Читать книгу The Sunflower Forest - Torey Hayden, Torey Hayden - Страница 10

I applied to the University of Kansas in Kansas City. I told them I wanted to study languages. Who knew? Maybe I would. It ended the visits to Miss Harrich’s office anyway. On the 27th of February they sent me a letter of acceptance. I showed it to my father, and after work the next evening he came home with a box of chocolate éclairs from the bakery at the supermarket and we had a family party.

No one ever did speak of moving, so eventually I concluded we weren’t going to. Mama continued to cast around the house restlessly during the month of February. Her agoraphobia worsened abruptly, and for a while she refused even to go next door to see Mrs Reilly. But she never said anything about moving. On my way home from school one afternoon, I stopped by the florist’s and bought her a bowl of forced hyacinths. It was only a tiny point of brightness in the winter-ridden days but it was the best I could do. The ground outside remained brown and unbroken.

Megan took up crocheting. She wasn’t very coordinated at doing things with her hands, so it took my mother almost three weeks of undiluted patience to teach her. Once Megan caught on, she crocheted and crocheted, turning out a thing that was five inches wide and about three feet long, because she didn’t understand how to cast off. It looked like a woolly blanket for a snake. I thought my mother was going to break a blood vessel trying not to laugh when Megan showed it to her. But she didn’t laugh. Instead, she said how nicely all the stitches were made and how she’d always wanted a crocheted belt. I don’t believe that’s what Megan had thought she was making, but she was so tickled by Mama’s comments that she immediately set about making another one.

I spent as much time as I could get away with at Paul’s house. All on his own he had converted the attic into a room for himself, so that he would have space for all his projects. Paul lived for the quiet, free moments he could spend up there and I lived for the moments I could spend with Paul. Sometimes I would sit on his bed and watch while he tinkered with one project or another. Other times we would lie, arms around one another, stretched out across the bed, and talk. We talked about ourselves, about school and our classes, about the future, about life, about dreams.

Our relationship moved with languid gentleness. Indeed, I suspect that if Paul’s family had realized how very little went on behind Paul’s closed door when I was with him, they would have laughed at us. As it was, I always had the distinct feeling from his mother that she was relieved to have me around. I think she’d begun to despair that Paul, happily shut up in his attic with his gerbils and his telescope and his dozens of notebooks full of observed astronomical minutiae, would ever get around to taking girls out. So sometimes I said things to Paul in their presence that intimated we were doing more than we were. I didn’t want them to know that we had such an innocent relationship because I think Paul would have gotten a real razzing. His mother kidded him a lot anyway in a cheerful, good-natured fashion, because he blushed really easily and it made everybody laugh. Paul hated her doing it, but I must admit, she was funny, and her teasing was a whole lot less caustic than my mother’s was, when she got on to someone.

I did, however, find myself anxious for the relationship to move more quickly, but intimacy was difficult around Paul’s house because, even up in the attic with the door closed, there wasn’t an abundance of privacy. His brother Aaron was worse than Megan had ever dreamed of being. If we were in the attic, Aaron would continually go back and forth outside the door, making smoochy noises, even when Paul and I were doing nothing more than homework and kissing was distant from our minds. Once Aaron changed thermoses with Paul when we were going skating, and when Paul opened his to pour hot chocolate, out dropped a pile of condoms instead.

The only place we could go for peace was the spot on the creek where Paul had taken me on our first date. Aaron didn’t have a driver’s licence, so we were safe there. And God knows, no one else was dumb enough to be out picnicking in a spot like that in February. We went out often, perhaps once or twice a week, but still we did nothing serious. We just petted and necked. I was a little worried. I enjoyed the slow, easy-going friendship we had and was fearful of losing that if I pressed him. But at the same time, I was ready for more. I didn’t know what to do. I talked about it with Brianna, to see if she thought I should say something or do something. I asked her if she thought anything might be the matter with Paul, because Brianna had four brothers and I reckoned she’d understand how boys worked better than I did. I even toyed with the idea of talking to Mama. But I didn’t. Not because Mama wouldn’t understand. To the contrary. A lot of things Mama seemed to understand completely and, in an obscure way, I resented that. Paul was my boyfriend and these were my feelings. So, in the end, I just kept quiet. Most of the time Paul and I did no more than lie in the brown prairie grass, arms around each other, and watch birds wheel over the enormous expanse of sky above us.

