Broken Flower

  She couldn't keep the scandal out of the newspapers or off television either. It seemed Mama was right, opening closets and drawers would release the brown moths and disgrace would generate so much gossip, the moths would circle the mansion for a long time.

  It had a very bad effect on Grandmother Emma's social life. Her friends started to avoid her, decline her invitations, and not invite her to their affairs, dinners, and teas. I began to realize that she was drifting into a world cloaked in as much loneliness as mine.

  Daddy was still in the physical therapy hospital and Mama was still in a vegetative state. Finally. Grandmother took me to visit them both. Daddy was almost as quiet as Mama was. He had learned how to use his wheelchair and was being taught how to do more and more things for himself, but Grandmother Emma said he was a reluctant learner and so it was taking longer and longer to get him released to go home.

  When he learned about Ian and what had happened, he said he wasn't surprised. "I always knew that kid was weird," he said, as if he were talking about a neighbor's child and not his own. He didn't seem sorry or sad for Ian at all. He was too involved in his own misery and went right to complaint after complaint until Grandmother Emma threw up her hands and told him if he didn't snap out of it, she would stop visiting him.

  All the while she was overseeing the

  supermarket, and then I learned one afternoon that she had managed to sell it to a supermarket chain, and in her words, "Get that albatross off my back."

  Daddy had no business at all now. I thought. I even said it, and Grandmother Emma said, "Why would he need one? He couldn't run it properly when he was healthy."

  Anticipating that he would come home soon, she had the bedroom and bathroom that he would use redone to accommodate a person in a wheelchair. She had a special bed put in as well. Before the summer ended, she hired a fall-time nurse and made arrangements for a therapist to work with Daddy at our home. She said neither she nor Nancy was equipped to deal with such a situation and they would need all the help they could muster.

  It's difficult enough when a normal person suffers such a catastrophe, but a spoiled person such as your father makes it nearly impossible," she told me.

  I wondered if she ever felt sorry for him at all. I still never saw her cry about him or speak about him with a tone of pity. If she spoke about him at all, it was usually to complain about his attitude.

  I found that she talked to me a great deal more. I was permitted to be with her more often in the living room or she would linger at dinner and she would sit outside and watch me either swim or just play croquet. She took me to Dr. Dell'Acqua for a checkup and we were both very happy to hear that the medicine was working. I had not had another period and she thought my growth spurt was in check. Grandmother took me shopping twice for more clothing, new shoes, and even, to my surprise, to buy a computer game I could hook into the television set.

  There was just one thing she was adamant about not doing with me, and that was visiting Ian. She was quite clear and firm about it, so that I was afraid to ask.

  "Isn't he afraid?" I did ask.

  "Hardly." she said. "The truth is. I'm sure the caretakers are more afraid of him than he is of them."

  I was never quite clear about those caretakers or where Ian was. However. I began to pick up bits and pieces from conversations I overheard Grandmother Emma have with Mr. Ganz and other people, some very important people. Despite the fact that she had lost and was losing the friendship of many of her rich and once powerful friends, she was still Emma March and we were still one of the most prominent families in Bethlehem.

  Because of Ian's age, he was considered a juvenile offender, but Grandmother Emma was able to get the court, the district attorney, and everyone else involved to agree that Ian need psychological help more than any form of punishment. He was sent to an institution for the juvenile mentally ill and it was unclear to me if he would be there for a long time and then go to a real prison or be released to come home someday. Grandmother Emma never wanted to discuss it with me. She wanted to shoo it all off as she would the moths.

  I never knew what Miss Harper had done with Ian's things. Grandmother Emma had everything left taken out as well, all his clothes and shoes especially. His room was closed up the way Daddy's used to be, with Nancy cleaning it occasionally. I hoped she was doing so for his eventual return.

  Grandmother Emma asked me if I wanted to return to my room now or remain where I was. I decided I would be quite lonely on that side of the mansion all by myself, so I told her I would stay in Daddy's old bedroom. She seemed very pleased by my decision. She told me my old room would be the nurse's room when she arrived.

