Agnes
Even though Sadie doesn’t want me to, I take the girls to their father’s funeral. It’s only right. Neither one of them cry
as the three of us stand by his grave alone. There was a smattering of his drinking buddies at the service. But no one cared
enough to follow us to the burial.
“Can we bury him in the family plot?” Vera had asked when the news came. I regretted showing her the small graveyard at the
edge of our property, a place where my parents and grandparents, my aunts and great aunts, were laid to rest. It’s a private
place, peaceful with a big weeping willow and an oak bench for contemplation. Willow. Salix. The ancient Greeks believed it
helped people pass safely to the underworld.
“No,” I said, too sharply. “He’s not family.”
She blinked at me, hurt disappearing behind anger. “He’s our father.”
“I’m sorry.” He was an abuser and adulterer who essentially ruined Sadie’s life. If it comes down to a question of who poisoned
who, I’d say he gave as good as he got in the end. He was a toxin that slowly destroyed her. Good riddance. We’re not spending
eternity with that piece of shit. Naturally, I didn’t say any of this out loud to the girls.
Vera hasn’t spoken to me much since, as if she read my mind.
“I’m glad he’s dead,” says Ana now graveside, her small voice wobbling. Of course she doesn’t mean it. She’s just being brave
the way the women in our family have had to be.
“Don’t say that,” Vera answers harshly. “Don’t.”
Ana looks ashamed for a minute, but then, no, she sticks to her guns. “He was a bad man. He hurt us, hurt Mom. That’s not love. And if he didn’t love us, why do I have to love him?”
Vera looks about to argue but then she presses her mouth closed a moment, a thin pink line of sadness and anger. Finally,
“He wasn’t just that. He didn’t only hurt us.”
My heart clenches a little at that, what’s left of it. It’s true that none of us are just one thing, that few people are all
bad. And that Mac could be loving and charming, generous. He played the guitar and had a good singing voice, which is what
I think did Sadie in, the music in him. How she loved him. Like a sickness, an addiction she couldn’t shake.
And truthfully it was his addictions that turned him rotten. Maybe he would have been a better man if he hadn’t given himself
over to drink and drugs.
There are so many types of toxins you might choose from in this life.
But what difference does that make? We are what we do. I’m not sure it matters who we might have been if we’d done better.
“When people love you, they don’t hurt you. Not ever,” Vera says. A child’s view of the world. We hurt the people we love
all the time, don’t we? “That’s what Mom said. No one is sometimes-mean. Mean is always there, beneath the surface, even when
they’re being nice.”
Ana looks at her sister, big eyes searching, but Vera is looking up where birds circle high above and the sky is an indifferent
blue, flowers blooming all around the pretty church graveyard—daisies and lavender, daffodils and wormwood, larkspur. I paid
for all of this, by the way—the funeral, the burial. I did it for the girls, for Sadie.
Not for you, Mac. Just to be clear in case you’re listening. I’m glad you’re dead, too. At least the girls are free now, though
it certainly doesn’t seem like it to them.
Vera clutches a bouquet we picked from among the wildflowers.
Daisies. Now, there’s an interesting flower.
So pretty and sweet, the very symbol of innocence and purity, and the perfect example of selective toxicity.
Pyrethrins are derived from the flower and used as a powerful insecticide.
Harmful to bugs, but not to people. Matricin, another daisy derivative, is used in pain relief. We’re none of us just one thing.
I can think of a few other flowers I’d like to throw in Mac’s grave—rue for regret, petunia for anger, tansy for hostility.
I could go on.
Vera walks to the edge of the grave and lets the flowers fall. Now it’s her sister’s turn to look away, batting at tears she
doesn’t want to shed. Vera is stone-faced.
I watch the flowers in the dirt atop the coffin for a moment as the sun dips behind a cloud, the air cooling. After a few
more moments of silence, we walk back to the car.
I’m about to get in and drive us away from this place when the little soldier finally breaks down. Vera drops to her knees,
wailing. It’s young and helpless sounding, striking all the notes of misery, rage, and despair. Ana drops beside her, wraps
her sister up in skinny arms.
“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry,” Ana pleads.
I join them on the ground, hold on to them both.
“No, that’s good,” I tell her. “Let it all out.”
When she’s spent, weak with the exhaustion of grief, Ana and I help her to her feet. In the car I hand her a little cotton
pouch of dried lavender, give one to Ana, too. Lavender, or Lavandula, it calms and soothes. “Here,” I say. “Put these under
your noses and breathe deep.”
In floriography, its meaning is distrust, maybe because asps frequently make their homes in the same hot climates where this particular flower thrives. Lavender is
a thing of beauty providing shelter for a venomous snake. But its effect on the body is powerful, with antioxidant components
that lower stress hormones and settle the nervous system.
Both girls do as they’re told. Vera still drawing in shuddering breaths until eventually she eases. Ana wrinkles her nose,
as cool and still as a glacial lake.
“I want to see my mother,” Vera says as I put the car in gear and start up the road that winds through the graveyard. The
tires crunch on the gravel; the trees outside the open window are alive with birdsong.
I glance in the back at Ana, who has receded to that place she goes when things are too much. It’s a glassy stare into nowhere that reminds me of Sadie. My sister used to do that, too. It’s a dark place, I think. Vera, like me, stays grounded in the real world. Someone has to.
“She doesn’t want you to see her in that place,” I say carefully. “She loves you both, so much. But she wants you to move
on and not look back.”
“Did she kill him?” asks Ana.
Vera’s eyes meet mine when I glance at them, then look back to the road.
