The Sunflower Forest

by Torey Hayden

  ‘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.’

  ‘But why don’t we put it in?’

  ‘Because it costs too much money, that’s why. Just roll down your window.’

  ‘I got my window rolled down. We got every window in the whole car rolled down. I’m still melting.’

  ‘You’ll survive,’ my father said.

  ‘Oh look! Look, Dad, there’s the sign for Kingman! Can we stop for Frosties? Please, Daddy? Please, can we?’ She had her seat belt off again and was leaning over to make sure he saw the highway sign.

  ‘I said we’ll stop later, Megan, when it’s dinnertime.’

  ‘But I’m hot.’

  I nudged her with my foot. ‘Clam up, would you?’

  ‘Come on, Daddy, please? Please?’

  ‘Megan, shut up,’ I said again.

  She was bouncing up and down on the seat. ‘Please? Please, Daddy?’

  I kicked her.

  ‘Ouch! Ow! Owie. What did you do that for?’ Grabbing her leg, she fell back, hugging it tenderly. ‘Owie. That hurt.’

  ‘Because all you’re doing is talking. Talk, talk, talk. You haven’t shut up since we left Wichita.’

  ‘Dad,’ Megan said in a wounded voice, ‘Lesley just kicked me. Hard, too.’

  ‘Meggie, Lesley’s tired. She’s had a long trip. Now just let her be.’

  ‘But she kicked me. I’m going to have a bruise.’

  ‘Yes, OK. Les, don’t kick her again.’ The car slowed, and he turned to look over his shoulder at her. ‘Look, sweetheart, why don’t you come up here and sit with me?’

  ‘I think I will,’ Megan replied sulkily and prepared to climb over the seat. But before she did, she turned and stuck her tongue out at me.

  The journey, like the plains, seemed to go on for ever. The heat was unbearable to me. Sauna-like in its strength, it sapped what little energy I had left. I lay sprawled over the back seat, my muscles anaesthetized with exhaustion, and tried to sleep.

  I couldn’t. Even after Megan had finally shut up and fallen asleep herself, her head resting heavily against my father’s arm, I was still awake. Somewhere west of Macksville, Dad tuned the radio to a country-western station from Tulsa and, under his breath, began to sing along with Crystal Gayle. I lay, suspended halfway between slumber and wakefulness, dreaming vivid but troubled dreams, while at the same time being conscious of the car, the music and the heat. In fact, as the miles passed, I became more and more awake and lay with my eyes open, staring at the pattern in the upholstery. I discovered I was still feeling the same tainted numbness I’d felt on the plane when it was landing, only this time the other emotion that underpinned it was more perceptible. It was a desolate feeling, strong enough to colour my half-awake dreams.

  What came to my thoughts as I lay was the paradox of change. On the one hand, I had expected everything to be the same at home as when I left it. I’d expected my father and my sister still to be caught up in the same turmoil they’d been in in June, and yet clearly they weren’t. However deep the wound Mama had inflicted on the family, things had begun to heal for them and they were moving on. That realization had caught me off guard. Yet, on the other hand, I had expected things to be different. I myself had changed so much in the last few months that I felt like an entirely different person; and somehow I’d expected they would be different too, but they weren’t. Dad was the same old Dad, Megan was the same old Megan and Kansas was the same old Kansas. Just as before. Weird, I was thinking, how things can change and not change at the same time.

  About half past five we stopped in Dodge City, a small, sleepy town weighed down by its Wild West past when Sheriff Wyatt Earp’s gun had brought rough justice to the place. After eating hamburgers in a roadside café, Megan and I walked along the famous main street and peered into the windows of the tourist shops. Since it was early Saturday evening, the museums and most of the shops were already closed, but we looked anyway, just to be out of the car for a while.

  The rest of the trip I rode in the front seat with Dad. Megan spent her time in the back trying to play ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ with a piece of tissue and my father’s comb. West of Garden City, we turned north on Highway 25 and followed the same route home tha
t Mama and I had used that day in April when I’d taken her to see Dr Carrera.

  The flatness grew more familiar. First on the right side of the car and then on the left, sunflower fields came into view. Mile after mile after mile of them. There was no wind, not even the merest breeze to ruffle the golden petals. They stood, silent and motionless, their heads all facing the sinking sun in the west.

