Flying in Place (12 page)

“I knew you’d be here,”
someone said, and I opened my eyes hoping it would be Ginny, whole and healthy again. Instead, it was a girl nearly as skinny as Ginny, with red ponytails and freckles like mine. If I tried, I could almost see through her. I’d known her name once. What was her name? I couldn’t remember.

“Everybody’s been looking for you. They’ve been paging you at school and nobody could find you and your mom’s having a fit. I knew you’d be here.”

Jane. That’s who it was. Jane was standing over me, scowling, her hands on her hips, sunlight leaking through her skin. I blinked, and she turned solid again. Now she’s going to beat me up, I thought, my body weighing me down like stone. She’s been waiting for her chance and she came out here to take it.

But she only scowled harder, and said, “Cripes, Emma, look at your face! You look like a lobster.”

“What?” When I tried to talk the skin around my mouth and nose felt like it was going to come off. I blinked, chasing a vague memory of lying down with the sun on my face…the sun. There wasn’t much sun now. The sky was becoming overcast, the same way it had at the dream-lake when Ginny—

I shivered. “What time is it?”

“About three-thirty. It’s going to rain. Look, come back to my house if you want to, and you can call your mom and pretend you’re at the library or something and go home when she calms down.”

“She won’t calm down,” I said. She’ll die. She’ll melt like Ginny melted. “Did you tell her I was here?”

“Huh? Of course not!
I
know when to keep my mouth shut, unlike some people I could mention. You owe me one, Emma.”

Ashamed and frightened, I bowed ray head. I knew I should thank her for sticking up for me in the boat, but I was too embarrassed to talk about it. “I know. Are you going to beat me up?”

“Huh? No! Who told you that?”

“Nobody. But you were mad at me, and you kept throwing spitballs—”

“I was trying to get your attention, idiot! Because you wouldn’t talk to me anymore. I figured your mom brainwashed you into hating me.”

“She tried,” I said. The sunburn made me feel feverish, and I kept seeing images of Ginny collapsing into a death’s-head. “I don’t know what to do. Whatever I do, she’ll be upset. She’s always upset.”

“Aw—look, Emma. She was really scared, your mom. You don’t exactly cut classes and disappear all the time, you know. So when she sees you she’ll probably yell, but mostly she’ll be relieved. Come on: whatever else you do, you’d better let my mother look at your face. We’ll sneak through the woods and go in the back door at my house.”

“But I’m not supposed to talk to any of you,” I said.

“Emma! What, she’s going to be mad that I found you and my mom gave you first aid? She’ll probably give us medals, unless she’s like ugly old Mr. Ewmet. And I don’t think she’s that dumb, even if she did hate my poem and make us give those stupid reports. Stop worrying so much. Come on. It’s starting to rain.”

We were both soaked by the time we got to her house. My legs felt like rubber, and my nose and forehead hurt so much that it was hard to keep from crying. Jane led me into her house—she had grabbed the sleeve of my sweatshirt, and tugged at it as if I were blind—and yelled, “Hey, we’re here! Mom?”

The Halloran household was in full riot mode: TV blaring, animals running underfoot, one of Jane’s sisters-in-law breastfeeding a baby at the kitchen table while Tom Jr. discussed dirt-bike racing with two of his brothers, someone whose back I didn’t recognize rooting through the refrigerator, saying plaintively, “Where’s the celery? I just want a piece of celery! Anybody seen any celery?”

“In the vegetable bin, dummy,” Jane told him. She parked me by a wall and let go of my arm. “Stand there and drip, okay? I’ll get you some dry clothing.’

“Nothing of yours will fit me.”

“We’ll find something. Don’t worry. Hey, guys, where’s Mom?”

“In her study,” the sister-in-law said. “With the door closed. She’s taking a sanity break and she’s
not
in a good mood. You’d better not bother her, unless it’s a medical emergency.”

“I need some sunburn lotion,” Jane said, and started down the hall to her mother’s study.

“Upstairs,” Tom Jr. called after her. “In the linen closet next to Mom and Dad’s bathroom—hey, Jane! Did you hear me? You don’t need to bother Mom for that, do you?”

She didn’t answer. Tom Jr. shrugged, looked at me, and whistled. “Well. Maybe she does, after all. That’s quite a job you did on yourself, Emma.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Someone’s toddler wandered up, handed me a stuffed dog whose floppy ears were sticky with spit, and wandered away again. “Do you want to sit down?” said the sister-in-law.

