Torey Hayden
The Sunflower Forest

A novel

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

In that year what I wanted most was a boyfriend. I was seventeen and had never had a date. I had the rest: breasts, hair under my arms, my period, the desire. I certainly had the desire.

Once, when I was little and not too informed about the mechanics, my best friend and I had pretended to make love, our legs spread apart scissor-fashion, until we were crotch to crotch, one person’s sneaker under the other person’s nose. My grandmother had caught us at it. She sent Cecily home and spanked me with a wooden mixing spoon and made me sit in the pantry to say Hail Marys. There was no doubt in her mind, she said: I got such interests from my mother. Perhaps I did. However, even at that tender age, I had decided that they weren’t such bad interests to have.

Nonetheless, I had reached seventeen with nothing more than a valentine from Wayne Carmelee and three kisses stolen by a Danish Eagle Scout under the bleachers at the county fair in Sandpoint, Idaho.

This was a source of great personal dismay to me and not helped at all by my sister Megan, who was nine that year and always willing to confirm for me that I was just as ugly as I assumed I must be. She also suggested that I probably smelled bad to boys.

My father told me that all I needed was patience. It was a natural thing, and you couldn’t stop nature from catching up with you. My time would come, he said. I replied that if we hadn’t moved around as much as we had, perhaps nature would have already located me.

So, in the end, it was Mama I went to for comfort. I asked her when she first fell in love.

‘Hans Klaus Fischer,’ she said to me. She was scrubbing the floor in the kitchen when I found her. Down on her hands and knees on the linoleum, her hair tied up in a red bandanna, she paused and considered the question. And grinned. Reaching up on the kitchen counter for her cigarettes, she sat down again on the floor and leaned back against the counter next to the sink. She crossed her legs and balanced the ashtray on one knee. ‘That was when I was living in Dresden with Tante Elfie. You see, I wasn’t supposed to be seeing boys. I was just turned fifteen and Tante said I couldn’t go out yet. They were very strict in those days, you understand.’ She lit the cigarette and over the top of it, her eyes were smiling. We both knew that what Tante Elfie said probably never had much effect on what my mother did.

‘He was the baker’s son. I met him because Tante Elfie made me go after the bread every day. If she’d sent Birgitta, who knows? Perhaps I would never have met him. But Birgitta was the lazy one.

‘Anyhow, he was at the back of the shop each day, taking down the loaves.’ She paused and her eyes were still on me. ‘And do you think he was handsome?’

‘Was he, Mama?’ I asked. You always prompted Mama with her stories. That was half the fun.

‘Was he handsome? Well, I will tell you. His hair was maybe the colour of yours. A little darker, perhaps, and combed down like this. That’s the way the boys wore their hair in those days. His eyes were blue, well, maybe more a blue-green. And light. A light, light blue-green. Like the colour old glass is sometimes. And he had very fine lips. Thin. Normally, I don’t like thin lips on a man, but with Hans Klaus Fischer, they gave him such a very …what can I say? …important expression. Haughty, that’s the word for it. He would stand in the back room and take down the loaves, and I would think, “Mara, you must have that boy for your boyfriend.” You could tell how important he was just by looking at him.’

She grinned at me. ‘I was very much in love with him. I went every day for the bread, and while I waited, all I could think of was kissing those fine, important-looking lips.’

‘And did you?’

‘Well, in the beginning it was very hard to get him to notice me. I was just one girl, and there were many girls in love with Hans Klaus Fischer.’

‘But you did get him to fall in love with you, didn’t you?’ I asked.

She was still grinning. With one hand she stuck long strands of hair back up under her bandanna, and she said nothing. Mama didn’t have to. She just grinned.

‘What did you do? How did you get him to notice you when there were all those other girls?’

‘I began to come in wearing my Bund deutscher Mädchen uniform. Every day. Even when there wasn’t a meeting. You see, he was a group leader with the Youth Movement.’ She paused, reflecting, and studied the end of her cigarette. The smile came back to her lips. ‘Sometimes I would see him in the back of the shop, and he would have his uniform on. He was very handsome in that uniform. He had a sort of strut in his walk when he wore his uniform; I could tell he thought it made him somebody. So, I thought to myself, Mara, he’s going to like you if he thinks you’re a good member of the BdM.’

‘And did he?’

She winked at me.

‘What did Tante Elfie say then? Did she mind that you were seeing a boy when you weren’t supposed to?’

‘Well, she did a little. At first she did. But I told her what a fine family Hans Klaus came from. I told her what a good boy he was. He was very clever at his studies, you see, and I heard his father tell Frau Schwartz once in the bakers that Hans Klaus might be chosen for the Adolf Hitler School. It was almost a sure thing, he said. So when Tante knew that, she said I could go dancing with him on Friday nights. If Birgitta went along. You know.’ She laughed. ‘To make sure I never really found out much about kissing those fine lips. They were very strict in those days. Not like now.’

‘But how did you make him love you, that’s what I want to know. How did you get him to ask you out for a date in the first place?’

Holding the cigarette out, Mama gazed at it before finally snuffing it out in the ashtray. The floor all around us was still wet, and we sat together, barricaded behind scrub brushes, the pail and floor rags, our backs against the kitchen cupboard.

‘I did a rather naughty thing,’ Mama said. Her voice was low and conspiratorial.

‘What was that?’

‘Well, when he came to the front of the shop once to talk to me, I told him I was really the granddaughter of the Archduke.’

I laughed. ‘You did?’

‘I told him my grandfather was the Archduke and that I had been sent to Dresden for my safety. To live with Tante Elfie, who wasn’t really my auntie at all but just a nanny my family paid to take care of me.’

That struck me as amusing, just the sort of thing I could picture Mama doing with such melodramatic realism that poor Hans Klaus Fischer no doubt never knew what hit him.

‘Why on earth did you do that?’ I asked.

Giving a shrug, she giggled. ‘I don’t know. It was just something I did. I wanted to make sure he liked me. I was afraid he wouldn’t.’

‘But it was a lie, Mama,’ I said, still tickled with the mental image of it.

Another shrug and she pursed her lips in a pensive expression. ‘No. Not really. Just a story. I didn’t mean it to hurt. There just weren’t enough interesting true things to tell him.’

‘So, you told him the Archduke was your grandfather?’

‘Well, you see, you must understand, I was quite desperate about him. I just wanted things to be nice. I thought if he believed that, then he would certainly want to go dancing with me. And once he knew me, then it wouldn’t matter any more who I was related to.’ She looked over at me, and the joke of it sparkled in her eyes. ‘You must understand, I was only fifteen. Everyone’s a little mad when they’re fifteen, believe me.’

‘Did he ever find out the truth?’

She shrugged and rose up on her knees to finish the rest of the floor. ‘I don’t know. After I went to Jena, I never saw him again.’

I was dreaming. It was about the house on Stuart Avenue where we had lived before Megan was born. I was upstairs in the small attic room that my father had made into a bedroom for me. I was standing in front of the little window, looking down on the street below. But instead of the elms that had lined either side of Stuart Avenue, there were sunflowers. The avenue was empty but the sun was shining and it was very beautiful.

However, even though it seemed like the house on Stuart Avenue, I knew it actually wasn’t. It was the apartment in Detroit where we had lived for a while when I was very young. While the bedroom upstairs belonged to Stuart Avenue, I knew that the stairway would lead down into the apartment in Detroit.

In the dream I could hear Mama crying. She was sitting on a cardboard box in the gloomy little storage area under the stairs. But I was still upstairs in the house on Stuart Avenue.

‘Lesley, are you ever going to get up?’

I jerked awake.

Megan was standing in the doorway of my bedroom. She had nothing on but her underpants and an oversized T-shirt that said ‘NASA Johnson Space Center/Houston’ across the front. Leaning against the door frame, she braced one foot against the shin of her other leg. ‘Daddy says you have to get up right now, Lesley. He has to go to work for a while this morning and he says you got to come down and stay with Mama while he’s gone.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Almost nine o’clock. Daddy says he’ll be back after lunch.’

She turned and left without shutting the door behind her.

I closed my eyes. I could still remember the dream. I had awakened so abruptly that it clung to me and seemed very real, even as it faded.

By the time I’d dressed and come down to the kitchen, my father had already left. Megan was there, still eating breakfast. She had her chair pushed back from the table, her legs drawn up under the generous folds of the NASA T-shirt. Mama was clearing away the breakfast dishes and putting them into the sink. The radio was playing very loudly. Saturday Morning Swap Shop. My mother was addicted to the show, relishing all the bargains she dreamed of getting.

I reached over and took a slice of bread to put into the toaster. It was a wholemeal type, full of crunchy little wheat berries. Although it made wonderful toast, it was messy to eat because all the wheat berries tumbled everywhere. And Megan, who already had a piece, wasn’t helping things. She was picking wheat berries out and carefully setting them atop her knees, which, pulled up under the T-shirt, formed a knobby platform. Then she licked the wheat berries off with the tip of her tongue. Each one, one by one.

‘Honestly, Megan, you eat like a pig,’ I said.

Megan set another wheat berry out, looked over to make certain I was watching and then languidly pulled it up with the tip of her tongue.

‘Mama, look at her. Look at the disgusting mess Megan is making with her toast.’

My mother turned from the sink. She regarded Megan a moment and shook her head. ‘You’re making crumbs everywhere,’ she said. ‘Sit up and put your feet down where they belong.’

I went to the cupboard for Rice Krispies.

‘Megan, Mama said put your feet down,’ I said when I returned to the table with my bowl of cereal.

‘So? You’re not my mother.’

‘Well, she is. So, do it, Megan. Mama said to.’

‘So, make me.’

Annoyed, I sat down.

When Megan continued to pick at her toast, I reached over and grabbed one of her legs. I yanked it down to the floor.

Mama ignored us. She kept her back to us and continued to do the dishes. She had a Brillo pad in one hand and the old cast-iron skillet in the other and was really giving it hell. Occasionally, she would pause and put to her lips the cigarette that was burning in the ashtray on the windowsill. Once she turned the radio higher. But she never turned around.

When Megan reached for another piece of toast, I clamped my hand over her wrist.

‘Stop it!’ Megan said, rather louder than necessary. ‘Stop bossing me around all the time, Lesley.’

‘The way you’re eating that toast is nauseating and you know it. Now, you can’t have another slice. You’re making a mess on purpose.’

‘Leave me alone.’

‘Mama? Make Megan stop. She’s still picking at her bread. She didn’t listen to you at all the first time.’

‘Lesley, let go of me. Let go of my arm! I mean it.’ Megan leaped to her feet to yank her arm free. The motion knocked her chair over backwards with a resounding bang.

Mama turned around.

Silence.

We both looked at her. She picked up her cigarette and snuffed it out in the ashtray with great care. The room went so quiet that I thought I could hear the sound of the cigarette against the glass of the ashtray, in spite of the clamour of Saturday Morning Swap Shop.

Wearily, Mama raised a hand to run through the hair alongside her face. ‘What is the matter with you two? You’re sisters. How can you always argue?’

We didn’t answer. There was no point in answering.

‘I can’t understand you,’ Mama said. ‘Why aren’t you happy? You have such good lives. O’Malley and I, we love you. We give you everything. And still you aren’t happy.’

‘We’re happy,’ Megan said.

‘We were just horsing around, Mama,’ I said. ‘We didn’t mean to sound like we were arguing. Did we, Megs? We were just playing.’

‘I cannot understand you.’

‘We are happy, Mama,’ Megan said again and there was soft desperation in her voice. ‘See? See? I’m smiling. I’m happy. Me and Lesley, we’re real happy. Don’t cry, OK?’

But it was too late. Mama lowered her face into her hands. Then she ran from the kitchen. We remained, listening to the shuffling unevenness of her footsteps on the stairs until they were drowned out by the radio.

Megan also began to cry. The tipped-over chair was still on the floor behind her. She stood, watching me, and let the tears run down over her cheeks.

‘Look, Megs, you want some more breakfast? Some toaster waffles maybe? You like them, Meggie. Don’t cry, all right? Shall I fix you some waffles? They’re your favourites.’

