The Sunflower Forest (11 page)

‘Macaroni and cheese tonight? With tomatoes in it?’ She turned to Megan. That was one of Megan’s favourite meals.

‘Mara, where have you been?’ There was definitely no mistaking my father’s feelings that time. ‘Mara?’

Mama looked over at him. For the first time there was alarm in her eyes.

He jerked his head. ‘May I see you in the study?’

Mutely, my mother regarded him. The colour drained away from her face and with it went the look of youth she had had coming through the door. She grew old before our eyes.

‘Mara, come in the study with me. I need to talk to you.’ The emotion faded from my father’s voice. He too must have seen the way the gaiety ran out of her so quickly. His voice softened, and he extended a hand to her.

Mama was still holding the pan in her hand. She looked down at it, as if it were a foreign object. A troubled expression wrinkled her brow as she regarded it. She set it on the stove, turned and went with him. She didn’t accept his hand, so he laid it gently on her shoulder. Megan and I remained in the kitchen. My parents’ footsteps sounded on the stairway, but the study was too far away for me to be able to hear the soft click of the catch as Dad shut the door behind them.

Wearily Megan collapsed into a chair at the table. Her books from the library were still stacked on the other end. Bracing her cheek with one fist, she stared at them. ‘I’m really wishing right now that I was someplace else,’ she said.

I too sat down.

She looked over. ‘I wish he hadn’t found out. Or at least I wish he could have left it alone. Too bad we couldn’t have just sort of gone on like it hadn’t happened.’

I nodded.

My parents seldom had serious arguments. They disagreed with one another as often, I suppose, as people generally do when they live together. Usually, however, the arguments were one sided. My mother would want to do something and my father wouldn’t. Or he would be after her for one of her more provocative idiosyncrasies. Just small things. Then one of them would become annoyed, and they’d seesaw back and forth over the issue for a while before one of them would grow sick of it and go off. Or they would end up laughing. Mama could make you laugh at the damnedest times, and she knew it. But it made for few serious fights.

When they first went upstairs, we could hear nothing. As disconcerting as this whole incident was, in the beginning I could not force myself to become too worried. It was just one of Mama’s little things. Dad would set her right. He’d tell her not to go running off without letting someone know. He’d explain that she was mistaken about that boy, that he was just some farmer’s child. Mama would sulk and most likely have a spell, but then we’d be over it. We could have supper and go on with things as usual.

The difficulty with sitting at the table, waiting for them to come out, was that it gave me ample time to contemplate what my father had said to us beforehand. Those few simple sentences of his were so incredible to me as to border on the irrational. Other children? Had Mama really had other babies besides us? Why had we never known about them? Who were they?
Where
were they? The issue and its implications began to mushroom into such gargantuan proportions that I was unable to grasp even the possibility of it.

Then above the silence of the kitchen came my father’s voice. He was shouting at my mother. As far as my sister and I were from the study, we could still hear him. What he was saying was not distinct, but the emotion certainly carried. My mother must have been holding up her end of it, because although her voice was inaudible, my father kept on and on for so long that it was obvious she had to be responding.

Megan and I sat like zombies. We didn’t even dare look at one another. I was trying to think of what to do. I wasn’t hungry. I was afraid to go upstairs to my room. I could hardly just go in the living room and turn on the television as if nothing unusual were happening. Beside me, Megan was motionless. She gave no indication of life at all, except for the fact that she was running her finger up and down the length of her bare forearm. Up and down, up and down, with hypnotic slowness.

Then the door to the study opened, and I could hear them in the hallway. My mother was sobbing.

‘He’s
my
baby! They took my baby
away
from me, O’Malley!’

Then my father’s voice, restrained. ‘Mara, come in here. For God’s sake, don’t stand in the hallway.’

‘I want him
back
! You must help me, O’Malley. You promised you’d help me. You promised me. He belongs with me.’

‘Mara, get out of that hall this minute. Get back in here.’

Muffled sobs, and my mother said something I couldn’t hear.

‘Mara, I meant it. Get out of that hallway. The girls are going to hear you.’

I felt like shouting up at him that the girls had already heard plenty.

Then he must have come out into the hall to get her because there were several muffled, angry sounds, and Mama muttered something about his leaving her alone, that she needed a glass of water because she couldn’t breathe. More noises. The bathroom door. The study door. The bathroom door again. Then they were fighting in the bathroom right above us.

Megan was inching her chair around the table. Her head was on her folded arm on the table top, but very slightly, inch by inch, she was moving in my direction. Tears had filled her eyes but they didn’t fall. She said nothing; she did not even look at me. And I was too paralysed to be any comfort.

Suddenly I could plainly hear what Dad was saying. He was still in the bathroom, and his voice rose in volume. It was about Klaus. About Klaus being dead and gone. About Mama living in a dreamworld and how if she couldn’t help herself, no one else could.

There was a small, strangled shriek of rage from my mother. Then she roared at him, first in a mixture of English and Hungarian, before sliding into pure German. My mother could give a wrath to the German language as she could to no other. She knew all the most vulgar and hateful phrases in that language. And she was furious with my father. Klaus is not dead! she shouted. He had no reason to say Klaus was. Do you, O’Malley, she screamed. Do you? Look me in the face and say that. Say you know he’s dead. Look me in the face.

I couldn’t hear my father’s answer.

Then the subject was Megan and me. I heard my father tell my mother that she didn’t pay enough attention to Megan. Why had they bothered to have another child when she never paid enough attention to her? What did they have Megan for anyway, if all Mama did was dream about Klaus? I glanced over to see if my sister was listening. It was difficult to tell. She remained immobile, her head still resting on her arm. I was embarrassed for her. Although hoping desperately that she hadn’t heard, I realized that if I’d heard, no doubt she had too.

