The Lovely Bones - страница 37

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So it was his father’s old sketchbooks that Mr. Harvey looked at when the not still dreams came back. He would steep himself in the images of other places and other worlds, trying to love what he did not. And then he would begin to dream dreams of his mother the last time he had seen her, running through a field on the side of the road. She had been dressed in white. White capri pants and a tight white boat-neck shirt, and his father and she had fought for the last time in the hot car outside of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. He had forced her out of the car. George Harvey sat still as stone in the back seat – eyes wide, no more afraid than a stone, watching it all as he did everything by then – in slow-mo. She had run without stopping, her white body thin and fragile and disappearing, while her son clung on to the amber necklace she had torn from her neck to hand him. His father had watched the road. “She’s gone now, son,” he said. “She won’t be coming back.”

Nine

My grandmother arrived on the evening before my memorial in her usual style. She liked to hire limousines and drive in from the airport sipping champagne while wearing what she called her “thick and fabulous animal” – a mink she had gotten secondhand at the church bazaar. My parents had not so much invited her as included her if she wanted to be there. In late January, Principal Caden had initiated the idea. “It will be good for your children and all the students at school,” he had said. He took it upon himself to organize the event at our church. My parents were like sleepwalkers saying yes to his questions, nodding their heads to flowers or speakers. When my mother mentioned it on the phone to her mother, she was surprised to hear the words “I’m coming.”

“But you don’t have to, Mother.”

There was a silence on my grandmother’s end. “Abigail,” she said, “this is Susan’s funeral.”

Grandma Lynn embarrassed my mother by insisting on wearing her used furs on walks around the block and by once attending a block party in high makeup. She would ask my mother questions until she knew who everyone was, whether or not my mother had seen the inside of their house, what the husband did for a living, what cars they drove. She made a solid catalog of the neighbors. It was a way, I now realized, to try to understand her daughter better. A miscalculated circling, a sad, partnerless dance.

“Jack-y,” my grandmother said as she approached my parents on the front porch, “we need some stiff drinks!” She saw Lindsey then, trying to sneak up the stairs and gain a few more minutes before the required visitation. “Kid hates me,” Grandma Lynn said. Her smile was frozen, her teeth perfect and white.

“Mother,” my mother said. And I wanted to rush into those ocean eyes of loss. “I’m sure Lindsey is just going to make herself presentable.”

“An impossibility in this house!” said my grandmother.

“Lynn,” said my father, “this is a different house than last time you were here. I’ll get you a drink, but I ask you to respect that.”

“Still handsome as hell, Jack,” my grandmother said.

My mother took my grandmother’s coat. Holiday had been closed up in my father’s den as soon as Buckley had yelled from his post at the upstairs window – “It’s Grandma!” My brother bragged to Nate or anyone who would listen that his grandmother had the biggest cars in the whole wide world.

“You look lovely, Mother,” my mother said.

“Hmmmm.” While my father was out of earshot, my grandmother said, “How is he?”

“We’re all coping, but it’s hard.”

“Is he still muttering about that man having done it?”

“He still thinks so, yes.”

“You’ll be sued, you know,” she said.

“He hasn’t told anyone but the police.”

What they couldn’t see was that my sister was sitting above them on the top step.

“And he shouldn’t. I realize he has to blame someone, but…”

“Lynn, seven and seven or a martini?” my father said, coming back out into the hallway.

“What are you having?”

“I’m not drinking these days, actually,” my father said.