Wiping her eyes, she shook her head. Then she righted the chair and left the kitchen too.

My dad called them ‘spells’. Mama’s spells. When they happened, he would lift his shoulders in a bemused, half-shrug and then smile, as if it were just a whimsical little quirk she had, such as the way people might throw salt over their shoulder after spilling it. Although I’d hated the episodes, for most of my childhood I thought they were normal. I thought every child’s mother acted like that. I must have been ten or eleven before I discovered other mothers didn’t.

I stayed in the kitchen alone and finished up the few dishes left in the sink. Clearing off the table, I wiped away the last crumbs of Megan’s toast. I dumped the soggy Rice Krispies.

Sometime later Megan came back into the kitchen. With a widetoothed comb, she was trying to untangle the ends of her hair. ‘Will you help me?’ she asked, holding out the comb. ‘I can’t get all the snarls out.’

My sister had beautiful hair. Like my father’s, it was so dark that it was almost black, but like Mama’s, it was very, very straight. You could run your fingers through it and it would fall away in a soft, undulating manner, like water. The best part about Megan’s hair, however, was the length. It was nearly long enough for her to sit on. There was so much of it and it was so often left loose, since the sheer weight of it prevented her from using little-girls’ hairslides or headbands, that Megan always had a kind of untamed look about her. Even so, people stopped sometimes and turned around to look at her again because she was so striking. I had never been allowed to keep my hair that long when I was Megan’s age, but then I had never had hair like Megan’s.

‘You know, Les, Daddy’s going to kill you for giving Mama a spell,’ Megan said softly as I combed her hair.

‘Me? It was your fault, you little pig. Daddy’s going to kill us both.’

She didn’t answer. Pulling away from me, she took the comb out of my hand and went over to the table. She hoisted herself up on it and then pulled long strands of hair around to comb the tangles from the ends.

‘Megan, don’t do that on the table.’

She didn’t respond.

‘Did you hear me? That’s unsanitary. Go somewhere else.’

Still no response. But she had stopped combing her hair. Instead, she just fingered through it, regarding the strands. ‘Les?’ she asked without looking up. ‘Why do you suppose Mama does that?’

‘Does what?’

‘You know. That. I mean, we were just goofing around, that’s all. How come she can never tell that?’

I shrugged.

‘Why does she keep thinking we’re unhappy? How come it’s so important to her anyway that we be happy a hundred per cent of every second?’

‘It’s just one of those things, Megs.’

‘One of what things?’

I shrugged.

At a quarter to eleven Mama came downstairs again. Megan and I were still sitting in the kitchen. She came to the table and reached for her cigarettes.

‘Do you want a cup of coffee?’ I asked. I was already on my feet.

She nodded. Going over to the sink, she leaned forward to look out the window above it. With fingers of one hand resting against her lips, she smoked without ever taking the cigarette from her mouth.

‘There are no flowers,’ she said.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘But there’ll be plenty again when spring comes. Remember all the new ones Daddy planted?’

Megan had wrested the kettle from me so that she could fix Mama’s coffee herself. Carefully, she measured a spoonful of granules from the jar. ‘Here, Mama,’ she said, stirring the boiling water in. ‘Here’s your coffee.’ She squeezed her body between my mother and the sink in an effort to make Mama look down at her. She held up the mug of steaming liquid. ‘Here, Mama. Just the way you like it.’ But my mother stared over her to the window.

They didn’t look much alike, my sister and my mother. Megan was thin and lithe and dark, like some half-imagined thing escaped from the pages of a fairy tale. Mama was tall and pale, with broad, prominent features. Her hair was still light as sea sand. The only thing she had given Megan was her blue eyes, and they were very blue, like chambray cloth.

Mama turned entirely away from the window, and Megan had to run around to be in front of her again.

‘I’m sick of this place,’ Mama said. ‘It’s too cold. I hate the cold.’

Mama went over to the table and sat down. With both hands she finally accepted Megan’s mug of coffee.

‘Does that mean we’re going to move again?’ Megan asked very quietly.

‘I don’t like it here,’ Mama replied.

‘I do,’ Megan said, her voice still soft and tentative. Mama was looking at her over the top of her mug as she drank the coffee. ‘I think it’s nice here, Mama. I got friends here. Like Katie and Tracey Pickett.’

My mother lowered the cup. ‘There are no flowers.’

‘But Mama, it’s January.’

With a sigh my mother set the coffee mug on the table. She gazed at it. ‘But there are no flowers here.’

‘There aren’t any flowers anywhere in January, Mama,’ Megan said.

My mother was silent for a moment. ‘There were in Lébény. In Popi’s conservatory,’ she said. ‘There were always flowers there.’

Megan’s face brightened abruptly. Coming closer to Mama, she knelt down and put her arms around Mama’s neck. With one hand she moved Mama’s face away from the direction of the coffee mug so that she would have to look at her. ‘Tell me and Lessie about Lébény, OK, Mama? About Popi’s flowers, OK? Tell us about that time you and Elek sneaked in and took Popi’s camellias for your hair and then you two went to that dance. You know. That time you weren’t supposed to be up late because it was a big-people’s party. The time they played “The Blue Danube” and you and Elek danced in the upstairs hallway and you could smell all the beautiful ladies’ perfume. Tell us that story, OK?’

My mother’s face softened. The tired, bloodless look left her and she smiled down at Megan, who was on her knees beside the chair. ‘You know that story, Liebes. I have told you that story a hundred times already.’

‘Oh, I know,’ Megan said, her expression beguiling. ‘But it’s really my super favourite. Tell me again, OK? Please? Me and Lessie want to hear it.’

Mama was still smiling when she touched Megan’s face. The smile made my mother very beautiful.

Chapter Two

My mother was born into a family of the Hungarian gentry, genteelly declining in the ruins of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her father, who had fought alongside von Hindenburg in the Great War, had retired from the military a short time afterwards and returned to manage his family estate in northwestern Hungary. His child bride, whom he’d met and married in 1914, was the youngest daughter of one of the old, established families in Meissen, in Saxonia.

Besides my mother, there had been three other children in her family. Her older brother, Mihály, she remembered only dimly because he had gone far away for schooling in Germany before she was two. Her beloved younger brother, Elek, however, was only thirteen months her junior, and they had been constant childhood companions. Mama’s stories about Elek were so vivid he almost seemed to be my brother. Her younger sister, Johanna, had died of scarlet fever the year Mama was eight.

Although my mother never said as much, I suspect she had been her father’s favourite among the four children. She had been a strikingly beautiful child, with that blonde, clear-eyed pureness that was so prized in those days in that part of Europe. In all the photographs, she was dressed up like a little princess, in velvets and silks and lace. Her flaxen hair was very long and carefully curled. And even with the solemn mood of those old pictures, she’d managed just the slightest hint of a smile on her lips. We had only one photograph of her entire family together, and in it, my mother stood apart from the other children and leaned against Popi’s arm. If you looked carefully, you could see his hand on her shoulder, his fingers twisted lovingly through her hair.

Popi had seen to it that she was well turned out. She had been bilingual all her life because Mutti spoke to her only in German, while Popi spoke Hungarian. But he had also brought a special tutor from Milan for her when she was six so that she could learn Italian. She had had dancing lessons and voice lessons and had learned to play the piano and the organ. When she’d wanted a pony, Popi had hired a riding instructor from Vienna and bought her a white horse.

Like her older brother, Mihály, my mother had been a gifted student. As always, Popi was determined to give her the best advantages. Both he and Mutti believed in the superiority of a German education, so when my mother was twelve, she went to live with Mutti’s sister, Tante Elfie, in Dresden. There she attended a private girls’ school and prepared for university.

My mother had hated leaving home. For a solid year, she said, she was homesick, crying herself to sleep so many nights that Tante Elfie finally moved her bed into the hallway so that she wouldn’t disturb Birgitta, Tante Elfie’s daughter, with whom Mama was sharing a room. On this occasion Popi didn’t give in to her pleas, and she stayed in Dresden. Slowly, she grew accustomed to life in the city, to Tante Elfie, who insisted on always setting her table with a lace tablecloth, and to Birgitta, who snored.

The war broke out during my mother’s first year at the university in Jena. She was sixteen and able to continue her studies into the autumn of that year before the turmoil disrupted university life. She would have been sent back to Hungary, she told us, because Hitler was deporting everyone with foreign birth certificates, but she was recognized as an ethnic German, a Volksdeutscherin, and allowed to stay. Soon afterward, she went to a youth hostel in northern Germany with several other girls who had been members of the Bund deutscher Mädchen.

Mama didn’t have a lot of stories about those years. I think she was desperately frightened for much of the time. The hostel wasn’t far from Hamburg, and my mother often spoke of hiding in a cupboard to muffle the sounds of the Allied planes flying over. What we did hear about, when she told stories, was the countryside, broad, flat, humid in summer, frigid in winter. And we heard sometimes about other girls and women whom she met during the war. Part of the time she worked on a farm, and she met one of her best characters during those experiences. Jadwiga was a Polish matron from Warsaw. I was never exactly clear how Jadwiga came to be on the farm, and from the way Mama told it, Jadwiga always sounded slightly surprised by the circumstances herself. What amused Mama was that it seemed to bother Jadwiga not so much that she was a city housewife out doing farmwork but rather that she was forced into intimacy with such socially inferior individuals as she thought all the other women to be. Mama, who had a wicked gift for mimicking people, would give us the whole show, imitating Jadwiga down to her walk, her buck teeth and her nasal accent. Mama would sashay around and around the room, snorting at us in mock Polish, contorting her face into a rabbity look of disdain until she broke up, laughing so hard that she was forced to stop. Then she’d drop into a chair, clutching her stomach, overcome with hilarity. Inevitably, Megan and I would laugh until we had tears running down our faces.

By 1945, when the British soldiers came with chocolate and cigarettes, my mother had typhus and was so sick she had no memory of them. She did recall the chocolate bars, however, and in her drawer in the bedroom, she still kept the wrapper from the first one she was given after the war.

It was then, while lying in the hospital recovering, that my mother had met my father. He was an American GI who had come to visit someone else in the ward. Mama was in bed, still weak from typhus, half bald from malnutrition and with her arm bandaged from wrist to elbow because of a septic cut. As my dad was walking down the aisle between the rows of beds, Mama, who was trying to eat soup with the wrong hand, dropped not only her spoon but the tray and bowl as well. Soup went everywhere. My father bent down to retrieve the rolling soup bowl. When he stood up and gave it back to her, that was it, he said. He loved her instantly, bandage, bald head, soup and all. Whether that’s precisely how it happened, it’s hard to say. My father always has been a romantic.

They married in Vienna on New Year’s Day, 1946. My mother’s one wish as she grew stronger had been to return to Hungary and locate her family. She’d lost contact with all of them during the course of the war. Throughout the winter of 1945–6, she and my father searched through the war-ravaged countryside of Germany, Austria, western Czechoslovakia and northwestern Hungary.

None of my mother’s immediate family had survived the war. Her brother Mihály, who already had a wife and child by the time the war broke out, was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1936. He was killed during manoeuvres in France. Mutti died of heart failure in 1940. Elek, who had remained at home to help his father run the estate rather than joining the military the way most boys his age had done, was shot by German soldiers in 1942. Popi, distraught and alone, had gone up to Tante Elfie’s in Dresden to search for information about my mother. He and Tante Elfie were killed in the 1945 Allied bombings. My mother never located Birgitta.

In September 1946 my father was posted to an army base in southern England. After discharge the following spring, he and my mother had remained in Great Britain, eventually moving to Wales. Most of the following ten years were spent living in a cottage on a Welsh mountainside. Mama told Megan and me beautifully elaborate stories about that period of their lives. The cottage where they lived had been derelict, and the farmer Dad worked for had told them they could live in it rent free, if they wanted to fix it up. He’d felt sorry for Mama, who was still in poor health, and he said the mountain air would help speed her recovery. The cottage was way up in the hills without even a road to it. They had to walk up a steep trail through a forest and over a footbridge to get there. Chiselled in slate above the door was the name of the cottage in Welsh. It meant Forest of Flowers. Mama said when they came the whole back garden of the cottage was overgrown with sunflowers. Mama took that to be a good omen, since sunflowers didn’t normally do well in Wales because of the rain. But at Forest of Flowers they thrived. My parents lived there until the late fifties. Then there was a cold winter, followed by a wet summer, and the sunflowers didn’t bloom. Mama and Daddy moved.

