The Moon Sisters: A Novel Read online

  I don’t know, I said, and sniffed. My nose had begun to run. I bounced on my feet, tried to disguise a shiver as the man in the T-shirt looked at me and shrugged.

  All right, he said. Let’s go inside. Maybe you’ll figure it out.

  His name was Rat, and I followed him into the house. Music seeped out at us from unseen speakers, as somber and low as the music that had played at my mother’s wake. When we neared the room she’d been laid out in, empty now, I stepped into it. The air smelled vaguely of flowers, though there were none to be seen, unless you counted the blue flowered fabric on each of the three couches. Scattered among them were chairs of green and gold thread. Tasseled lamps and boxes of tissue adorned every side table, and art decorated each wall—paintings of trees and butterflies, and more flowers. All of it in place to be a comfort, I guess, to counter being left to face the thing that made everyone so uncomfortable. Death. It struck me then that this was death’s home, this house of illusion and faux control.

  I asked about the job.

  “Was that a town sign, Jazz? What did it say?” Olivia asked as I felt the change; all of a sudden, we had no power. An indistinct rattling sound emanated from all around us, like a beehive full of angry life. I pumped the accelerator pedal. It didn’t matter. We’d been traveling up a hill and wound down real fast. I pulled onto the shoulder for the second time that day and, out of sheer disbelief and frustration, slammed the heels of my hands against the steering wheel, eliciting the bus’s warbling goose-honk warning. We slugged to a complete stop.

  “Jesus Christ, we’re cursed!” I hollered. And for the first time all day there was a quiet behind me so comprehensive that I could hear my own breathing.

  It was almost worth it. Almost.

  We waited in the bus for ten minutes, and when no one stopped to help, and the heat got to be too much, we left to walk alongside the highway. I set myself closest to the white line, between Olivia and the trucks and cars that passed, and settled the pack on my back.

  There were no arguments. We were going to the nearest town to find a phone. The bus—was it even towable? How much would it cost to fix? It wasn’t like we had AAA. Whatever it was, I would have to cough it up, because that bus was my ticket to Kennaton.

  We were calling for help. And then we were calling home. Eventually our father would be sober again, and then he could pick us up.

  Olivia remained silent, her shoulders slumped as she hugged her suitcase to her chest. A crow dropped twenty or so feet from us to pick at something dead or dying.

  “Some things aren’t meant,” I said, knowing she had long shared my mother’s trust in fate and ready to lean on that to make a point if I had to. “Things that are meant slip into place like the missing puzzle piece in your life, right? You get the job, you ace the test, whatever. Your car doesn’t break down, you know?”

  It was a rabbit, I think. Ten feet away now. Hard to tell, but that looked like flattened rabbit ears. The air buzzed with bugs.

  “It’s not the right time,” I continued. “We need to go home and reassess this whole thing.”

  There were no arguments, but for some reason I still felt the need to defend the obvious, sensible course of action, the path we were taking.

  We followed the shoulder to an exit ramp as cars poured off the highway along with us. Buildings created an irregular skyline in the distance; a city I’d never visited before—Jewel—lay just ahead. And maybe my luck was changing, because there, tucked between a diner and a dry cleaner, was a mechanic’s shop. JIM’S, the sign read. There were only a few cars in the lot, too, which seemed promising—an old Chevy, a Jeep with some serious rust issues, and an antique car missing two of its tires.

  “There,” I told Olivia, pushing my sunglasses farther up my nose, the tricky lens staying in place. “The setup couldn’t be better, see? You can sit in the diner while I talk to whoever is at the shop, all right? You can order a Pepsi and a sandwich, and even have a piece of pie.”

  She slanted her head, looked at me with her dead eyes, then let me lead her into the diner, where the thick scent of greasy bacon slammed into us like a heart attack. Speakers from the far end of the room blared country music. A song I couldn’t name morphed into one I did: “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” by Carrie Underwood.

  No offense, Jesus, but I think I’d like to keep the wheel, thank you very much.