Then the bathroom door opened and they were back in the study. They argued for what seemed to me a small eternity. It went on and on and on. All the peaceful years vomited up their small bitter moments.

Finally, the study door opened and shut noisily. Dad’s footsteps were on the stairs. He thundered into the kitchen.

‘Lesley, do you know the name of those people whose little boy your mother saw?’

I shook my head.

He sighed, cast around the room for a moment, as if lost for what to do next. Then grabbing his jacket, he headed for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ Megan cried, leaping up.

He paused, stock still, like someone caught in a frame of film. Still wearing his work overalls, he hadn’t even gotten around to washing the garage grease from his hands. Then abruptly he came back to life.

‘I’m going out to get us something to eat,’ he replied. ‘Fried chicken or something. Look at the time,’ he said and sounded as if it were somehow our fault that it had grown so late. ‘And no one’s had any supper.’

‘I’m not really very hungry, Daddy,’ Megan said.

‘No, neither am I,’ I said.

He stared at us, flustered, as if we were speaking foreign tongues. Then he yanked on his jacket. ‘Well, I am. I’m starved. So I’m going to get myself something to eat.’ He looked over Megan’s head to me. ‘And for Christ’s sake, get your sister to bed. It’s way past her bedtime.’ Then he left.

Megan started to bawl. After the agony of enduring their argument, the sudden silence overwhelmed her and she broke into loud, inelegant sobs. There was no point in trying to talk her out of it. She was beyond caring.

It took a long time to muster the courage to go upstairs. I put it off as long as possible. I comforted Megan and got her to sit down in front of the TV. I made us both mugs of hot chocolate with more marshmallows than milk. But I realized that before Megan would be willing to go up to bed, I was going to have to go upstairs myself.

Mama was still crying. Huddled in my father’s lounger in the study, knees drawn up, head down, she sobbed wearily. It was a heavy, hopeless sound that carried all the way to me on the staircase.

‘Mama?’ I said softly. ‘It’s just me, Mama.’ I walked into the room. She didn’t acknowledge my presence.

‘Mama?’ I knelt down beside the chair and touched her shoulder. ‘I’ve made me and Meggie some hot chocolate. Do you want some? Do you want to come down and sit with us?’

My mother always had about her a truly heartbreaking kind of vulnerability. Even in the good times, even when she was being wickedly funny and full of laughter, there seemed to be some tender part of her exposed. That fragility had always terrified me. From the time I had been very, very young I’d felt it, and it made me reluctant to ever take my eyes off her. You just didn’t, not if you loved her. You had to be there right on top of her to protect her, because it never seemed that she could be fully trusted to protect herself.

From the bathroom I brought a damp cloth and again knelt down beside the lounger. I pressed the cloth to her face and could feel the heat come through to my fingers. Her cheeks were swollen and red, but in contrast, her eyes were almost an electric blue. While kneeling there, my emotions rocketed through extremes, varying from fury at my father’s willingness to leave her like this to a frenetic desperation about my own ability to cope. I was nearly in tears myself before I was finished.

When I went back downstairs, Megan was still in the living room watching television. It was after eleven o’clock, and she had switched to a raucous cop show where they were killing everyone in sight.

‘Get up those stairs, Megan. Honestly, didn’t you hear Daddy? Do you know what time it is?’

She ignored me. Still wearing her school clothes, she was draped over the chair, feet up on the arm.

‘Does somebody always have to tell you everything? Now I just don’t have patience for this. It’s ten after eleven and you’re supposed to be in bed. You’re going to be like murder in school tomorrow.’

‘Get lost, Lesley. I’m watching this.’

I walked over to the set and turned it off. Megan shot up angrily. ‘Who gave you the right to do that? You’re not the boss in this house. I was watching that show.’

My back against the television set, I glared at her. ‘I’m the boss now, Megan. You heard Dad. He told me to put you to bed. Ages ago. So get up those stairs or believe me, I’ll damned well make you, the way I’m feeling right now.’

Tears were in her eyes.

‘Look, the last thing I want to do is fight with you.’

‘I hate you,’ she muttered, and she stomped out of the room. I reckoned that at that particular moment everyone was hating everyone else just a little.

Mama had fallen asleep. Still in the lounger, she slept in a tight, cramped position, her head resting heavily against the side of the chair. Her breathing was deep and still faintly congested.

Wandering idly around upstairs, I picked up my schoolbooks with an intention to study but did not sit down. Instead, I went into my parents’ bedroom and parted the curtains to see out to the front of the house. The car was still in the driveway. My father was still in it. I had never heard it leave.

Megan had changed her clothes but then gone to sleep before she’d gotten under the blankets. She lay in the midst of the clutter of things on top of her bed, the tiger cat stuffed against her face. The light was still on.

Seeing her, I was unexpectedly awash with regret for having been so snappish with her. The emotion came as sodden remorse, oversized for the crime, and made me want to wake her up to get forgiveness. Going into the room, I tried to move her sufficiently to get her under the blankets, but she was too deeply asleep to cooperate. All I could do was double back the bedspread over her. I gazed at her. On impulse I kissed her before I turned off the bedside lamp and left the room.

I wanted to wait until my father came in, so I took my school work down to the kitchen table. By midnight Dad was still out there, and I knew I was going to have to go to bed myself. I had gone past the point of being tired and into a sort of taut, desperate exhaustion. I looked out the window and wondered if he was intending to sleep in the car. I wondered if I should take him a blanket. But I decided against disturbing him in case he was still angry. So, leaving the back door unlocked, I turned out the kitchen light and went upstairs. Hesitating in the hallway, I considered whether or not to wake Mama and get her into bed. She wasn’t going to be able to move at all in the morning if she slept in a position like that. But the thought of having to cope with Mama awake at that point seemed unbearable. So I left her alone.