I waited until my father had finished his supper that Saturday evening and had gone up to his study. At night after a meal he liked to go there to sit among his things and listen to the radio. Occasionally he would read or write letters, but usually he did nothing more than push back the lounger, put the music station on and listen.

‘Dad?’ I said, opening the door slightly. ‘May I talk to you?’

He had the lounger fully reclined and his eyes were closed. He opened them. ‘Yes, of course, Lessie, come in.’

I shut the door carefully behind me and came over to sit on the footstool beside the chair. I touched the arm of the lounger with one finger to feel the rough, knobby threads in the upholstery.

‘Are we going to move, Dad?’

He had his eyes closed again. The radio was playing quite loudly. It was classical music. In all honesty I don’t believe my father knew up from down about such music. My mother did. She knew the titles, who composed what when, which type of music it was and who the performing artist was. But Dad neither knew nor particularly cared. He liked to listen because that was the only radio station with almost no commercials.

He didn’t answer my question.

‘I hear Mama beginning to talk,’ I said. ‘She’s thinking about it.’

‘She hasn’t said anything to me.’

‘No. She hasn’t said anything to me either. But I can hear it nonetheless.’

He didn’t stir.

‘So? Are we?’ I asked.

‘Your mama needs a warmer climate, Lessie,’ he said at last and opened his eyes again. ‘It’s too cold for her here.’

‘We’ve been to warmer climates before, Dad, and she didn’t like any of them either. Face it. She doesn’t really like it anywhere.’

I could see the pupils of his eyes dilate. They grew larger for a moment and then shrank back.

‘Your mama hasn’t said a thing to me,’ he said. ‘So don’t go thinking up problems you haven’t got.’

I felt the upholstery again with my finger.

‘And another thing. I don’t like to hear you talk like that. The cold bothers her. You know that. It aggravates her back. So it’s through no fault of her own.’

‘She’s got pills for her back, Dad.’

He was still watching me. ‘Well, there’s no need for her to suffer with the cold when there are plenty of warmer places.’

‘It’s not the cold,’ I replied. ‘It’s the flowers.’

He pushed the lounger up into a sitting position. ‘What?’

‘I said, it’s the flowers. It’s not the cold or her back or anything else. It’s the stupid flowers. She wants to be somewhere with flowers. Even in January.’

My father didn’t say anything. It grew noticeably quiet, even with the music playing.

I studied him. My father couldn’t exactly be called a handsome man. He was of Irish descent, short and wiry, with masses of curly black hair, greying by his ears. His face had a well-lived-in look, especially around the eyes, as if he’d had a lifetime of bad nights’ sleep. But it was a cheerful face. He had a very ruddy complexion that gave him Santa Claus cheeks, and he was always betting Megs and me that we couldn’t look at him for five minutes without smiling. Neither of us could. Yet he was an unexpected choice to complement my mother’s rather awesome appearance.

‘It isn’t fair, you know,’ I said. ‘As soon as we really get settled somewhere, you guys want to up and leave. And frankly, Dad, I just don’t want to go anywhere right now. I’m a senior this year. I’m going to graduate and I want to do it here where I got some friends. I know kids here.’ I looked at him. ‘What I really want is to go to my senior prom. I want to get asked out by some guy and go on a date and be like every other girl in the senior class. I don’t want to be the only one not invited. The only one who doesn’t have anywhere to go. And if we move now, that’s what’s going to happen.’

He smiled gently and reached a hand over to touch me. ‘I know it’s been hard sometimes,’ he said, and I could tell from his voice that if it came to a showdown between Mama and me over moving, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

I sighed. Then once again, heavily. ‘I feel like I’m going to be a million years old before I even have a date. I feel like I’m probably going to be a toothless old granny, and when I get my first kiss, he’ll suck my dentures right out.’

He grinned.

‘It’s not funny, Dad.’

‘I know, sweetie,’ he said and chortled anyway.

‘Look, if Mama decides to move—’

‘Lesley, she has said absolutely nothing about it. You’re creating problems that don’t exist.’

‘If Mama decides to move, I want to stay with Brianna. I’ve already talked to her. I told her we might be moving, and she said she’d ask her mom to see if I could stay with them until the school year ends. It’d only be until June.’

‘You shouldn’t be talking to people about family matters, Les. This is strictly our personal business. I don’t think you ought to be sharing it with strangers.’

‘Daddy, Brianna’s no stranger. She’s my very best friend. Besides, I wasn’t specific. I was just sounding her out.’

‘The cold bothers your mother,’ he replied flatly. ‘If she wants to move, then I think we ought to move. We owe her that much.’

I said nothing. I put my head down and braced it between my hands. I gazed at the floor. The music coming from the radio was Rachmaninov’s. One of his concertos. I couldn’t remember which one.

‘Dad?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Do you think I’m ugly or anything? I mean, being really honest with me.’

His eyes widened. ‘Of course you’re not ugly, Lesley. What a thing to ask.’

‘I was just wondering.’ I listened to the remainder of the concerto and studied the pattern in the rug.

‘Look,’ he said, and his voice was gentle, ‘you still have plenty of time. Don’t put yourself in a state over it. Things’ll work out just fine.’

I raised my head. ‘How old were you when you first went out with a girl?’

‘Older than you are now. I was in the army.’

‘Didn’t you ever go out before that? When you were at home?’

‘The way your grandmother felt about things like that? Are you kidding? And way out there on the farm?’ He grinned. ‘I was lucky I even knew what girls were.’

‘Oh.’

‘So, see?’ He put his hand on my head, ‘Nature’ll take care of things. Don’t worry. Your time will come.’

Chapter Three

There were no tattered remnants of European aristocracy in my father’s background, no private tutors, no summer afternoons whiled away with garden parties and violin music. The son of an Irish immigrant, my father grew up on a pig farm on the vast plains of Illinois.

There were seven children. My dad was the fourth child, the second son. They weren’t a poor family, not dirt poor the way a lot of farm families were in the Depression. Not the way his father had been when he’d arrived, aged four, in steerage with his parents at Ellis Island. But my dad had recollections of just getting by. My favourite was the one about how he got into a fight at school because another boy had said his coat was a girl’s coat. It had been. His mother had made it over for him from one his sister Kathleen had outgrown. When he was recounting that episode, Dad would always end up grinning. Yes, he’d say, it had been a girl’s coat, but he sure wasn’t going to let Jacky Barnes say so.

The mainstay of their lives had been religion. Both my father’s parents were devout Catholics. All the children had had at least a few years at parochial school, even with the hardship of the Depression. One of his sisters had later joined an order of nuns devoted to helping the poor and still lived in Colombia. His younger brother taught theology at a university in Massachusetts.

When my father was thirteen, his father was killed in a farm accident. He had been mangled under the wreckage of an overturned tractor, and two men near by had helped free him and bring him down to the house. My dad had been alone at the time. He was hoeing in the vegetable garden and keeping an eye on the baby, who was about two. The men had come, carrying his dying father between them. Dad wasn’t one for telling stories. Unlike Mama, he couldn’t spin out a small incident into a captivating drama. But when he told this, you felt it. You saw the skinny kid in worn overalls and dusty bare feet. You saw the baby with his one-eyed teddy bear. Daddy’s mother had gone down to the neighbours’ and so he’d been alone at the house with his small brother and his maimed father and he didn’t know what to do. And every time he told us about it, you felt his horror.

So I never knew my grandfather. We didn’t even have a photograph of him. Once, Dad told us, a travelling photographer had stopped by the farm and offered to take a picture of all of them. His mother made the children wash and dress in their Sunday clothes. But when the photographer returned with the developed pictures, he wanted more money than he had said initially: they hadn’t said there were so many children, the photographer told them. A deal’s a deal, Dad’s father replied. In the end, the photographer was sent packing, photographs and all.

Grandma O’Malley, however, I knew well. When I was very little we’d gone to Illinois every summer to visit her. She lived in a little row house in a northern sector of Chicago not far from Uncle Paddy and Aunt Gretchen’s house, and I remember the cool, damp-smelling attic room where I slept. Later, when I was in grade school, I spent the month of July with her each year.

She was a tiny woman with white hair that she kept in a braided bun and skin stretched so tightly over her bones that her forearms and hands always reminded me of the legs of a bird. Being very much my mother’s daughter in respect of height and bone structure, I was bigger than Grandma O’Malley by the time I was ten.

I always looked forward to those visits when I was in grade school. What I actually loved most, I think, were the journeys to and from Chicago with my father. They were great adventures to me. We always went alone, just him and me, and left Mama at home to take care of Megan. All my Julys were bracketed with memories of Daddy and me sitting way in the back of the bus where my mother refused to sit because it made her carsick, of sharing Cokes and candy bars with him, of making wishes on white horses we saw in roadside pastures. We ate, in steamy, dimly lit bus depot cafés and slept in motels with saggy mattresses and chenille curtains at the windows or dozed in drowsy, diesel-scented darkness.

The visits themselves I anticipated rather less. There were plenty of good aspects, particularly after Megan was born, when I was relieved to discover that I could still go alone and Megan couldn’t come because she was too little for Grandma to take care of. Plus, my cousins lived just down the street from Grandma’s and were a constant source of familiar playmates each summer, which I longed for after our frequent moves. And Grandma was usually willing to spoil me a little. She had small gifts for me when I arrived. She gave me all the pennies from her change each night. Best of all, she would make me buttermilk pancakes for breakfast any morning I asked for them, which was something my mama would never do because she’d never adjusted to the idea of making a whole meal out of something sweet.

There were, however, less enjoyable aspects about going to see Grandma. From the moment I arrived with Daddy I was always aware of a subtle uneasiness, that kind of tension you can detect so readily when you’re young. And it permeated the entire stay. Regardless of the little surprises and treats Grandma had in store for me, the visits always left me anxious and on my guard.

From a very early age I knew what lay at the heart of the matter. Grandma O’Malley was devoutly Catholic and my mother was not only not Catholic but not even what could honestly be called Christian. Consequently, neither my sister nor I had been baptized, confirmed or even taken to church. This left my grandmother aghast.

Of course, Grandma O’Malley did her best to rectify what she considered an unthinkable situation. The moment my father had left, Grandma would call up the priest and have him come over to see me. She bought me Sunday dresses and patent-leather shoes and books of children’s Bible stories. She marched me off to Mass and catechism classes and vacation Bible school. During mealtimes she quizzed me about the life of Jesus. While we were doing the dishes, she would listen to me reciting the Bible verses she’d given me to memorize. And the summer I was nine, she promised to give me five dollars if I would go home and see that Daddy had Megan baptized.

With deadly regularity, my July visits would end with a terrible argument between my father and my grandmother. Dad’s first words to me as he arrived to take me home were invariably about church. Those questions doomed me. If I lied and said I’d had nothing to do with church while I was there, I got into trouble for not telling the truth. If I told the truth, he yelled at Grandma because he had expressly forbidden her to send me to Bible school or catechism classes or whatever and, of course, she always went ahead and did it anyway. Then they’d progress to his telling her that I was his child and if she didn’t like his rules then I wasn’t going to be allowed to come again, and to her telling him that she was not about to have any grandchild of hers burning in Hell. Within moments they’d be arguing about Mama.

