Grandghost
Page 23
I looked. There was a bright yellow Florida Gators T-shirt, LeeVon’s size, folded over one of his shoulders, and an equally bright sky-blue Cooter Springs Snappers T-shirt on the other. Underwear still in plastic packets had been tucked discreetly into the blankets, and the rest of the available space was lavished with toys and candies: matchbox cars, licorice sticks, a brand-new baseball, Snickers bars, a child-sized bow and rubber-tipped arrows, bubble gum balls, a hefty metal Slinky, a big Tootsie Roll, a chuffy red dump truck.
Things he would have liked. Things he probably never had.
Sukie said, ‘Too bad they don’t sell candy cigarettes no more.’
Bonnie Jo said, ‘Liam lays eyes on that stuff, he’s gonna want it.’
I said, ‘I already have a bunch of presents for him and the girls.’ I blushed, and had to force myself to meet Sukie’s questioning eyes. ‘They are your grandchildren, Sukie, I know that, and I know …’ I knew I ran a risk of offending their pride, both sisters, by helping with expenses, giving them money. But I also knew better than to talk about it. I had other, better communication skills. ‘Hold on a minute,’ I said, and I hurried into the studio and headed back to them with a pile of sketches. ‘Please have a seat.’ Once the sisters had settled side by side on the sofa, I handed them the evidence and let them judge. I retreated into the kitchen, where I could hear only murmurs of their conversation, and busied myself excavating things from the freezer to make a dinner of sorts. Pizza rolls, chicken nuggets, garlic bread …
‘These drawings, can I keep them?’ came Sukie’s small voice from behind me as I was trying to figure out how to work the oven, as not everything would fit in the microwave.
‘Um, sure.’ I could make more.
‘They’re good. How did you do them?’
‘From memory, she means.’ Bonnie Jo, older sister, took charge.
I turned around to face both of them. ‘Since the first day I met Chloe and Emma and Liam, I’ve kind of imprinted on them like a big goose, that’s all.’
It was Bonnie Jo who had the perception to demand, ‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t have any grandchildren.’ Both serious and smiling, I looked at Sukie. ‘I know they’re yours, and I will always remember they’re yours, but please, could I borrow them and spoil them a little bit occasionally?’
Sukie apparently saw no harm in me, because she said without much hesitation, ‘Um, OK.’
Poker-faced, Bonnie Jo added, ‘Only if you spoil me, too.’
After supper, I took a sketchbook and some crayons, sat on the sofa and called the children to me, Chloe on one side, Emma on the other and Liam on my lap sucking at the red plastic truck I had given him. (As predicted, he had required pacification after seeing the one in the coffin.) ‘I’m going to read you a story that’s invisible,’ I told them, ‘but we’ll fix that as we go along.’
Sitting nearby, Sukie and Bonnie Jo looked at each other, their glances like fingers crossing.
‘A long time ago, before you were born,’ I told the children, ‘there was a messed-up monster sort of mama.’ As best I could with my arms around Liam, I drew Monster Ma on page one; she looked kind of like one of the Wild Things from the Maurice Sendak book, only in a skirt. ‘Messy Monster Ma was sad because nobody loved her. And being sad made her mean.’ Quickly, I sketched her on page two trampling flowers and flattening bunnies with her oversized feet. ‘She was so mean she didn’t think and she made mistakes.’ Page three, I drew her trying to pour milk on to her cereal and missing the bowl entirely; the children giggled. ‘There was something wrong with her. She wasn’t like normal people. Instead of thinking butterflies were pretty, she ate them,’ I improvised, sketching more pages at top speed, ‘and in her house, instead of putting pictures on the wall, she put road kill.’
‘Ew!’ chorused not only the children, but Bonnie Jo and Sukie.
‘That was a big mistake, don’t you think?’
‘Yes!’
‘But it wasn’t her biggest mistake.’ I flipped a page and started drawing Mean Mad Messy Ma cooking at a stove. ‘She should have been thinking about what she was doing, but she wasn’t, so totally by mistake she made three babies!’ They looked kind of like Cabbage Patch dolls. I drew them popping up from the cooking pots, comically astonished. The children laughed; good. They knew that the babies in the story had nothing to do with them and the way they had come to be living with their grandmother.