  Everything that had belonged to Miss Harper was returned to her mother, of course, and for the time being. Daddy and Mama's old bedroom was closed down as well.

  "The house is in retreat," Grandmother Emma muttered one afternoon when she thought about all this. She became very quiet and very sad about it.

  I was actually finding myself feeling sorry for her almost as much as I was for Mama and Daddy. Ian, and myself. She wasn't moving as quickly as she used to. Her steps were softer in the hallway. She spent less time in her office and rarely left the mansion. Her business manager and her attorney came more often to her than she went to them, and there were many nights when I took dinner alone and learned she was having hers in her room. The loneliness was beginning to slow me down, too. I lost interest in all my toys and games and I didn't even watch television that much.

  Ironically. I spent more time reading the textbooks Miss Harper had left than reading or doing anything else. Ian had thought it was a good idea for me to do it and I felt closer to him by doing what he approved. I looked forward to the day we would see each other again and I could tell him how much I had learned. He could ask me questions and I would answer them so well he would be impressed.

  When I did go with Grandmother Emma to see Mama. I sat and told her about the books, too. Mrs. Feinberg remembered me, of course. She and Grandmother Emma went off to talk. I was sure it was all about Ian. Later, Mrs. Feinberg was even nicer to me. She told me to keep talking to Mama.

  I didn't tell Mama about Ian. I imagined she was wondering where he was, but when he had visited her, he didn't really talk to her much anyway. I thought if she knew about him and what had happened, she would become so sad, she would never wake up. Grandmother Emma thought I was right.

  "That was very smart of you, Jordan. You are growing wiser. I am sure you will be a fine young woman," she said.

  Hearing such compliments from her surprised and delighted me. I couldn't wait to tell Ian about it. He might not care or think as highly of it as I did, but I had to tell someone. I did tell Daddy and he looked at me strangely, as if he thought it was odd I should care what his mother thought of me.

  "You know," he said, leaning toward me while he sat in his wheelchair, "I can't watch you when you go swimming anymore. If something happened to you. I couldn't do a damn thing about it.'

  He just blurted that out and I hadn't even talked about my going swimming at all.

  "I'm not sure they'll even let you ride with me in a car, once I get one of those specially made cars for cripples like me," he added.

  "She has no idea what you're talking about, Christopher. What point is there in your unloading your self-pity on a child anyway?" Grandmother Emma told him.

  "Right, thanks for straightening me out. Mother," he said, and turned his chair' around to stare out the window.

  "Don't let your father depress you,"

  Grandmother Emma told me afterward. "All that has happened to him is his fault. He has no one to blame but himself."

  "Mama, too?" I asked.

  She looked like she wasn't going to answer, and then she said, "The two of them can blame only themselves."

  Why was that? I wondered. Mama hadn't been driving. Why would she be at fault at all? I didn't ask Grandmother to explain.

  Days continued to tick by so slo
wly for all of us that even Nancy remarked it seemed as if there were thirty hours in these days and not twenty-four. Finally, at the end of the first week in August. Daddy came home. Grandmother Emma purchased a special van for Felix to use to drive Daddy around. It had a lift that Daddy could wheel onto and when it was raised, wheel into the van. He didn't even have to leave his wheelchair if he didn't want to. She then had Mac and some of his workers build a special ramp for Daddy to use to get in and out of the house. That was as far as she would go to accommodate him and spoil what she called the classic look of the March Mansion.

  I was playing outside, really imitating Ian and pretending to look for unique bugs and weeds, when Daddy was driven up in the van. I hurried to the front to watch the door open and the lift lower him in his wheelchair,

  It was a beautiful August day, not too humid, and there was a very nice breeze. The sky seemed to be flawing from one horizon to the other in a constant light, almost Wedo-wood blue with puffs of clouds dabbed randomly about it, some looking like they weren't moving at all. I imagined the whole world, birds included, was holding its breath as Daddy's wheels rolled off the lift and onto our driveway.