Grandma knew Mama’s views on religion. It was impossible not to. If you knew Mama, you knew her views. My mother was fanatically opposed to religion in any form of the word. It was because of the things she had seen in the war, she always said, and because of the way she saw religious people react. She said they knew. She said a lot of people knew – the foreign governments, the people in high places, even a lot of ordinary people. She said they knew of the various kinds of terrible suffering that was tolerated in Germany. And she said they still went home at night and had their suppers and said their prayers and went to bed. They all thought of themselves as good Christians when they were in church on Sunday. They thought they lived in Christian nations. But what kind of teaching was that? Where was the Pope when the Jews were in Auschwitz? Where were the nuns and the priests and the clergymen and all the good, righteous Christians in Congress and the world parliaments, who could have helped, who could have passed laws to let in more refugees, who could have provided more routes of escape or, more importantly, who could have stopped what was happening altogether? Mama always maintained it could have been stopped. If everyone had tried. Together, the Christians, the churches, the Pope, all of them, they could have formed a voice that no leader, not even Hitler, could have ignored. But they hadn’t. Even if it wasn’t conscious, she said, they had chosen not to help. And my mama had no use whatsoever for the doctrines that had allowed so many to turn their backs so easily on all that suffering.

Grandma, for her part, had no use for my mama. I don’t think it was so much Mama’s personal atheism, because I don’t think it mattered a whole lot to Grandma what became of Mama’s eternal soul. Even though she never said so, I always suspected that Grandma felt Hell would probably suit Mama just fine. But what did matter to her was that Mama had taken my father away from the Church. And with him, Megan and me.

Despite my father’s threats about keeping me home, I went back to Grandma’s every July until she died, the year I was thirteen. Almost all I knew about my father’s youth came from those summers.

I think my dad, a quiet and undistinctive boy from the sound of things, might have escaped notice in the rough-and-tumble anonymity of such a large family, if it hadn’t been for his poor health: he had suffered a mild case of polio as an infant and later, scarlet fever, and these had left him with what Grandma called ‘a weakness of the chest’. Consequently, he had been sick a lot, often seriously, and much of his childhood was marked by long periods of isolation and convalescence. Because of these, he’d grown into a shy, introverted boy, not bookish, the way his brother Colin was, but just self-absorbed. Grandma said she’d never been much worried by that. With the casual certainty about destiny that is so common in devoutly religious families, it was assumed my father would become a priest, because he was the second son and that’s what second sons did. So Grandma was comforted by the knowledge that he was not inclined toward fast cars, parties and the high life, the way Paddy, Kip and Mick were.

Of course, my father didn’t become a priest. Nor did he achieve Grandma’s other aspiration for all her sons: a college education. When my dad finished high school, the Second World War had started and like so many other young men of his day, he’d ended up in that. What always went unsaid in these conversations with Grandma but was implied was that Dad had met my mother while he was in Europe. Grandma was capable of attributing virtually anything my father didn’t accomplish to the fact that he had married my mother.

So, my father had joined the army and was posted to England. He was only twenty-one when he married my mother, who was almost two years his senior. After that, he never found the time or the money or the energy to pursue a higher education. And frankly, I don’t think my father ever particularly minded.

What did bother him were the kinds of jobs he ended up with because of his lack of skills. What with moving so often and having no real training, my father had always done whatever he could find, taking dead-end jobs that were easy to get and easy to leave. They never paid enough money, and they usually required physical effort, which made him less employable as he grew older. When we’d moved to Kansas from our previous home in Nebraska, my father had been unemployed for over two months before he found work at Hughson’s Garage. No one was looking for a fifty-year-old unskilled labourer.

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.

We were among the last couples to arrive at Claire’s party. The band was already playing, and most of the others were dancing. The small room was oppressive with the heat of moving bodies.

Throughout most of the evening Paul and I sat on folding chairs and drank Cokes. He said that he didn’t really like dancing particularly, and I told him that was OK because I didn’t either – which wasn’t precisely true, but I said it anyway. The music was so loud that it was impossible to carry on a conversation. So we just sat and drank. I watched Frog Newton playing his drums. He wasn’t as grotesque as Brianna had made him out to be. His hairstyle was rather unique, but aside from that, I thought he was good to look at. He had a nice body.

A little after eleven Paul suggested we go. The volume of the music was making my insides vibrate, and I was hoarse from shouting over it, so I agreed.

Coming outside was a shock. After all the noise and humid, sweaty heat, the January cold ripped my breath away. Shivering violently, I tried to zip up my jacket.

‘You want to go for a drive or something?’ Paul asked, as he unlocked the car door for me.

I glanced at my watch. I was supposed to be home by midnight, which Paul knew, and it was already 11.15. I showed him the time. ‘A short one, maybe.’

We drove down the street that led to the highway. Paul turned west and we sped out beyond the reaches of the town lights. It’s very flat in that part of Kansas. All Kansas is more or less flat, but out there in the western reaches, I reckon you could see the headlights of a car in Colorado, if you tried.

‘That’s not really my scene,’ Paul said as he drove. ‘That back there. Claire’s brother told me I had to go. It was all right, I guess, but it’s not for me. I hardly ever go to parties.’

I didn’t answer. I was wondering if Claire’s brother had also told him to invite me.

Leaning back on the headrest, I closed my eyes. Paul had turned the heater to its highest setting, and the car grew very warm. It also smelled incredibly of dog.

It was a nice feeling, speeding silently along the highway in the darkness. For a split second I let myself slip into dreams, imagining that this warm, shadowy quiet was my life to come, that Paul was my husband and we were off across the country, speeding to some secret destination in the west. It wasn’t that I wanted to be married to Paul or even that I wanted to be married at all. It wasn’t that specific. Just that the sudden feeling of well-being I had at that moment made me wish I could keep it. I wanted to prolong that instant of dark, drifting laxity for ever.

‘You don’t talk much,’ Paul said, shattering the silence.

‘I don’t have much to say,’ I replied.

He smiled at me. ‘You want to stop? I know this place. On Ladder Creek. My brothers and I used to go there to hunt rats.’

‘Yuck.’

He laughed. ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s pretty there. The water bends around and there’re these little willow trees. I saw a deer there once.’

This is it, I thought. It. He was taking me to make out. With sudden sharpness I became alert to the fact that we were a mighty long way from anywhere, and I wasn’t very sure precisely where we were. He had taken off on a series of tiny country roads until we were far out on the plains without a light to be seen anywhere.

Paul pulled the car off the road as we neared the creek. Turning off the engine, he sat a moment, and I waited for him to make a pass. I ran my tongue around my teeth to dislodge any bits of potato chips and wondered if my breath smelled of Coke. Cautiously, I glanced sideways to see what was going to happen next.

Nothing.

Pulling the keys from the ignition, Paul opened the door on his side. ‘Come on. I’ll take you down and show you where Gary and Aaron and I used to get the rats.’

Great.

It couldn’t have been more than fifteen degrees outside. I had my jacket zipped up to my nose as I followed him down along the creek bed. It was dry then, in January, without even a glassy trickle in the bottom.

‘I used to pretend I was Luke Skywalker,’ he was saying as he forged ahead of me. ‘You know, from Star Wars. See, here was the Death Star, and Aaron and I would pretend we were flying our fighter planes and trying to hit the place that’d blow the Death Star up. That’s what we pretended the rat holes were.’

This is a date? I was thinking.

In the east the moon was rising. It hung on the horizon, not quite full, but big as a house. Overhead were scattered a billion stars honed to brilliance in the cold night air. Prairie grass crackled with frost as we walked through it.

Near a clump of leafless willows, Paul paused. He put his arm around my shoulder with clumsy affection. It tightened my muffler. He paused from his story about rats and Star Wars.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ he asked. ‘I think this is the most beautiful place in the whole world. You can have your mountains and oceans and cities. Give me this any time.’

I stared out from the creek bed. It was so flat. In every direction, as far as you could see, the horizon came right down even with our feet. There were no lights to be seen, no trees except for the four or five willows beside us. Nothing but sky and stars and darkness. It struck me as novel to think of somebody actually loving Kansas.

I shivered. ‘It’s cold though.’

His face brightened. ‘Yup. But I’ve thought of that. See here?’ He held out matches. ‘I thought we could gather up sticks. I’ll make us a fire. And see, I brought apples. You put them on sticks and roast them over the fire.’ He had a peculiar expression that reminded me of Megan when she desperately wanted to do something but was afraid of being laughed at for it.

‘I’m supposed to be back by midnight,’ I said. It was already ten to twelve. We looked at one another and both knew I wouldn’t be.

Paul built a small fire on the dry stones of the creek bed. Clearly, he had done this sort of thing often. Hands in my jacket, chin buried in my muffler, I watched him as he cut willow sticks, peeled them back, stuck them through the apples and put them over the fire. I had never heard of doing that to apples but I didn’t say anything. They gave off a wonderful smell, like autumn and old barns. When they were done, they were charred and crackly on the outside but the inside was steamy, smooth and slurpy. We ate in silence, hunkered down beside the small fire. Paul was gazing at me across the flames, and it struck me then how differently the night was turning out from what I had expected. I had expected a date. One of those pick-you-up, go-to-the-party, make-a-pass, take-you-home sort of evenings. The kind of thing I could tell Brianna about on Monday. And I would have liked that. What I was getting was more of a communion.

‘I haven’t ever brought anyone out here before,’ Paul said as he banked the fire. ‘But you know, I’ve been sitting in history class watching you. All term. You seem different from other girls.’

‘Oh?’ I said, flattered. ‘How’s that?’

He shrugged and reached an arm out around my shoulder. We went walking down the empty waterway. We didn’t speak again. We walked about a quarter of a mile in the moonlight until we came across a trickle of water under thick panes of ice. Paul crunched the ice with his shoe and we followed the water until it disappeared into a culvert running under a farm road. He stopped a moment to bend down and watch the water. Then we turned and walked back.

Paul stabbed the fire to life again. He threw small, dry branches on it. Sparks rose up into the air, and he stood back, watching them.

I thought how I wouldn’t mind at all if he did make a pass. A kiss from him would be nice. He had a sensual mouth, full lips. I wondered if I dared to start something.

Paul tipped his head back and stared up to the sky. The fire cast grotesque shadows on his throat. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘whenever I’m out here at night and looking up at the stars, I always wonder. I mean, I feel like such a small thing compared to all that up there. I think that I’m just one little person and there’re billions of people and this is just one little planet and there’re billions of planets.’ He looked over. ‘Do you ever think about stuff like that?’

‘Sometimes.’

There was silence. The fire crackled.

‘And yet,’ he said, his eyes on the stars again, ‘every one of us still has dreams.’

We stayed out very late. Paul and I talked for so long that the fire fell into embers and the cold held us rigid in its grasp. I had never come across anyone like Paul before, who found places like these bare plains beautiful and who thought about things like the stars. When we finally gave in and drove home, heater and dog stench going full blast, it was after three in the morning.

‘What are you carrying in there?’ he asked as we neared my block. ‘I saw you get in with it.’ He indicated a brown grocery sack.

‘It’s a gift I got,’ I said and opened the bag to show him.

He touched it. ‘It’s soft, isn’t it?’

I nodded and took the turquoise shawl out, laying it across my jeans.

I had become frightened on the way home, thinking that my father might be waiting up for me. I dreaded to think of the state he would be in because I had stayed out so late. And I was so tired that I didn’t feel able to cope with anyone’s anger just then. So, when we reached my house, it was with great relief that I saw all the lights were out except the porch lamp.

As noiselessly as possible, I let myself into the house and tiptoed up the stairs. My eyes had long since grown accustomed to darkness. I undressed and prepared for bed without bothering to turn on any lights. The room seemed unnaturally warm to me after being out so long in the winter night.

Carefully, I took the turquoise shawl out and draped it across my chair so that if Mama came in early in the morning, she would think I’d worn it. Then I went to the window and pulled back the curtain. The moon was high. It had lost its hugeness and now threw out a cold, lifeless light. The wind had picked up and drew debris from the street into noisy eddies below the window. I watched intently, still half lost in the dreamy strangeness of the evening. I was tired, but for some curious reason, I was not sleepy.

Then the door opened. I started violently. It was just a whisper of a sound but my heart popped into my mouth, and I jumped enough to hit my head on the upper edge of the window sash.

It was Megan.

She closed the door quietly but deliberately behind her, so that the latch sounded in the silence. Then she turned and looked at me but came no closer.

‘What are you doing up?’ I whispered.

‘I heard you come in.’