Of the make-believe babies, I said, ‘Two of them were girls and one was a boy. Messed-up Ma did not know what to do with them.’ I cartooned her juggling three diapered, flying blurs. ‘So she gave them pillowcases to wear and she fed them buzzard gizzards and lizard juice—’
‘Ewww!’
‘Wait a minute.’ I flipped back to the page of Monster Ma spilling milk and I lettered Lizard Juice on the carton. ‘There. See? Lizard Juice.’ Returning to the narrative, I drew three round-headed tots in shapeless smocks while I continued, ‘And sometimes she sat on them by mistake or dropped them on their heads, and sometimes she just plain forgot about them. She was a Messed-up Monster Ma and she just didn’t know how to take care of children. It was sad,’ I added, giving the children tearful eyes and tiny drooping mouths. Distancing was one thing; sugar-coating was another. ‘But remember, this was a long, long, very long time ago. And the two girls took care of each other and they’re OK.’ As I spoke, I drew two taller children hugging each other. ‘But the Monster Ma was so mean to the boy that … he … died.’
There was a shocked silence, and although the scurrying of my crayons across the paper sounded very loud, I did not speak, only drew a sort of sideward cutaway view of a hole in the ground, and in it a stick figure of a body. As I was thinking what to say next, to my surprise Bonnie Jo spoke. ‘Ma didn’t care much.’
‘It was like she broke a doll,’ Sukie said.
‘But she knew she done wrong, so she took and hid it.’
Nodding agreement, with a maroon crayon I drew rectangles into my diagram, bricks upon bricks, layers of bricks, covering the boy who had died.
Little Emma exclaimed, ‘That’s the hole in your backyard!’
Liam sucked both his thumb and his red toy truck.
Chloe, with tears in her small voice, said, ‘That’s LeeVon.’
I said, ‘Yes. The bricks made kind of a roof over him, and he lay in the soft dirt for a long, long time. The gentle earth hugged his skin and muscle away so nobody could hurt him anymore. He still had bones left, but bones don’t feel pain.’
‘And then you found him,’ Chloe said. ‘And there he is in the box.’
‘Yes. All comfy.’ I stopped drawing.
‘But that’s him, too.’ Emma pointed a chubby brown finger toward the wall, the portrait, the crayoned aureole of scribble-pictures surrounding it.
‘Yes,’ I agreed.
‘And in the other room and all around here.’
‘Yes. Which is why he needs us to give him a funeral tomorrow.’
Chloe sat up straight and demanded, ‘What happened to the mean mama?’
I shook my head, smiling down on her ruefully. ‘That’s another story.’
Late that evening, after Bonnie Jo had taken Sukie and her grandchildren home, I stood beside the coffin looking into wells of indigo shadow, the eyeless orbs of the skull. The day felt satisfactory and complete; no need for a wake. I said, ‘Good night, LeeVon. I love you.’ Then I went to bed.
My sleep that night felt thin as gauze, stitched with butterfly dreams I could never catch. I was up with the dawn as usual and at once I went looking for LeeVon’s presence in my home. Three weeks ago, when I had first known him, he would have trashed the coffin, but I sensed, I believed, I trusted – yes, the casket and its contents were just as I had left them late the night before. Hoping with all my heart for some subtle thing more – a hint, an intimation – I studied the bones, the blankets, the clothing, the candy and toys – but I saw nothing transformed in the slightest.
What the fandango?
Dressed only in a butt-length sleep shirt, I yelled, ‘Just a minute!’ and snatched one of my husband’s big old cardigans out of the coat closet. Wrapped around my waist, it overlapped, sleeves tied, to cover the more embarrassing parts of me. ‘Who is it?’
A rather muffled voice, female, responded with something about delivery.
Delivery? I couldn’t remember having ordered anything, yet as always, because I am too short to use a peephole, I opened the door with what I suppose must be called faith.
And I gasped. With delight.
‘Flowers!’
The delivery woman’s arms were loaded with arrangements in papier-mâché pots, her face obscured by Shasta daisies and larkspur and … hollyhocks? I grabbed the nearest bouquet and set it on the floor where I was, and she set three other pots of flowers down beside it. ‘There’s more,’ she said over her shoulder as she headed back out the door.