“No. I have to leave soon.”

“No, you don’t.” It was Myrna, with Jane following her. “You don’t have to leave at all.” She dumped a cat off one of the kitchen chairs and said, “Sit down while I put this lotion on your face, Emma.”

I’d heard her use that voice on her own kids. It didn’t permit disobedience. I sat down, cradling the toy. “I have to go home.”

“Why?” Myrna spread the cream on my face with firm, gentle strokes. “I think you should stay here. This is an awful burn, you know. You practically gave yourself a second degree,”

Mom will give me the third, I thought, and said, “My mother will be mad at me.”

Myrna pressed her lips into a thin line. “Yes, I’m sure she will. But she’ll also be glad that you’re safe. Why don’t you spend the night here? I’ll call her and take care of it.”

“It won’t do any good. She won’t talk to you. The only thing that will do any good is for me to go home.”

I meant it. As much as I hated Mom sometimes, I didn’t want the rest of her to die. And home was where I lived, the place that held whatever I had: my Nancy Drew books, my calendar from Jane and my stuffed horse from Aunt Diane, the afghan Mom had made for me, however sloppily. There wasn’t anything of mine in this house: just other people’s children, other people’s animals, other people’s food and conversations and favorite TV shows.

Still clutching the damp dog, I twisted away from Myrna’s hands and looked out the kitchen window. The rain had stopped, and somebody was on our porch. I peered at the figure, not daring to hope; when she turned towards the Hallorans’, my joy was so intense that for a moment I thought I was flying, even though I was still in my body.

“I’m going home now,” I said, handing the stuffed dog to Myrna. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine.”

“What?” She shook her head. “Emma, I really don’t think—”

“Don’t worry,” I said, and ran out the back door. Everything was going to be all right, because Ginny was sitting on our front steps.

It wasn’t Ginny,
of course, but a woman who looked the way Ginny probably would have looked if she’d lived to be my mother’s age: still tiny, still with the same flowing auburn hair, but with lines of laughter and weariness etched around the eyes and mouth. She was wearing jeans and old sneakers and had a black leather jacket draped over her shoulders, despite the heat, and her eyes were the blue of the lake on cloudless July afternoons. She smiled and stood up, extending her hand, and said, “You must be Pam and Stewart’s daughter. I’m Donna, your mother’s sister.”

“Hi,” I said, remembering Ginny’s first visit.
I know lots you don’t know
. She was real. She was a real ghost, not my imagination, not just something I’d dreamed up to amuse myself. She was a real dead person who’d come back to talk to me, a dead person who’d done cartwheels and melted into a skeleton. My own bones ran fluid for a moment, and I felt goosebumps goose-stepping up my arms. “I’m Emma.”

“I guess your mother didn’t tell you I was planning to visit.”

I shook my head. “Where are you from?”

“New York.”

Of course. Macy’s. “How long will you be here?”

“Just for the weekend,” Donna said. “I won’t be staying at the house, though. I got a room at the Howard Johnson’s on the highway. I don’t think your mother is going to be happy to see me.”

I swallowed. “Are you the person she was yelling at on the phone last night?”

“Bingo,” Donna answered drily. “Hello, Pam.”

I turned around to find my mother standing behind me, glaring. I hadn’t even heard her car pull into the driveway. “Well,” she said tightly, “I should have known she’d be with you. Emma, what happened to your face?”

“I got sunburned,” I said. “I went to the lake and fell asleep. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you wet? Don’t tell me you went swimming in all that clothing?”

“I got caught in the rain coming home. I’m sorry.”

“I was worried sick about you! Don’t do that to me again!”

“I’m sorry, Mom.” I bent my head so she wouldn’t see how hard I was trying not to cry. How sick had she been? As sick as Ginny?

“I even called your father at the hospital—interrupted him during rounds! So he could come home and help me look for you! I interrupted him at work! Do you understand that?”

“Pam, she’s here now,” Donna said. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not, but Emma and I will discuss this later. Donna, I want you to leave. I told you not to come here—”

“Yes, you did. Repeatedly. But I need to talk to you, and I can’t do it on the phone. I won’t stay long, I promise. May I please come in?”

“No! You may not come in! I don’t want you here! You haven’t changed a bit—”

“Nonsense. It’s been twelve years, Pam, I’ve changed more than you’ll ever know.”

“You’re still a pushy phony! Barging in where you aren’t wanted, with your teenage clothing and your contact lenses and your fake dyed hair—it was never that exact shade of red before, was it?”