We stared at one another across the expanse of the room. It was almost too dark to distinguish her when I let the curtain drop back down.

‘Why aren’t you in bed?’ she asked.

‘Why aren’t you?’

Again, no words. Megan reached up and pushed back her hair.

‘Is something the matter?’ I asked. ‘Why are you awake?’

She continued to try and keep her hair back from her face.

‘Come over here,’ I said.

She came, hesitantly, stopping just before she was within my reach.

‘Did you have a bad dream or something?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I wet the bed.’

‘Oh. Oh well, Meggie, don’t worry about it. Do you want some help getting it changed?’

‘No. I did it already.’ She scratched her nose. Her long hair was wild about her, like a secondary garment. She looked up again. ‘No, I was just sitting there and I heard you come in.’

‘Well, you better get back to bed then. It’s really late.’

A pause. ‘Can I sleep with you?’

‘Are you having bad dreams or something?’

She shrugged. ‘No, I’m just sort of lonely.’

‘It’s like the old days,’ Megan whispered after we had gotten into bed. She had the quilt right up to her nose and it muffled her words.

I had my eyes closed.

‘Remember how I used to come in and sleep with you when I was little? When we lived in Yakima. Remember that, Lessie? I came in all the time.’

‘No lie.’

‘It was because of those dreams. Those nightmares I got. Remember them? And I’d wake everybody up? Remember?’

‘Yes, I certainly do.’

Megan shifted. We didn’t fit together in my single bed like we used to. I had almost outgrown it myself. And Megan was no longer tiny. I lay with my cheek resting against the top of her head.

‘Did I ever tell you what I believed then?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, you know how Mama was in the war? And she couldn’t go home to her family?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well, when I was little and in the school in Yakima, I thought maybe they were going to do that to me. That teacher, remember, she used to always keep me after school. Mrs Hoolihan. Because I kept doing those worksheets wrong. And I thought it was going to be like it was with Mama. That pretty soon she wasn’t going to let me go home at all.’

‘That would never have happened, you know,’ I said. ‘You should have told somebody you felt like that, because we could have told you. It wouldn’t really happen.’

‘But it happened to Mama, Lessie. And it was when she was at school. She told us that. She was there and she couldn’t go home.’

‘Yes, but that was different. There was a war on. And she was at the university, not in grade school. Besides, that was in Germany a long time ago. Not America. It wouldn’t happen here.’

‘Well, yes, I know that. I’m telling you what I believed then. Remember, I was just little.’

‘Yes.’

‘And I mean, you can understand it. They did keep Mama there and not let her go home. So I thought they might do that to me too. Especially when Mrs Hoolihan made me stay after school and wouldn’t let me leave until I did those papers right. It really wasn’t such a stupid notion.’

I put my arms around Megan.

‘It was you guys I was scared about most,’ she said. ‘That they’d keep me there and I’d never see you or Mama or Daddy again. That’s what happened to Mama, and I think I’d just die if the same thing happened to me. I would. Even now. So, I kept dreaming about it. Over and over and over.’

‘Was that tonight too?’ I asked.

‘No. I just wet the bed, that’s all. Then I got up and changed the sheets and I was just sitting around. It made me feel lonesome.’

Silence settled over us. It was horribly late.

‘Did you have a nice time?’ Megan asked.

‘You mean tonight? Yeah, I did.’

‘Is he OK?’

‘Yes, he’s OK.’

‘Did he kiss you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you like it?’

‘You know, Megs, it kind of wrecks a thing like this when you have to come home and discuss it with your little sister.’

Megan shifted. ‘I don’t see why.’

The darkness closed in around us, and Megan grew so quiet that I assumed she had fallen asleep finally. I was very sleepy myself. Closing my eyes, I dozed.

‘Les?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘I’m getting awfully tired, Meggie. I want to go to sleep.’

‘But can I ask you something first? Before you go to sleep?’

‘You will anyway.’

‘Well, you know about the war?’

‘Mmm-hmm.’

‘Well, we’re studying about it at school. And you know, my teacher was telling us about some of the things the Nazis did to people. To the Jews, you know? She had some pictures. They were in a book.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Have you ever seen those pictures, Lessie?’

‘What book is it?’

‘Well, I can’t remember its name. But have you ever seen pictures like that? Of what they did to the Jews?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have.’

Megan was silent. I was wide awake again.

‘Is it true? Did they really, really do things like that to people?’

‘I guess they did.’

‘Mama never makes the war sound very bad. She makes it sound like, well …I don’t know. You hear her stories. Like about Jadwiga. About how silly she was and stuff.’

Again silence.

‘Well …’ and then she stopped. I could feel her breath against my arm as she exhaled. ‘Well, Les, do you think they ever did things like that to Mama, things like in those pictures?’

‘Is that what’s bothering you? Are you worried about that?’

‘But did they, Lesley?’

‘Megs, Mama wasn’t a Jew, was she? Those were Jews in those pictures.’

‘But how come she never went home when the war started?’

‘I don’t know. She was working or something. I don’t know. But it was different than with the Jews, Meggie. I know that for certain. They liked Mama. See, they thought Mama was really beautiful. Because she was so blonde and stuff. You know. She’s told us about that. About how the Nazis liked people to have blonde hair and blue eyes. Aryan. That was their name for it. They liked people to be Aryans. And Mama was.’

‘But Mama had a hard time in the war. You know it. Like she’s got all those little scars and stuff. You know that’s from the war. Daddy said.’

‘Well, who knows. It was a difficult time there then. People got in trouble pretty easy. And you know Mama and her opinions. She’d get in trouble anywhere.’

No response from Megan.

‘But it wasn’t anything like what happened to the Jews. The Nazis hated the Jews. They planned to kill them all.’

‘But what was it like where Mama was?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then how can you say it was different from the places the Jews were? For all you know, maybe it wasn’t.’

I sighed. ‘I’m too tired for this, Megan. It’s the middle of the night. Cripes, it’s practically morning. I want to sleep.’

Megan squirmed around. She was well past the cuddly stage. Instead, she was mostly knees and elbows. She had her shoulder jammed against my breasts.

‘But what was it like for Mama, Lesley? I got to know. I keep thinking about those pictures and I got to know.’

‘But I don’t know. Listen, just forget about it. It happened a long, long time ago before you were born or I was born, before a whole lot of people were born. A long time ago.’

‘If it was so long ago, how come it still bothers Mama?’

‘Megan, go to sleep.’

‘But I need to know. I just keep seeing those pictures in that book. I shut my eyes and that’s what I see. In this one picture there was this little boy with his hands above his head. And they shot him. I keep seeing him in my mind. I keep seeing the way he was looking out of the picture. He was littler than me.’

‘Well, stop seeing him. Don’t think about it, because it’s over and done with. And Mama’s circumstances were not like the Jews’. I do know that much. Mama would have told us if it had been like what happened to the Jews. But she hasn’t, has she? So stop worrying and don’t think about it.’

Megan sighed. ‘You sound like Daddy.’

Again, another long silence. But this time I didn’t grow sleepy. I lay staring at the wall.

‘Les?’

‘What is it now?’

‘You know Mama?’

‘Of course I know Mama, Megan.’

‘No. Stoppit. Be serious. You know about Mama. The way she is. That’s because of the war, isn’t it?’

‘Megan, I mean it. Stop worrying about it. If you don’t shut up right now, I’m going to make you go back to your own bed.’

‘I’m not worrying. I’m just wondering.’

‘Well, then stop wondering.’

She sighed again. Then she wiggled to make herself more comfortable against me. She sighed one more time, heavily.

‘Your teacher shouldn’t be talking to you kids about stuff like that. You’re too little. She’s just scaring you. And I think that’s wrong. I think in the morning we ought to tell Daddy what she’s doing.’

Megan didn’t answer.

‘So just forget about it and we’ll take care of it in the morning, OK?’

Megan squirmed and then relaxed. She expelled a long breath of air and then closed her eyes. ‘Doesn’t matter really,’ she said quietly. ‘I already knew about it anyway.’

Chapter Six

Both Megan and I slept late. It was after ten o’clock when I woke up. Megan was still in bed with me, still asleep. I had a painful crick in my neck from not having been able to move easily during the night, and it hurt like heck to turn my head. So I sat up cautiously and then tried to climb over my sister without waking her. Quietly, I dressed and brushed my hair. Megan remained dead to the world.

Downstairs in the kitchen, my mother and father were still sitting at the table and drinking coffee. On days when my father didn’t have to work, my parents enjoyed long, leisurely breakfasts. Often they spent as much as three hours at the table, talking, eating, reading the newspaper, discussing world events, listening to the radio and drinking the strong, dark coffee my mother made in a special pot. When I came down I could tell they had eaten their main breakfast quite a while earlier, but by the way things were spread out, it was apparent they were still a long way from finishing.

Warily, I glanced at my father to see if he was angry about my late return. But after greeting me, he returned to his coffee and newspaper. Mama was browsing through the want ads. She looked up.

‘Did you have a nice time?’

‘Yes, Mama, I did.’

She lit a cigarette and leaned back in her chair. ‘This boy, did you like him?’

‘Yes, Mama.’ I smiled at her as I went to the refrigerator to take out the eggs. ‘I like him a lot. He’s different.’

Lifting down a bowl, I broke a couple of eggs into it and scrambled them. Mama had turned in her chair to watch me. Her hair was loose. Apparently she had washed it earlier and had not gone to tie it back yet. Like Megan, she had extraordinarily straight hair, and it lay across her shoulders, reflecting the glow of the kitchen light. Putting her cigarette into the ashtray, she pulled out one strand of hair and twisted it around her finger.

‘Guess what, Mama. Paul liked the turquoise shawl. He said how soft it was. He thought it was beautiful.’

Pleased, she smiled.

‘And guess what else? They have dogs. Two of them. Labradors. Named Fortnum and Mason. His mama lets them ride around in the backseat of her car when she goes to do the shopping.’

My mother laughed. She adored dogs. We’d had one once, a great hulking brute of a dog, a cross between a Dalmatian and a Newfoundland retriever. Mama had named him Piffi, which was a very unlikely name for that dog. He should have been called Brutus or Killer, or at the very least Rover. But in spite of his appearance, he had been gentle and good tempered. Megs used to ride on him, and I dressed him up in doll bonnets or tied yarn to his tail to make him look more like the pony I was longing for then. However, Piffi’s real allegiance had always been to Mama.

All the while I talked, I kept an eye on my father. I was concerned that if I let the conversation between Mama and me flag, he would pounce on me for having stayed out too late. I stalled as best I could, talking faster and faster, elaborating way beyond what I actually knew about Fortnum and Mason. But Dad said nothing. He sat with his newspaper and his coffee and a piece of toast Mama had gotten up and made for him while I was talking. When I couldn’t detect a flicker of life from behind the newspaper, I gave up and ate my breakfast.

I knew he knew I had come in late. Because it was my first date alone with a boy, Dad had sat me down for a thorough talk the night before. Unlike Mama, my father wasn’t the least concerned about Paul’s virginity. He made me Scotch tape a dime inside my shoe so that if I needed to call him to come get me, I’d be prepared. I knew it mattered to him and my lateness wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. Besides, he seldom went to bed before midnight anyway.

But my father said nothing. I could tell he was listening to my conversation with Mama, but he never came out from behind the sports section. My mother saved me. Delighted with all this talk of dogs, she began reminiscing about Piffi. We exchanged little memories about him, and Mama was laughing and illustrating her stories with animated gestures. Dad, I suspect, was reluctant to spoil her happy mood by getting mad at me.

The weather that Saturday was wretched. It rained in the morning, the drops half-frozen before they hit the ground. Around noon the sleet stopped and the sky hung low and swollen. When we had lived in Washington state, the snowdrops and crocuses would begin to show in late January, and I had always shared Mama’s deep relief at seeing them, even though the weather often persisted in being miserable. But here there was nothing to indicate that winter wouldn’t go on for ever. All I could see out the window was dead grass, bare trees and lead-grey sky.

