by Unknown
Lara looked up and I winked.
“Do you want to talk to her?” I asked.
“Yes!” Grandma said.
I brought the phone over to Lara.
“It’s Mom’s mother,” I said, with my hand over the mouthpiece. “Her name is Sophia. She really wants to talk with you.”
Lara smiled and took the phone.
“Hello?” she said and strolled into the living room. I stepped outside to see the kittens for myself.
The barn was warm and sweet-smelling, and the kittens were nestled with their mother in an unused sheep pen. The kids were still gushing over them as I approached.
“Well?” Mom asked.
“I told her Seth has a lot of problems and to be careful.”
Mom nodded, like that was the end of it, but I knew it wasn’t.
“But I have this feeling she will want to befriend him because of his problems, Mom,” I said.
She looked up at me like I had failed, and yet I could tell she quickly realized how stupid that was. Lara was so much like Rosemary. Rosemary could never let a needy person pass her by.
“What’s she doing now?”
“Talking to Grandma,” I said.
“On the phone? Right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Good heavens,” and she headed for the kitchen door.
“Grandma said we could have ice cream,” Olivia said to me.
“Well, then let’s go get it,” I said. I wanted to hear the conversation in the kitchen too.
Lara was sitting on the floor of the living room, her back against the sofa and her feet pointing toward the kitchen. She saw us come in and smiled.
“That sounds great,” she was saying.
Then there was a pause as Grandma said something.
“Well, actually, my mom’s parents died before I was born. I did live with my Grandma Prentiss for a while, but she passed away a few years ago,” Lara said.
And then, “Well, maybe.”
I knew what Grandma was asking her. She was asking Lara if she wanted to call her “Grandma.” And if she wanted to come visit her and Grandpa Stuart in Ann Arbor. Mom could tell too. It was a little awkward.
“Okay,” Lara was saying. “Here’s Claire.” And she handed the phone to my mom. Mom took the phone into the adjoining study.
“So she asked you to call her Grandma, huh?” I said to Lara.
“She did,” Lara said. “But I don’t know that Claire would like that...”
“And she asked you to come to Ann Arbor this summer?”
Lara smiled. “Yes. How did you know?”
“She always liked having us kids out there for the summer.”
“Are you and Spencer her only grandchildren?” Lara asked.
“Yep. My Uncle Matt didn’t get married until he was forty. He and Marta never had kids. I’m not sure if they couldn’t or if they just decided not to. They’re both history professors and travel a lot,” I answered.
“I see,” Lara said. Then after a pause she asked, “Do you think I should go visit them?”
I felt a peculiar sense of envy at the thought of Lara spending a week or two at Grandma and Grandpa’s, doing all the things with them that I used to do. I knew once they met Lara, they would be crazy about her. That bothered me too. It was a weird feeling. Like I was proud of my little sister and I wanted my grandparents to meet her and like her, but I also didn’t want them to because it would mean sharing them with her. I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t know what was true and what was just jealousy.
“I guess that’s for you and Mom to decide,” I finally said. “But I always had a great time at their house.”
Both statements were true.
That weekend at Nicole’s Saturday brunch, she and Mom decided to throw a big Fourth of July party and family reunion at my parents’ house. It didn’t surprise me at all that Nicole would think of throwing a huge party with less than two weeks’ notice. She was always coming up with grandiose ideas on the spur of the moment. I was a little amazed Mom jumped on the wagon with her, though. Mom’s a planner. She likes everything to be perfect at her parties.
But then I realized Mom just wanted the family to meet Lara, especially the family members who really knew who Lara was, including both sets of grandparents, Matt and Marta, Karin and Kent, and my mom’s Aunt Elizabeth. She wanted to show her off.
The two of them fell into a crazed, party-planning-in-a-hurry mode. I felt a little left out and got up from the table to start the dishes. Olivia and Bennett disappeared into the TV room, and the men went out into Wes’s shop to see his new fishing rod. Lara started to help me, but I was grumpy and wanted to be alone. I told her to just relax, that I’d take care of the dishes. She hesitated and then stepped outside, unsure of where to go or what to do.
