Why the Sky Is Blue (19 page)

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 more 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.

“How does week after next sound?” Grandma said to Lara.

Lara looked over at my mother like any child would look to its mother for permission or advice. It was the unmistakable gesture of a daughter seeking a parent’s blessing.

This did not go unnoticed by Mom, either. She seemed to relax as Lara looked her way and waited. My mom smiled and nodded. Lara turned back to my grandmother.

“That sounds great,” she said.

“I’ll take care of making the airline reservation,” my grandmother said, giving Lara a hug goodbye. “We’ll have such a good time.”

“I am sure we will,” Lara said as they parted.

“I want to come, too, Gamma,” Olivia said.

“Well!” my grandmother said, “Wouldn’t that be fun!”

“Maybe next time, Livvy,” I interjected.

“I want to go this time!” she said, and I could sense a battle brewing.

“Let’s talk about it later and see what’s best,” I said.

“I’m coming with you!” Olivia said to Lara, looking up at her from the swing.

Mom came to my rescue.

“Olivia, can you get Aunt Elizabeth’s sweater for her? I left it on the kitchen counter.”

Olivia bounded off the swing to fetch the sweater as I gave Mom a look of gratitude that I knew she understood.

We said goodbye and watched the car drive away; then Michael and I ushered our own kids into our car to go home.

Lara stood there between my parents as we drove off, and I suddenly saw the irony of her being between my parents. I wondered what it was like in that house with just the three of them: the mother, the daughter, and the man who loves his wife.

On Monday, as another workweek began, I found myself itching to get away from the tedious routine of my job, even though it was work I loved. I brought Olivia and Bennett with me to play in the basement at the Table that morning. Michael was doing livestock judging in another town all that week, so the kids had to be with me or spend their days in daycare. That probably also colored my mood. One day was fine in the basement of the shop, but I knew they would balk at five days of it, and they didn’t particularly enjoy daycare in the summer. I wasn’t looking forward to the week.

Mom and Lara were already at the Table when we arrived. Mom was on the phone in the office, and Lara was making lattes behind the counter with Nicole and Trish. I sent the kids downstairs to play since it was my day to run the front rooms where we sold the books, my paintings, and a few other gift items.

It was one of those mornings where nothing went right for me as a mother. The kids were up and down the stairs, constantly needing my attention or my refereeing skills. By lunchtime I had a monstrous headache. I was swallowing two Advil when Lara came up to me.

“I’m off at noon every day this week,” she said. “I can take Olivia and Bennett home with me, and you can come get them when the shop closes.”

“That’s too much to ask of you,” I said, holding my head.

“You didn’t ask,” she said softly. “I offered. I want to do this. It will help you, it will be fun for me, and hopefully they’ll enjoy it too.”

I looked up at her, searching for some ulterior motive, which was ludicrous. Lara never seemed to do anything with a concealed purpose. And she was right, it would be a tremendous help to me.

“You sure?” I asked.

“We’ll have a great time,” she said. “I love your kids.”

Then she disappeared down the basement stairs.

When I drove up my parents’ driveway at four thirty, Olivia and Bennett were sitting in a plastic wading pool that I hadn’t seen since Spencer was a kid. I didn’t even know my parents still had it. They had spoons, measuring cups, and Cool Whip containers, and they were having a great time filling the cups and containers with water and splashing each other. Lara was at the side of the pool with my parents’ cell phone tucked under her ear, deep in conversation, as she filled the pool with more water. She must have stopped at my house to get the kids’ swimsuits.

I got out of my car to the sound of laughter.

“Mommy! Look! I can blow bubbles!” Olivia screwed up her eyes, stuck her face in the water, and blew air out of her nose. Then she lifted her face. “Lara said she can teach me how to swim!”

I looked over at Lara, who smiled sheepishly.

“Yes, Cleo, I will,” she was saying. “I miss you, too. Say hello to Ben for me. Bye.”

She threw the hose away from the pool onto the grass and stood up, pressing the off button on the phone as she stood.

“Cleo says hi,” she said.

“Does she really?” I said, probably sounding more cynical that I intended.

“Yes, she does,” Lara answered, meeting my gaze and slipping the phone into her pocket.

“Lara is a light guard!” Olivia announced. “She can teach me to swim!”

“I can blow!” Bennett said, putting his face in the water and blowing bubbles as well.

“You’re a lifeguard?” I said to Lara.

She nodded.

“I just finished the last level in March. I taught a preschool swimming class in April,” she said. “It was a lot of fun.”

“We want to go to the big pool,” Olivia said.

“We need to ask Mom first,” Lara said to Olivia.

