Little Girls(25)

“Do you like her?”

“Who’s that?”

“The Dora lady,” said Susan. “Dora the Explorer.”

“I don’t even know her.”

“Did she seem nice?”

“I suppose,” said Laurie.

“Oh.”

“What’s with all the questions this morning?”

“I’m just bored.”

Laurie could see the wheels continuing to turn behind her daughter’s eyes, but no more questions followed. It was the closest Susan had ever come to dealing with death. Ted’s parents had died before he and Laurie had married, and Susan had been too young when Laurie’s mother had passed away.

“You know,” Laurie said, knocking a pat of butter into the frying pan, “if you have any questions about it, you can ask me.”

“I already did,” Susan said matter-of-factly.

“I mean any other questions.”

“Like what?”

“Do you know what it means when someone dies?”

Susan wrinkled her face at her mother. “When you’re dead, you’re dead,” said the girl. “Like Sissy’s dog.”

“That’s pretty logical.”

“Like Torpedo, too.”

“Ah,” said Laurie. “Torpedo the frog.”

“He died and now he’s not coming back. He’s in frog heaven with all the other dead frogs. It’s different than human heaven. There’s just frogs there. And maybe some flies, so they can eat.” She clanked her spoon against her bowl. “Do you believe in heaven?”

“For frogs?”

“For people, too,” Susan said. “People mostly, I guess.”

No, Laurie did not believe in heaven. Neither she nor Ted was religious and they had decided long ago that they wouldn’t impinge any organized religion’s contradictory and judgmental sentiments on their daughter. Now, however, in the face of Susan’s question, she wasn’t sure what the right response should be. There was a latent hopefulness in her daughter’s voice and Laurie didn’t want to be the one to smash that hope.

“What do you think?” Laurie said, turning the question around on her daughter.

Without missing a beat, Susan said, “I think Torpedo is still buried in the yard where me and Daddy put him. I bet if I dig him up, he’ll still be there. And if there was a heaven that people go to, then who is buried in all those graveyards? If they’re in the ground, they can’t be in heaven, too.”

“Some people believe only your spirit goes to heaven,” Laurie said. “Not your whole body.”

“Oh.”

“Do you understand the difference?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does it bother you staying in this house now that you know what happened here?”

“No way. It’s a neat house. I like it a lot.” The girl didn’t appear to fully understand the question. “Daddy said it’s ours now.”

“Well, yes, but we’re going to sell it.”

“How come?”

“Because we don’t live in Maryland. We live in Connecticut.”

“Can’t we just move here? I like it here. I like Maryland.”

“Wouldn’t you miss your friends back home?”

“I could make new friends.”

“You don’t know anything about living here.”

“I do! I know there’s a river on the other side of the woods and Daddy said he would take me out to swim there someday. And I know there’s a neat little house made out of glass in the woods, too.”

Laurie had just broken an egg into the frying pan and now held the two halves of the eggshell in midair, frozen. She looked up sharply at the girl to find her wrinkling her nose again. “You saw it?” Laurie’s voice was nearly a whisper.

“It looks like a big dollhouse,” said Susan enthusiastically. “But it’s all old and dirty and covered under a big tent.”

“When did you see it?”

“The day we got here. Daddy and I went walking down a path through the woods and we found it.”

“I don’t want you to go back there.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so. It’s dangerous and there’s broken glass everywhere. I don’t want you playing back there.”

“I’m careful.”

“No. This is not up for discussion. Promise me you won’t go back there.”

Even at ten, it seemed Susan was able to harness some sense of trepidation from Laurie’s voice, or perhaps from the look on Laurie’s face. The young girl’s eyes hung on her, slightly wider than they generally were. One palm lay flat down on the tabletop beside her bowl of Cheerios and Laurie could see the little pink fingers working in agitation. “Okay,” she said quietly and at last. “I promise.”

And now I’ve just scared the poor kid half to death....

To lighten the tension, Laurie raised her right hand and said, “Girl Scout’s honor?”

“I’m not a Girl Scout.”

Laurie lowered her hand. She felt coldly removed from her daughter. On the stove, the egg sizzled in the pan. “I know you’re not. I was just being funny.”