The Sunflower Forest (37 page)

I took a deep breath. The mountains and the mist faded, and I was back in Kansas, trapped once more in the terrifying vortex of those days in April.

‘I guess she must have thought it was better for him to be dead than to live like that, away from her,’ I said. ‘Anyway, she took this gun. It belonged to my boyfriend, and he’d left it at my house one afternoon while he and I went out. And my mama took it and she went to where these people lived and she killed them all, the boy and his mother and his father. Then the police came to arrest her and my mama still had the gun. They shot her and she died.’

I looked down at the stone wall. Beside me Angharad did not move.

‘Everything about it’s so horrible,’ I said. ‘About what she did. About why she did it. About the fact that these perfectly blameless people should get killed for something that happened forty years ago in another country.’

Angharad had her head down. The end of the cord from her raincoat was between her hands and she twisted it, first around one finger and then around another. Around and around. From her expression, I was unable to tell what she was thinking.

‘I keep trying to figure out why this all happened to us,’ I said. ‘I keep trying to make sense out of it. My whole life has fallen apart, and I just wish I could at least understand why. But I can’t.’ I touched the lichen on the stone. ‘I don’t seem to understand anything any more. I thought I did. I thought I knew everything. At first, I thought Mama was just an innocent victim, that it was all the fault of those wicked people during the war. Then I thought the fault was my father’s because he could never deal with Mama’s problems. Mama was a law unto herself with Daddy, and I thought it was all his fault. Then sometimes I thought I had caused it. I thought of all the things I had done, you know, and the things I could have done or could have said to her. Or shouldn’t have said to her. I thought if only I could have done better, all this wouldn’t have happened. And then I’d start all over again and blame the Nazis. And so on and so on and so on, because there wasn’t an end to it. But the truth is, I don’t really know what I think. I don’t know what the answer is.’

Angharad touched the smooth wood of the shepherd’s crook with her fingertips. ‘Is that why you came here?’ she asked.

I shrugged.

‘What did you want from us?’

I shook my head. Silence came between us, faintly textured by the noises of the sheep. The mist was growing thicker again. It did so in a slow and even fashion, starting nowhere in particular. The valley floor melted away into greyness.

‘I wanted to be happy,’ I said softly. ‘Mama was happy here.’

Angharad said nothing.

‘But now I find out that it’s all an illusion. Forest of Flowers never existed.’

The mountain on the far side had receded into the clouds so that only the shape of it, darker grey on grey, was visible. The mountains beyond it, like the valley below, were indistinguishable in the mist.

‘I always thought my mother was the most wonderful person in the world,’ I said. ‘I thought she was the bravest and the best, you know, for all she survived. Now I wonder how I ever felt that way. All I’ve learned, it seems, is that she must have sold her soul a million times over.’

‘Perhaps it’s time for you to go home,’ Angharad said.

G
oing home, I flew from winter back into summer. The captain told us, as the plane banked in brilliant sunshine, that it was ninety-four degrees in Wichita. Across the broad plain below us all the fields were golden brown, a patchwork of somewhat imprecise squares and rectangles, as if the task of drawing them up had been given to a six-year-old, just learning to make straight lines with a ruler. Long before the curvature of the earth hid the land from view, it had disappeared into a heat haze.

I sat with my face pressed against the small window and watched for the appearance of Wichita amid the miles and miles of farmland. I was energized with the crawly sort of nervousness that overtiredness brings. I hadn’t been able to sleep on the transatlantic flight, and I’d come to Wichita from New York via Dallas, following one of those puzzlingly circuitous routes that airline companies seem to prefer. The whole journey, including the nighttime train ride from north Wales to London, had taken twenty-seven hours, and I was desperate just to stop moving.

The plane levelled off. The outskirts of Wichita came into my view for the first time. Then the long, spidery arms of the Mid-Continent Airport reached out for us. It was a huge airport for the amount of traffic. Brown brick concourses, supported on concrete pillars, sprawled out from the main terminal. No need to economize on space here. Space was not something Wichita was short of.

With a pre-emptory bump, the wheels of the plane touched the ground. Wing flaps went up. All conversation in the cabin was momentarily drowned out.

I had forgotten the sheer hugeness of Kansas. In Wales, nurtured by the mounds and rises, like a child cuddled to its mother’s breast, the world was intimate and well defined. Here, you could feel only your own smallness. In a place one-tenth land and nine-tenths sky, there is no other way to feel but exposed and insignificant.

Slowly, the plane taxied toward the gate. Below us on the tarmac men with ear protectors and orange paddles waved us in. We were within minutes of deplaning.

Now what?

I tried to imagine. I tried to picture meeting my father on the other side of the barrier. What should I say? What should I do? Would I kiss and hug him? Was I glad to be home? Would I say that? Was I?