I rinsed a dish and looked out the window to see if she had decided to follow the men into the shed, which I thought would be rather pointless.
But she hadn’t.
She had been joined on the porch.
I watched as she and Seth strolled out to a bench under a cottonwood in the backyard and sat on it. Seth was talking; she was listening.
I turned back to the dishes and didn’t look out the window again after that.
26
The day of the big party dawned hot and sticky, but by afternoon the humidity had tapered off some, and a nice breeze had kicked in. It turned out to be a perfect day for an outdoor party. Mom and Nicole did pretty much all the planning for the big event, and I just went along with their ideas. They asked me to take care of the dessert because they wanted a decorated sheet cake, saying it was the perfect thing for me to do since I was “so artistic.”
Whatever.
It was my token responsibility so I wouldn’t feel left out. But I did what I was told. I made a cake to beat all cakes. It was a white cake layered with blueberry and strawberry filling and decorated with blue stars, silver stripes, and red roses for the kids to fight over.
My grandparents from Michigan—retired and free to do pretty much what they pleased—decided to drive out with my mother’s Aunt Elizabeth who had moved in with them the year Bennett was born. They allowed my Uncle Matt and Aunt Marta to drive them, which I was very glad about. I didn’t like the idea of my eighty-something grandparents driving out alone, though both were still mentally as sharp as tacks. They arrived on the third of July.
I knew Grandma Sophie, my mom’s mother, would fall in love with Lara the moment she saw her. I was right. Grandma was as bad as Olivia. She barely left Lara’s side the whole day. It was sickening and comical at the same time. The two of them, Olivia and Grandma, were all over Lara until Spencer and Natalie arrived with Noah, and then they took turns smothering first one and then the other.
My other grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa Holland, drove down from Red Wing with my Aunt Karin and Uncle Kent, arriving around two in the afternoon. My cousin Allison, her husband, Tim, and their two-year-old daughter, Kaitlin, followed them, bringing with them my cousin Jennifer and her fiancé, Jared.
Michael’s brother, Andrew, arrived from Minneapolis an hour late, as was customary for him, but bringing a date—a quiet girl named Tera, who did not seem to like family reunions very much. Wes, Nicole, and Seth arrived early that morning to set up tables and chairs and returned later wearing matching red, white, and blue tie-dyed T-shirts. So very Nicole.
Dad and Michael butchered a hog for the occasion and roasted the best parts over an open flame. The aroma of the roast pork brought out all the barn cats, who were quite undaunted by Bogart, who had tagged along for the party.
It was actually a nice get-together. The kids did great—no one got hurt or mad—and everyone seemed to have a great time. Lara initially appeared at ease, though I could sense having an extended family for the first time in her life was a bit much to absorb all at once.
Not long after the party got going, however, she watched most of it from behind the lens of her camera.
She took pictures of everyone and everything, as if making sense of her world through her art. I understood this about her—because it’s exactly the way I am too.
Throughout the day, I found myself wondering what people thought about Lara. For me, I had no trouble thinking of her as my half-sister. And I knew Grandma Sophie was dying to call Lara her granddaughter; maybe to her friends back in Michigan she already was calling her that. But I wasn’t sure what Grandma and Grandpa Holland thought of Lara, aside from believing her to be a nice, polite teenager who took incredible photographs. Lara was not Grandma Holland’s granddaughter, and Grandma Holland didn’t act like Lara was. My cousin Jennifer seemed to take a tremendous liking to Lara. After seeing Lara’s pictures, Jennifer asked her if she would take pictures at her upcoming August wedding. It appeared to me that Jennifer was making a fast friend in Lara. But not a fast cousin.
