The Sunflower Forest

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 (#ulink_1f4d805d-ddb2-5331-86c9-ca563f06d681)

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.