  I left my sister in a booth, then stepped back outside to find the stairs newly blocked by a sixtysomething with a full head of white fuzzy hair and a doughy face. Beside him sat a leashless dog.

  “Got the time?” he asked, as if telling him that would be the secret password to unlock his butt from the stair and let me by. His camouflage pants were cut at his calves, and his rust-colored T-shirt was ripped at the neck. He wore big boots that lacked laces, held together instead with wound pieces of rope. There was a discomfiting intensity to his expression.

  “It’s ten after twelve,” I told him, taking a second look at the dog—a mutt that might’ve had sheepdog somewhere in its lineage but whose appearance was made ridiculous by a large dose of mini-mutt genes. It barked at me, and a goop of drool landed near my sneaker.

  “Thanks,” he said, and moved just enough so that I could brush by him.

  Maybe it was because I never credited those sorts of feelings, thought them too much in the realm of superstition that was my grandmother’s, that I ignored a hint of unease as I walked away from him and his dog, and the diner that held my sister.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hope and Mirrors

  OLIVIA

  I was twelve when Mama and I had the only significant conversation we ever had about Jazz. We were together in the kitchen with the door closed and the oven on, because it was a frigid January day. Later we’d make pizza, so I was busy on the sauce, swirling a wooden spoon through a pot of crushed tomatoes laced with garlic and oregano. Making sauce was one of my favorite chores, even back then, because I loved both the smell and the look of it. Shimmering, iridescent circles formed in time with burbling stovetop noises, each new circle appearing outside the older ones, which grew smaller and smaller. They were ten times more transfixing than what I might see in a regular pot of boiling water, which is why I never volunteered to make pasta. Jazz was in charge of that and other cooking chores.

  I hate winter, Mama said, gazing out the kitchen’s single squat window. Sometimes it feels like we’ll never see the sun again.

  When I told her that her voice sounded like a tunnel that went on for years, Mama let go of the curtain clutched in her hand and let it fall free. We’d made that curtain ourselves, out of an old sheet, and dyed it using a package of coloring called Sunbright, which we hoped would inspire her writing.

  I’m sorry, Olivia, she said. I’m just worried about your sister.

  A glance at the clock told me that Jazz was an hour late, and for the third time that week. I knew Mama thought that something was going on with her, especially since Jazz wouldn’t tell anyone where she’d been or what she’d been doing. It wasn’t like my sister to be secretive. Usually she was honest, and sometimes too honest. Just that morning, she’d said I was more annoying than slush in a boot.

  She told me she doesn’t want to go to college, Mama said, lifting a blanket from the chair where she worked. She wrapped it around her shoulders before stepping beside me and easing the oven door open a hair more. Careful you don’t get burned, sweetie.

  I abandoned the spoon in the pot and turned toward my mother as heat rose around us in waves, asked her why Jazz didn’t want to go to college.

  She said, Probably because she knows I want her to go.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Even at that age, I knew college didn’t sound like a good choice for me. Besides, Mama needed me at home for dreaming. She’d always tell me how much it meant to her that we did that together, said I was like the sky to her sun—even though the sky was always there and my feet itched to wander more often than not. Still, I could make
a decent life for myself in Tramp. One day I’d convince Babka that a marriage between my sauce and her dough could make a perfect pizza. I’d get to travel then, as I sold my pies all over the country. I listened more intently to my bubbling creation.

  I blame myself, Mama said after I’d counted twenty-two circles. I should’ve spent more time with her when she was growing up. I should’ve gotten to know her as a person and not just as a child. I should’ve been a friend to her as well as a mother. Children need their parents to be both, I think, but not all parents know how to be both.

  When I told her that she was the best friend any girl could want, Mama gave me her sunlight-in-the-rain look, with her lips upturned but her eyes sad.

  You made me your friend, Olivia Moon, because you wouldn’t take no for an answer when you asked me to play. You pulled me down to the ground and shoved a doll in my hand, and that was that. Not that I didn’t enjoy myself, she added, when I felt my own smile begin to slip. I just didn’t know I would enjoy myself until you showed me the way. With Jazz, I was a mother only. And sometimes not a happy one.