I had rapidly grown to adore Paul’s family. They were noisy, energetic and extroverted – the antithesis of mine. One of Paul’s two brothers was already married and living in Garden City. The other, Aaron, was fifteen. With a face full of acne and peach fuzz, Aaron knew he was God’s gift to girls. Every time I saw him, he was either washing his hair or blowing it dry. He deafened the household with his stereo. To me, Aaron was a kid right out of a television comedy: bold, brash and full of one-liners.

My favourite member of the family, aside from Paul, of course, was his mother. The very first time I came to the house at the end of January, she’d put her arm around me and told me to call her Bo. None of this Mrs Krueger stuff. After all, if I was a friend of Paul’s, I was a friend of hers.

She was a tall woman. Her features were rather plain; she didn’t have the classic bone structure that made my mother’s face so dramatic, but nonetheless, Bo was an attractive woman. Even in February she had a tan. Her body was long and lean from diets and dance classes and daily swims at the Y. Twice a month she had her hair highlighted and trimmed to keep the short, stylish cut. Bo dressed in jeans with designer names and turtlenecks under Oxford-cloth shirts, not like my mama in her old cords and Daddy’s shirts and sweaters.

Sometimes when I was over on Saturdays and Bo wasn’t busy, she would take me into the bathroom off the master bedroom and show me how to put on make-up. She’d pull my hair into a ponytail and draw with soap on the mirror to show me the shape of my face. Look at those cheekbones. Why couldn’t I have cheekbones like that? she’d always say. Or else she’d take out balls of cotton and orange sticks and little jars of cuticle remover and help me do my nails before putting on pale, dreamy coloured polish. On other occasions she would let me come into her bedroom and she’d show me her clothes. This blouse is a Bill Blass. Ralph Lauren designed this pullover. See what good use of colours he makes? Feel this. It’s genuine silk.

Bo knew all the really exotic places to shop. She had been to New York City and shopped in Saks Fifth Avenue. She’d been on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Once she had even been in the same shop as Shirley MacLaine. I would stand in the bedroom beside her and listen and feel drab and colourless, my bones, like Mama’s, peasant huge, my hair, like Daddy’s, uncontrollable. The eye make-up would smudge when I put it on. The blusher made me look like I had a fever. And once when I came home after Bo had made me up, Mama just stood there, arms folded over her breasts, and shook her head. When I asked what was wrong, she burst out laughing. But with every passing visit to the Kruegers, I grew to love Bo more. She never seemed to doubt that I could enter her world, if I tried. She never seemed to lose faith that I was really a peacock in sparrow’s clothing.

Paul’s father I never really came to know. He was gone much of the time. He was a lawyer and was thinking of running for the legislature, so he spent a good share of his time in Goodland or Topeka or over in Kansas City. The few times he was home when I was over, he was usually in his study. Unlike my daddy, Mr Krueger really did have paperwork to do.

The majority of the time I spent at the Kruegers was, of course, spent with Paul. Usually we shut ourselves upstairs in his room and worked on his projects. He would explain them to me in patient, loving detail. Some of the things I did eventually understand. Most of them I didn’t, but it mattered little. I found it fun to be with him, to work on them, to see how they came out. He could so easily conceptualize what he wanted to do and then create it that I was excited just to be a spectator to the process. Through January and most of February we worked on a contraption to photograph Kirlian auras and then hunted for various items to try in it, including money and gloves and once, the seat off the upstairs toilet. But Paul’s real passion was for astronomy and his dream was to build a telescope larger than his current one. So we spent hours and hours together, paging through catalogues that sold ground lenses and mirrors and numerous bits and pieces that I had no understanding of, in preparation for creating what I came to think of as ‘our telescope’. Actually, I was impressed by the telescope he already had. I’d never seen one that powerful in someone’s home before and I knew it must have cost a great deal of money. We spent a lot of our evenings looking through it. I learned how to locate Procyon and Andromeda and Mira, ‘the Wonderful’, and helped Paul keep his observation notebooks. Sometimes we attached his father’s camera to the telescope, and once I got to take photographs of the moon. Later, we made plans to get them blown up into posters, some for his room, some for mine.

At my house, life remained very much the same.

‘Daddy,’ said Megan one evening as we were sitting at the dinner table, ‘can I have a slumber party?’

Dad looked up. ‘You can. The question remains whether or not you may.’

Megan groaned. ‘May I have a slumber party? I got to thinking about it today and I thought, well, maybe when my birthday comes around, we might’ve moved and I won’t know any kids to ask. So can I have a slumber party now while I still got friends?’

