Tin Lily (5 page)

“When?” I say.

Margie squints at me. I have to ask in more words so she understands. “When can we take Mom up?”

“It’ll be a few days yet. I know you want to get this all put behind you. I know that. I wish I could make it go faster.”

Margie doesn’t understand. When you want to put things behind, you usually have something in front. There is no front for me. No future.

Pretty soon the tears will start. Pretty soon there’ll be a crack and then a flood.

Pretty soon I’ll dissolve, disappear, vanish into the ether like the life we had at the dog food house.

“Would you like to say a few words?” Margie’s asking. We’re standing in the middle of Mom’s meadow with wildflowers blooming right up around us, going about their business like Mom didn’t die. Purple fades to pink. Yellow into red. Dew on our sneakers. The earth sinking, soft with spring, the sky blue and cloudless.

I’m standing in Mom’s meadow. I’m holding the urn that holds her.

“Lily?”

“I love her,” I say. I look at the urn. “I love you.”

There’s a hot tightness in my stomach. Aching behind my eyes. Hollow in my chest where my heart’s supposed to be.
Thump-crack, thump-crack.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer the phone.” It’s all I can say because the heat and the ache and the hollow want to come out, to dissolve me. There are worse places to become nothing, but I’m weak, not brave like Mom. After Hank’s light went out, when he let in Grandpa Henry’s poison, he made sure I knew.

“You're so pathetic, Lily. A weak-willed, mewling little brat.”

Margie says a few words too, letting the heat and ache out. She stays Margie, though, and doesn’t dissolve. She tells Mom she’s sorry for what her brother did, for how things turned out.

We take the lid off the urn, walk around the meadow and spread Mom’s ashes. A little for the black-eyed Susans. A lot for the honeysuckle growing up the side of a tree—her favorite. A little more for the dogwood and the bluebells and the cosmos.

Glass into sand. Mom into ashes. Ashes into earth. The earth is small enough. My focus: the earth.

Me and Margie, we sit next to each other in the softness and dew, in the warm sun. We sit down with our living bodies and watch the breeze carry Mom to every corner of her hidden meadow.

“Lilybeans, pull one of those black-eyed-Susans for your hair. Tuck it behind your ear. That
’
s it!” Click. Snap.

“This is a beautiful spot,” Margie says.

“Lil, lean against that tree, will you? Grab a honeysuckle flower, hold it under your nose. Good girl.” Click. Snap.

“I can see why you and your mom spent so much time here.”

“Lily! Did you see the rabbit? We have to get a picture!” Click. Snap.

Margie scoots close, puts her arm around me. “I thought we’d leave for Seattle on Friday. What do you think?”

“What about Hank?”

Margie doesn’t say anything for a minute. We listen to the crows complaining in their scratchy voices. We watch the Susans bend their miniature sunflower heads. We feel a soft breeze come through, rustle the long grass. So much quiet.

“Do you hear that, Lily?”

“What?”

“Nothing. It
’
s so silent, so peaceful here. Can you feel it?”

“Sure, Mom, whatever you say.”

“There
’
s no yelling. No fighting. Just the wind and the meadow.”

“It
’
s nice.
”

“Yes.”

“Are you worried about Hank?” Margie’s taken the silver box out of her purse again and she’s turning it over in her hands. I see it’s etched with little flowers. Very detailed. I think it’s maybe a touchstone for Margie.

“No,” I say and it’s the truth.

Margie’s fingers quiet down and she holds the box in one palm.

“What is that?” I ask.

She gestures for me to hold out a hand and sets the little box on my palm. I expect it to be warm, but it’s cold. I expect it to be light, but it’s heavy.

“I made it. You know what I do for a living?”

I think back to stuff Mom said, to Margie’s T-shirt in the hospital. “A metallurgist or something?”

“That’s right. This little thing”—she touches one finger to the top of the box—“is a hobby.” Margie’s whole body sighs. “Metal runs in our veins, kiddo. The little cat your dad made?”

I nod.

“Looks like he couldn’t get away from it either. No matter what we did, it all came back to this.” She brushes her fingertips across the box’s lid.

