whole day in Omaha, where they saw Paint Your Wagon at the Indian Hills Theater, with its huge, wraparound, CinemaScope screen.

  Larken is seven years old, all dressed up in an outfit she is wearing for the first time: a purple plaid taffeta skirt, a snug fitted purple velveteen vest with covered buttons, a white satiny blouse with a big floppy bow (she has rearranged the bow to conceal a dime-sized gravy stain she got at the fancy restaurant), white tights, and black patent leather shoes. Daddy likes her in purple—such a rare color for a child to wear, she feels very grown-up—and he bought this outfit for her at Hovland-Swanson, the fanciest store in Lincoln. Larken has been there with him, she’s seen how solicitous the salesladies are, how Daddy sits like a king outside the dressing room on an enormous, circular ottoman while she tries on outfits and then comes out and models for him. But Daddy bought this outfit when he was in Lincoln on a football Saturday without her. The outfit was only a little bit small when they left this morning—and it felt nice and fresh and cool against her skin then—but they’ve been eating all day. The outfit is too small now, the blouse is sticking to her skin in places, and Larken’s tummy is starting to hurt. She decides that, since they are on the way home and it will soon be dark, it might be all right if she unfastens the back of the skirt and undoes the bottom buttons of her vest. Maybe she could even untuck her blouse. She decides that she can; she’s in the backseat behind Daddy and surely he won’t notice. Besides, it’s just them now, no strangers to look fancy for. She has a hard time getting the hooks and eyes undone; she has to suck in her tummy even more to do it, but finally she manages—and what a relief it is! Her stomach still hurts, though.

  Clint Eastwood was in the movie, and a beautiful blonde actress named Jean Seberg, who Daddy tells her is from Iowa, which Larken finds very exciting since being from Iowa is almost like being from Nebraska. Daddy explains before the movie starts that Jean Seberg will not really be doing the singing. Someone else did the singing for her.

  “You’ll be able to tell,” he whispers, “because her throat won’t be moving.”

  Larken spends the next three hours looking very closely at Jean Seberg’s throat whenever she sings. She doesn’t understand how Jean Seberg can look like she’s singing but not be singing. And if Jean Seberg isn’t singing, who is? Where is the real singer hiding?

  “See?” Daddy leans in to whisper every time there’s a song. “You can tell, can’t you?” and Larken nods, but she can’t tell, not really. It looks to her as if Jean Seberg is singing every note.

  Larken and her father are the only two people in the family who see the movie in its entirety; Bonnie fusses during the loud parts, and Gaelan gets scared every time there’s a close-up of the faces, so Mommy spends most of the afternoon in the lobby with the two of them.

  Hope has told Larken that Bonnie isn’t as easy a baby as Gaelan was, but she’s still pretty easy.

  “Was I an easy baby?” Larken wants to know.

  Hope always smiles at this question. “You were my first baby,” she says, as if that explains everything.

  Now they are driving home. Gaelan has fallen asleep with his head on Larken’s shoulder; Bonnie sleeps in Hope’s arms in the front. Larken has a good view of Mommy’s face in profile; even in the waning light, she notices that her mother’s cherry color is paler than usual.

  Larken has perfected the art of playing possum; her parents talk differently when they think they are not being overheard and Larken likes this, likes the private, murmuring sound of their grown-up voices, so when Daddy says, “Are they asleep?” Larken quickly closes her eyes and lets her face go slack.

  “Yes,” Hope says, and sighs. “They’re asleep.” They drive on in silence. Larken squints at the stars and revels in the exotic feeling of being out so late at night.

  And then suddenly Bonnie starts crying—not a fussy baby cry, but a hurt baby cry, as if she’s put her hand on the stove. It’s a horrible sound. “W
hat?” Hope is saying, her voice terrified. “What happened?” and Daddy is pulling the car over to the side, dangerously close to the ditch, saying, “Jesus Hope! Did you drop her?”

  “Oh, my God,” Mommy says. She sounds sleepy or sad. “My hands. I can’t.”

  And Daddy says, “Give her to me,” and Mommy says, “No, it’s all right, I’ve got her now. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

  Daddy pulls hard on the hand brake. Bonnie is wailing now. Gaelan sleeps on; he can sleep through anything. Daddy comes around to Mommy’s side, opens the car door, takes Bonnie from her, and says, “Larken, are you awake?”