‘We’re not moving to my knowledge,’ my father replied.

‘Well, we might. You never can tell. Besides, my birthday’s right in the middle of summer vacation, and there’s never any kids around then anyway. So can I have one now? And we can count it for my birthday, like an advance against it or something. I won’t ask for anything then.’

‘What’s a slumber party?’ Mama asked.

‘Oh Mama, it’s where kids bring over their sleeping bags and sleep on your floor. And you eat food and stuff. It’s real fun.’ Megan obviously had it plotted out already in her head.

‘Well, Meggie,’ my father said, ‘I can see why you’d like to do it, but I don’t think it’s a very good idea right now.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, for one thing, it’d be a lot of trouble for your mama.’

‘No, it wouldn’t. Just a little party. Just a little, little, little one. Just maybe me and Katie and Tracey Pickett and Suzanne Warner. And maybe Jessica. And, oh yeah, Melissa. I can’t forget Melissa because I went to her birthday party in November. Remember? But that’s all. Just them. And I already got it thought out. They could bring their sleeping bags and we could do it in the living room. And we could have dinner, you know, like hot dogs or something. Nothing big. I could make hot dogs myself. Then we’d just watch TV and go to sleep. We wouldn’t be any bother at all, Daddy.’

By the set of his jaw, I could tell my father had already decided against it.

Megan studied his face.

‘No, Meggie,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid not. Maybe some other time. Maybe when we get a bigger house.’

‘But we’ll never get a bigger house.’

‘Sure we will. Maybe we’ll get a house with a rec room in it. Then you can play games and everything.’

‘By then I might be old and not want a slumber party.’

‘Sure you will.’

Megan fell silent a moment, her lower lip jutting over her upper. ‘I want a party now, not some far-off time, Daddy. Not someday.’

‘I know you do, kitten.’

Putting her elbows on the table, Megan braced her face on her two fists. She rolled her eyes in my father’s direction. ‘It’s not fair. I never get to do anything. Katie had a slumber party just last week. Katie’s had three of them.’

‘Yes, and you got to go to every one of them, didn’t you, Megs?’ Dad said.

‘That’s not the same.’ Megan’s voice had grown whiny. My father’s brows began to knit together when she spoke like that. ‘Well, it’s not, Daddy. Sometimes I want to do these things too. Sometimes I just want to be like everybody else.’

‘But you’re not everybody else, are you?’

‘No,’ Megan said in a low voice. I could see she was about to cry. Mama, next to her, was busying herself with the mashed potatoes.

‘Well then,’ said Dad, ‘that’s that. Just as soon as we’re in our new house, Megan has a party. I’ll mark that down in my diary so I remember. Just as soon as we’re settled.’ He looked over at her. ‘But in the meantime, young lady, take your elbows off the table and start on all that food.’

Megan was still teetering dangerously on the edge of tears. With one foot she kicked against the leg of the table. Milk danced in our glasses. Mama turned around and lifted the coffeepot from the stove. She asked Dad if he wanted more.

‘You know something,’ Megan said, her voice low and hoarse, ‘I don’t really like being in this family very much. In fact, I hate it.’

Without even looking up from his food, my father said, ‘You’re excused. You may go to your room, Megan.’

Megan just sat, kicking the table leg.

Lifting one eyebrow, he looked over at her. Megan threw down her napkin, rose and left.

I felt sorry for Megs. I knew exactly how she felt. Besides, it was easy to hear from her voice that she’d had the slumber party all planned out. You could tell that she’d most likely sat through all of Katie’s party the previous week, saying to herself, at my party we’ll have hot dogs, at my party we’ll watch Happy Days, at my party there’ll be even more girls than here. Megan always did have more dreams in her head than sense.

After the dishes were done, I stopped by her room. She was lying on her back on the bed, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling.

‘Look, I’m sorry about your not getting to have a slumber party, Megs.’

‘Go away,’ she said.

‘I know how you feel. I remember wanting stuff like that too.’

‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘He’s just mean.’

‘He’s not trying to be, Megs. He thinks he’s doing the right thing.’

She looked over. ‘It’s because of Mama, isn’t it? He just doesn’t want to bother Mama. Well, I didn’t hear Mama say anything against it. I didn’t hear her complain.’

‘Megs, it’s not his fault. It’s just one of those things.’

