The Sunflower Forest

I knew he hated his jobs. He never said so but it was one of those things you could feel. He would linger a moment too long over his morning coffee. He would come home with his hands black and his clothes dirty and apologize to Mama even before he kissed her, although Mama never complained. But mainly it was the study. In every house we’d ever lived in my father had always insisted on having an extra room for his study. Even if it meant Megan and I had to share a bedroom. Someday, he told me once, he’d have a job where he’d have to bring home work from the office to do at his desk and he’d need a study – somewhere quiet to get away from the noise of the TV and Megs and me and Mama’s records, so that he could do his paperwork. So far he had never found such a job, but every night after supper he went upstairs and sat for a while behind the desk and waited.

While my father dreamed, my mother acted. We lived like Gypsies because of Mama. She pursued happiness down a real road. Wherever we were, my mother assumed peace of mind must be waiting over the next hill. Nowhere suited her for long. She wanted it cooler; she wanted it warmer. She wanted to be in the country; she wanted to be in town. Always searching, never finding.

There was a regular routine to our moves. First Mama would grow restless, pacing around the house, uprooting things and transplanting them in the garden, paging through Megs’ or my schoolbooks and constructing fabulous tales about what she imagined the places in the pictures must be like, while my sister and I would sit captivated, eating our afternoon snacks at the kitchen table. Then would come the depression. Any little thing my sister or I’d do would upset her, and she’d start having more and more spells. Her anxieties would increase, in particular her fear of leaving the immediate environs of the house and yard, because she’d begin thinking the people in the community didn’t like her any more. Then Dad and I would get stuck with all the grocery shopping and the errands. When those things started happening, I knew it was only a matter of time before we would head off for some new horizon.

I hated the moves. I hated the awful weariness right afterward when I would wake up in the morning and realize that all the people out there were strangers except for Mama, Daddy and Megan. I hated the discouraging task of starting over, of trying to make new friends, of even wanting to try.

My feelings, however, never appeared to make much difference. When my mother was in that state, she had no energy left over for other people’s feelings. As far as my father was concerned, relieving her discomfort was all that seemed to matter; he never questioned the process. If Mama wanted to move, we moved. If Mama thought we’d be happier in Yakima or North Platte or Timbuktu, then that was all it took for my father. He would drop everything, give notice at his job, sell whatever was necessary to raise the money, then pack up and go to wherever it was Mama believed she’d be at peace this time. And he expected the same devotion from Megs and me. We were not allowed even to question the move in front of Mama: this was just something you did when you were part of a family.

The guidance counsellor was waiting for me again when I came out of my calculus class on Wednesday of that week. She was leaning against the lockers on the other side of the corridor, and when I came out of the door of the classroom, all she did was nod and I knew the nod was meant for me. Without exchanging any words, we went back to her office together.

The counsellors, six men and Miss Harrich, were together in the new part of the school building. Each one had a little cubicle just large enough to accommodate a desk, a desk chair and a second chair and still have space to close the door. In Miss Harrich’s cubicle there was a large framed print hanging over her desk that said, in letters that were nearly impossible to read, ‘A wrongdoer is often a man who has left something undone.’ It took me the better part of three visits to puzzle it out.

Sitting down at her desk, Miss Harrich lifted a file with my name on it from a stack by the dictionary. For several moments she riffled through the contents, stopping to read occasionally with such absorption that it was hard to believe she had read it all many times before.

‘So, how’s it going?’ she asked me.

I shrugged. ‘All right.’

‘Are you thinking, as I asked you to? About where you want to go to college?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Have you decided?’

I shrugged.

‘Lesley, I hate to have to keep reminding you about this, but the time is coming. You’ll have to get an application in. You can’t procrastinate for ever.’

I nodded.

There was a pause and she looked back down at the file. I was sitting across from her and could see what she was reading. I already knew what was in the file: my IQ score, my test results, a long note from my old chemistry teacher that said he thought I was an under-achiever. I could read upside down easily.

‘You’re exceptionally good at languages, Lesley. German, French, two years of Spanish. Do you still speak Hungarian at home?’

‘Sometimes,’ I said.

‘There are some promising career opportunities for linguists. Have you thought about doing something like that? You’re very good. And it’s an open field, jobwise.’

I nodded.