  We came into town. Main Street. First Street, Second Street, Third Street. Megan was reading the signs aloud as we passed them. Berg Street. Bailey Street, then our street.

  I was home.

  All I wanted was to take a bath, wash my hair and go to bed. It was only a quarter to eight, but I was so jetlagged I just couldn’t manage any more. Megan was running after Dad as he walked into the kitchen, harassing him about letting her friend Alison come over. ‘Come on, Daddy, come on,’ she was saying. ‘I told her she could come over when we got back. I said so. I said I’d call her straight away when Igot back. So please? Please? It isn’t very late. It isn’t a school day tomorrow. Please can she come over?’

  Alison was there even before I’d managed to get into the bathroom for my bath. She was a funny-looking kid with fat, brown braids that stuck out like sausages at uneven angles to her head. Her face was full of dust-coloured freckles, as if a sparrow had tracked over it. ‘That’s my sister,’ Megan was saying, pointing at me as if I were an exhibit at the zoo. Alison burst into giggles and the two of them went tearing up to Megan’s room.

  I ran the tub completely full of water so hot I could hardly put my hand in and then threw in generous scoops of bath crystals to create a bath unlike any I’d had since I left. Pinning my hair up, I stepped in and carefully slipped down under the surface until the water was against my chin. Picking up a copy of Cosmopolitan I’d bought in the airport in New York, I opened it to resume reading a deliciously graphic fiction excerpt that I’d started on the plane.

  The bathroom door rattled.

  ‘Are you going to be in there all night?’ a voice enquired.

  ‘Megan, I’ve been in here exactly ten minutes, counting running the water.’

  ‘Well, how long you going to stay?’

  ‘Until the water gets cold. Until I feel like getting out, that’s how long.’

  A sigh followed beyond the door.

  ‘You’ve been in there ages already, Les. Not just ten minutes. And I need to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘I’ll be out in a bit.’

  ‘Can’t you let me in there now?’

  ‘Just hold it.’

  ‘But me and Alison are playing Monopoly and I want to get back. But I got to go. Come on, Lesley. Let me in there.’

  ‘Megan, honestly. Just wait.’

  Silence. I could hear her breathing outside the door.

  Throwing the magazine down, I climbed out of the tub and dripped water over to let her in. ‘Damn you. Get in here and hurry up and get out,’ I said and stomped back to the tub. ‘And shut the stupid door.’

  Megan paused in front of the mirror. It had steamed over, so she took a towel and wiped it. She picked up the hairbrush.

  ‘I thought you were in some kind of rush to use the toilet.’

  ‘I am,’ she said absently and brushed her hair.

  My bathwater was already lukewarm. My magazine had gotten wet around the edges. I was just preparing to yell at her for being such a pest when I too got caught up in watching her image in the mirror, already fading behind the steam again.

  ‘Megs, how come you cut your hair?’

  She shrugged and went on over to the toilet. ‘Daddy wanted it. He said he’d always thought I’d look nicer with shorter hair.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yeah. So when we were in Chicago, I went with Auntie Caroline and got it cut.’ She looked over. ‘Do you like it?’

  I nodded. ‘It makes you look different, though. I almost didn’t recognize you when I got off the plane.’

  She flushed the toilet and was absorbed momentarily in tucking her shirt into her shorts.

  ‘I didn’t know Daddy ever wanted you to have short hair,’ I said. ‘He never mentioned it before. I always thought he liked it the way it was.’

  A shrug. She wiped off the mirror with her hand. ‘I dunno. I like it better too. This way it’s not so hot. I used to get really sweaty in the summer. Besides, now I can wear headbands and clips and stuff. I couldn’t before because every time I bent forward, my hair knocked them out.’

  ‘Mama wouldn’t have liked it this way, though,’ I said.

  Megan gazed at her image in silence. ‘No, I suppose not,’ she said, lifting her hair off her shoulders. ‘But then Mama’s not here any more.’

  Another quick flick with the hairbrush and then Megan replaced the pink headband. Starting for the door, she paused before opening it. She turned.

  Silence.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked? She crossed back to me in the tub. ‘How come you’re crying, Lessie?’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said and I lifted the dripping washcloth to cover my face a moment. ‘It’s just water from washing.’

  ‘Your eyes are red.’