“No,” Donna said, raising an eyebrow. “It wasn’t. Cheap shot, big sister.” She dug her fingers into her hair as if she were going to scratch her scalp, and instead tugged until the entire mane came away in her hand. Underneath, her skull was covered with thin fuzz, like the down on a duckling.

My mother stared. “What did you expect?” Donna said. “I’ve just had a year of chemotherapy.”

“What?”

“Che-mo-ther-a-py. Our new vocabulary word for today. It means—”

“I know what it means! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, hell.” Donna started pacing on the porch. “I did. I did tell you. I should have expected this. I should have known.”

“Expected what? Told me when?” My mother was using her grammar-drill voice.

“Dammit all to hell, Pam! I sent you a ten-page letter last March. Didn’t you read it?”

“I never got any letter. Stop cursing in front of my daughter and tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Shit!” Donna said, and pulled her wig back on. “Excuse me, Emma.”

“S’okay,” I said. Like Ginny, this woman was interesting, even if she was spooky. “You do that a lot? Pull your hair off to freak people out?”

She grinned at me. “Not often, but it’s effective.”

“Should have known
what?
” said my mother.

The grin turned into a scowl. “That not even you would have been that cold on the phone if you’d read my letter.”

“What letter? I never got any letter! What are you talking about?” Mom’s voice had risen an octave, and I wondered if the Hallorans were gathered at their kitchen window watching this scene the way we’d watched Tom’s argument with Mr. Ewmet.

“I’m talking about Revisionist History 101, subtitled Life as Fiction, Or, Here We Go Again. Pam, Stewart assured me that you had gotten the letter.”

“You talked to him?” Mom said. She sounded like the breaking strings on a violin. “You’ve been talking to him? When? How? You promised—”

“Jesus, Pam! I didn’t
want
to talk to him! I wanted to talk to you. He never gave you the message, did he?”

“He knows how I feel about you.”

Donna stopped pacing, crossed her arms, and raised her eyebrows. “Well. In that case, I should think he’d have told you I had cancer just to make you happy.”

“Donna! How can you say that?”

Pam!” Donna said, and shook her head. “My God, but you two are a pair. Look, I really think we’d better discuss this inside.”

“I’m sure you’re mistaken,”
Mom said. She stood at the kitchen sink, trying to mix some frozen orange juice so we’d have something cold to drink, but her hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t get the top off the can.

“Do you want me to do that?” Donna asked.

“No! I want you to tell me what this is all about!”

“I already told you. When you hadn’t answered the letter in a few weeks, I called to see if you’d gotten it. Stewart answered the phone and assured me that you had; you were devastated, he told me, and would be in touch as soon as you’d come to grips with my illness. Those were his exact words. I remember them precisely, because at the time I was puking my guts up and losing clumps of hair every time I turned around, and I remember thinking that it was a hell of a time for
you
to be devastated.”

“You must be mistaken,” Mom said. “I didn’t get the letter, and Stewart wouldn’t have—”

“Goddamn it, Pam! It all comes down to the same old thing! Either I’m lying or he is. You can’t believe both of us, and that means I don’t stand a chance, doesn’t it?”

A car door slammed, followed by footsteps on the porch. “Here he is,” Mom said, looking infinitely relieved. “I’m sure there’s some rational explanation for all this.”

“Here I am,” my father said when he came in. He was wearing crisp khakis and a short-sleeved polo shirt, and looked as if he’d just bathed. “Oh—you found her. Good. Emma, you shouldn’t—oh. Hello, Donna.”

“Stewart,” Donna said. “Did I or did I not have a telephone conversation with you last March about a certain letter I sent to Pam?”

“I beg your pardon? Emma, sweetheart, where did you get that sunburn?”

“At the lake,” I said.

“Don’t change the subject,” said Donna. “Last March, Stewart. The letter I sent Pam telling her I had cancer? Remember that one?”

“Oh, Donna.” My father’s voice assumed the grave concern he always used when he was speaking to patients with fatal illnesses. “I’m very sorry.”

“I know. That’s what you said during the phone conversation too,”

“You must be mistaken. We never got any letter and I never spoke to you.”

“There,” Mom said, “Didn’t I tell you?”

“You told me she was at a PTA meeting,” Donna said, as if explaining basic plumbing to an extremely small child. “You said she’d call me when she came to grips—”

“I don’t belong to the PTA,” Mom said triumphantly. “You must have imagined the entire thing.”