Miss Harrich sighed. I wasn’t trying to be difficult, although I could tell she thought I was. Or at least that I wasn’t being very cooperative.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I am trying to help you, Lesley. I know you think I’m just hassling you, but I’m not. I’m worried that you’re going to just keep putting this off and putting it off until it’s too late. And you’re such a bright girl. You have so much potential. I just don’t want to see you waste it.’

I stared at my hands. My stomach hurt and I wanted to leave.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. She watched me, and because I couldn’t bring myself to look at her face, I studied her clothes. She was an older woman, perhaps near sixty, but she dressed very fashionably. Soft wool skirts and silk-look blouses, in muted, earthy colours. If she’d been someone else, I would have liked to ask her where she bought them. They didn’t look like what you found in our town.

I shrugged wearily as the silence grew too heavy for me. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t even know what was wrong, why it was so hard to look at the applications and do something about them, why I hated coming in here so much that it made me feel sick to my stomach.

‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked. ‘I mean, how’s it going for you? Generally speaking. Classes all right? Are you having any trouble?’

I shook my head.

‘Are things OK at home?’

I nodded.

She regarded me for a long moment before finally opening her desk drawer to take out a pad of hall passes. ‘If you ever need anyone to talk to,’ she said, ‘you know I’m here.’

‘I have history now,’ I said when I saw her hesitate over that blank on the form. ‘Room 204. Mr Peterson.’

‘You heard me, didn’t you? That’s why I’m here, Lesley. To help out when things get rough. I do care. You know that, don’t you?’

I stood and held out my hand for the pass. When she laid her pen down, I snatched the form from the pad and left.

Claire, one of my group of friends from school, was having a party the next Friday night. Her mother was helping her clear the furniture from the family room, and there was going to be a live band. It was a local band, made up of three boys from our high school and someone named Frog Newton from Goodland, who played the drums. Frog was a friend of Brianna’s cousin, and Brianna said she thought he was one of the weirder monkeys not in the zoo. She always referred to him as Fig Newton, which in my mind was an improvement on Frog.

Claire’s party was the big social event of the term among my crowd, which by and large didn’t seem to generate many big social events. None of us girls who were friends that year was exactly femme fatale material. Claire still had a generous amount of what her mother affectionately called ‘puppy fat’. Brianna wore glasses and braces and had hair like Little Orphan Annie’s. And of course there was me. Naturally, Claire intended that we all bring dates. But she did tell us that her brother and a bunch of his friends were coming, which was a diplomatic way of saying that there would be at least some boys on the premises.

After lunch on Wednesday I went down to my locker to change books for my next class. I stood alone, sifting through the debris in the bottom of the locker, searching for my German vocabulary notebook.

‘Where were you in history class today?’

I looked up.

His name was Paul Krueger. I didn’t know him well because the only class I had with him was history and he sat across the room. All I knew for sure about him was that he was reckoned to be a whizz kid in physics. Otherwise, he was an ordinary sort of boy with brown, wavy hair and a lumpish build, like a wrestler’s.

‘I was down at the counsellor’s office. Miss Harrich is always hassling me about college applications.’

Shifting his books from one arm to the other, he leaned back against the locker next to mine. ‘Too bad you got her. I got Mr Perryman. He’s not so bad.’

‘Yeah. It’s because my last name begins with O.’

‘Yeah. Mine begins with K.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

Silence. We both looked away.

‘Luckiest kids are those with last names starting with S, because they get Mr Kent. He’s really nice. I know. My friend Bob’s got him.’

‘Yeah, they’re lucky.’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed.

‘Yeah.’

Silence.

‘So. Where are you going to college?’ he asked me. ‘Have you been accepted anyplace yet?’

I shrugged.

‘I’m going to Ohio State. They’ve got a good statistics department there. That’s what I’m going to major in. Statistics.’ He shifted his books again. ‘My old man says there’s lots of jobs available in statistics. And you know how it is. You pretty much do what the old man says.’

With a smile, I nodded. I had located my vocabulary notebook, so I shut the locker door. By the hall clock I could see I had only two minutes left to get to German and I didn’t want to be late because Mr Tennant gave us marks when we were tardy.

Paul was studying the fingernails on his left hand. ‘I wanted to ask you something – in history class,’ he said, still regarding his hand. ‘But you weren’t there.’

‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘No.’

Still the intense interest in his fingernails.

‘See, I’m a friend of Kurt’s – you know, Claire’s brother. And about this thing on Friday night.’ He looked over. ‘You going to it?’

‘You mean Claire’s party?’ I asked.

He nodded.

I shrugged. ‘I guess so.’

‘You want to go with me?’

My jaw went slack.

‘I mean, assuming you’re not going with anyone else or anything. Are you?’

‘Yes. I mean, no, I’m not. I mean, yes, I’ll go with you. If you want.’ I grinned. ‘Yeah. OK. I will.’

‘Great, then.’ He hoisted up his books. ‘I gotta go to English. Listen, I’ll talk to you more after school, OK?’

I nodded.

With a smile he turned and took off down the hallway.

I stood next to my locker, a stupid grin plastered all over my face, and watched him disappear. Astonishment had me spellbound.

So this was it.

Still grinning like a Cheshire cat, I tossed my pencil way up into the air and tried to catch it. The teacher monitoring the hall gave me an odd look. I hooted at her, then grabbed my books and ran for German.

Chapter Four

When I arrived home from school, I went into the kitchen to fix myself a snack. Megan was sitting at the table and spreading butter on soda crackers. I took down the bread and then went to the cupboard to get the peanut butter.

‘There isn’t any peanut butter,’ Megan said.

‘There was this morning.’

‘Yes, but I ate it already.’

Frowning, I turned. ‘You know I always have a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich when I get home from school. Always. Since before you were born, you little brat. That was my peanut butter.’

‘Not any more!’ She giggled. ‘Here. You want some crackers?’

‘Aren’t there any apples left either? Did you pig them all up too?’

‘No. But all that’s left are the old wormy ones that fell off Mrs Reilly’s tree.’

I sat down at the table and took the crackers away from Megan. Intently, I worked on extracting one from the wrapper without breaking it. ‘Where’s Mama?’

‘In her bedroom.’ Megan was concentrating on spreading butter to the exact edges of her cracker.

‘Is she OK?’

Megan shrugged. ‘I guess so. She’s still got her bathrobe on. And she doesn’t look like she combed her hair yet today. But when she was out a little while ago, she said “hi” to me, so I guess she’s all right.’ Megan paused to look up. ‘But you know what she’s doing?’

‘What?’

Megan wrinkled her nose. ‘She’s got all those photographs out. You know. The ones of Popi and Mutti and Elek.’

I sighed.

‘You know something, Les,’ Megan said, ‘what I really feel like doing someday when she isn’t looking is taking all those old pictures and burning them in the fire.’

‘What an awful thing to say, Megan. All Mama’s family got killed in the war. And she misses them. If something happened to all of us, would you want some kid of yours to burn up our pictures?’

She took out another cracker. ‘Well, I dunno. If it kept me from remembering I had real live kids here in front of me, then I might.’

‘She remembers us, Megs. Don’t be so selfish.’

Megan didn’t reply.

‘Hey, you want to hear some super news,’ I said, hoping to distract her. ‘You know Claire’s party on Friday?’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, guess what? I got a date for it.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Really. Who with?’

‘This guy at school. You don’t know him. His name’s Paul Krueger and he’s in my history class.’

‘Can I meet him? When he comes to get you, will you introduce me?’

I rolled up the wrapper on the crackers and rose to put them away. ‘Well, he isn’t exactly coming over.’

Megan’s brow wrinkled.

‘I told him to pick me up at the nursing home.’

‘The nursing home? But you finish there at 5.30. Claire’s party doesn’t start at 5.30, does it?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I thought I could study until it was time. Mrs Morton lets me use the staff room to study when I want to.’

Bafflement still clouded Megan’s features.

‘Besides, it’s a lot closer for him. He lives on Cedar Street. That way he doesn’t have to come all the way over here to pick me up.’

Megan had the knife in one hand, and with a finger she scraped off bits of butter from it and put them into her mouth. ‘Cedar Street isn’t really that far, Les. Why don’t you have him come over here and pick you up? Then we could meet him.’ But before I had to explain, I saw a look of understanding cross her face. She gazed at the knife and finally put it into her mouth to suck the last of the butter off. ‘Yes,’ she said softly, ‘I guess it probably is a better idea to meet him somewhere else.’