  He was dressed in one of his bright blue shortsleeve shirts and a pair of dark blue pants with his favorite boat shoes. He looked like he had just had his hair styled, too, and wore one of his pairs of designer sunglasses. Despite his unhappiness. I could set his pleasure in his homecoming. Felix came around and took the handles of his wheelchair to push him toward the ramp.

  Mac and his workers were there to greet him.

  Daddy's new nurse, Mrs. Clancy, had just arrived at the house that morning and, as Grandmother had told me, taken my original bedroom. She had short dull brown hair, brown eyes, and very thin lips. Although she was slim. I saw she had real small but ropelike muscles in her forearms. I didn't think Daddy would like her because she wasn't pretty, and I wondered if Grandmother Emma had hired her knowing he wouldn't.

  Nancy came to the front entrance, too, and stood beside Grandmother Emma. They watched Mrs. Clancy quickly go down to greet Daddy. She had been introduced to him in the hospital and had met with his nurses and doctor there to get information about his condition.

  He nodded at everyone, but he didn't say anything. I went to him and he started to reach for me and then stopped and shook his head.

  "Just get me inside," he told Felix. He gestured at him and cried, "Meet CPS, Crippled Person Service."

  No one laughed. Grandmother Emma shook her head and Nancy backed into the house.

  "I'll take it," Mrs. Clancy told Felix, and practically pushed his hands off the wheelchair. "You want to start doing this yourself, Mr. March," she told Daddy as she brought the chair to the ramp. "It will be hard at first, but it gets easier as your upper body develops even more."

  "Whoop-de-do," Daddy said. "I have something to look forward to after all."

  I followed them up the ramp and into the house. I didn't think Daddy knew until that moment that he would be sleeping in the downstairs guest bedroom. He complained about that immediately because it had no view and was far smaller than either bedroom he had used upstairs.

  "I've already had everything done to it to accommodate you, Christopher," Grandmother Emma told him, "and how would you manage the stairway?"

  "You could have had a lift built, Mother.' "And ruin that classic balustrade?"

  "Well, Mrs. Clancy," Daddy said, looking back at her, "you don't have to wonder what my mother's priorities are here. House first, son second, maybe third or fourth. Don't mess anything up," he warned.

  "We'll do just fine," Mrs. Clancy said, and continued to push him along.

  "Are you hungry, Mr. March?" Nancy asked, stepping out of the kitchen. "I've got your favorite meat loaf sandwich ready."

  "Just serve the crow my mother prepared," Daddy said, and Mrs. Clancy pushed him forward to his new sleeping quarters.

  I looked at Grandmother Emma to set if she thought I should follow or what. She just shook her head.

  "You can go back outside, Jordan," she told me. "It's too nice a day to waste in here under these clouds of self-pity."

  I lowered my head and walked out,

  disappointed. I knew Nancy had prepared Daddy's favorite cake, a flourless chocolate cake, for his dinner and I was hoping we would have a real "welcome home" celebration. I had fantasized every night for the last week about his being so happy to be home and to see me, he would let me wheel him about the grounds and we would talk about everything, especially Mama. He would fill me with confidence about her homecoming, too, and then we would talk about how we could bring Ian back so we would all be a family again.

  Instead. Daddy was in his room, the room he hated, and I was outside, alone, sitting on one of the lawn benches, just staring at the house. I looked up at a flock of sparrows and recalled my conversation with Ian about the birds. Soon, their instinct would tell them to go south. I thought. Ian and I once saw a flock of geese going south.

  The birds are luckier than we are. I decided. They know when to come and go.

  I just sat there, not knowing whether I should go in or out of my house, even if I should try to talk to my own father. Why couldn't something just click inside me and take me through my whole life, helping me make all the right decisions and never any mistakes?