After breakfast, Dad rummaged around the house in an attempt to assemble all the bits and pieces he needed to do the income taxes. It put him in a foul mood. He yanked out the junk drawer in the kitchen while I was doing the dishes and he rooted sullenly through the mess. Unable to locate all the prescription receipts, he hollered for my mother, and she came running. For some reason my father always assumed that Mama had done something with whatever he could not find in the house. Still unable to unearth what he wanted even with Mama’s help, he left the junk drawer sitting up on the counter, its contents strewn everywhere. Wiping the counters down with a dishrag, I paused, unsure if I should put the stuff away or leave it alone.

Mama seemed nearly as moody as my father. Wearing a pair of faded jeans and one of my old sweatshirts, she drifted around the house restlessly, hands in her back pockets. She was trying to help Dad find everything but she wasn’t much help, chiefly because doing the taxes put my father in such rotten humour that no one could have pleased him. So she shadowed him at a distance, hands still in her pockets, until he growled impatiently at her for always sticking things in strange places. Then I heard her mutter softly that she didn’t stick things in strange places, that if he would only file them away in his desk like she asked him to …But by that point Dad had disappeared somewhere else. So she wandered over and sat on the edge of the kitchen table and watched me struggling through college applications. Until my father hollered for her again.

Boredom, I think, had always been my mother’s principal foe. She needed more to keep her occupied than she could ever find around our house, especially now that neither Megan nor I were babies any longer. If she could have had a job of some kind or something similar, I think it might have helped. I had said this to my father on numerous occasions because, since he was working, I didn’t think he was as acutely aware as I was of how empty Mama’s days were. But he didn’t agree. In fact, he was flatly against her working. Mama was too unpredictable, he would always reply. What with her moods and her strong opinions and her idiosyncrasies, you couldn’t expect people to be very tolerant.

My mama had a lot of what Dad labelled ‘idosyncrasies’. Many of them were rather endearing behaviours, if no one you particularly wanted to impress was watching.

For instance, my mama talked to radiators. And to most other inanimate objects, if the occasion arose. In her mind everything had the possibility of being alive. ‘Well, you don’t really know, do you?’ she’d say to us when we laughed at her. ‘Would a stone know you’re alive? Well, then how can you know for sure that the stone’s not alive too and you just don’t perceive it? How do you know? It could be.’ And in her mind, it could. So it only stood to reason that you treated everything courteously, just in case. Our radiators, which were forever banging and clanging, were the recipients of three-quarters of Mama’s conversations on cold winter mornings, when Dad, Megs and I were still stumbling around bleary eyed. ‘You got air in your belly?’ she’d enquire politely of the one in the kitchen as we sat, eating jam and toast.

Some of her idiosyncrasies, however, were less charming. She had, for instance, a morbid fascination with food. Starchy things, like potatoes or pasta or rice, were her favourites, and many were the occasions that we would chance across her in the kitchen, eating a bowl of plain, cooked macaroni or a dish of cold, leftover potatoes. And my mother ate everything, including the fat off the meat, the skins off the potatoes, the liquid left in the vegetable bowl. Her idea of scraping dishes before washing was to eat whatever the rest of us had left and then wipe the plate clean with a piece of bread to get the last bit. The most distressing aspect of this inability to ignore food concerned things that fell on the floor. My mother would eat dropped food. She didn’t confine herself to retrieving those things that could be washed off, but also went after and ate such things as Jell-O or mashed potatoes or butter. Both Megan and I had always found this horribly embarrassing behaviour, and we were often reduced to bouts of berserk screaming when we demanded that she leave it alone and she in turn called us wasteful little louts. But we never broke her of the habit. She still did it every time something dropped. So we were forced to keep the kitchen floor literally clean enough to eat from and we prayed like zealots when we went to a restaurant that God might intervene before anything hit the ground.

And others of Mama’s idiosyncrasies were downright intolerable. Perhaps her most incorrigible habit had to do with her speech. My mother still spoke four languages and used three of them in daily conversation, yet out of all those words, she had never acquired a euphemistic vocabulary. Consequently, tact and diplomacy certainly were not Mama’s strong suit. She had a colourful, multilingual way of offending everyone by always saying precisely what she thought. This habit, more than any other, drove my father wild. ‘Why can’t you think sometimes before you speak?’ he would yell at her. ‘How can you say things like that?’ Yet Mama made no serious attempt to curb her tongue. ‘I am just being honest,’ Mama would say. ‘It’s you who are wrong, always saying what isn’t true. I’m just saying what I think. I’m just being sincere.’ Or on other occasions, particularly when her language had gotten a little salty as well, she would just give him a completely blank look. ‘What does it matter?’ she’d ask. ‘They are only words. Shit is shit. Fuck is fuck, no matter what you call them.’ And Dad would explain that you didn’t call them that, period, at least not in polite company. Mama would nod wearily and shrug, and I knew she didn’t care one way or the other. Then, the next time, there they’d be, together at the checkout at the supermarket, Mama sliding cans of pork and beans or whatever down the conveyor belt for Dad to pack, and she’d casually remark what a bastard she thought the man who cut the meat was. My father would go white with horror, and once they were in the car, the argument would start all over again.

So these were the reasons, my father explained, that he did not want Mama out working. She’d end up being humiliated or treated shabbily or made fun of, he said. Or she’d get herself into trouble.

I still didn’t agree. Some of the things Mama was capable of doing were excruciatingly embarrassing, and I was as bad as anyone about trying to keep her separate from people I hoped to impress, but nonetheless, I couldn’t help thinking that if she had something more to occupy her mind, perhaps she wouldn’t have so much time left over to think up good reasons for engaging in eccentric behaviour.

I am not sure how much Mama felt her confinement. Everything always had intensity for her, wherever she was, and she could go about the most mundane tasks with almost electric vigour. She liked listening to her various phonograph records and often jotted down notes to help her remember to show Megs or me some small nuance she had discovered in comparing one piece with another. She pored over the newspaper for so long each morning that she was far better informed on the state of the world than either my father or I. Then she’d reread the editorials, clip out articles and write short, sharp, to-the-point letters to people like our congressmen or the President. She always made me proofread the letters to make sure she’d made no grammatical errors. They were good letters, well thought out. She read voraciously. She would read anything we brought home from the library for her, from murder mysteries to books on family finance. She browsed through Megan’s and my schoolbooks, and sometimes I would find pencilled-in answers to the questions at the ends of the chapters. She exchanged magazines with Mrs Reilly next door. And every payday she made Dad buy her a paperback at the supermarket.

Mama’s contacts with people outside the family were limited, partly because of our frequent moves and the difficulties in meeting people that engendered, partly because of her fluctuating agoraphobia, and no doubt partly because of my father’s inclination to keep her home. She did have coffee with Mrs Reilly quite often, and when she was active, she went downtown, and I knew she had some acquaintances in the stores because she always came back with local news. Otherwise, her only long-standing contact was with a German Jew from Berlin, who now lived in New York. She had never met him. She’d simply struck up a correspondence with him after reading an article he’d written in a magazine. Over the years their friendship had flourished. My mother had developed very strong Jewish sympathies arising from what she termed her ‘enlightenment’ during the war; yet I knew she was still wracked with guilt about having been born Aryan in a time and place when that had mattered and about never having questioned the Hitler regime until she was forced to. She spent hours composing the letters she sent Herr Willi. Writing them out in longhand, revising them, writing them again, typing them, she struggled to untangle turgid emotions and troubled philosophies. Occasionally she would let me read the letters, to see if I thought what she was trying to say was clear. But she wrote to him in German, her sentences far more complex than anything she ever produced in English, and often I could not fully understand them. One thing, however, was always plain to me then: we underestimated Mama.

So I felt sorry for her. It seemed wrong to me that she should spend so much time sitting around the house all day, reading novels and watching soap operas. That would depress anyone. But one time Mama overheard me when I was talking to my father about it and telling him I didn’t think he was right to keep her at home. She took me aside afterwards and told me to leave the matter alone. She was OK, she said, she didn’t mind. What she meant, I think, was that she didn’t want me to hurt my father.

Mama seemed at loose ends that Saturday, trying to help Dad assemble what he needed for the income taxes. Finally, she wandered into the living room and turned on the phonograph. She had a collection of old 78s she’d bought while they were living in Wales. The music on them was a type unique to the Welsh, and Mama was fascinated by the complex harmonies.

‘Do you want to hear The Lark Ascending?’ Mama called to me after a short while. I was still in the kitchen.

‘All right, Mama,’ I called back.

That had been Elek’s favourite piece. Mama had told me so often about Elek’s sitting in the gazebo, playing his violin, that I could see the house near Lébény myself, and the gardens with their broad expanse of lawn curving around the lime trees. The white gazebo I pictured was one of those with all the ornate Victorian fretwork. Behind it was the mill pond, glassy in the mid-afternoon sun. The ducks quacked sleepily as they drifted in the shallows. And soaring over it all was the eerie, grave beauty of The Lark Ascending.

She played the record twice, turning it up louder to make certain I could hear it. As I was trying to fill out college application forms at the kitchen table, I ended up putting my hands over my ears in order to concentrate enough to understand what I was reading.

My father came down the stairs from the study. Mama lifted the needle off the record. He came into the kitchen to sharpen a pencil. She followed him to the doorway.

‘O’Malley, dance with me,’ she said to him as he stood over the pencil sharpener. She came and put her arms around his waist.

‘Not now, Mara. Let me get this done first.’

She had her cheek pressed against his back. Her hair, still loose, flowed over her shoulders. She was watching me, smiling at me, because my mama knew she could get pretty much anything she wanted out of Daddy. He stood in front of the sharpener and felt the point of the pencil.

‘Dance with me now, O’Malley,’ she said. ‘I’m in the mood.’

Grinning, he unhooked her arms. My dad was a sucker for dancing. On Friday and Saturday nights he would put on records and push back the couch and the coffee table in the living room and whisk Mama off, as if it were the Stardust Ballroom. Both Megan and I had learned to dance before we were in school. Perhaps my favourite memory of my father came from when we lived on Stuart Avenue. Mama was very pregnant with Megan at the time and she could hardly get close enough to my father to put her arms around him. Plus, she tired easily and her back hurt. So my dad played waltzes all night because they were slow. When they were taking a break, my father lifted me up on his lap and showed me the cover of one album with a picture of the Vienna Woods on it. He and Mama had been there in the woods of Vienna, he told me. Right there by that tree. They had eaten bread and cheese on a picnic, but no sausages because meat was still too hard to get in those days. They had gotten married not very far from that spot in the Vienna woods. Then when he started the music again, he bowed deeply to me and asked if I wanted to be his partner. I was eight and couldn’t waltz very well. So he told me to stand on his feet and he whirled me around and around the living room.

I remember that evening with timeless clarity. I remember the colour and plaid of his shirt. I remember the way he looked down at me, his smile, his eyes. I remember his warm man’s smell as he hugged me to his stomach. I felt like a princess, dancing magically around the room on my father’s feet.

‘Dad?’ I said, standing in the doorway of the study. I was trying to discern if he was still working on the taxes, because if he was, I didn’t want to interrupt. The papers were strewn all over the top of his desk: tax forms, receipts, slips for this and for that. But Dad had a magazine open on top of the lot.

He raised his eyes as I came into the room. It was almost evening. On such a gloomy day, the passage of day into night was not noticeable until it had happened. He had the desk lamp on, and it bathed his hands and the litter of paper on the desk in a yellowish glow. The rest of the room was a deep, grainy blue.

‘I need to talk to you,’ I said. ‘It’s about going to college next year. I have to get these applications in.’

He rocked back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

‘They’ve got deadlines. My counsellor at school keeps hassling me about it because I’ve put it off so long.’

‘Put what off?’ Dad asked.

‘Put off deciding where to go.’

‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked.

I set the applications down on the edge of the desk. Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I gazed at him over the top of the lamp. Silence.

‘It’s something I thought you might kind of like to help me decide,’ I said. ‘Like Paul’s dad. His dad decided that he ought to go to Ohio State. See, they have a good statistics department there. His dad thought that the job opportunities would be good in statistics.’