I felt nothing. Empty. Numbed by exhaustion, I couldn’t mobilize any emotions. Just the numbness, tinged perhaps by a lesser feeling, a sort of sad, hazy longing, although for what I wasn’t sure.

Megan was standing at the very front of the group of people beyond the gate. She was wearing red running shorts and sneakers without socks and a T-shirt saying ‘My parents went to Chicago and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.’ Her hair had been cut. Not really short, just to her shoulders, but it was pushed back away from her face with a plastic headband. I very nearly didn’t recognize her.

But she saw me. ‘Lesley!’ She shrieked and bolted over the rope barrier. I stumbled from the unexpected power of her hug, and passengers behind me crowded up, attempting to get by.

‘I thought you’d never get here. I thought that plane would never, never, never get up to the gate,’ she said as I dragged her back around the barrier. ‘We watched the whole way. From when you were just a little bitty speck in the sky till you landed. And it took
for ever
.’

Then Dad was there, and the question of how to greet him was irrelevant. We clung to one another, squishing Megan unceremoniously between us.

‘Your hair’s long,’ Megan said to me as we all walked down toward the baggage claim area. ‘It’s got really long over the summer.’

‘Well, yours is short. When did you get it cut?’

‘Last month. For my birthday. Daddy and me went up to Auntie Caroline’s for a vacation. And Auntie Caroline took me into Chicago to get it done. See, it’s got blunt cuts so that I don’t have to worry about split ends.’

‘Split ends?’ I thunked her on the side of her head. ‘You’ve never worried about split ends in your life.’

‘Well, see, now I don’t got to, see? Look at it. That’s a blunt cut. It’s just like Alison’s got.’

‘Who’s Alison?’

‘She’s this girl. She lives on Fourth Street, and her and me are best friends now. She got to stay overnight after my birthday party. Guess what kind of party I had?’

I shrugged. ‘How should I know?’

‘Guess.’

‘Megan, I haven’t the faintest clue.’

‘It was a disco party. And I got to invite every single kid in my class. A real disco party with lights and music and everything. It was super.’

I grinned at her. ‘Were boys there too?’

‘Daddy let me invite my whole class. Twenty-three kids. Everybody in the fourth grade. Well, I mean everybody that was in the third grade last year but was going to be in the fourth grade, but wasn’t yet, because it was summer. You know what I mean.’

‘You mean boys. How many did you dance with?’

She shrugged. ‘We didn’t dance much. Mainly we ate junk. Sometimes me and Alison danced.’ She hesitated a moment. We’d reached the escalator going down, and she paused to run her hand along the moving handrail before getting on. ‘But it was a super party. No other kid’s gotten to have a disco at their house. I’m the first.’

‘What about that one boy? You danced with him,’ my father offered as he put his hand between her shoulder blades to shove her on to the escalator. ‘What was his name? Lenny?’

‘
Benny
, Daddy. Benjamin actually. They just moved here from Goodland. And he dances real good. So I let him dance with me one time.’

‘You
danced
with a boy? Oh Megs, guess who has a boyfriend?’

‘I didn’t say that, Lesley. He’s
not
my boyfriend. I just said he was a boy and he could dance good. That’s all I said.’

‘I dunno. Having disco parties, dancing with boys. Sounds dangerous to me.’ I glanced over to her. ‘Bet you smooched him when Daddy wasn’t looking.’

‘
Lesley!
’ She turned, horrified. ‘I did not!’

‘Meggie’s got a boyfriend.’

‘Lesley, shut up. Shut up or I’ll kick you. People’re going to hear.’

We were in baggage claim, waiting for the carousel to start. Megan moved away from me to stand on the far side of my father. She took his hand. ‘Dad, tell her he’s not my boyfriend and so she better shut up. I don’t even know him hardly. He’s just a kid in my class. Besides, he’s only nine and I’m already ten. Tell her he’s not my boyfriend.’

As we waited and waited for my bags to appear, Dad began enquiring about Wales. How had I found everyone? What about the farm? he asked. Was the old barn in the back of the house still standing? It was the one with the little white cupola and weather vane in the shape of a fish. Yes, I said, and we decided it must be in no better or worse shape than when he’d last seen it. Had they cut down the stand of three oaks up by the spring? Or were they still there? he asked. Someone had told him once that those trees were over three hundred years old. When he was helping old Jones with the farmwork, he used to take his lunch break under those oaks and he often wondered if they were still standing now. And what about the village? Was Mrs Davies still running the post office? Was the village built up any that I could tell?

I found it almost eerie to be standing in the dim, air-conditioned lower level of the airport discussing the Jones’s farm and Bwlch-llwyd-ddu so casually with my father. The baggage area was solid and substantial, almost a concrete fortress in its construction, and by comparison, Wales had already grown indistinct and ethereal. Prosaic as all my father’s questions were, I found it impossible to shrug off the rather disconcerting feeling that we were discussing something we had both dreamed.