‘Well, whose fault is it, then?’ she asked and rolled over on to her stomach. The instant she said that, she knew the answer. Gently, she kicked at the bed with her foot. Silence followed. I picked at the wallpaper by the light switch. ‘You know what, Lesley,’ she said at last.

‘What’s that?’

‘I hate Mama.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Yes, I do. Sometimes I do. And you know what else? I meant what I said. I don’t really like being in this family very much.’

Then at last it was March.

‘Lesley? Lessie? Wake up.’

‘What do you want?’ Sleepily I rolled over to see Megan leaning over my bed. It was not even 6.30.

‘Are you awake? Get up. Come on. I want to show you something.’

‘Go play in traffic, Megan.’

‘Get up. Come here. Come in my room.’ She gave me a mighty shove.

Without any show of good humour, I got out of bed and followed her back to her own room. She ran across and bounced up on the bed.

‘Lookie here, Les.’

‘This better be good. Or I mean it, Megan, I’m going to murder you.’

‘Look.’ She had the curtain held back.

It was not quite dawn. Early March and the world for the main part was still winter grey. From Megan’s window I could see the big, leafless sycamore in the Reilly’s backyard, the street, the roofs of other houses, and out beyond them the dull, yellowish stretch of plains. The day was dawning clear and cloudless, but at that hour the sky was mostly without colour.

‘I don’t see anything, you little pig. What did you drag me in here for anyway?’

‘Down there. Look in the grass under the window.’

On the small stretch of lawn between our house and the Reilly’s, I could make out crocuses growing in the grass. White and yellow ones, forming letters, M-E-G-A-N.

‘Look at it. See? Someone’s made my name in flowers down there on the lawn. See them? I never noticed them until just this minute when I woke up and looked out. And there they were.’

I pressed my nose against the glass to see them better. The letters were surprisingly clear in the grass. Then the windowpane fogged over with my breath.

‘It’s like magic, isn’t it?’ Megan said. Megan was the kind of child to believe in magic. Although she didn’t admit it, I knew she still hoped for the possibility of fairies and elves and a real Santa Claus.

I tried to see down the strip of lawn to tell if there were flowers under my window too. When I saw crocuses there, I pointed them out to Megan and she bolted off her bed and down the hallway to my room.

The letters making my name were not nearly so well formed as Megan’s. They looked like L-E-S-L-F. There was no Y at all, just random flowers. But still, I could see it was my name.

‘Who did it, do you think?’ Megan asked, as she tried to wrench open my window to stick her head out.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Mama. I bet it was Mama. I bet Mama did it.’ The window wouldn’t open after the long winter of being shut. Megan pressed her face and both her palms flat against the glass. ‘Or maybe it’s really magic. It’s like magic, isn’t it? I’ve never seen it before now and there it was, like it came up overnight. There was my name in the grass.’

‘I don’t think it did,’ I said. ‘We never go over on that side of the house. It could have been up for ages.’

‘But I look. I’m always looking out my window, Lesley, just like now. And there it was. Just this morning.’

The discovery excited Megan out of all proportion to what it was. I couldn’t restrain her from galloping in and bounding into bed with Mama and Daddy. They were both asleep when she crawled in between them. My father woke, yawning. Mama turned over sleepily and kissed Megan on top of her head. Megs was squirming down between them and chattering like a chipmunk. When Mama saw me standing in the doorway, she beckoned. I got into the bed with everyone else.

Mama put her arms around us. Megan was between her and Daddy and I was on Mama’s other side. She pressed us against her with strong arms, and my nose was filled with her warm, familiar smell. It was a broody scent, of baby powder, stale cigarette smoke and sleep.

‘Did you plant the flowers, Mama?’ I asked.

She nodded. She was smiling drowsily.

‘It’s like real magic,’ I heard Megan say. Her voice was growing soft and sleepy sounding. I lay with my head pressed against Mama’s breast. She had her left hand on my face. Her skin was almost hot, and I could feel the faintly different temperature of her wedding ring against my cheek.

‘It was magic, Liebes,’ Mama said to Megs.

There were a few moments of sleepy silence.

‘I love you, Mama,’ Megan whispered.

Then my father rolled over with a motion that rocked the whole bed. He settled deeper into his pillow. ‘There’re an awful lot of female voices nattering on in this bed,’ he said without opening an eye. ‘And this being Sunday and the day of rest …’

With a finger to her lips, Mama winked at me. No one spoke again. I lay for a while, quite wide awake. I could hear Mama’s heart beating. I lay listening to it. Then eventually, I closed my eyes and went back to sleep too.