  ‘That’s just tiredness. I’m absolutely exhausted. But nothing’s wrong.’

  With her lower lip sucked between her teeth, Megan looked at me a moment longer. Then she reached out and very gently touched my hand. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you’re home. I missed you a lot.’

  I got into bed, absurdly grateful for sheets after three months in a sleeping bag. The room was dark and too warm. Beyond, the house rattled with lively sounds.

  I closed my eyes and waited for sleep. Despite how tired I was, it wasn’t happening.

  ‘Les?’ It was my father’s voice from outside my door. ‘May I come in?’ He was speaking very softly, in case I was asleep already. I almost didn’t hear him.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Come on in.’

  The knob turned and he pushed the door open. Light from the hallways spilled across the carpet.

  ‘How’re you doing?’ he asked and he crossed the room to my bed.

  ‘I can’t seem to fall asleep.’

  ‘Would you like a milky drink or something?’

  ‘No, but thanks, though.’

  ‘Meggie says you were crying earlier,’ he said.

  ‘Not really.’

  He studied my face.

  ‘I’m just tired. I told her that. That’s all it was. You just can’t believe how tired I am.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Silence.

  I sighed. ‘I’m so exhausted from all that travelling that I can’t even sleep. I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin.’

  Dad sat down on the bed beside me. Reaching over, he pushed back the hair alongside my face. ‘How was your trip?’

  ‘OK.’

  Unsaid things crowded into the darkness around us. Tears welled up in my eyes. If Dad could see them, he didn’t say, but he watched me very closely. The tears stayed but they didn’t fall.

  ‘How come she lied, Dad?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Mama. How come she lied about Coed-y-Bleiddiau? I know now that it doesn’t mean Forest of Flowers. You did too, didn’t you? That’s why you only ever called it by its Welsh name. You knew that all along, didn’t you?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘So how come she lied? If she knew bleiddiau meant wolves, why did she keep saying it was flowers?’

  He gave a little lift of his shoulders. ‘She wanted it to mean flowers.’

  ‘But it didn’t.’

  ‘It did for her.’

  ‘But it didn’t.’

  ‘Some things are like that, Lessie. We long for them to be a certain way so much that that’s how we see them.’

  ‘She lied about the sunflowers too, didn’t she?’

  He didn’t respond immediately.

  ‘In the garden of the cottage, there were no sunflowers, were there?’

 
‘Once there were sunflowers. In this other place we lived,’ he said. ‘In Texas. There were wild sunflowers there.’

  ‘There? Those sunflowers?’

  He shrugged. ‘I think she just confused them. Just mixed up one place with the other.’

  ‘How could she, Dad? That was Texas. Without a hill for a hundred miles. Without rain for months on end. How could she mix up Texas with Wales?’

  He lifted his shoulders again. ‘I don’t know. Maybe there were sunflowers in Wales too. There may have been. That was a long time ago and my memory’s not so hot these days.’

  ‘They don’t grow sunflowers in Wales, Dad. It’s too wet. That was just another lie.’

  Lips pursed in a thoughtful expression, my father paused for a long moment. Then he shook his head gently. ‘They weren’t really lies, Lessie. I know it seems like that to you just now, but it isn’t so. What you’re talking about is what’s literally true. What you see with your eyes. Black or white. Real or unreal. But there’s another kind of truth, a kind of truth that’s really about the essence of things and you see it with your heart, which means you see what’s really there and not just what your eyes tell you. That’s what your mama was doing, seeing the world that way. Because that’s what lets you see that the world is a good place in spite of all the horrible things that happen. Wales was beautiful to her. In her heart, she knew it was flowers and not wolves.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  There was a pause. It drew out into the semi-darkness to become a soft silence.

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to feel. Nothing got answered for me in Wales. Nothing got clearer. I went all the way over there and, if anything, it’s made me understand less.’

  He reached his hand out and took mine.

  ‘Before all this happened, back before, I always thought that if only you and me and Meggie could just love Mama enough, we’d be able to make up for everything. I thought if we loved her enough, she would be able to let go of her past and it wouldn’t matter so much. But that didn’t happen. Maybe she was trying to see flowers instead of wolves in Wales, but the truth is, Dad, she didn’t succeed, and she ended up seeing wolves where there were really flowers.’