  “Yes.”

  He comes back around to Larken’s side of the car and opens the back door. Why isn’t he closing the car doors? Larken wonders. Three of them are open and it’s dark now and this strikes Larken as dangerous. “Hold your sister until we get home,” he commands, placing Bonnie in Larken’s arms. “Have you got her?”

  “Yes, I’ve got her.”

  Daddy circles around the car again, slamming all the doors as he goes, one after another (WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!) and then hurries around to the front of the car again and gets back in.

  Bonnie quiets almost instantly in Larken’s arms. I am good with babies, Larken realizes suddenly. She has heard this expression; she feels amazed and a little proud to find that it applies to her. I look good in purple, I have small feet, and I am good with babies. Gaelan stirs and then goes back to sleep. And I can stay awake because I’m the oldest.

  Hope cries on the way home. She is trying not to, but Larken can tell that she is because she’s sniffling.

  When they get to the blind driveway, Daddy pounds on the horn just like always, but quickly, as if the real danger is elsewhere. And when they get home, he doesn’t carry anyone to bed. He doesn’t even wait for them. He just gets out of the car, slams the door again, and disappears into the house. Larken and Hope and Gaelan and Bonnie are left in the car. Gaelan and Bonnie are still sleeping.

  “I did a terrible thing,” Hope says quietly. “A terrible, selfish thing.”

  Larken doesn’t speak and they sit there in silence for a while. She thinks that Mommy has forgotten about them, but Hope turns around finally and looks at them. Then she gets out of the front seat and gets in the back with them.

  “I’ll take her now, sweetie,” she says, easing Bonnie out of Larken’s arms and into her own. “Gaelan,” she says, and Gaelan starts. “Wake up, lambie. We’re home. You need to get to bed. You too, Larken. I’m going to sit here for a while. I’ll come inside in a bit and tuck you in.”

  When Larken closes the door, she looks into the backseat and sees Mommy there, looking down at Bonnie and crying. She’s moving her mouth the same way over and over again, but it’s dark inside the car and Mommy’s not opening her mouth very much. Larken can’t tell what she’s saying but she’s pretty sure it’s not a prayer.

  Years later, Larken and Gaelan drive up to Omaha by themselves and see another Jean Seberg movie. She does not sing in this one. It’s terrible, one of those humorless airport movies that have since been parodied innumerable times; they were that bad.

  And a few years after that they hear that Jean Seberg has committed suicide. Something to do with Black Panthers and the death of her baby, and they learn that she lived in Europe somewhere and spoke French—even though she was from Iowa!—and encountered in that foreign place a sadness too terrible to endure and so she took pills and died. So did that other blonde actress, Inger Stevens, who was also from the Midwest: she was in a TV show called The Farmer’s Daughter.

  Beginning with Jean Seberg, Larken becomes aware of pretty blonde actresses from middle America who become famous and then kill themselves.

  “Larken!” Viney’s voice forces Larken into wakefulness. “Come on down now! Your pancakes are getting cold!”

  Good-bye and I’ll call you when I get there and Don’t be a stranger, honey, come back soon and she is back on the road.

  When Larken imagines looking at Nebraska from above, she sees Tornado Alley as an actual boundaried region that is always hovering, ever-present, invisible to Doppler radar but completely obvious with the aid of some other, yet-to-be-invented kind of detection device. She imagines something like that which metastasizes over the earth in one of her most beloved childhood books, A Wrinkle in Time: a black insidious blight marking the southeastern corner of the state in the exact shape of one of those photo corners people use to adhere pictures to scrapbooks. Tornado Alley is an energetic curse, the Bermuda Triangle of the Cornhusker State, and Emlyn Springs is smack dab in the middle of it. Usually, Larken is delighted to shake the dust of her hometown from her feet and head north.

  But today, as the last one to arrive, the last one to depart, she feels encased in an energy that is neither her mother’s nor her father’s. What color is she? Vaguely unhappy to go but not wanting to stay, she drives over to the Texaco to fill up the car, expecting to find Bonnie at work. But there’s a CLOSED sign on the juice bar.

