The Sunflower Forest. Torey Hayden
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you want me to rub it for you? You want to go up to my room and lie down on the bed? I think we’ve got some rubbing alcohol.’
She shook her head.
Shivering in the pre-dawn chill, I watched her. Her hair, mussed from sleep, splayed over her gown. She had broad shoulders, which the gown emphasized. I noticed she was losing weight again. Long-term dysentery during the war had played havoc with her system, and she still suffered frequent, severe bouts of diarrhoea; consequently, she never could keep weight on, even with her prodigious appetite. And when she did gain weight and was well within the norms for someone her height, she still looked underweight. Her skin fitted loosely, making her always appear too thin.
‘Shall I make you a cup of hot milk, Mama?’
No answer.
‘A cup of tea? Would you like a cup of tea? India tea, maybe? I wouldn’t mind a cup myself. How ’bout if I fix you one too?’
‘No thanks,’ she said. She kept her back to me and watched out the window. I doubted that she could see much, because the lamplight obscured any view into the darkness beyond the glass. But she watched anyway, absorbed.
I noticed her feet were bare. ‘Mama, come sit down. It’s too cold for you over there. Cripes, I’m freezing.’
Her eyes remained focused on some point in the darkness.
‘Mama, was ist los?’ I asked. She was always most comfortable in German. Even more so than Hungarian, I believe. German had been her language with Mutti, the one of nursery rhymes and children’s songs and a mother’s secret words for her small daughter. We never could settle on a language in our family. Mama slid back and forth at will between German, Hungarian and English, often in the same conversation. But it was German she took comfort from.
Still she gazed at the glass. Bringing a hand up, she scratched along the side of her face in a slow, pensive motion and then dropped her hand and locked it behind her back. In the reflection of the glass, I saw her eyes narrow, as if she were seeing something out there, and her forehead wrinkled into a frown of concentration.
‘I saw him,’ she said very, very softly.
‘Wer, Mama?’ I asked.
She said nothing.
‘Wer, Mama? Klaus?’
Sharply, she turned and looked at me.
‘I know about him. Megan told me about him this afternoon.’
She sighed and once again turned away from me. I saw she was shivering too.
‘Mama, come away from the window. It’s too cold there for you. Here, take the afghan.’
She didn’t move.
I had the afghan around my shoulders. Bringing it over, I tried to hand it to her but she didn’t take it. So I wrapped it back around myself. My stomach felt sick, and I thought perhaps Megan really did have something and I had caught it. I almost hoped so. Then my mother would have to take care of me.
‘I saw him,’ she whispered, her breath clouding the glass. ‘I’ve found him. The Scheisskerle, they could not keep him hidden from me.’
‘What, Mama?’
‘Him,’ she said, nodding her head slightly at the window. ‘The bastards, they thought I’d never find him. The stupid swine. They thought they’d had the better of me. But they never did. I’ve found him now.’
‘Who, Mama?’
‘Mein Sohn.’
‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I need to talk to you.’
He had a shovel in one hand and a cardboard box in the other. Sunday, like Saturday, had come up warm and bright and smelling of spring. Mama was still asleep on the couch in the living room when my father had gotten up, so he had made himself breakfast, put on his gardening clothes and gone out into the backyard. Mama was still sleeping when I rose too. I didn’t eat. My stomach felt all right, but I wasn’t hungry. Instead, I pursued my father into the garden.
‘What about?’ he asked and put a shovel into the damp earth. He turned a spadeful over.
‘Well, I got to thinking,’ I said. I watched him. With slow, almost rhythmic movements, he spaded up the length of the flower bed. When he came to the end, he paused and leaned on the shovel handle.
‘About what?’ he asked.
‘Well, you know how back in January Mama was acting like she might like to move?’
‘Yes?’
‘I got to thinking. And I think maybe we should. Maybe right away.’
‘I thought you had your heart so set on graduating with your friends, Lesley.’
‘Well, not really, I guess. I mean, it doesn’t matter that much to me. Graduating’s graduating, isn’t it? It can happen anywhere. There’s nothing so special about it.’
My father rocked thoughtfully forward on the shovel. A worm squirmed in the upturned soil. He reached down and pushed a bit of dirt over it.
‘I think I’d like to be in a different place,’ I said. ‘And I think it would be good for Mama too.’
‘Your mother is doing just fine where she is,’ he said, still watching where the worm was buried. He rocked again against the shovel. ‘We don’t need to disrupt things on her account. She’s quite happy here.’
‘Really, I don’t mind going, Dad. Somewhere warm. Mama’s back’s bothering her again. She was up last night with it. And I was thinking that if we were somewhere warmer, maybe she wouldn’t have so many problems with it.’
‘It’s March, Les. It’ll be plenty warm enough for anyone right here in no time at all.’
‘Well, I was just thinking maybe it’d be better.’
‘I thought you liked it here,’ he replied, looking over. He was wearing a red-plaid flannel shirt. I noticed that two buttons were missing, replaced by a safety pin. ‘You’ve got all your friends here. And Paul. I thought you and Paul were …’ He didn’t finish the sentence.
‘Yes, well, I just thought I’d tell you that it doesn’t matter at all to me. That you don’t have to stay here for my sake. I’d rather move, I think.’
He was searching my face. ‘Did something happen to cause this sudden change of heart? Did you and Paul have a falling out?’ There was a tenderness in his voice that I hadn’t anticipated.
‘No. No, no, nothing like that. I just thought there was no point hanging around here just because of me.’
‘I don’t think we are. I don’t think I ever heard anyone around here mentioning moving except you. Your mama never has.’
‘Well, I was just thinking it might not be such a bad idea.’
I could tell that Dad thought it was me. He thought I’d had some kind of disagreement with someone and was trying to get away. That hadn’t been what I’d intended but at least he didn’t think it was Mama.
Megan, however, was nobody’s fool. She was sitting out on the front sidewalk with her roller skates when I found her.
‘How’re you this morning?’ I asked.
She shrugged and continued to adjust her skates. They were an ancient pair that had belonged originally to one of Auntie Caroline’s children back in the fifties. Mastering the art of putting them on and making them work should have qualified Megan for an engineering diploma.
‘Do