The heat outside the airport building was paralysing. I’d left the Jones’s farm at 9.00 p.m. at night, and it had been forty-three degrees. So I arrived in Wichita wearing a turtleneck and a pullover. The pullover I’d shed long before, and I’d yanked the sleeves of the turtleneck up, but as I waited in the parking lot while Dad put my bags into the trunk, I seriously considered whether or not I could get away with taking off the turtleneck and making the long trip back to western Kansas in just my bra. Dad went around the car, unlocking doors so we could get in, and Megan went around behind him, rolling down all the windows.

I sat in the back seat with the intention of being able to stretch out and sleep during the journey home. But in a burst of unexpected sisterly love, Megan hopped in with me.

‘Megs, why don’t you ride up front? It’s too hot back here for both of us. You got a sweaty little body.’

‘But I want to ride with you,’ she said cheerfully. She snuggled up against me.

‘Megs, ride up front. I want to sleep. I’m exhausted.’

‘No. I want to ride with you. You can sleep if you want, but I want to ride back here.’

‘It makes Daddy look like a chauffeur with both of us sitting back here. If you’re not going to sit up front, I’m going to.’

‘No, stay here, Lessie. Geez, it’s been practically three whole months since I’ve seen you. I want you to sit with me.’ She slammed the doors and locked them.

Too tired to argue further, I collapsed back on to the seat.

Once we were out on the highway, I slid down on the seat so that I’d have the benefit of the breeze through the window and so that no passing motorist would see me in my bra. Since the trip would take the better part of three hours across uninterrupted plains, I folded my sweater into a pillow, stuffed it into the corner and prepared to go to sleep.

‘Dad,’ Megan said, leaning over the front seat, ‘can we stop at a Wendy’s? I want a Frosty.’

‘I don’t know where there is one, sweetie,’ my father replied. We were already well out of Wichita and into the countryside.

‘How about Kingman?’ Megan suggested. ‘Let’s stop when we get to Kingman and buy everyone Frosties.’

‘I don’t know if there is a Wendy’s in Kingman, Meggie.’

‘Well, when we get there, let’s find out, OK? Please?’

‘We’ll see,’ said my father. There were a few seconds of silence. ‘And Megs, sit back please. If you’re going to be back there, I want you sitting all the way back. Don’t hang over the front seat. And put your seat belt on.’

Megan slid back.

I closed my eyes again. The motion of the car was friendly and familiar. Within moments I slipped into a doze.

‘Daddy?’ Megan said.

‘Hmm?’

‘Can I play the video games? If we stop at a Wendy’s, I mean.’

‘Megs, to be honest with you, I don’t think we really need to stop anywhere for a while. Maybe when we get farther down the road. We’ll have to stop for dinner anyway. But I don’t think we need to stop before then.’

‘But can I play the video games? I got my own money along. I got more than five dollars with me. It’s from my birthday money. I got it along because I was thinking maybe we could’ve stopped longer in Wichita and I could’ve bought something I needed. Like maybe a new notebook for school. I need a new notebook. You know. One of those ring-binder ones, like Alison’s got.’

‘We’ll be able to find plenty of notebooks back home, Megs,’ my father replied.

‘But anyway, I got my own money with me. So can I play the video games when we stop?’

‘If you think you’re going to spend five dollars on video games, young lady …’

‘Not the whole five dollars, Dad. I didn’t say that, did I? I just said, can I? Not the whole five dollars. Just a little bit of it.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Does that mean yes?’

‘It means we’ll see, Megan.’

I was watching Megan as she talked to my father. The haircut did make her look very different. It was attractive, right at shoulder length like that, so that her thick hair swung cleanly away from her face. But it took away from her that untamed aura. It made her look ordinary, with her little pink plastic headband.

Megan, to me, had always more closely resembled Mama than I had. In spite of my fairer colouring, Megan had always seemed more like her. I thought of that as I watched her, and what occurred to me was how ordinary Mama probably would have looked if she’d cut and curled her hair the way middle-aged women usually do. But of course, Mama never had.

‘I’m hot,’ Megan said and she flopped back against the seat. Sliding way down so that her back rested on the seat part and her bare legs were thrown over the seat in front, she waggled her feet in the air.

‘I’m having a hard time understanding how you’ve got your seatbelt buckled when your feet are up here with me,’ my dad said.

Megan giggled.

‘I’ve about had it with you sitting back there, Megan. Now sit up and put that belt on. I mean it.’

‘But I’m hot.’

‘I don’t care if you’re being grilled on a barbecue. Do as I say,’ he replied.

Reluctantly, Megan straightened up, found the two ends of the belt and buckled them. Looking over at me, she wrinkled her nose. Silence reigned for perhaps thirty seconds.

‘I wish we had air conditioning,’ she said. She leaned forward. ‘How come we don’t have air conditioning in our car, Daddy? Everybody else has it.’

‘Because it’s an old car and the people who bought it first never had air conditioning installed.’