  Pete Labenz appears from the garage wiping his hands as Larken turns off the engine and prepares to get out of the car. “Hey, Larken,” he says. “I’ll do that.”

  “Thanks, Pete.”

  “You headed back up to Lincoln?” he asks.

  “Yep.”

  “Dyl!” he shouts back toward the garage. Dylan comes out, covered in grease.

  “Hi, Larken!” he shouts, and then goes to work on the windows.

  “Fill ’er up?” Pete asks.

  “Yes, please.”

  The Labenz boys in person are never the Labenz boys as Larken remembers them. Her body remembers them, though—not in a carnal way, for Larken always chose her sexual partners from outside Emlyn Springs, but with shame and fear because who knew if they recognized what a whore she was back then. How could she be sure they weren’t talking about her behind her back? And if so, aren’t they still talking about her?

  There’s just no way around it. In Emlyn Springs, she is no one. People are always changing. When they live in close proximity, the change is gradual and everyone is a part of it. But when you move away and then come back, who do you present? The person you were, the one everybody knows? Or the person you are, who (let’s face it) is a stranger? Outside the clearly defined protocols of the Gymanfa, Larken feels like nothing but a phony.

  Al hangs up the phone and comes out of the office. He’s put on weight, but he carries it well. “Hey, Larken.”

  “Hey, Allan.”

  “Goin’ back to Lincoln, huh?”

  “Yeah. It’s time.”

  He leans closer. “We’ll keep an eye on Viney and Bonnie, no worries.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.” She decides to risk a veiled question: “I guess Bonnie decided to take another day off.”

  “No, she opened and closed early today. You just missed her. Hey, guys! Bonnie say anything about where she was going?”

  “Hardware store, maybe,” Pete answers. “Said she needed some lumber.”

  “She told me she was going to the grocery store,” Dylan adds.

  “That’s okay,” Larken says. “I just wanted to see her one more time before I headed back.”

  “You want me to call over to Schlake’s and see if she’s there?”

  “No thanks, Al,” Larken replies, already fearing that she’s revealed too much. She pays and gets on her way. All three of the Labenz boys wave good-bye.

  Surely Bonnie is on her bicycle. Where else would she be? Larken leaves a message with the Williams girls to please have Bonnie call her this afternoon.

  She crosses Bridge Street, glancing to her left, where, about half a mile away, Flying Girl’s tree still forms a link between the north and south sides of the ravine. Why hasn’t anyone taken that tree down?

  She could try driving around for a while. She might find her.

  But no, she has to get back. Fall term starts the day after tomorrow. Christ! She’s had none of her usual prep time.
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  There’s more activity now, signs of life as the folks of Emlyn Springs—released from their moratorium on working and their obligations to Larken’s dead father—are on the road. Some have already done their errands and are heading back; she passes several farmers, folks she knows; they lift the tips of their fingers from the top of the steering wheel in acknowledgment.

  “Blind driveway,” she says, and honks.

  The sound acts like the catalyst to a magic trick, releasing a universal perturbation of birds. They spring up from the ditches and explode out from the whiskery vegetation covering the bluff. They seem to come from everywhere and are unaccountably agitated.

  Larken leans her head to the side, trying to follow their path.

  Up ahead, a large, sleek crow is on the ground being swarmed by smaller birds, starlings maybe, as if the crow poses a threat—but there are no trees nearby, no nests. Is it in possession of something the flock desires?

  She drives on, noticing more birds crowd together on the power lines, emit harsh cries, feign injury. But this is not the time of eggs and hatchings and all those protective parental instincts. It’s nearly autumn.

  There is a sudden swirl a few yards from her windshield, a wild descent as of an unbound manuscript let loose on the wind. It is a moment before she realizes that it is another bird she is seeing, a hawk or maybe even an owl, and all at once the chaotic disorganized shape distills, solidifies, and dives with a spearlike precision to the right side of the highway, into the ditch, where some small inconsequential thing must have been spotted, targeted from up above, and is already dead, or dying.

  Here comes the billboard: Thanks Mom! I got born! it proclaims. The words inhabit an attenuated cartoon balloon that looks like a cigar arising from a creepy-looking drawing of a newborn with a full set of teeth. Surely the same artist did both sides of the billboard. God made me, the billboard reads, Mom and Dad adopted me!