  Ian would think that was silly. I was sure. Maybe. I would write him a letter. I thought. Yes, that would be wonderful. I could write him and he would write back to me. I would ask Grandmother Emma to send the letters to him. She shouldn't be upset about that. I could tell him all that was going on here and all about Mama. Otherwise, how would he ever know any of it? I couldn't wait to tell him about all I had already learned from Miss Harper's schoolbooks. That's it, I thought put a math problem at the end of each letter and show him how I solved it.

  The idea gave me new energy and I went back inside and up to my room to begin.

  That evening we had our first dinner with Daddy at the dining room table. The wheelchair fit well and he almost looked like his old self sitting at his place. He seemed a bit happier and enjoyed the way Nancy fawned over and around him, especially when she brought out the cake. He started to ask questions about everything, the supermarket. Mama, and finally Ian.

  Grandmother Emma wouldn't discuss Ian in front of me. She made that clear. He didn't seem to care. He didn't care when she told him about the sale of the supermarket either. All he cared about now was watching sports on television. Mrs. Clancy let me push him in his wheelchair back to his room after dinner. He had his own television set there and didn't care to go to the living room.

  "I wouldn't want to roll over one of my mother's precious Persian rugs," he said.

  The chair and Daddy felt heavier than I had anticipated, but I kept it straight and didn't bang into any walls on the way to his room. When we got there, he told me where to place him and then I turned on the television set for him. He watched me as I moved about the room and then, he finally reached out to touch my hand and hold me for a moment.

  "Thanks. Jordan," he said. "I know this isn't going to be any picnic for you either with your mother the way she is and your brother gone. I'm the child here now." He turned angry again and then he pulled me closer. I thought he wanted to kiss me, but he wanted to whisper something to me that neither Mrs. Clancy nor Grandmother Emma could hear. "You don't need this," he said. "Be smart. Stop taking your medicine and grow up fast and get the hell out."

  His words were so shocking. I couldn't speak or move. I thought he would smile and laugh and say he was just kidding as he often did when he said something Mama thought was silly or bad, but he didn't smile. He stared hard at me and then he let go of my hand and flipped the channel selector until he found something he wanted to watch.

  After that I could be there with him or not. It didn't make any difference.

  I hurried out and up to my room, my heart thumping. Stop my medicine? Grow up fast? Where would I go? What did he mean? Mama is going t
o be angry he said all that. I thought. I probably should never tell her nor ever tell Grandmother Emma.

  But I would tell Ian. I'd put it in my letter because, as always. he would know exactly what Daddy meant and what I should do and think about it. I sat at my desk and began.

  .

  Dear Ian,

  I don't know where you are or when you are coming home. When?

  I am writing you a letter to tell you Daddy came home today. He is in a wheelchair and Grandmother Emma has a nurse to help him. She is sleeping in my old bedroom. Her name is Mrs. Clancy. She is not pretty and I noticed she had little hairs over her upper lip like a mustache.

  I have gone to see Mama twice. She is not any different because she did not say anything. She still moves her hand the way she did. I talked to her for a long time. I did not tell her that you were away.

  I wish you were here to talk to me about the birds and everything. I wanted to tell you that Daddy just said a strange thing to me and I need you to tell me why.

  He said I should stop taking my medicine. He said I should grow up fast and get out.

  What did he mean? Where would I go?

  Can you tell me when you are coming home? I have been looking for your things, but I haven't found them yet. I keep looking.

  Jordan

  .

  I folded the letter and put it in an envelope. Then I wrote Ian March on the front of it and sealed it. I didn't have any stamps, but I knew Grandmother Emma had them in her office and she would have to write the address on the letter anyway.

  She was downstairs in her office, in fact, when I was finished. I knocked on her door even though it was open because she told me to always do that. She wasn't at her desk. She was in the big leather chair and had her head back. I realized she had fallen asleep so I tiptoed to her desk and put the envelope on it, but as I started out, she opened her eyes.