‘From where?’ I yelped, but she didn’t answer. I crouched to hunt the bouquets for a card or message, already beginning to notice how remarkable they were; these were not typical funeral offerings. No big solemn wreaths of lilies or carnations or chrysanthemums. These were …
‘This is it,’ said the delivery woman as she set three more bouquets with the others, making a total of seven.
‘Who are they from?’
She glanced at her clipboard. ‘Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt,’ she reported. ‘No message.’ With a perfunctory smile and no apparent curiosity at all, she shut the front door behind her.
I collapsed from my crouch to a seat on the floor, clutching my own chest as if I needed to restrain a swollen heart from busting me wide open. My girls had sent flowers, so many flowers – why so very, overwhelmingly many? Not just roses from the two of them, or, if they couldn’t agree, a bouquet apiece, but seven beautiful bouquets?
Seven different arrangements. One was mostly colorful daisies, another was a rainbow of miniature irises, then tiny tea roses mixed with cornflowers, and mini tulips striped like peppermint sticks – my eyes were starting to blur but I saw pompons, buttonflowers, snapdragons, bluebells, even buttercups …
Why seven?
Lucky number?
Nothing traditional, nothing big and white. All bright and small. Flowers for a child.
Oh, Cassie. Oh, Maurie. Oh, LeeVon.
‘LeeVon, can you see these?’ I asked as I carried daisies and irises into the front room and set them down by his coffin. ‘Can you smell these?’ as I brought in the roses and the bluebells. I felt no sense of his presence, but had I ever, really? Still, placing the plethora of flowers, I decided to keep my irrational and heathenish faith that he was there with me somehow.
I thought of phoning Cassie and Maurie to thank them, but there were other things I more urgently needed to do, such as get dressed. I put on green jeans and my favorite tie-dyed T-shirt. But I hadn’t yet managed to choose the perfect pair of novelty socks or get my shoes on when somebody knocked at the door again – a brittle knock I thought I recognized.
I murmured in disbelief, ‘Wilma Lou?’
Sure enough, when I answered the door barefooted, there she stood, a faded green housedress draping her desiccated body. That plus the way she cocked her head to ogle me brought to mind a giant preying (praying?) mantis standing on my doorstep clutching a fuchsia armload of crepe myrtle.
‘I seed a flower delivery truck,’ she chirped, ‘and I figured might be you needed some more.’
In other words, she was hawk-eyed curious to know what was going on. But for some reason I didn’t mind. It was about time I forgave Wilma Lou for being Wilma Lou. And this was LeeVon’s special day; I couldn’t be petty. ‘Wilma Lou, such beautiful flowers, and they smell so good!’ I gathered the mass of crepe myrtle from the twiggy woman’s arms. ‘We’re giving my skeleton a funeral today, and I’ll make sure to lay your flowers on the grave. Would you like to come in?’
She hesitated. ‘Y’all giving the child a Christian burial?’
‘Now, Wilma Lou,’ I teased with a warm smile, ‘what do you think?’
She teetered on my doorstep as if on the cusp of suspicion versus curiosity. Peering past me, she said hopefully, ‘You took them animals down off your wall.’
‘I’ll put them back up afterwards. Or maybe I’ll just paint some right on to the wall.’
With no ill will, I hoped she would retreat. I didn’t want her to see the skeleton dressed as a boy. If she did, there would be no hope of keeping LeeVon’s secret.
‘It’ll be just a few of us, all barefoot,’ I fibbed, flexing my exposed toes, ‘for a pantheist funeral.’
It worked; she backed off. ‘Y’all have a real blessed day,’ she quavered. Then added in a stronger tone, ‘I’ll pray for you. I been praying for you, anyways. I pray for you all the time.’
‘I appreciate that, Wilma Lou. Thank you. And you have a good day too,’ I called after her as she scuttled like a hunchbacked insect back toward her own lair.
I chose socks with butterflies on them, and my newest Skechers, which were cerulean blue. There: all set. Back in the front room, I put Wilma Lou’s crepe myrtle into a big Pyrex bowl of water and set it with the other flowers, so many, so sweet, filling my heart with motherly warmth, my breathing with fragrance and my mind with an uplifted sensation that is hard to describe, a kind of beatitude. When I heard the first arrival knocking, I all but floated to the door, opened it without a thought and smiled with monk-like serenity into the unexpected face of Detective T.J. Tadlock.