I don’t answer because the truth is that I don’t know for sure. Sadie of course hasn’t told me what happened. I know she served
him beef Wellington, and there’s a variation to that recipe that could make it deliciously deadly.
“How did she do it? Poison?” presses Ana. “Did you help her?”
Vera is glaring at me, eyes burning but her expression slack.
“Sadie never needed my help with anything.”
That was always true until now. Last night she called. “It’s time,” she told me. “I need you.”
“I can take you to your mother,” I say to my elder niece. “But she won’t see you. She’s already told me as much.”
A quick intake of breath. She turns to look out the window where I see her wan face reflected.
“Doesn’t she even want to say goodbye?” asks Vera.
“We don’t always get that in this life. Write her a letter if you have things to say.”
She casts me a bitter side-eye but stays quiet.
I don’t mean to sound cold. But the truth is not always kind, and it’s not always pretty. It’s better swallowed whole, to
avoid that bitter taste in your mouth and throat, even if it sticks in your gullet for a time.
Finally, Vera’s shoulders sag. Defeat. We all take the rest of the ride in silence.
Back at the house, Vera leaves the car and runs up the stairs, slams the door to the bedroom with such force that the fine
china in the dining room sideboard clatters.
“She made him beef Wellington that night,” says Ana as I serve her some warmed-up macaroni and cheese. “She wouldn’t let us have any, even though we both love it. She said it was special just for him.”
I nod.
The death cap mushroom, or amanita phalloides, is delicious. Similar in shape, size, and color to the common mushroom, it
is often mistaken for its benign cousin. An invasive species, the death cap frequently grows in the roots of live oak, elm,
or birch, blooms in the darkness of their shade. People who have ingested it—and survive—describe its rich, earthy flavor.
You feel fine for a while, until the toxins go to work on your kidney and liver. Then come the abdominal pains, the nausea,
vomiting, and diarrhea. The symptoms may subside for a while, delaying necessary medical treatment. But the amatoxins, phallotoxins,
and virotoxins have most likely done irreparable damage to your organs. You will probably fall into a coma as one by one those
organs fail, death coming soon after.
What scientists don’t understand about this mushroom that crept into North America, actually every continent except Antarctica,
from Europe on the roots of an imported decorative shrub, is why it has evolved to be so terribly deadly. Why has it developed
this weapon in the war of nature where predator and prey struggle in a terrible dance of survival? From whom exactly is it
trying to protect itself? The answer is known only to Mother Earth. We, her most difficult children, are often in the dark
about her many mysteries.
Mac was a big eater. He scarfed his food, had an insatiable appetite. Just a tiny piece of the death cap is enough to kill.
He likely ate more than his share.
“I’ve seen it,” Ana says, her face smooth, eyes big. “The garden. My mom told me about it. And I saw you go inside.”
“Don’t go in there without me,” I say maybe too harshly. I keep the door locked of course. But was there ever a kid that didn’t
find a way into trouble when she was truly motivated? “It’s dangerous until you know what you’re doing.”
“You’re teaching Vera,” she says, polishing off her food. “I want to learn, too.”
I’m not sure about Ana. There’s a coldness to her, a blankness that I don’t like. The Knowledge, as we call it, is a dangerous thing; its keepers must be trustworthy. There’s a code. An order.
“Maybe,” I say finally. “When you’re older.”
When our eyes meet again, she’s just a kid who has lost her parents, with a little bit of cheese on her lip. I see her sadness,
her vulnerability, and something else. The desire to take her in my arms and assure that everything is going to be fine, someday,
is strong. Instead, I find myself thinking of fields of lavender that hide the deadly asp. I tell her to clear her plate and
go to her room.
Later, alone in the garden, I pick a bouquet for my sister. The delicate white flower of hemlock, or conium maculatum. The
cheerful violet monkshood, or aconitum. The pretty pink foxglove, or digitalis. The bouquet is delicate, feminine, a gift
of love for my sister. I’ll go to see her on my own tomorrow. She’s right. It’s time.
Our relationship to the natural world, to plants and trees, to the whole big spinning orb, is complicated. It’s a twist, a
dance, a struggle. Nature nourishes us, an endlessly giving mother. But unsheltered exposure to her whims and moods can end
your life. The plants we use to heal ourselves, in different doses become toxic. The substances we use for recreation can
stop our hearts, irreparably addle our minds, invade our cells, and change our behavior. Consider tobacco, one of the most
dangerous plants on earth, killing nearly five hundred thousand people a year. And yet some of us pick it up willingly and
daily suck that poison into our lungs because of the way it makes us feel. And the poppy, the beauteous red flower of misery
and death. Untold millions have died from the drugs concocted from her compounds, drawn over and over again to the promise
of that state of euphoria, the blessed relief from the pain of living.
There’s no such thing as an unnatural death. Nature has devised a million ways for us to die, even if it’s by way of human
nature.
There are some that believe humans have dominion over the earth.
But it’s not so. As we trample and destroy her, so does she wreak her havoc upon us.
Eventually, she will eradicate us like the virus we have proven ourselves to be.
And then she’ll heal herself, take back everything that she has given.
The scars we’ve left will heal. And there will be silence again.
There’s a kind of comfort in that, isn’t there? That there’s only so much damage that we can do?
I’m thinking about this as I finish collecting what I need and tie it all together with a swatch of muslin. Like so much of
nature the bouquet is beautiful, to the untrained eye a pretty bit of innocent prettiness, but lethal in the right hands.
Sadie will know what to do.