My daughter looked up at me, hope shining on her wet face.

“We can probably do that,” I said.

“Can we go now?” Olivia said, hopping out of the wading pool.

“How about tomorrow?” Lara said, handing her a towel and looking at me.

“Sure, you can go tomorrow,” I said.

I got my kids dried off and changed into dry clothes and then helped them get into the car.

“The swimming thing was just an idea,” Lara said to me. “If you have made other arrangements for swimming lessons...”

“No, I haven’t,” I said, feeling strangely at ease and yet apprehensive about Lara teaching Olivia how to swim. “Maybe tomorrow I can leave a little early and take Bennett off your hands when you take her.”

“All right,” Lara said smiling.

On the short drive home Olivia held up one of her Barbie dolls and told me her name wasn’t Barbie anymore. It was Lara.

Lara took Olivia to the pool in town in the late afternoon on Tuesday and Thursday of that week, and the two of them spent more than an hour in the water both times. On Thursday I came to watch the last few minutes before the pool closed for the supper hour.

Olivia was completely relaxed in Lara’s care and didn’t seem the least bit afraid of being in the water. It was so unlike the year before when I couldn’t get Olivia anywhere near the pool. I was both amazed and irritated that Olivia could lavish such trust upon a teenage girl she had known for only a month.

I took Bennett outside to wait while the girls changed into dry clothes. We sat on a bench by a bunch of kids waiting for rides or for friends and siblings still inside. I was anxious to get home, and Lara and Olivia seemed to be taking forever. I kept looking at my watch like it would hurry them along. Finally they emerged.

I stood up as they approached us. I didn’t even bother to try to hide my impatience, but neither of them seemed to notice.

In fact, Lara’s attention was drawn to two nearby children fighting about who knows what. The older one, a boy, said something in Spanish to the other one, a younger girl. He was angry. He said something else and then laughed. Then he got on a bike and pedaled away. The little girl began to cry.

Lara walked over to her, knelt down, and said something to the little girl in perfect Spanish. I had forgotten she lived in Ecuador for twelve years.

I took French in high school, not Spanish, so I had no idea what she was saying. I heard Lara say “Mama,” and the little girl answered her.

Lara said something else to the little girl, then stood up and held out her hand. The little girl took it, and they began to walk toward the pool admission window.

“I’ll be right back,” she called to me.

I watched as Lara led the little girl to the office window. She explained something, and then the pool cashier handed Lara the handset of a phone. She talked into the phone for a few minutes, speaking Spanish the whole time. Then she handed the phone back, knelt down, and told the little girl something.

The two of them walked back out to where we stood.

“You guys can go on ahead,” she said. “I have my car here. I’m just going to wait until this little girl’s grandmother comes to get her.”

“What’s up?” I said.

“It seems her bicycle was stolen,” Lara said. “She’s not sure of the way home without her brother to show her the way. And he took off.”

“We can wait,” I said, hardly knowing why. Lara did have her own car. I was going home after this, and so was she. But we waited.

About ten minutes later an aging, gray sedan pulled into the parking lot, and an older woman stepped out of it.

“
Mi
abuela
,” the little girl said softly.

Lara and the child walked over to the car, and Lara chatted with the woman in Spanish for a few minutes, stroking the back of the little girl’s head the whole time. Then the little girl got into the car, and Lara waved as they drove away.

“What were you talking about?” I asked Lara when she walked back to where we waited.

“I told her I could call the police for her, that her granddaughter’s bike had been stolen,” Lara said. “But she said she has a nephew who speaks English who can call for her.”

I shook my head.

“Where are that little girl’s parents?” I said gruffly, making my way to where our cars were parked side by side.

“They’re in heaven,” Lara answered.

On Friday, my kids wanted to be at their own house while Lara watched them. So at noon, Lara took them home.

When I arrived later that afternoon, I was a little perturbed to see Seth’s car in the driveway alongside Lara’s.

Nobody was in the yard or the house. As I headed toward the barn I heard Olivia and Bennett’s voices.

The two of them were in the pen where Seth kept the lamb he was raising for the county fair. They were brushing it while the lamb ate. Seth and Lara were seated side by side on a hay bale.

“Hi, Mommy,” Olivia said. “We’re brushing Spock.”

“He’s eating,” Bennett chimed in.

“I wasn’t sure where everybody was,” I said. “Hey, Seth. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

He just looked at me.

“I always come on Friday afternoons to take care of Spock,” he said.

He had me there.

“I guess it is Friday, isn’t it?” I said.

“Yeah, it is,” he said, standing.

“I should probably go,” Lara said, as she rose also.