“Didn’t that make Grandpa Henry happy?” I ask even though I know the answer already. Grandpa Henry owns—owned—a company called Berkenshire Metalworks. The only thing I know about it is that Hank didn’t want to install rain gutters or build chain link fences or put up security gates.

Margie shakes her head. “I’m afraid nothing ever did. I stopped trying when I left home.”

“Hank too. For a while.”

“Yes, Hank too.”

“He was happy when he painted, when he made those little animals for me. Not always happy, but better than after he went to work for Grandpa Henry.”

“Your mom said he started drinking.”

“When I was little. I think he hated his jobs.” Every year a different color uniform shirt, but always his name embroidered on the chest.
Hank.
At first, just six-packs of beer disappeared overnight. And then after Grandpa Henry, more than just beer. Big bottles of whiskey gone in a flash and Mom and me seeing a lot of movies on school nights so we weren’t home before he passed out.

Margie sees my frowning face, pulls me close and cuts off my breath with her tight hug. “You don’t have to worry about that now, Lilybeans.”

I think Margie, with her not knowing that Hank wanted to kill me too, believes we’ll be safe. I also know if she doesn’t think she can protect me, she’ll call up Mack and Darcy. Fear and a promise to Mom will make her think of their ranch in the middle of the desert where Hank can’t find me. If she knew about his bullets for me, she’d send me today.

I shove these thoughts away, these Mack and Darcy thoughts. I think about Hank’s dead-and-cold father instead. “Do we need to bury Grandpa Henry?” I ask.

Margie shakes her head. “He took care of everything and there’s no way I’m seeing him laid to rest.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“Anyone you want to say good-bye to before we go?” Margie’s voice tells me she already knows there isn’t.

“No.”

We wait a little longer, for a whisper, a
good-bye
, to come along.

It doesn’t.

On the way back from the meadow, we visit Margie’s mom in an old cemetery. She wants to say something, probably tell her what Hank did. I turn my back and wander a little ways while she talks to the ground. I try not to hear what she says, but I catch snippets anyway. “You should have left Dad when we were young, when we had a chance. You knew what he was capable of.”

I walk farther away so Margie has privacy, keeping watch for Hank, wondering if he’d be so stupid. So far, there is no Hank. So far, there’s only a feeling of him out there with his patient waiting, with his imaginary picture-taking that says
see you later
.

The cemetery is nice. It's one of those old ones with leaning headstones that have grass growing up around them. Big trees cast long shadows across engraved names so you’re left bending down to read if you want to know who’s buried under your feet. I bend down a few times before Margie’s ready to go.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say.

We walk back toward the road. Margie’s rental car sits on a long stretch of asphalt cutting through the old graveyard. A trail right through the dead that leads to somewhere I can’t see.

At fifteen, life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

-
Maya Angelou,
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Margie keeps her word and we leave for Seattle on Friday. We let Goodwill take the rest of the stuff from the house. It’s not much. I have my books, the sweater Mom knitted, my rug, our pictures—everything important.

It’s too long a drive, Margie says, so we’re flying. It’s my first time in an airplane. I’m not nervous. There’s no room inside for nerves. All seats taken.

It’s a short flight and pretty soon we’re walking through the airport, yanking suitcases off the carousel. I’m watching Margie pull on the bag that holds my books when whiskey and paint fill my nose. He’s on the other side of the rotating luggage. He’s wearing the same jeans with red stains, has the same booze belly hidden underneath the same flannel shirt, same paint and blood-splattered work boots. Margie doesn’t notice, probably wouldn’t recognize him. Twenty years ago Hank was a kid, in better shape and handsome in the few pictures I saw. Now he’s all spindly arms and legs with a skeletal, triangular head and glassy, black eyes. A praying mantis with hands instead of pincers. A praying mantis with a gun.

Mint joins the crowd and the bees start buzzing their broken song. I know what it means, the
buzz-buzz-buzz
. It means silence and peace for a little while. It means nothingness—something I don’t mind so much. Not here, though. Here there are too many people, too much bustle. Here there’s Margie with her worry.