That was the good thing about Megan. She was young but she wasn’t stupid.

When my father came home and saw that Mama was still wearing her bathrobe, he went up into the bedroom and stayed there quite a while with her. Later, when she came out, she was dressed and had her hair pulled back in a rubber band, the way it always was when Dad brushed it for her. She made us pork chops and French fries and green beans for supper, and while we were eating, she started joking with Dad about Mrs Beckerman, who lived across the street. Mrs Beckerman’s main activity seemed to be standing behind the net curtains in her living room and watching what everyone else on the block was doing. Mid-meal, Mama, carried away with the pleasure of her story, was on her feet, waddling across the floor precisely the way Mrs Beckerman waddled, imitating that suspicious, beady-eyed expression Mrs Beckerman had so exactly that we all were in hysterics. Megan laughed so much she choked over her milk.

While we sat around the table after the meal and ate ice cream, I told my family about Paul. Or rather Megan did. But once the beans were spilled I elaborated willingly.

Mama was pensive. ‘This boy, you know him from school?’

‘He’s in my history class.’

‘Is he a good student?’ she asked. She was stirring her ice cream around in the bowl. The coldness bothered her teeth, so she always stirred ice cream into milk-shake thickness before eating it.

‘Yes, he’s a good student. He’s practically a genius in physics. He takes honours physics, would you believe. And he won this prize at the science fair last fall. It was for this contraption that even Mr Wallace, our physics teacher, didn’t understand.’

‘So, will he go to university?’

‘Yes, Mama. He’s going to Ohio State. To study statistics. His dad says that’s a really good field for jobs now.’

Mama lifted her spoon and sucked the ice cream off. ‘What is his other name, this Paul?’

‘Krueger.’

A frown. ‘Is he German?’

‘No, Mama, he’s American.’

She nodded. Briefly glancing in my father’s direction, she turned back to me. ‘Very well. You may go out with him.’

‘Thank you, Mama,’ I said and looked down at my bowl. I hadn’t realized I was asking.

On Thursday, my mother was not home when I returned from school. This came as a surprise because during the previous weeks Mama had become increasingly anxious about leaving the house. When Dad came home from work at 5.30, he was just as surprised as I was. Did I know where she’d gone? he asked, and I could tell he was concerned. No, I said. No, said Megan. So we waited.

Mama returned just as I was beginning to worry that she’d forgotten about supper. I was standing on a chair and rummaging around in the top cupboard for one of those macaroni and cheese dinners in a box, when the back door burst open and there was Mama.

‘Ho!’ she said cheerfully to me. The winter air had reddened her cheeks and nose. Snowflakes fell out of her hair as she shook it. Setting down a bag of groceries, she came over to me. ‘Here, come down from your chair. I’ve bought you something.’ Excitement edged her voice. Her lips pulled back into a grin that showed all her teeth. ‘Come on. Come with me upstairs, I’ll show it to you.’

Still wearing her jacket, she went on through the kitchen and into the hallway. Jumping off the chair, I galloped after her.

‘What is it?’ I asked. She climbed the stairs ahead of me and would not say.

I sat down on my bed, and Mama, brown-paper-wrapped parcel in her hands, sat down beside me. She put the package in my lap, but before I could undo it, she reached over and broke the tape and pulled back the paper. Inside was a shawl. It was a deep, rich turquoise.

‘Oh Mama, it’s gorgeous!’

Gently, she lifted it up and laid it on my shoulders. ‘It’s for your date. When you go out with this boy, Peter.’

‘Paul, Mama.’

‘Well, Paul then.’ She smiled. ‘See how soft it is? One hundred per cent wool. It’s made in Guatemala. Feel it. Isn’t it soft?’

I touched the shawl. Rising, I wrapped it around myself and stood in front of the mirror. It was magnificent. Not exactly the thing to wear with jeans to a party, but still, it was beautiful.

‘Remember, I told you about Hans Klaus Fischer, the baker’s son?’ Mama asked.

I nodded.

‘The night I went to my first dance with him, I was wearing a white dress. It was cut like so in front. Like this.’ She gestured. ‘It was very much a little girl’s dress, and I hated it. I was so embarrassed to have to wear it. But there were shortages because of the war.’ She smiled. ‘So you know what Tante Elfie did?’