My father frowned. “Maybe you dreamed it. Chemotherapy can give people very vivid dreams.”

“Balls, Stewart! It showed up plainly enough on my phone bill the next month. We talked for half an hour. You made me describe the entire treatment regimen, right down to the gauge of the needles they were putting in my arms and the color and consistency of my bowel movements. If we
didn’t
have that conversation, how did you know I was having chemo then?”

“Most cancer patients have chemo,” my father said calmly. “It gives many of them vivid dreams. Donna, I’m sorry you’ve been ill. I’m sorry we didn’t know until now. What can we do to help you?”

“You can start by telling the truth.”

“But I am telling the truth. Do you think I censor my wife’s letters? She obviously got the one you sent a few weeks ago telling us you planned to come here—”

“Yes, well, maybe she got to the mail first that day.”

“Donna!” said Mom.

“Pam,” said Donna. “Listen to me, please. I didn’t come fifteen hundred miles in a wig to watch your husband amputating reality. Stewart is lying. The same way he lied—”

“Donna, I won’t have you saying these things in front of my daughter!”

“Somehow I doubt you say much in front of your daughter. Emma, tell me something: did you know I existed until this afternoon?”

“Yes,” I said. Mom and my father glanced at each other over Donna’s head; they looked as surprised as Donna did.

“Really? What did your parents tell you about me?”

“Nothing. Mom, was that Aunt Donna’s letter you were reading when I came home from Jane’s house a few weeks ago?”

“What? When, sweetheart?”

“When I fell and skinned my knee. The night Mr. Halloran had the fight with Tad’s father. I came home from Jane’s house and you were reading something at the dining room table.”
You’ve been brooding about this since last night
, my father had said, and then he’d burned the letter. Come on, Mom. Think. If he burned one letter he could destroy another.

“Yes,” Mom said, but she was a shade paler than she’d been before. “Exactly, You see, we got that letter, Donna.”

My father gave me an unreadable glance and said, “Maybe you should tell us what the first one said.” He sat down at the kitchen table, trying to look casual, but as he passed me I caught an acrid tang of sweat. I’d never smelled sweat on him before, not even during the heaviest of the breathing. He was scared of Donna. I hadn’t thought he was scared of anybody.

“What kind of cancer is it?” Mom said, and stopped, and took a breath. “How long—”

“Cervical,” Donna said impatiently, waving a hand as if to dismiss a cloud of gnats. “Bad odds, the doctors said, but I’ve beaten them so far, and I have every intention of living out my biblical threescore and ten. But the treatment isn’t fun. It makes you do a lot of thinking, when you aren’t sick as a dog. It made me realize that as soon as I was well enough I needed to see you again, Pam, whether you wanted to talk to me or not.”

Mom’s face tightened. “There are some things we can’t talk about. You know that. I can never forget what happened, but I’m willing to forgive you if you’ll apologize, just once, for what you did—”

“Pam, I’m sorrier than I can tell you about the whole bloody mess, but I didn’t
do
anything. And if the only way you can make peace with yourself is to believe that I’m a monster, I might as well turn around and go home.”

Mom made a fluttering, helpless gesture with her hands. “Under the circumstances,” said my father, “it would be better if you didn’t stay here.”

“I have a hotel room,” Donna said with a sigh. “I also have a request. You didn’t let me attend the funeral. I’d like to visit Ginny’s grave now, if I may.”

Mom had started shaking in earnest, hugging herself. My father got up and stood next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Donna, we can’t stop you. You can go to the cemetery and they’ll tell you where she is—”

“No,” Mom said. “I don’t want her going there by herself.”

“Oh, Pam! What do you think I’m going to do? Dig up her body and take it back to New York with me?”

“I don’t want you going there alone! We’ll go with you! We’ll all go! I need to do some gardening there anyway. I was going to go tomorrow. We can go now.”

“It might rain again,” I said, trying to think clearly through my confusion. Ginny had appeared the first time I bled, right after Mom got the letter from Donna—probably the very next morning.
You’ve been brooding about this since last night
, my father had said, and Ginny had come back to tell me something about Donna. Was Donna my mother’s other tragedy? Why hadn’t they let her go to the funeral?”

“We’ll bring umbrellas,” my father said tightly. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him so tense. “Pam, are you sure this is wise?”

