Torey Hayden - The Sunflower Forest

‘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.