Playing Dead

EPILOGUE

I am sitting on the floor of Tuck’s old room, a pile of treasure in front of me. A blue jay’s feather, a dried stem of lavender, a grocery store slip, a smooth pebble from the driveway, a fork, a photograph. I don’t know what these objects meant to my mother, but she hid them here under the mattress in the childhood room of the son she had to let go.

It is a breezy, cloudy October day, almost a year since my brother and I sat together in that New York coffee shop. We are preparing the house for his first visit home to the ranch with my niece, nephew, and sister-in-law. I didn’t expect to find Mama’s collection while I cleaned, but I remember Daddy saying that, at the end, this had become her habit. To hide inconsequential things.

“What’s that stuff?” Maddie asks, appearing beside me. Her face and hands are thick with dust, her tennis shoes caked with cow manure, all part of her ritual that she calls “cleaning the barn.”

“Some things your grandmother kept in here.”

“Cool,” she says. “Can I have the feather?”

“Sure.”

She grazes it across her cheek, then picks up the photograph on top of the pile.

“Is this you?”

I am startled that she can see it instantly when I could not.

“No, that’s your grandmother. I think she must be holding your uncle Tuck’s hand. He looks about three.”

“Are you still mad at her for lying?”

“Not exactly mad, no.”

She studies my face solemnly. “You know, Mama lies to me.”

“Don’t say that, Maddie. You mother would never lie to you.”

“She tells me that the tumor in my head is nothing to worry about.”

I feel an ache all over. We didn’t use the word tumor with Maddie. Ever.

“What do you think?” I ask, cautious.

“I think Mama doesn’t know what will happen. Nobody knows.”

“You can talk to me about it anytime.” I reach over, smoothing her hair. “But it would be better if you talk to her.”

“Mama feels better like this. Thinking I don’t know. Protecting me.” She bounces up, handing me the photograph, not ready yet for more. “Do you think my cousins will want to play croquet? I found an old set in the barn. I can put it up.”

“I think they would love that,” I say, and Maddie skips out the door, unaware that she has opened the door to my prison.

I stare at the picture of Mama, not begging her to speak like in my childhood game with Etta Place, but hoping she can hear.

“I know who you are,” I say aloud, softly, repeating Hudson’s words. “You are kind. Beautiful. Brave. You save children.”

Not one of us who loved Mama ever saw the whole, but the piece I have of her is jagged and beautiful. I can see the sun shining through it.

The curtains at the open window dance and the photograph flutters out of my hand, skittering across the floor. The air fills the room with the intoxicating, earthy smell of our land. I close my eyes, drinking it in.

I could swear I heard music in the wind.