  Why weren’t you happy? I wanted to know, and she lifted her hands, palms down, into the path of the oven’s rising heat.

  Sometimes people get sad after having a baby. Women’s bodies are like that, she said. Maybe that was it, but I don’t know.

  It was difficult to picture—Jazz alone with her toys on the floor. I asked Mama if she was sad after I was born, but she said that she didn’t think so, that I’d kept her too busy for that. And then she looked again at the clock above the stove.

  Are you worried because you think she’s with a boy? I asked, but Mama didn’t answer. I stirred the sauce.

  I went rambling a lot, too, but I always told Mama where I’d gone if I forgot to tell her where I was going, which was most of the time. Back then I was too young for boy trouble, but I still thought about it. Nuzzling up to someone and kissing in a car somewhere, making more heat than a hundred stoves. That’s where I’d want to be, I decided then, if I were as pretty as Jazz and fifteen and had such a great chest. But I wasn’t about to say that to my mother.

  Maybe I should’ve homeschooled your sister, too, right from the start, Mama said, her voice like an expanding balloon. Then she would understand the value of education and communication. She wouldn’t be so closed off and rebellious and—

  Disappointing?

  The blanket around Mama’s shoulders dropped an inch from the oven when she spun around to face my sister.

  Jazz stood with a set jaw right outside the kitchen, her bare hand clutching the doorknob, her hair coated with tiny balls of ice. She sniffed, but I thought it was because her red nose ran from cold and not because she was going to cry. Jazz never cried.

  Where have you been? my mother asked, and Jazz snapped right back.

  Does it matter?

  Yes. It matters.

  I wasn’t sure if I should leave the room or stay, so I listened again to the sauce and stared at a spider I found near my foot on the slate floor. Circles closed in around that spider, like one lasso after another. The spider stayed still.

  Finally, Mama said, I’m sorry, Jazz. I shouldn’t have said those things.

  Did you mean them? Jazz asked.

  Yes, Mama said. I suppose I did.

  Jazz ran up to her room after that, and Mama ran after her, though it wasn’t any use, because Jazz slammed her door and locked it straightaway. Later, she told Papa that she’d been staying after school to help tutor a student in math, making some money so she could buy presents for my parents and my grandmother, who all had birthdays coming up. Mama cried a lot after that, and she slept a lot, too. Jazz didn’t speak to her for at least a week.

  Mama told me later that she was sorry, that it wasn’t good of her as a mother to talk about Jazz like that in front of me. I told her she didn’t have to apologize, but she did it again anyway.

  You’re such an old mirror, Olivia Moon. But your sister is a mirror, too. Just harder for me to look into.

  I didn’t understand, and told her so.

  I see myself in both of you, she explained. Different parts. She put her hand against my cheek. Here’s what I want you to remember, my old-mirror daughter. You should always think about what you say before you say it, always mean what you do before you do it. Always be sure of yourself, and consider the repercussions. It’s not something I’m good at, Olivia. I never have been.

  I had a sense of it then, but later I knew it for sure: Thinking ahead to the repercussions of any given choice wasn’t something I was good at, either. The big difference between me and Mama, though, was that I didn’t let it bother me.

  I wished there was a way to convince Jazz that a stalled-out bus was something we could overcome, that it didn’t have to mean the end of the road. But she’d said going home, said period, said end of story, and even I knew a brick wall when I ran into one. I leaned against the window beside me, but although the sky was as blue as ever, it smelled like failure.

  “Here you go, sugar,” said the waitress, settling a tall glass on the table.

  It was easier to perceive her if I looked toward the side of her face, so I did that, and tried not to care that she might think me shy or rude or just plain weird for not looking her square in the eye. She was tall, with a mass of blond hair, and wore a purple apron that said something I couldn’t read.

  “Did you have a chance to look at the menu?” Her voice was as light and frothy as the root beer I’d ordered. “Our buffalo burger with cilantro mayonnaise is on special today if you’d like to try that.”