‘Good morning!’ I sang at her. ‘Come in!’
Just by what she wore – a flowing crinkle-cotton Indian-print caftan – I knew that she was here as a person, not a cop. ‘This way.’ I led her into the front room. ‘Have a seat if you like, but we’re all going to be standing around the coffin soon.’
I’m not sure she even heard me. She was already standing beside the open coffin with her head bowed, her homely face very still.
Wondering what she was thinking, I watched her until someone else knocked at the door. I should have known Coroner Wengleman would show up. ‘Marcia!’ Impulsively, I hugged her, and she hugged me back.
‘I wanted to bring you a sympathy card,’ she told me, ‘but I couldn’t find one that was even remotely appropriate.’
Bonnie Jo and Sukie arrived with the kids, bringing me more hugs, even from little Liam. I herded everybody inside, and without prompting they all gathered around LeeVon, sharing space as best they could, the kids in front with their hands on the coffin rim and their solemn little faces looking over.
‘Since there’s nobody else who could possibly show up,’ I said, ‘I guess it’s time.’
Detective T.J. Tadlock and Dr Marcia Wengleman glanced questions at me, so I explained, ‘There’s no ceremony planned. We’re just here to, um, talk to LeeVon.’
‘I’ll start,’ Bonnie Jo said in the strongest voice I had ever heard from her. ‘LeeVon,’ she told him to his skullbone face, ‘it’s OK to hate Ma’s guts. What she done to you was just plain mean low-down evil and don’t nobody expect you to forgive her. I hate her too.’
‘So do I,’ said Sukie. ‘I hate her more for what she done to you than for anything she ever done to me or Bonnie Jo.’
‘I wish we could have done something …’
Bonnie Jo’s voice faltered but Marcia spoke up. ‘You were all just babies. None of you deserved for such an awful thing to happen. None of you could have changed anything and none of you is to blame.’ She spoke quite naturally to the boy in the coffin; I wondered whether she often talked to the dead people she encountered. ‘But, LeeVon, that was all a long time ago. Even when a person can’t forgive, they can still move on.’
‘You was the best b
ig brother I ever had.’ Sukie spoke with a quirk in her voice. ‘I don’t care how much you pulled my hair.’
All three children swiveled to look up at her. Emma squeaked, ‘He pulled your hair?’
‘Of course he did. But he could throw a brick farther than any of us.’
‘Throw a brick?’
Chloe said to the bones in the coffin, ‘Never mind, LeeVon. I bet if you’d growed up, you’d have been as nice as my gramma.’
‘LeeVon,’ said the voice I least expected – T.J.’s. ‘It really was a long time ago. Now your ma is so old, she’s the one who wets the bed. And people get mad at her. And she’s so nasty that nobody loves her. And maybe nobody ever did. So what goes around comes around. The important thing is your sisters love you.’
‘And you know I do too, LeeVon,’ I told him. ‘And as much as I’d miss you, I have a big, halacious, ginormous hope for you. I hope that right here, now, today, you’ll be able to leave. I don’t know whether you’re still hanging around my house or whether you’ve already gotten back together with your bones, but that’s what I want you to do. Because I love you, I want you to let go of the bad memories and just have some peace.’
Bonnie Jo said, ‘That’s what I want too, LeeVon.’
‘Me, too, LeeVon,’ said Sukie.
‘We’re all praying for you, LeeVon,’ said Marcia.
Chloe and Emma both said at the same time, ‘Amen.’
So I was a heathen – so what? I almost felt as if I might conceivably pray, what with the aroma of flowers like a magic carpet of scent uplifting me, caressing my mind; how I loved my daughters, and how good of them to send flowers, not just token flowers but so many so perfect all the way, not holding back. This was no time for holding back. LeeVon needed us.
Except for the children, we all looked at each other, forming a silent consensus: yes, we had done our best.
I glanced out the window. I thought I had heard Nick drive in, and yes, there he was, sitting in his truck. I said, ‘Excuse me,’ went and hailed him from the front door, and in he came, solemn in his best blue jeans, reverent in work boots. I noticed he avoided looking into the coffin as he passed it to where the lid awaited him.