“Please, Stewart. Let’s just go and get it over with. We can drive Donna back to the hotel afterwards,”

“All right,” said my father. “Donna, I really wish—”

“I’m sure you do,” Donna said. She suddenly looked exhausted. “I’m sure we all wish a lot of things.”

“Shall we go?” said my mother. “Emma, you’d better change into dry clothing first. Hurry up.”

I shared the back seat
with Donna while my parents talked in the front, “I’m sorry I called you at the hospital,” my mother said. “I thought—”

“Don’t worry about it, Pam. You needed me at home, and things were slow at the hospital anyway. My most interesting case was an elderly man who thought hernias were large dogs that lived in Africa.”

No one laughed. From my seat behind my father, I could see Mom’s white-knuckled hands clenched in her lap, quivering. They looked very much like Ginny’s hands.

“So,” I said to Donna, “what’s New York like? There must be a lot of interesting stuff there.”

Donna shook her head and touched my wrist once, lightly. When she spoke, her voice was too carefully matter-of-fact, completely devoid of the sarcasm she’d used back at the house. “It’s my home and I love it, Emma, but it’s not for everyone. It’s very different from Wisconsin.”

“She means it’s crowded and dirty,” my mother said tightly. “And dangerous.”

Donna made a face. “Well, sometimes it is, yes.”

“Full of runaway children,” Mom said.

My father cleared his throat. “Pam—”

“Full of little whores. Full of big ones, too.”

“I think,” said my father, “that we should change the subject.”

Next to me, Donna took a deep breath. Her eyes were closed, and I realized that she was doing relaxation exercises like the ones Myrna had taught me for cramps. After a few seconds she opened her eyes again and said calmly, “Thank you for coming to the cemetery with me, Pam. I know this is hard for you.”

“It was time for me to go there anyway, I go at least once a month. I have to. The groundskeepers just don’t keep up with anything. The plot would be overgrown with crabgrass if I didn’t stay on top of it.”

“She does a wonderful job,” my father said. “I’ve never claimed to be a gardener, and Pamela’s brilliant at it. ‘Flowers bloom when she walks by.’ There’s some poem like that, isn’t there? All that pruning and weeding and fertilizing in the spring and summer, not to mention watering when we haven’t gotten enough rain, and then in the fall all those leaves to rake away, and in the winter she plants bulbs and puts down grass seed. It’s really quite a job, that little garden. Amazing how many hours it takes just keeping a tiny patch of soil so fertile. I’d never have the patience for it.”

“Ginny loved flowers,” my mother said. Her voice sounded raw, as if she were about to start crying. “She disappeared in the dead of winter, just the worst time of year for a journey, and such a long journey. The least I can do is make sure she has flowers now.”

My heart sank. It was always a bad sign when Mom started speaking in quotations, and these weren’t even pretty ones. My father sighed. “Okay. I give up, Pam. I can’t place it. I’d guess Browning if I had to, but I’m sure I’m wrong.”

“Wrong century,” Donna said. “Eliot, by way of Auden. Tell me about the flowers, Pam.”

My mother let out a strangled laugh. “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. I would give you some violets, but they withered all—”

“Daffodils,” my father said quietly. “You planted daffodils, Pamela, remember? Like Wordsworth’s daffodils. And there are—what are those blue things that are blooming now? You know I always forget the names.”

“Irises,” my mother said, in something more like her normal voice. “They’re irises. I’m sorry. Look—here we are already.”

We drove through the iron cemetery gates and along the winding road I’d come to hate during so many earlier visits. Ginny’s plot stood in the shade of an old maple tree, promising at least some relief from the stifling heat. As I moved into the darkness cast by the leaves, I realized for the first time that whatever was in Ginny’s coffin after twelve years bore a much closer resemblance to the skeletal apparition I’d seen today than to the charming child whose photographs hung all over the house.

“It’s a lovely stone,” Donna said. “You chose well.”

My mother nodded. “We wanted something simple.”

I’d always wondered why Mom hadn’t insisted on a mausoleum, or at least a wrought-iron bench fit for swooning. The restraint embodied in Ginny’s tombstone seemed unlike her. But for whatever reason, there it was: a simple gray granite slab bearing the inscription, “Beloved Daughter Virginia Ann Gray: 1952–1964. May she rest in abiding peace.”

Abiding peace. My visits with Ginny, once such a source of solace, had become less and less peaceful. The lake was peaceful—that perfect, invented place—but I wasn’t supposed to go there anymore.
You’re trapping both of us here
. What difference did it make, though? Wasn’t the world a trap, too?