bedding plants from a tumbledown hothouse twenty miles off the reservation. Cardboard flats and plastic trays were set out in the shade. There were red, purple, pink, and striped petunias. Yellow and orange marigolds. There were blue forget-me-nots, Shasta daisies, lavender calendula, and red-hot poker flowers. Dad gave me directions. I set the plants one by one into the flower beds. She had a tractor tire painted white and filled with dirt, and matching rectangles of dirt beside the front steps. I added lobelia and candytuft to the pansies in the narrow beds that lined the driveway. I kept all of the flimsy plastic plant markers for her to see. From time to time, as I worked, I thought of the files. The ghost. The bits and pieces of confusion. The round house. I was beginning to dread the talk with my father. The files again. And the nagging thought of the priest, then the Larks, then the priest again. Behind the house her vegetable garden lay—still heaped with straw. After I’d planted the flowers, I went around back of the house to stack the plastic pots and put away the tools.
Keep those out. We’re going to turn over the dirt in your mother’s vegetable garden, said my dad.
For what?
He just gave me back the shovel I had dropped, and pointed to the edge of the yard, where onion sets and tomato sprouts and packets of bush bean and morning glory seeds waited. We worked together for another hour. When we’d finished with half the soil, it was time for lunch. He left to buy the rest of the plants. I went inside. I was supposed to watch over my mother. I looked around the kitchen. There was a tin of minced ham on the counter, a key fixed to the top to roll the cover back. I made myself a sandwich, ate it, and drank two glasses of water. There was a package of cookies with red jam in the center. I ate a handful. Then I made another sandwich and put it on a plate with two cookies to decorate it. I walked upstairs with the plate of food and a glass of water. Pearl had learned to watch for and wolf down food left outside the bedroom door, so we always brought it into the room now. I balanced the plate on top of the glass of water, and knocked. There was no answer. I knocked harder.
Come in, said my mother. I went in. It had now been over a week since she had walked up those stairs, and the bedroom had taken on a fusty odor. The air was heavy with her breath, as if she’d sucked out the oxygen. She kept the shades pulled. I wanted to set the sandwich down and run. But she asked me to sit.
I put the sandwich and water on the square bedside table from which I had removed so many stale sandwiches and half-drained glasses and bowls of cold soup. If she’d eaten anything I’d not seen it. I dragged a light chair with a cushioned seat close to the bed. I assumed that she wanted me to read to her. Clemence or my father chose the books—nothing sad or upsetting. Which meant the books were either boring romances (Harlequin) or old Reader’s Digest Condensed Books (better). Or those Favorite Poems. Dad had checked “Invictus,” and “High Flight,” which I’d read. They made my mother emit a dry laugh.
Now I reached forward to switch on her bedside lamp—she wouldn’t want the shade drawn up, light to pour through the window. Before I could touch the switch, she gripped my arm. Her face was a pale smudge in the dim air, and her features were smeared with weariness. She’d become weightless, all jutting bones. Her fingers bit hard into my arms. Her voice was fuzzy, as if she’d just woken.
I heard you two. What were you doing out there?
Digging.
Digging what, a grave? Your father used to dig graves.
I shook her arm off and drew back from her. The spidery look of her was repellent, and her words so strange. I sat down in the chair.
No, Mom, not graves. I spoke carefully. We were digging up the dirt in your vegetable garden. Before that, I was planting flowers. Flowers for you to look at, Mom.
Look at? Look at?
She turned over, away from me. Her hair on the pillow was greasy strings, still black, just a few streaks of gray. I could