A Perfectly Good Place

The white jutting from the southern Illinois dirt was most likely the bones of his hand. While the grown-ups were upstairs folding towels, and visiting, as they called it, the two sisters crept back down to the basement and opened the sliding glass door. There it was: white and gnarled, just at the base of the black walnut tree. They took a few steps closer, and then several hurried steps back, whining like trapped piglets. They rushed back inside.

The younger one began, turning the long plastic tube that controlled the blinds and watching the tree through its blink: “How come Grandpa’s hand is buried under the tree if we buried him this morning?”

They stared outside at the ground and at the tree rising from it. Already, in their minds, the grandpa had been sucked up into it and become the leaves and was watching them.

“I don’t know,” said the older, finally. “But we have to find out.”

They decided they had to tell their very tall cousin what they had found. The younger was sent upstairs, and moments later returned with her. “What are you guys doing?” the cousin asked, popping her hip to the side. Her long legs projected from her shorts like beams of light.

“You might want to sit down for this,” the older sister said.

“Yeah,” said the younger, pushing the very tall cousin’s stomach lightly in a suggestion that she should choose the top of the couch.

“What?” the cousin asked again.

“We think Grandma buried Grandpa in the yard.”

“Yeah. We found his hand.”

The cousin looked first at the younger, then at the older. Her arms were crossed into more of a squeeze. She looked mad but seemed to change her mind and made a noise like a laugh. “You guys are seriously so weird.” And with that her long insect legs sprang back up the stairs.

The only noise left was the whirring dryer. The sisters looked around at the unmade beds where they had been sleeping since they arrived in town. Cardboard boxes filled with other mysteries bordered the room.

A few summers ago, on one of their annual visits to this town and this house, they had found clown costumes in one of these boxes. The mother and aunts said they were from the theatre around the corner where the grandfather acted and directed. The sisters put them on, and so did the tall cousin. They were allowed to wear makeup that day only if it looked like a clown’s, and they’d gone on a walk around the neighborhood. The sisters danced and mimed their way along the sidewalk. The cousin walked with her arms crossed, hoping no one from school would recognize her. “They will never recognize you in a million years!” the older sister promised. “Yeah!” chimed in the younger sister, stepping out of the imaginary driver’s seat of her imaginary ambulance. “You look great.”

A neighbor had recognized them and called the grandpa right away to ask if the clowns could perform at her son’s birthday party the next day. The girls rehearsed all night until they perfected the invisible box, the faulty stretcher, and how to fall down without getting hurt. They were asked to perform for almost forty-five minutes, but they didn’t have enough material to fill that time, so they just kept starting over until an adult said it was time for cake.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” the older one said, leading the younger up the stairs, and softening into a whisper. “Why would Grandpa just suddenly die?”

The younger sister looked back to the glass doors. “Yeah, and how?”

On this drive to the Midwest, the older sister had watched the mother’s face in the passenger side mirror. The mother’s eyes were red, but the color was lost to the glass. The mother watched the landscape flattening into prairie. Sometimes she would fall asleep to the lull of the car. When the older sister checked the mirror again she would see the mother, head tilted...