My father reached over and took the applications. ‘Have you figured out how much these places cost?’

‘Yes, Daddy. It’s at the end. I was doing that earlier. That’s why it took me so long. See. I calculated the tuition and my room and board. If I used that savings bond Grandma gave me, plus my money from work …Well, just look at it. I got it all figured up.’

He studied my calculations.

‘I could go to Fort Hayes. Or KU. If I get a really good scholarship, I thought I might try for Columbia. It costs a lot, I know, but if I got a big enough scholarship … It’s a very good school. That’s what Miss Harrich says.’ I paused. ‘What do you think, Daddy?’

He said nothing. He just read. Standing in front of his desk, hands still in my pockets, I rocked back and forth on my heels and watched him. I felt nervous without really knowing why. It caused a crawly feeling, primarily in my hands and feet and in the pit of my stomach. Desperately, I wanted my father to help me, to tell me where he wanted me to go and what he thought I should do, the way Paul’s father had done. That was the chief reason I had procrastinated with the applications for so long. I kept waiting for Dad to say something when I told him about the places I was interested in. I knew he cared about what I did, so I could never figure out why he left me to decide so much on my own.

‘It’d be nice,’ he said, ‘if you could go somewhere close to home. In case we needed you or you needed us or something.’

‘Fort Hayes? That’s nearest. If we don’t move. Are we going to, Daddy?’

‘I don’t know. No one’s mentioned it to me.’

‘Should I apply there?’

Again he paged through the various applications, checking my figures at the end. Then looking up, he handed them back to me across the lamp. ‘I trust you to do a good job, Lessie. You know better than anybody what you’d like to do.’

‘But Paul’s dad pretty much decided for him.’

‘How can that be right?’ my father asked. ‘You’re the one who’s going to end up living at the college and doing whatever it is you get trained for. Not me. You’ve got a level head, Lesley. You know best the things you’re interested in. You just go ahead and decide.’

‘Even Columbia?’

He grimaced. ‘That is a long way away.’ Then he smiled. ‘You’re a lucky girl. You got all your mama’s brains. And your daddy’s going to be proud of you, wherever you choose to go.’

I stared at the papers. ‘May I have money for the application fees?’

He nodded. ‘You let me know what you come up with and I’ll write you a cheque.’

Chapter Seven

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.

Chapter Eight

When I was very young, we lived in west Texas for a while. I don’t remember much about it. I was only about three at the time. I don’t recall anything about the house at all. I do, however, remember that there was no yard at the back of the house. The ground just stretched away from the back porch down a hill and out on to alkali flats before dissolving into the interminable plains. Sitting on the porch, I used to look out over the landscape and think to myself that if I could only see far enough, the plains would stretch all the way to the ocean and on the other side was Madrid, Spain. Why Madrid, Spain, I don’t know. How I even knew there was such a place, when I was that age, I don’t know either. But that was one of only two clear memories of the house in west Texas. My other memory was of the sunflowers.

Down on the alkali flats below the hill grew sunflowers. They may have been wild ones, springing up after the summer downpours had flooded the flats. Or maybe they were cultivated. My memory doesn’t serve me there. What I do remember is sitting on the porch and looking down on all those sunflowers.

They were beautiful from the hill. The big golden heads would track the sun through the day, and that made them seem as if they were looking at me part of the time and looking away the other. Sometimes children would come and play there. From where I was sitting on the hill, I could see them, small as insects, disappear amid the flowers and the huge heads would nod and sway as the children ran among them. Laughter would ride up the hill on the wind.

I longed to go down there myself. The sunflowers beckoned to me welcomingly. Certainly I didn’t have permission the day I did go. I remember slipping down the rough prairie grass of the hillside, keeping low to the ground to stay out of Mama’s sight, in case she glanced out the window. Then I ran across the flats and into the shadows of the flowers. My biggest concern was not getting caught.

When I ran among the sunflowers, I discovered they were gigantic, a veritable forest, not small, the way they appeared from the hilltop. The flowers were high above my head, and before I realized what was happening, I was deep among the tall stalks. With each step I took, the green-and-gold wilderness closed silently behind me. In no time at all, I was lost, trapped.

I screamed.

I flailed about amid the sunflowers, hysterical, crying in terror to get out. The flowers went on and on in all directions, and I could not escape. Panic-stricken, I thrashed and screamed and was swallowed up.

Mama found me. From the house on the hilltop she could hear my terrified crying. She’d come crashing in among the sunflowers, bending them aside, pushing them down. They were even taller than she was.

In her hurried slide down the hillside to reach me, she had slipped and scraped her knee. I remember clutching frantically at her and tasting blood mixed with my tears. She pulled my fingers apart and lifted me up on her shoulders so that my head was above the flowers and she carried me out.

What I remember with brittle sharpness is that final moment, being on my mama’s shoulders. I remember turning and looking back at the forest closing behind us, the flowers bright in the Texas sun, and innocent and heartless.

For my mother, however, sunflowers had an entirely different connotation. They were of almost mystical significance for her. Sunflowers had grown wild in the back garden of their cottage in Wales after the war. The way Mama talked about it, it was easy to tell that she perceived the appearance of those unexpected sunflowers as practically a religious experience. They were the sign of her resurrection, and she knew she had managed to pass through her season in Hell.

My mother loved to tell us about those years in Wales. They were among her very best stories, spun out in epic, almost myth-like proportions, laced with lyrical descriptions of an aged land. I loved them above all the others, not only because she made them so beautiful to listen to, but also because they were the only stories about her life after the war that had the same magnificence as her tales of Lébény and her girlhood. They reassured me that she still had the capacity to be happy and that all her joy had not been dragged from her by the horrors of the war.

The translated name of the cottage was Forest of Flowers. It was high up a mountainside in north Wales. Mama always told us how she and Daddy had had to climb the last half mile to the cottage on a small, steep path. I had a very romantic image of Forest of Flowers in my mind. I could see the narrow, meandering trail passing through sun-dappled woods, the forest floor a carpet of snowdrops and bluebells and populated with little Thumpers and Bambis. And there in the clearing, like Snow White’s cottage, was Mama’s holly hedge and the winter jasmine and the quaint wooden arch, all leading up to the whitewashed Forest of Flowers.

Those were her sunflower years.

In Kansas, sunflowers are grown commercially. If you go out in the late summer along the small country roads in western Kansas, you’ll come upon field after field of flowers, a sea of golden, nodding heads. In the time since we’d moved to Kansas, it had become a family ritual to drive out every few weeks to watch the progress of the sunflower fields from planting in March to harvesting in mid-autumn. In spite of that childhood experience, which still came back to me in nightmares, I enjoyed these journeys, although I never could bring myself to walk down the narrow rows between the stalks, planted in military straightness, the way Mama and Megan did. For my mother especially this observation of the sunflower crop was a most pleasurable way of marking the year. The sunflowers were the single redeeming feature of Kansas for my mother.

By mid-March the ground underfoot was spongy and smelled of newness. The sun had grown surprisingly hot in the space of a few weeks. It was a Saturday afternoon, but despite the weather, I was in my room studying. On the next Monday we were having an exam in calculus, and I’d be the first to admit that calculus was not my best subject. It wasn’t going to be an easy test either. Mrs Browder told us on the previous Friday that she was intending to give us a set of ten problems and we had to solve eight of them. So I was frantically going back over old assignments to make sure I knew how to do them.

Mama came to the open door of my room. ‘I feel like a walk,’ she announced.

This caught me completely unawares because my mother had not been out of the yard since the end of January. I turned from my desk to see her standing in the doorway. She was dressed in old tan corduroys and a plaid shirt. She had one of Dad’s pullovers on, and her hair tied back with a yarn ribbon. She smiled at me, knowing, I think, that she’d surprised me.

‘They’ll be starting to put the sunflowers in,’ she said. ‘And I want to walk out and see.’

‘Mama, it’s quite a walk. Most of those fields are at least a couple of miles away or more. If you wait until Daddy comes home, I’m sure he’ll take you out in the car.’

She remained in the doorway. She had a small smile that gave her a look of amusement. ‘Come with me, baby. We can walk that far. It’s such a beautiful day, and I’m longing to move my legs.’

‘We don’t even know for sure if they’re putting them in the same fields as last year. I think we ought to wait for Dad.’

‘I have cobwebs in my legs. Come along with me. I want to walk.’

I turned back to my books for a moment. ‘I can’t, really, Mama. I have a calculus test on Monday morning. And I honestly think I might not pass it. Not if I don’t study; because I don’t understand how to do all these problems. In half of them I can’t even tell what they’re looking for.’

She continued to stand there, silent but insistent. It was difficult ever to deny my mother things.

‘Maybe Daddy can take us all out in the car tomorrow,’ I said. ‘We could have a picnic. Why don’t we do that?’

Mama still had the small smile on her face. She looked young to me then, standing there in those old clothes. She had an ageless quality to her facial expressions that made it very difficult for people to guess her age.

‘What about Megs?’ I suggested when it became apparent Mama wasn’t going to give up the idea. Megan was downstairs doing something in the kitchen. I knew because I’d been hearing her throughout my studying. Megan never had been what you could call a quiet child. ‘I bet Meggie would love to go with you. Why don’t you ask her?’

Mama considered that. She waited a moment longer in case I was going to change my mind. Finally, satisfied that I wasn’t, she turned and left.

I could hear them preparing downstairs, fixing a picnic of fruit and soft drinks. Mama was talking in Hungarian, her voice full and undulant. Megan was beside herself with excitement, and her glee floated up the stairs in squeally, high-pitched syllables.

From my window I watched them leave together. They had the little knapsack with them. Bulky in Dad’s brown sweater, Mama strode off down the street, moving purposefully, like one of Odin’s Valkyries. Megan flitted around her like a small, dark wraith.

‘Where’s your mama?’ my father asked when he returned from work mid-afternoon.

‘She and Megs went to see the farmers putting in the sunflowers,’ I replied. He had come upstairs, still carrying a bag of groceries in one arm. He was in his blue work coveralls and had his cap on. He set the bag down on my bed. Taking off his cap, he ran his fingers through his hair. It stood straight up.

‘Mama asked me to go,’ I said, ‘but I have this test on Monday to study for.’

‘That’s an awful long way,’ he said.

‘That’s what I told her. I said you’d probably take her out in the car, if she’d only wait till you got back. But you know how Mama is. She wanted it right then.’

He wandered over to the window and pulled back the curtain. ‘It’s been such a long time since she’s been out,’ he said, more to himself than to me. Then he turned in my direction. ‘Did she say where she was going?’

‘No.’

I knew what he was thinking, even though he didn’t say it. He was thinking I should have asked her specifically, that I had been irresponsible to let my mother wander off with Megan without finding out at least which way they planned to go. It had not occurred to me until just that moment that Mama might have had no idea of where she was going. That was the problem with Mama. Like the time she had dismantled the refrigerator because it wasn’t working. Mama would set her mind to do something and she’d do it, not caring whatsoever that she had no clue about how to go about it. The sheer pleasure of action was enough for her, even when her willingness to tackle something far outweighed her actual knowledge of what was involved. Suddenly the simple Saturday afternoon walk seemed fraught with every kind of possible disaster.

‘Maybe I should take the car and go look for them,’ Dad said thoughtfully.

‘I don’t think you need to do that,’ I said. ‘If they get lost, they can call. Megan’d know to do that.’

‘Do they have any money with them?’

Again, I realized I hadn’t checked. ‘Well, they could go to a farmhouse and use the phone there.’

‘How long have they been gone?’

‘Since about one.’

My father sighed. ‘She’s been inside all winter. She should have waited.’ Letting the curtain fall back into place, he went over and picked up the bag of groceries from the bed. ‘Well, I’ll give them until five. If they’re not back by then, I’ll take the car out and look for them.’

There was no need to worry. At 4.30 the storm door slammed, and I heard the sound of Mama’s voice calling for my father. When I came downstairs, I found them embracing, involved in one of those chaste but terribly long, complete-with-droning-bees-sound-effects kisses that they got into. Dad never said anything to her about being gone without telling him. Instead, he told her that Mr Hughson from the garage had paid him double overtime for working Saturday afternoon and that he’d bought us steaks for supper.