Again, I had no alone time with my brother. I had no idea what he really thought about Lara. Did he think of her as his little sister? I was both unnerved and delighted, if that makes any sense at all, to notice that almost everyone treated Lara like she was a foreign-exchange student my parents were hosting for the year.
All that day whenever Lara spoke to our mother, she called her Claire. I liked it and hated it at the same time. It drove me crazy that I couldn’t decide how I felt about it, or that perhaps I really did feel both ways.
When it got dark, Dad passed out sparklers, and we stood around the farmyard singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” at Olivia’s request.
July nights in Minnesota take their time in arriving, so by the time the sparklers ran out, it was close to ten o’clock. My kids were exhausted as was Kaitlin. Noah had long since fallen asleep in Grandpa Stuart’s lap.
Our Red Wing and Minneapolis relatives packed up their cars and their sleepy kids and headed for home. We would see them all in a few weeks’ time for Jennifer and Jared’s wedding.
There were a few things left to clean up in the yard, but Mom insisted what was left could be taken care of in the morning. Wes and Nicole began getting ready to leave and looked for Seth. He was nowhere in sight. Neither was Lara.
Nicole and Mom exchanged the same look I had seen before at the shop, and Nicole called Seth’s name. Mom went to see if Lara was in the house with my grandparents and Aunt Elizabeth. As Michael and I put our kids in our car, Seth and Lara appeared from behind the barn, walking slowly and looking like they hadn’t a care in the world. Lara stopped as they neared the open area where all the cars were and peered behind a couple of planks of wood leaning against the side of the barn. Seth stopped too.
Nicole gave Wes a look of exasperation. Mom stepped onto the porch and saw them too. Wes called out to his nephew.
“Seth, come on. Let’s go.”
I couldn’t hear what Seth said to Lara, but he said something, and she nodded. He started to walk away, turned and said something else to her, and she looked toward the barn doors. She nodded again.
Nobody said anything as Seth, Nicole, and Wes got into Wes’s car.
“Great party, Claire,” Nicole said, through the open car window. “I’m not opening until ten tomorrow, okay?”
“Fine by me,” Mom said. But she wasn’t looking at Nicole. She was looking at Lara who was slowly making her way toward the rest of us.
“We’d better go too,” Michael said to me. He thanked my parents, shouted a goodbye to Lara, and got in the driver’s side.
I called Bogart, who came bounding out of the machine shed, and let him into the back of the car with the kids.
“See you tomorrow,” I said to my parents, waving to Lara, who was still somewhat in the shadows.
She smiled and waved back.
Later that night, Michael asked me in the quiet darkness of our bedroom if I was okay with Lara being here in Blue Prairie.
I said something dumb like, “What do you mean?”
“You seem a little...edgy.”
No woman likes to be told she’s edgy. Even if it’s true.
“It’s like you’re apprehensive about her being here,” he continued.
“It’s just a big change for me, that’s all.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Then he said something that I could tell he had been wanting to say for days, probably since Lara arrived. He told me I was acting a little jealous. A little childish. I could handle being told I was acting jealous. That would make sense, as uncharitable as it was. I had always been the only daughter. Now the long-lost and dearly loved other daughter was back. Of course I might feel a little jealous.
But acting a little childish?
It was like being told to grow up, something no one had ever said to me. I was the take-charge firstborn who grew up too fast. I had never been thought of as immature. Michael didn’t exactly say he thought I was acting immature, but he may as well have. To me, it meant the same thing. And I could not recall any other time in my life when someone accused me of behaving like a child, not even when I was a child.
I honestly didn’t know what to say to him. My silence bothered him; I guess he thought I would defend myself or accuse him of something worse or at least get angry, but I didn’t do any of those things. I didn’t say it to him, but I suddenly felt like he had hit the nail right on the head. I didn’t know if I really was acting like a child, but I knew he had one thing right—I really did feel like one.
He began to apologize.
I told him not to worry about it.
