“My apologies as well, Sheriff.” Dad aired his collar. “I think it’s safe to say Sal is wanted, and he can stay here until something more permanent can be decided upon. And again, I’m so sorry for what has been spoken here.”
You could feel the sheriff’s anger take over the room. Almost like a whooshing past your face. A sort of entity that felt like it could have peeled the wallpaper off the walls and broken the crystal.
“I best be goin’.” The sheriff straightened as if he were being asked to show how tall he really was. Then he quietly nodded at all of us, very slowly at Mom, before leaving with his hands clenched at his sides, only the pinkies left out like small horns.
“Well, that was very sudden, Stella.” Dad checked his tie once more.
“I’m not used to it bein’ so hot. None of us are. We’re not prepared for a heat like this. I can just imagine the things that’ll be had from here on out. We best get cool, and soon. We’re all in a volcano of trouble. I feel it.”
“Calm down now, Stella.” Dad cleared his throat. “I think I’ll go … I think I’ll take a walk to the cemetery. I’d like to talk this whole situation over with Mother.” He turned to Sal to clarify. “My mother has passed. But she always had a way of clarifying the distinctly strange. I think speaking with her has the great possibility of enlightening me on this matter we have before us.”
“The cemetery is a million miles away.” Mom wrung her hands. “You’ll be gone forever. I was plannin’ on makin’ lentil stew. You have to boil lentils, Autopsy. You know how I feel about boilin’ things, all them bubbles poppin’ up. It’s like rain in a pot. And now we won’t be havin’ lentil stew, ’cause you won’t be here to boil it. You have to stay.”
Dad tugged on the tail of her hair until she smiled.
“I won’t be gone long.” His long arms wrapping around her was like being somewhere in a wheat field.
“You’ll be gone forever. Once you start talkin’ to your mother, I become a widow.” She broke the embrace and bit her fingernail hard enough to chip the polish. She frowned at this and more as she said to him, “If you must go, then go, but before you do, bring me my canna for the day.”
Breathed envied Mom’s cannas, which were tall, tropical flowers done up in colors with familiar names like red, orange, yellow, peach. Yet they weren’t familiar at all. They were the colors of the other side of a journey to another world.
The job of caring for the cannas was left to me, Dad, and Grand because even though the cannas were just a few feet from the house, Mom never risked the rain. She gardened from the back porch, using us as her hands. We were her reach in the outside world. She told us when the cannas were dry and needed more water. We’d get the hose and give them a drink while she followed through the motions with us, feigning to pull the hose across the yard and then to stand still with her hand up and moving side to side like she was spraying something more than air.
She examined their growth through binoculars, looking out for insects or other damage. I remember the year the leaf rollers came, a great pest that rolls the leaves of the cannas in order to pupate inside them. Mom instructed me from the back porch to cut off the infected leaves. She held a pair of scissors and cut with me. Then she handed me flour to sprinkle on the remaining leaves as prevention, keeping some flour for herself, which she sprinkled all over the back porch.
Every day she asked for a canna. I suppose to feel the petals, the leaves, the roots, allowing her to feel somewhat responsible for them.
“What variety today, my love?” Dad pulled her back to him without much difficulty.
“Oh, I’d say Alaska.” She tilted her face to his and softly wiped the sweat from his cheeks. “Alaska will do for today. Perhaps it’ll cool me down.”
“In that case—” Dad kissed her wet forehead. “—I shall get enough Alaska for all of us.”
The Alaska variety has a yellow middle surrounded by white petals. Pee in Alaskan snow, that’s what I said as I took the flower from Dad.
“Not pee.” Sal frowned at me. “It’s your mother in her yellow dress and she’s twirling in the Alaskan snow. In the white rain.”
“I’m off now. You boys be good.” Dad carried his own flower tucked under his arm as he walked out the door.
Mom watched him go as if he were a feather falling off her wing. “Well”—she turned to us—“what say you boys run down to Juniper’s for me. Get some lentils.”
“You don’t have any, Mom? I thought that was what you were makin’ for dinner?”
“Well, my love—” She licked her palm and tried to lay down my cowlick, the same as hers. “—I can’t make ’em if I don’t have ’em, now, can I?”
“Mom, stop.” I swatted her hand away. “Give me some money so I can go.”
“And may we have enough to buy ice cream?”
“Mr. Elohim flamed all the ice cream yesterday,” I reminded Sal.