She didn’t stop to think. She just ran. When she got there, he grabbed her and held her tight. She reached out an arm, grabbed Annabelle, and pulled her in, too, and now, Annabelle started to cry.
Harlan still didn’t say a word. He just hung on.
61
Falling Like Rain
They buried his mom in Bismarck.
“It’s the right place,” Vanessa had said the night before, when they’d all been sitting around Harlan’s hotel suite, drained and exhausted, eating not-all-that-Chinese food and drinking wine. Their grandparents were there, too, their grandmother white and strained, their grandfather looking about ten years older.
Vanessa continued, “At least it seems that way to me. What do you think, Grandma?”
“She should be where her kids want her to be,” their grandmother answered. “She lived for the four of you. Let her lie where you decide.”
“I think she should be here.” That was Alison, who’d been the quietest of all of them today. She was still holding her daughter, Mattie, even though the two-year-old had long since fallen asleep, like the little girl was her comfort object and her shelter.
That should have been her husband.
Harlan was beginning to realize that what he’d thought of as withdrawal, as rejection, was the cry of a woman overwhelmed by her life, who literally felt like one more straw would break her. He was going to have a quiet talk with her before he left and let her know that if she needed him, he was here. He suspected that her marriage was failing, and that she knew it.
He needed to tell her that she had another chapter in her, and that he’d do what he could to help her write it, because Jennifer was right. That was the best of him, of all of them. The gift their mom had left them.
He asked Alison, “Why do you think so?” Keeping it neutral. Half of him wanted to protest, to say that he never wanted to see this town again, but he suspected there was more to the picture.
She said, “Because she loved the sunflowers. Because she loved the summers, when she’d take us to the river and we’d spend all day and have a picnic. She even loved the winters. Does anybody still have their ice skates?”
“She made the best hot chocolate,” Alison said. “And she’d let us toast marshmallows in the fireplace, even though Dad said it was too messy. She always said, ‘We’ll clean it up. Some things are worth a little mess.’”
They were all silent at that until Harlan said, “I was remembering, back this winter. The day I met you,” he told Jennifer. “I heard a great horned owl, that lonesome sound, and I remembered Mom standing outside on the porch in the freezing cold, telling me about them. About how they mated for life, and that was beautiful.” He took Jennifer’s hand where she sat beside him on the floor, their backs against the wall, because her back was hurting and the couch was too soft. Massage later, he thought, and told her, “At the time, I thought, ‘That’s not all that beautiful,’ but I think she was right. It can be beautiful.”
She smiled at him with all her warmth, and he kissed her head and said, “Yeah. I think so. And I think you guys are right, too. This is where our memories are. Maybe where her best times were.” He looked at his grandparents. “I’m not discounting her childhood. Just …”
“You’re right,” his grandmother said. She was crying, but doing it quietly. “Leave her here, where you remember her. We can come visit her. There won’t be anybody to stop us now.”
That was why, on another sunny summer day, on the kind of morning when their mom would have taken them to the river and swung out on the rope swing herself, they were putting her in the ground.
No service, just the little group of them standing around the grave, sharing more memories. The two guys from the funeral home stood under the trees, giving them their privacy, patiently waiting to shovel the mound of dirt that lay under a green blanket that was supposed to look like grass.
They talked until nobody could think what else to say, and then they sang the song their mom had sung them all to sleep with. Alison and Annabelle were crying as they sang, and their grandparents weren’t able to sing at all. Harlan was singing, though, and Vanessa was standing tall and belting the song out, because Vanessa was a warrior.
“Hush little baby, don’t say a word,
Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird.”
He remembered all the words. He could see his mom in the big wicker rocking chair with whatever baby it was, holding a tiny hand. Her face soft, and her voice soft, too.
He held himself together and finished it. He and Vanessa were the only ones singing now.
“If that horse and cart fall down,
You’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.”
The last notes died away, and he looked around at all of them, his heart so full, it was going to burst. Then he stepped forward and dropped the sunflower he carried onto the casket.
Goodbye, Mom, he told her, all the way from his depths. I love you.
The others dropped their own flowers in, his grandmother going last. Holding the flower for a long, long moment over her daughter’s grave, and then letting it go. Saying goodbye.
He didn’t cry. Not yet. He had one more thing he needed to do.
Jennifer had thought she knew sadness. She’d buried her own mother just months before, and it had broken her heart. Now, she realized that she didn’t know what heartbreak was. She’d started crying the moment they’d started singing, and she couldn’t stop. She was holding Harlan’s hand, feeling his pain, and she’d have given anything in the world to take that pain away.
When they were done, he headed over to the mortuary people, but came back without them, pulled the blanket back from the pile of dirt, picked up a shovel, and said, “She got buried all wrong the first time. I think we need to do this ourselves. She needs to be left here with … with love.”
Vanessa stepped forward and picked up the other shovel. She was wearing a navy dress and heels, but she dug the shovel into the dirt anyway with a heavy scrape, lifted it, and let the dirt fall on the casket. Then she went back for another one.
All Harlan’s sisters took a turn, and so did their grandparents. In the end, though, it was just Harlan. Jennifer was holding his jacket now, and he was in his shirtsleeves, digging and tossing dirt down like an automaton.
Shovelful after shovelful, the loose dirt falling into the black hole like rain. The wood of the casket had long since disappeared under it. Harlan’s white shirt was stuck to his body with sweat, but his rhythm never stopped, and everybody else stood silent and watched.
Finally, all the dirt was gone. A low mound covered the grave, and he stood there a minute, his head bowed, his chest heaving, his blistered hands on the shovel handle. Then he set the shovel carefully down, knelt, touched the temporary plastic sign at the head of the grave, and said, “I’m sorry I doubted you, Mom. I’m sorry I didn’t know. I know now.”
His eyes were blue pools in his strained face when he held out his hand to Jennifer and told the others, “I’ll see you all back at the place. I need …” A deep breath. “A couple minutes.” Then he turned and walked, nearly staggering, to the car, still holding her hand.