Someone brushes me where I’m standing at the carousel, brushes me hard because I’m frozen staring at not-Hank or Hank, taking up space and not moving. Both of us watching, not moving, fixed in this here-and-now moment. Margie’s voice is next to my ear, but I can’t make out the words. The bees are too loud. People are bustling all around and the quiet place is a blink away. Don’t go. Don’t go. Stay. Please stay.

I can’t.

When I come back we’re still at the carousel and Margie’s standing in front of me. She’s not embarrassed even though people are staring. She’s scared. Plenty. But not embarrassed. This helps.

“Hi, Aunt Margie.”

“Hi, Lilybeans. How ya doin’?”

I look over Margie’s shoulder. There’s no more Hank or not-Hank across the way, no more mint or whiskey, no paint either. Everything is the way it’s supposed to be. Margie glances over her shoulder at where I’m staring.

“I’m okay,” I say. “Should we go?”

Her skin is creased between her eyebrows, but she doesn’t ask anything. We get the luggage and head to the parking lot.

We’re driving away from the airport, through the city, and I’m remembering when Mom and I came to stay with Margie last summer. I remember the shabby brick wall we’re passing now painted bright with a Seahawks logo, how the new paint made the brick look even more worn out. The Seahawk is faded now, a year and a thousand storms gone by.

I remember the Space Needle, the downtown buildings made of glass and brick and metal, towering over a city people say is emerald, but right now is gray. It was sunny when we visited Margie last summer. Now there are no fluffy clouds, no warmth. Everything is dull and dim. Foggy.

I look out my window and see a harbor through the rain drops sliding down the glass. The water out there looks mad, waves crashing one way, waves crashing another way, banging into each other like they’ve got nothing better to do.

Pretty soon there’s a guy on the corner, waving his arms, hollering at an invisible audience. We sit at a red light and I watch him, thinking about the Hank or the not-Hank in the airport, wonder if seeing Hank means I’m crazy or if it means he’s come for me already. If it was a not-Hank and I keep seeing him, keep hearing the bees, I might end up on a corner someday, waving my arms, talking to invisible people. Or staring into space, not moving, not being. Or maybe even end up like Hank, raging at a gun when it runs out of bullets. His coming that night, I think it did something to make me empty and crazy—like him.

We’re on Magnolia Bridge and Margie’s asking me if I remember it from last time. I do, but I say I don’t so she’ll point out the sites and I don’t have to talk. She’s explaining how all the close-together boats in the water below us is a yacht club, how people sail on the weekends, even when it rains.

“Don’t wait for the sun to come out in Seattle, Lily, or you’ll never leave the house.” She smiles, points to downtown, to the yacht club, to a park with a lot of foggy trees. “Plenty to do here, but we’ll take it slow, okay?”

Pretty soon we stop in front of Margie’s apartment building. I remember the patio from last summer, sitting out there in the dark watching downtown and the Space Needle light up. Queen Anne—a fancy neighborhood. There’s no white steam into blue sky, no stink, no threadbare couches with pots of gold in the cushions.

It’s not long before Margie’s unlocking her front door. “What did you think about that big house next door? Pretty elaborate, right?”

I look at Margie, feel my eyebrows wrinkle up. I don’t remember the house. “I didn’t notice,” I say.

Margie looks sad, then nods, then shows me my room.

My new room is where Mom and I stayed. We shared the big bed, talked for hours and planned our new life. I feel a whooshing inside, like my stomach’s decided to leave my body. I stand in the doorway, frozen, but not gone.

Margie thinks I’m disappointed. “We’ll get you your own stuff soon.”

“No need. This is fine.” The room is still done up in blues and whites like I remember. It’s sterile. It’s fine.

“No. We’ll go shopping when we’re both feeling a little better. I’ll donate all this stuff. It’s old anyway.”

“Okay.”

“Get settled and I’ll check on you in a bit. I need to make a quick call.”

Margie disappears and I go to the bed, run my fingers along the bedspread. Mom sat here while I sat on the floor. She braided my hair, said sweet things.