  Buffalo? Cilantro? I wasn’t even sure what those things would taste like. Maybe chicken. Everything was supposed to taste like chicken.

  “Or maybe you’d like a slice of pie,” she said as I chewed my lip. “We’ve got some real nice lemon meringue today.”

  “I do love pie,” I told her.

  “Smart girl,” she said. “My name’s Rocky. Whistle if you need anything.”

  I wished whistling would work. I’d whistle for a week. The thought of going back to everything as it was—to my father drinking and my sister about to start work in a funeral home, to my mother’s ashes stuck in a jar and a letter stuck in my pocket—made my dark spot twitch with the threat of growth. I sent a silent question up to the universe.

  Do you want me to go home? Can you give me a sign?

  I waited. Listened to the conversations of people around me. Talk of taxes, of road work, of not trusting a babysitter and buying a surveillance camera. Listened to the restaurant’s swinging doors whoosh open-closed-open in a spray of maroon rectangles. Breathed in the greasy smell of burgers and fries, the sweet underscent of pie. Felt the cold table beneath my fingers, as smooth as stone. Saw Rocky rush here and there, saw others come and go, saw black-and-white floor and red seats, saw—not enough. Not nearly enough.

  If not for my eyes, maybe I could’ve made this trip alone. If not for my eyes, maybe I could’ve borrowed the bus and driven myself to the glades. Even with my eyes, I could’ve driven myself—after getting the permit for folks who required special glasses. I thought about those glasses, how I’d told my father and sister that I’d lost them. I hadn’t. But I couldn’t use them. Not yet.

  “No dogs allowed,” someone said at a distance, and I peered over my shoulder to spy two men standing beside the entrance. I couldn’t see a dog.

  “You need to turn yourself around right now, so we don’t cause a scene,” said a man with a voice like a bad muffler.

  “Come on, I’m dying for a coffee,” the other man said. “This isn’t even my dog.” His voice reminded me of our driveway back home. Full of stones.

  “Rules are rules. Out with you now. And stay away from our dumpsters.”

  “Now, that’s just plain insulting.”

  I strained to get a better look, as the man and the dog I still couldn’t see were ushered outside.

  “Gonna sprain your neck doing that, sugar.”
r />   I whipped back around as Rocky set a plate in front of me.

  “Who was that?” I asked her.

  “Train hopper, I’m sure,” she said. “They come in every once in a while, sometimes with their dogs. But, dogs or not, Den doesn’t like them—they’re not the right sort, a real weird mix.” She pointed toward the window. “See that out there?”

  I couldn’t make out any details and told her so, that I had bad eyes. When she didn’t ask me any questions about that, I decided I liked her all the more.

  “There’s a train down there, stopped with some Levi Pike cars at the tree line,” she said. “They’re empty now, going back to Levi to restock, which is why the hoppers were in them, taking advantage of a free lift.”

  “People still do that?” I’d heard about that sort of thing but thought it was an old-fashioned fad, something that had stopped a long time ago.

  “They sure do, right under our noses and within eyeshot of a whole restaurant full of people. It’s close to the yard down there, but not in it, so those cars are away from the bull.” She laughed when my eyes went wide. “Not the animal, sugar. The bull’s a person. He’s the one who tries to prevent hoppers from catching out in the first place.”

  “So it’s illegal?” I asked, and Rocky laughed again.

  “Only if they get caught.”

  She left me there to stare out the window, struggling to make out the train. Levi Pike cars. Levi. A town that lay southeast of where we were. Southeast, and close to the bogs. Closer than we were, at any rate.

  I plunged my fork into the lemon meringue, then took a bite. It might’ve been the best pie I ever tasted. It tasted, I thought, like second chances.

  August 2, 1991

  Dear Dad,

  Your granddaughter, Jazz Marie Moon, turned six months old today.

  Yes, she was born—pink, healthy, crying as she should, and with a wickedly misshapen head. Labor was hard. Thirty-six hours. I passed out once from the pain, when the doctors had to push at my legs to make more room for the baby. But time passes, doesn’t it? She came. The pain ended.