When it became obvious that I’d get stuck helping with the meal if I stayed downstairs, I returned to my room to study. Megan had gone thundering up the stairs past me when I’d first come down, so on my way back to my room, I stopped at her door. It was shut.

‘Can I come in, Megs?’ I asked and opened the door without waiting for an answer. ‘How was it? Did you and Mama find any sunflowers being planted?’

Megan was crying. She was sitting on the edge of her bed and had her stuffed tiger cat shoved against her mouth to block the noise.

‘Whatever’s wrong with you?’ I asked in surprise.

‘Nothing,’ she said and furiously mopped her face. I came over and sat down on the bed beside her. That immediately caused her to throw the stuffed animal down and get up. She crossed to the window. Reaching for a rubber band on the window ledge, she lifted her hair up and put the band around it. I remained on the bed.

‘Megs?’

Another prolonged effort to stop the tears. I waited.

‘Lesley, who’s Klaus?’ She turned to look at me.

‘Klaus who?’

Tears flooded her eyes again. ‘That’s what I’m asking you, dummy.’

We stared at one another in silence. She had snot running over her upper lip.

‘What are you talking about, Megan?’

‘Well, you know we went out? We were walking on this road by the creek. By those fields where you and me got the fireflies last summer, remember? Anyway, there was this little boy there. He was playing in the underbrush.’

Megan paused. She came over to the bed and picked up the tiger cat again. Taking its two forelegs, one in each of her hands, she held it out in front of her and gazed at it. ‘All of a sudden,’ she said pensively to the cat, ‘Mama looks at this kid and she says to me in this really excited voice, “There’s Klaus!” You could just tell from the way she said it, she was super excited.’ Megan looked above the stuffed animal’s head to me. ‘I mean, really, really super excited, Les. She shouted, “Klaus, Klaus, come here!” And this little kid looks up and he sees her and of course, ’cause he hears this lady yelling at him, he gets this scared look and he takes off down into the underbrush. And Mama’s hollering “Klaus! Klaus!” after him.’

‘What did he look like? Did you know him?’

The tears reappeared and Megan paused a moment to quell them. Pressing the tiger cat to her chest, she sat down on the bed beside me. ‘He was just some little kid. I don’t know who. He was just little. Maybe five or something. He was wearing overalls and one of those brown jackets that’s got the flannel lining inside. And he had this really white hair.’

‘What did Mama do then?’ I asked. ‘After he ran away?’

‘We were on the road. So she ran down the road a little way, and I ran after her. Then she turned to me and said, “Maybe he doesn’t understand German.” See, she had shouted at him in German. So then she shouts at this kid in English. Same thing. “Klaus, come back here.” But the little boy was on the other side of the fence by then and he was still running. She stopped when she got to the fence. But she kept yelling for him to come back.’

I shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Megs. Really, I wouldn’t. It’s not worth getting so upset about. It’s probably just one of Mama’s funny things.’

‘But she kept saying to me, “He must not speak German. They must have raised him here.”’

‘Look, don’t worry about it. You know how Mama is sometimes.’

‘But who is Klaus?’

‘I don’t know, kiddo.’

‘Where would Mama know him from?’

‘Like I said, it’s probably nothing at all. Just a funny idea of hers. Maybe somebody she remembers from before. You know. From Germany or somewhere. I wouldn’t get all upset about it.’

‘You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like.’

‘Just the same, I wouldn’t worry about it.’

‘But who is he?’

‘Megan, I said I don’t know. I don’t. I’ve never even heard of anyone around here named Klaus. So don’t cry about it anymore, OK? It’s probably nothing.’

‘You know what she said, though? She said to him, “Klaus, come back here. It’s Mama. Come back, it’s me, Mama.”’

Megan remained upset. I was unable to talk her out of it, and she was unable to forget it. She stayed up in her room and told my father that she was sick in her stomach when he came up to see why she hadn’t come to supper. She put on her pyjamas and crawled under the covers and stayed there. I didn’t bother her. Nor did I tell Dad what had happened. If it was one of Mama’s imaginings, there was not much to be done about it, and I saw no point in upsetting him too. And I couldn’t fathom what else it could be.

All through supper and into the evening, I watched Mama closely and wondered. That was a strange thing for her to do. Even by Mama’s standards, it was weird. I wondered what she could have been thinking of.

If anything, my mother was more buoyant that evening than she had been in months. The wind had burned the skin along her cheekbones, giving her a ruddy, healthy look. She had removed the yarn tie, and her hair lay thick and pale over her shoulders, catching the glow of the kitchen light as she moved. She and my father joked around. While he was drying the dishes, he flicked her playfully with the dish towel, and she squealed like a schoolgirl. Later, they went upstairs, hand in hand, and left me to watch television by myself.

Mama was pacing. I woke slowly to the sound, not quite realizing it wasn’t part of my dream until I was fully awake. I turned to look at the alarm clock. Four-fourteen. Putting the pillow over my head, I tried to shut out the sound.

Mama had always had trouble sleeping. Her insomnia was periodic. Sometimes she’d go seven or eight months without difficulties, then she’d start waking up in the night and be unable to go back to sleep. She said it was her back. Her back would ache, and she couldn’t sleep because of the pain. Then she’d go to the doctor for a prescription, sometimes for her back, sometimes for the insomnia. Nothing worked for long. If she was in the midst of one of her wakeful periods, she woke up, pills or no pills.

‘Mama, what’s the matter?’ I stood at the bottom of the stairs. She was by the living-room window. In her long cotton nightgown, she looked like a ghost in the darkness. The only light came from the glowing end of her cigarette.

When I spoke, she started and turned. I came farther into the room and bent down to switch on one of the table lamps. She squinted in the sudden brightness.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘What’s wrong?’

At first she did not respond. Then slowly she dragged a hand up and touched the small of her back. ‘It’s just the old hurt, Liebes. I shouldn’t have walked so far today. I overdid it. That’s all.’

‘Do 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.’

Chapter Nine

‘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 you feel OK? Is your stomach all right?’

She tightened the skates further. They pinched into the sides of her running shoes. ‘Nothing was wrong with my stomach,’ she said acidly. ‘You know that.’

I hitched my thumbs into the waistband of my jeans.

‘We got to ask her, Les.’

‘No, we don’t.’

‘Yes, we do. I heard you two up last night. I know she wasn’t asleep. And I can bet you a million dollars I know why. So don’t bother to lie to me.’ Carefully, she rose and put the skate key into her pocket. Taking a step backwards, she let herself roll down the sidewalk away from me. I followed her.

‘No, we don’t have to ask her, Megan. What Mama is thinking about is her own business.’

‘Lesley, are you deaf or something? Did you hear what I told you last night: Mama thought that little kid was one of us.’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘She didn’t. She thought he was her son.’

Megan’s eyes widened. ‘Well, that’s worse. She hasn’t got a son.’

Neither of us spoke after that. Megan was skating along very slowly and with deep absorption. In the same way, I focused all my attention on simply keeping up. To the rhythm of the skates against the cement, I counted out my steps.

We went down around the corner and up Bailey Street and over to Third without saying anything to one another. When we reached the park on Third and Elm, Megan stopped. She ran her skates off into the grass and paused, balancing on the toes. Taking the skate key from her pocket, she sat down on the grass.

‘What exactly happened to Mama?’ Megan asked. Her voice was very calm. She was adjusting the skates again and did not look up. ‘I mean, during the war. Just what really did happen then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you ever asked?’

I shrugged. ‘She’s told us plenty of stuff, Megs.’

Megan rested her cheek against her knees. I sat down on the grass beside her. ‘I want to know what happened,’ she said. ‘Not just the funny stuff. Not just about old Jadwiga. I don’t want Mama to stick out her teeth and do old Jadwiga’s funny voice and make me laugh. I want to know the rest of it. I want to know how come Mama’s got scars on her butt and her legs. I want to know how come she was so sick in the war, how come she got starved. I’m not so stupid as you think, Lesley. I see all that stuff. And I need Mama to tell me what really happened. It matters to me, because I never can really forget about it. And I don’t think she does either. So I need her to tell me. It’s better than guessing all the time.’

‘Megan, don’t you dare ask her stuff like that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Just don’t. I mean it.’

Megan eyed me with annoyance. ‘I will, if I want to.’

‘You do and I’ll make you sorry.’

Silence between us. From her expression, I could see she wasn’t backing down.

‘You’re not old enough,’ I said. ‘That’s what they’ll say to you. I asked Dad once and that’s what he said to me. That I was too young to understand.’

‘When was that?’ Megan asked.

‘When I was about your age.’

‘So what about now? Are you old enough to find out now?’

I shrugged. ‘I’m not so sure I want to know now. I can see what it does to Mama. Besides, it’s old stuff, Megan. It’s over and done with. The war finished in 1945 and that’s years and years and years ago. There’s no point in knowing, really.’

Megan sighed and reached down to pull tight her shoelaces. Then wearily she rose and skated off.

Chapter Ten

Megan was sitting in the kitchen when I arrived home from school on Monday afternoon. She had her schoolbooks stacked on the corner of the table and her stockinged feet up on the chair across from her. One apple core lay beside her already. She was crunching her way noisily through a second apple while deeply absorbed in a book that lay open in her lap.

‘Hey Lessie, come here and look at this,’ she said when I appeared. I crossed over to the table.

It was a book on the Third Reich, an adult book, something for readers far older than Megan.

‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.

‘The library. I went in after school and asked the lady there where they had books about the Second World War. She gave me these. See?’ She indicated a couple of other books on the table too. ‘I’m going to read about it. I’m going to learn all there is to know.’

‘Those books are too old for you. You won’t even understand them.’

‘No, they’re not. I can read them. The lady at the library gave them to me.’

‘What did you do? Tell her you were a kid genius? Megan, those books are for adults.’

‘Not necessarily. Lookie. This one’s about kids. See?’ She pulled a thin paperback from the stack. ‘There are poems and stuff that these kids wrote while they were in a concentration camp for children. See what it says here in the back? The library lady showed it to me. Fifteen thousand children went into this camp. And only a hundred ever came back.’

There was a sudden, potent silence. Megan remained intent a moment longer over the book. ‘This could have been us,’ she said quietly without raising her eyes.

‘Megan, you shouldn’t be reading stuff like that. It’s macabre.’

‘It’s the truth though,’ she said. She looked up. ‘It happened, for real. And it could have happened to us. This here, in this book. If we’d been born, they could have taken us away just like these kids and put us in a camp.’

‘They couldn’t either. Those were Jewish children. They took them away because they were Jews.’

‘But we still could have been one of these children. If we’d been born then. They were kids just like us. See, look at the way this one kid writes. He makes his G’s just like I do.’

‘Megan, listen to me. It wouldn’t have ever happened to us. Those were Jewish children. We aren’t Jews. We never were and we never will be. So it could never have happened to us.’

‘It could have.’

‘Megan, it could not have. Wash your dirty ears out. I said, we’re not Jews. It could not have happened to us. So don’t be stupid and keep insisting. You’re as bad as Mama with your ridiculous opinions.’

A frown formed across her features. ‘How come you keep on saying that? “It couldn’t happen to us; we’re not Jews?” Why do you say that all the time? It happened to people, Lesley. Real people. And because we’re people too, it could have happened to us. You’re the one who’s stupid.’

‘You shouldn’t be looking at stuff like that. It makes you crabby,’ I replied. ‘Besides, what do you know about anything? You’re too little to understand what’s really behind it anyhow. You don’t know anything; you’re just a baby.’

Megan’s scowl deepened.

I set my books down and went to the cupboard to get down the peanut butter and honey for my sandwich. ‘All I’m saying, Megs, is that we’re in no position to be even discussing it. We don’t know what happened. That’s my point. We just don’t know. So it’s stupid to go reading about what happened to the Jews and generalizing it to everyone else who was in the war.’ I turned around and looked at her. ‘And if you ask me, you just shouldn’t be reading that kind of junk.’

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