Spirit Read Free Page B

mother’s pain had been more than they could bear, and they had started crying, too, while father stood outside the bedroom door ineffectually calling, ‘Margaret . . . Margaret . . . for goodness’ sake, Margaret, let me in.’
    On Tuesday night, without warning, their father came homecatastrophically drunk and started blundering around the house and slamming doors, screaming at mommy that she blamed him for everything, for giving up his job at Scribner’s, for moving to Sherman, for buying the house, for failing to empty the goddamned pool. Why didn’t she come right out with it, and say what she felt? Why didn’t she simply accuse him of murdering his own daughter? Jesus Christ, he might just as well have plunged her head under the water with his own bare hands and held her down until she drowned.
    After that, suddenly, the night went quiet. Elizabeth and Laura lay in their beds side by side and listened and listened, and didn’t even dare to whisper. Eventually, they heard sobbing, and it went on for almost a half-hour. It might have been mommy’s, it might have been daddy’s. It could have been both.
    They said a prayer to Peggy, although it was more like a conversation than a prayer. They found if difficult to believe that she had actually gone for ever.
    â€˜Dearest Peggy, what’s it like being dead? Do get in touch somehow, even if it’s just a whisper or writing your name on the frosty window. We think about you all day every day and we still love you just as much. We won’t let anybody throw Mr Bunzum away, we promise. We cry about you all the time but we know you must be happy.’
    Lots of unfamiliar people came and went. Adults who murmured and blew their noses and avoided your eyes. Almost magically, the house began to fill with flowers, daffodils and irises and even roses. There were so many flowers that mommy had to borrow vases from the neighbours, and still the blossoms seemed to swell. In February, with the snow still blinding the windows, all of these bright and fragrant flowers made the week seem even stranger, like a Grimm’s fairytale.
    Mrs Patrick came in every day that week and brought them lunch, which they ate in the kitchen. They liked Mrs Patrick’slunches because they were pot-roasted chicken and thick vegetable soup and Swedish meatballs, good farm food, fragrant and plain. Their mommy had always baked pretty little cookies and cakes, because granma had taught her when she was a girl. But when it came to stews and casseroles, she seemed to lose interest halfway through, and all her meals were odd-tasting and kind of unfinished, too salty or too herby or too floury, as if she had experimented with some new recipe and then grown bored. Her roasts were always grey and overcooked and sorry for themselves, and for a long time the girls thought that her greens were an intentional punishment, like losing your allowance, or having your leg slapped.
    Once or twice, while they ate, mommy came into the kitchen and talked abstractedly to Mrs Patrick. ‘You lost your little Deborah, didn’t you, Mrs Patrick? Oh God, I never understood what it was like to lose a child, not until now. It’s like having your heart torn out by the roots.’ Her cigarette smoke trailed endlessly across the room, towards the range, where the heat made it shudder for a moment and then suddenly snatched it away.
    Mommy’s presence made the girls uneasy, because they felt that they shouldn’t show too much of a healthy appetite, what with Peggy having just drowned. Sometimes mommy said, ‘Don’t make so much noise with your knives and forks.’ Then they picked at their food, hungry but reluctant to eat, and Mrs Patrick looked at them ruefully, but didn’t shout at them.
    On Wednesday morning, emboldened by the need for affection, and by plain gratitude, Elizabeth said pardon but what was Mrs Patrick’s real name? Mrs Patrick