‘What?’

‘She saw me standing in the hallway at the mirror and she brought me her shawl. Her white one. Made of crocheted cotton. I’ve told you about it, ja? Anyhow, she gave it to me to wear that night. I was very touched. You see, I thought she was still böse – angry – with me for wanting so badly to go out with Hans Klaus. But she said, “This is to make you feel beautiful, Mara, because now you are a woman.”’

Mama rose from the bed and came to stand behind me. She touched the soft material of the shawl on both my shoulders. ‘It meant very much to me, that she understood. I thought I would want it that way for you.’

I was watching her reflection in the mirror. She was smiling. Her hands remained on my shoulders. ‘This is a very good colour for you. When I saw it, I was thinking, this colour will make my Lesley very beautiful. This will make this boy know how lucky he is to take her dancing.’

‘Thank you, Mama. It’s really super. Thanks for thinking of me.’

For several moments she continued to stand there. The smile played itself out on her lips to be replaced with a more thoughtful expression. Still she studied my face in the mirror. Her head tipped to one side. ‘This boy, this Paul,’ she asked, ‘is he a virgin?’

‘Mama!’ In astonishment I whirled around to look her directly in the eye. She could do that to you, Mama could, just ask you those kinds of questions. ‘Mama, how on earth should I know that? I just met him. I hardly even know him. Cripes, Mama, what a thing to ask!’

She smiled pleasantly. Turning away from me, she went over and gently closed the door of my room. She leaned back against it. ‘I will tell you something about men,’ she said. ‘I want you to know how important it is to be very gentle with men who are virgins. You must be good to this boy.’

‘Mama, for Pete’s sake. I’m just going on a date with him. I’m not planning anything else.’

‘Men are very different from women.’ She tapped her chest. ‘In here, they are. You see, in here they’re different. Not as strong. Men hurt more when they love. They give themselves more. Women don’t. Women always keep a little piece of themselves back just for themselves. Women are more complicated in that way. But men, they aren’t. They just love. And you see, they get hurt.’

The shawl still around my shoulders, I walked back to the bed and sat down. Mama continued to lean against the door, hands in her pockets. She was still smiling slightly, her eyes going dreamy.

‘O’Malley, he was a virgin,’ she said. She called my father O’Malley. His first name was Cowan but I never heard my mother ever call him that. When I was young, I thought my father had only one name, rather like Ann-Margaret. ‘He was a boy still. You know. With a baby face.’ She grinned. ‘And me, I was no winner either. I was just over typhus, you see. I was skinny as a toothpick. My hair stuck out. It was only this long.’ She measured with her fingers. ‘But O’Malley, he thinks I’m beautiful. He was so afraid. Of me. Men, they have many fears. You must be very gentle with a man, because if you let him love you too much and then hurt him, he’ll never get over it. A woman will. But not a man. He’ll be afraid. He will never be able to love as well again, if you hurt him. It gives you power over him. You must remember that.’

‘Mama,’ I said, ‘I’m just going on a date with this guy.’

She nodded and pushed herself off the door. ‘Ja, ja, I know. But I am telling you this so you remember it. You must be aware of what you do. You bind a man to you in the way you love him. And if he’s a virgin, then he will always love you just a little bit, even after you are gone. So you must be good to this boy.’

‘Mama, it’s not just him. What about me?’

She chuckled and reached out to touch me. ‘I just want you to find a good boy to make you happy. I want you to have a boy to make you as happy as O’Malley’s made me.’

Chapter Five

On Friday night Paul picked me up at the nursing home about 8.30. He had his mom’s car, a little red Ford that smelled of wet dogs. Paul knew it smelled. Even as I was first putting my foot into the car, he apologized and explained that they had two Labradors that rode around in the backseat when his mom was driving. Their names were Fortnum and Mason, which referred to a high-class store in London that I’d never heard of. I made a joke out of it, saying what a good thing it was that she didn’t name them after Barnum Hooker’s Drugs downtown, because I didn’t want Paul to feel too self-conscious about the stink. He thought my comment was hilarious and laughed. I was surprised how easy it was to talk to him. Normally, when I became uncomfortable around people, I tended to go dead silent, and that had been one of my major worries about the evening.