Later that night, seated across from my father at the dining room table, an heirloom from the time of my grandfather’s family that had once seated fourteen men, women and children, I recognized a look of anxiety in my father’s nervous twitch found in his left eye, and the unusual mood he was in when he passed me the buttermilk biscuits.
When my mother told me to eat the boiled carrots on my plate, I balked her for doing so because I believed I was no longer a child to be ordered what to do. Instead of eating rabbit food, I had a better thing to say. My father didn’t want to hear it, but there was no authority in his voice when he said,
‘Don’t talk back to your mother.’
My mother turned to the empty space between us where an extra plate should have been.
Granted, at the time I felt an approximation of something being wrong. I squirmed in my chair while a cooing thought inside was telling me to stay quiet. The inner voice was so soft that I chose to ignore it.
‘Where’s Dawn?’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen her all week.’
‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ my mother chided me.
‘You know better than that,’ my father, shoulders slumped, added.
I attempted to imagine what force had been strong enough to make my father’s ego crumble, but I failed in my endeavour to do so.
‘She’s going to be away for a while,’ my mother said. She used her fork to scrape some snow peas alongside the mashed potatoes on her plate. ‘We’ll just have to get along without her.’ She sipped iced-tea from a small mason jar.
‘What are you talking about?’ A sister doesn’t vanish overnight, I thought. ‘What have you done?’
Even though she was only two years older than I was and had run away twice before, I thought anything was possible for Dawn. Somehow I believed my sister was invincible and despite all the fights she had had with mother and father, I hoped she could rise above it and make something of herself, such as a lawyer or a judge and even end up in the Supreme Court one day.
‘She needed a vacation,’ my mother said. She touched my father’s hand, a strong mechanic’s hand. He did not budge. ‘Isn’t that right, Ray?’
‘That’s about the sound of it, Ginny.’ My mother’s name was Virginia, and all the years I had known my father he had called her by that pet name. But that evening over supper there was not a trace of joy to be found in that sobriquet, nor did his voice pretend otherwise.
‘Now eat your carrots or you’ll go blind,’ my mother said. ‘They’re getting cold, and I won’t see them wasted.’
I bit my tongue, did as I was told, and said nothing of Darwin Mother’s lawn. Something had happened to Dawn and I was afraid it would happen to me too.
The next day when I awoke I imagined I saw Dawn’s long, dark hair by the window. Sometimes, when she came into my room to stand by the window, I watched her without her knowing it. She would look out over the neighborhood, one hand on the windowsill, like a queen exiled and imprisoned in this far away land and house surrounded by ordinary folk like myself.
The wind blew the curtains, breaking the daydream’s spell, and I saw that she was not in my room that morning. She was not by the window as I had hoped when I fell asleep the night before.
The bed was warm and I did not want to get up because it was still too cold, and I was still not ready to face Darwin Mother’s disappointment.
I arrived at Darwin Mother’s on that Saturday without my father’s mower. Father had been too preoccupied with Dawn, and I was too afraid to ask for permission to take tools from his garage.
When I rang her doorbell, I had no idea what I was going to say but I figured it had to involve some snippet of the truth. I had my honor to consider and that was all there was to it.
Darwin Mother came to the front door in a white dress, and the sun caught her in such a way that she looked like a young woman in her thirties. Even the gray in her long, dark hair had vanished for the moment and it made me think of Dawn and what she’d look like in ten or twenty years.
Darwin Mother frowned and nodded when I explained I had no mower.
‘Go around to the side of the house,’ she told me. ‘Where the path forks, take the left-hand path and that’s going to lead you to my vegetable garden. Inside the main yard you can find a shed and the mower that belonged to Andrew.’
I found Andrew’s mower and a gas tank that was half-full. I dragged them out of the shed and into the yard. The dipstick showed there was enough oil but I wiped it clean on the back of my pants, and checked the level again to be sure.
It could not have been past seven-thirty when she kneeled down in the middle of the backyard and placed the copper pot on the ground before her. I removed my cap and scratched my head, thinking how in the hell was I going to mow the yard with her in it. Some of the boys had told me she had some screws loose. I figured I could start on the outside by the picket fence and work my way in.
But she did the strangest thing then. Darwin Mother looked up and found me watching her and, I swear it, the look in her eyes was as though she had no recollection of what I was doing there in her backyard. Then she waved me over as if she had known all along.
I brushed my hands clean on the front of my shirt and tossed my cap to the ground next to the mower. I didn’t mind a delay in getting to work. Not one bit.
Darwin Mother motioned me to kneel down beside her. I did as she wanted.
‘I forgot something inside,’ she said. ‘Yell if you see anything.’
Before I had a chance to answer, she was hopping up to her feet and racing across the backyard, up the steps, and into her house.
I looked around the yard at the cracked picket fence and empty bird bath and a rusted toy wagon turned on its side, wheel missing and all, and I wondered what it was I was supposed to see.
That was when a flash caught my eye. I looked up expecting to see some sort of thunderhead but the morning sky was cloudless. Another flash came and went.
Then two more quick sharp bursts came from below me. Down inside the copper pot a black liquid could be seen spinning gradually, as if it were descending into the earth through a hole at the bottom. The black liquid remained and did not drain.
I parked my hands on the ground on either side of the pot and stared into a liquid mass that resembled the universe of stars at night. Several flashes, as though suns were exploding and imploding, brought strange and wonderful designs in a variety of colors. Rainbows melted into oily pools. One miniature star exploded and became a gaseous mix of purples and greens. The longer I watched these transformations shape and reshape the dark textures of the liquid in the copper pot I half believed I was witnessing a birth of another universe.
The screen door banged shut and I looked up to see Darwin Mother coming toward me in a rush with a vile of blue liquid in her hand. The movements of her dress, the way the edges lifted and fell as her bare feet touched and glided over the grass, reminded me of a lark or wren or some other bird.
‘Am I too late?’ she asked, and the question sounded as if it were meant for someone other than me.
‘I’ve no idea.’
We both leaned over and looked into the copper pot. The liquid was not black but resembled motionless pond water. Darwin Mother poured in the blue liquid but nothing happened other than creating a thin residue on the surface. We waited for at least five minutes on our knees.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I did everything right. I just don’t understand.’ Her questioning eyes turned to me as if I were the one to relieve her of her troubled doubts.
‘I don’t know,’ I told Darwin Mother. ‘Can I get to work now?’
‘Did you see anything?’ There were those questioning eyes again. ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ she pleaded, ‘you can tell me.’
I stood and wiped my knees free of grass. There was a thrill rushing through me from seeing the wizard’s potion unfurl a universe inside the copper pot. Darwin Mother remained on her knees beside the pot. I shook my head no, and returned to the back of the shed to start the mower. I did not turn back when the screen door slapped shut.