But he kept saying he was sorry and asking me to forgive him, which I said I did, but I didn’t feel any forgiveness, because I didn’t feel any injury.
It was a while before he fell asleep. Until he did, I laid very still to make him think I had drifted off so he would give in and do the same. When his breathing became steady and slow, I inched my way out of our bed and tiptoed downstairs. Bogart wagged his tail as I stepped into the moonlit kitchen, and he followed me out onto the porch.
My beloved constellations greeted me.
The sky was shimmering with starlight, and the sheer splendor of its size amazed me once again. I sat down and leaned against a post. Bogart curled up beside me to wait out my contemplations.
As I sat there, it occurred to me that I was looking at the same July sky as when I first moved to Blue Prairie, when my losses were painfully fresh. I was a child then, only twelve. Everything I felt back then—about what happened to me, my family, and my sister, Lara—I buried deep within me while encircled by a night like this one. No wonder I felt like a child. I was exhuming dreams and desires I had buried when I was a child. Now I was in my late twenties, and my buried dreams were being unearthed all around me, without my consent, without my blessing, without my permission.
It didn’t matter that I was getting what I wanted all along— a relationship with my sister. It was the way it was happening that troubled me. It was all happening outside of my control— just like before, when I wanted to love Lara and no one would let me.
I began to pray to God that He would help me let go of the part of my past that still hurt and hang on to the part that loved Lara, but I kept remembering what I said on that day Lara was taken from my young arms.
I don’t want to see her anymore.
I wanted to erase the fact that I ever said it, ever thought it, ever wanted it. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to disregard the reality that I wanted to let her go, that I agreed with my mother that loving her was too hard, forgetting her was easier.
I don’t know how long I sat there under my stars, pleading with the One who made them. When I felt like I said all I could say, I rose to return to my bed, feeling no better.
As I took one last look at the heavens, I almost felt like God was whispering something to me, but when I stood completely still to listen, I realized it was only the wind in the elms.
27
My grandparents and Uncle Matt and Aunt Marta stayed two mor
e days and then left Sunday for the long drive back to Ann Arbor. After church, Mom invited Michael and the kids and me to join them for lunch before everyone left.
Grandma seemed particularly sad when it was time to go. Uncle Matt and my dad began loading the car as soon as the meal was over as almost everyone stepped outside for goodbyes. While taking Bennett inside to use the bathroom, I caught the tail end of a conversation Grandma was having with Mom about Lara.
“Just let her come for a week, Claire,” Grandma was saying. “That’s not such a long time.”
“I don’t know, Mom,” my mother said in return. “Maybe it’s too soon for her.”
“You mean maybe it’s too soon for you,” Grandma said, but not in an unkind way.
“Maybe it is,” Mom said. “Maybe it’s too soon for both of us.”
“But she wants to come,” Grandma said.
“She’s too kind to tell you otherwise,” Mom said next. “Who knows what she really wants. Lara would never tell anyone she doesn’t want to be with them.”
There was a pause.
“Just a week,” Grandma finally said. “She’s my granddaughter, Claire.”
I guess it wasn’t until that moment that I realized Grandma completed the trio of women who had loved Lara and let her go: my mother, my grandmother, and me. She probably had done what both my mother and I did with the affection we held for that little baby girl with the dark hair: pressed it into a tight space where no light would shine. But the walls of that tight space had been bulldozed for her just like they had been for Mom and me, and light was now pouring in on all sides.
“The wedding’s coming up,” my mom said rather absently.
“That’s not until the tenth of August,” Grandma said. “That’s more than a month away. She could come week after next, stay a week, and still be back in plenty of time.”
Bennett was finished using the toilet and was asking loudly if he could have another brownie. The voices in the kitchen became suddenly hushed.
I took my son back outside. Lara was pushing Olivia in the tire swing, and the adults were standing by the car, waiting for Mom and Grandma. They soon came out. Grandma was smiling from ear to ear. She headed straight for the tire swing.
