The Moon Sisters: A Novel Read online

  She had no name at all for two days. I didn’t even call her “baby.” In the end, I named her after the music the nurse played for me while I labored; it was either Jazz or Wynton Marsalis.

  Jazz is a good baby, I guess, in the way of babies. She eats well; she is growing. She’s a good baby, but when I look at her I feel nothing. She coos and laughs, and I can’t even smile back. I know I should feel something more than I do. She’s a baby. She’s my baby. But all I see when I look at her is what I’ve lost. How could I not? She has your mouth, the downturned lips that make you look so serious. She has your eyes.

  I still miss you, Dad, but I try not to think of you—how you are, your health, whether the house has fallen around you, what you feel. Because I am more mad at you than anything. Furious sometimes. So much so that it verges on hatred.

  I just thought you should know.

  Beth

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Boiled Poet

  JAZZ

  Anger and I had a strange relationship. It claimed me more and more often, and I understood it less and less. Sometimes I worried about this. Why was I so angry? I never landed on a complete answer. I felt it, though, simmering inside me, ready to go off at any second, and had become all too familiar with the cycle. Boil over. Shut down. Steep in guilt. Return to a simmer. Repeat.

  It wasn’t always like this. I remember being happy.

  What do you want to be when you grow up, Jazz Marie Moon? my mother asked when I was little. An architect? You’re smart enough. A model? You’re pretty enough. How about a rocket scientist, or an artist, or the president of the United States? I’d shoot her a knowing look, and she’d smile, because she knew what I liked best. Or you can be a writer! You’ll become a brilliant novelist, or a playwright, or the next poet laureate! Be a good girl and listen to Mama, and you can be anything you like, anything you put your mind to.

  I believed her then. I did listen to her. I was a good girl. And I dreamed. I’d wake up before the sun and write a new constitution, or I’d stand in front of the bathroom mirror and practice poses. I’d draw pictures of big houses and include an office for my mother; never again would she have to work on a plywood desk or in a cramped kitchen in a house with poor heating.

  And I’d write. I loved to write plays best of all, though most were nonsensical. Once I wrote a play about a girl named Candice Kane, a name I thought to be exceedingly clever.

  I wrote poetry, too. Long, windy things that went on for pages. Short haikus that were displayed on the refrigerator:

  Alligator ham—

  eating you up with mustard,

  and a glass of milk.

  One day I’d try a bigger project, write a story that could become a book, just like my mama.

  Things changed as I grew, as I learned how life worked.

  The message never wavered—listen and dream and good things will happen—but neither did anything else. My father went to work and came back again. My mother rarely left home. When I asked if I could do something—like go into the neighborhood to see if I might find some kids to act in a play I’d written, back when I was younger, when I had a friend or two who hadn’t yet decided that my family was too weird to associate with—my mother always found a reason to keep me planted beside her. There were things to do (cooking, cleaning, watching my sister) or things to avoid (the rain, the snow, the mud, the unleashed dog or the bully down the road).

  The unreasonableness of this situation became more glaring to me as time passed. How would I ever become anything at all without real world practice, and not just an ability to imagine a greater existence? Because I could imagine it: a unique life, boundless and full of color, in stark contrast to the browns and greens of West Virginia and the stagnancy of our days. But as I grew it became clearer that there was a gap between what my mother said she wanted for me and what she expected of me, and that the only thing full of color at my house was my sister’s head.

  I envied Olivia’s altered perceptions, but not as much as I envied her freedom. I told myself it was because she was younger that things were different, and that my mother was probably as permissive with me as she was with my sister when I was her age. But that was not the case.

  You will not be able to manage Olivia the way you try to manage Jazz, Babka said one day, in a conversation with my mother that I wasn’t meant to hear. But she will bring a new perspective to your life if you see life through her eyes.

  It was a perspective I would never share, never could. And eventually it occurred to me that Olivia’s perspective was the reason my mother was so different with her. My sister was, intrinsically, genetically, more creative. All she had to do was open her eyes to see the world in fine pastry layers of color and flavor. Everything that came from my mind, and all that went onto my pages, seemed gray when compared with my sister’s reality. The surreal art that began to dominate the surface of the refrigerator was not anything I could ever compete with. My mother knew it, too; she didn’t have to say it for me to feel that from her every day.

  Hope hardened for me like an overbaked biscuit. My grand drawings became doodles. My plays became brief, drafted on the backs of my papers at school, on tests and quizzes. I tried not to write at all, though I was once made to write a poem for a junior high English class. It was about black claws and the bleeding guts of crow men. I liked writing it and thought the poem had a good flow. My teacher gave me a D and said I should talk to the guidance counselor if I felt troubled. That was the last poem I can recall writing down.

  Olivia became my mother’s muse. I became the cook.

  My headache bloomed as I stood talking with Jim—a tall, skinny man with oil-smeared gray coveralls and less oily gray hair. He needed to see the bus before he could diagnose the problem, he said several times as I quizzed him on what could be wrong, stressed how important it was that my bus be all right and that he make it so as soon as possible.

  “It’ll take a bit, no matter what it is,” he said.

  “Do ‘bits’ run into hours or days?” I asked, and he surprised me with a full-fledged guffaw.

  “Well, this here’s no fast-lube joint, but it’ll get done. You have the key?”

  I appraised him, tried to guess what sort of mechanic he might be by the lines around his eyes, the creases on his forehead. Back at home, we’d used the same guy for as long as I’d been alive.

  Then again, what choice did I have?

  He and my key disappeared inside an orange tow truck that seemed not to have a speck of rust anywhere on it, which was at least some sign of a strong work ethic. I waited until it disappeared beyond my sight, my heart turning over like a failed engine. The bus had to be all right, otherwise what would happen with my job?

  Inside the shop’s bathroom, under the watchful eyes of a blue-and-green graffiti cat, I tossed cool water over my face. A small relief until I accidentally inhaled some of it. In the midst of my coughing fit, I made the mistake of looking into the mirror. Dark half-moons lay on their backs under my eyes, water dripped off my nose and chin, and my hair looked as ill-kempt as Olivia’s. For a second I wondered if my mother’s spirit would come crashing out of the glass, rake me over the coals for worrying more about my responsibilities to Emilia Bryce than to my own sister. My head pounded with a newfound intensity when I realized I hadn’t packed any pain relievers.

  I developed the only migraine I’ve ever had the year Olivia’s homeschooling began, on Christmas Eve. My eyes had been funny, my vision not quite right during our traditional holiday dinner at Babka’s.

  It is not velija, but it will have to do, my grandmother said, referring to the five courses spread over her table, gracing her best white china plates, instead of the traditional twelve courses for the holiday. I could barely eat a bite. The candle she lit wavered until the white fish swam on my plate along with the holubky.

  I shouldn’t have said anything to Olivia.

  Sounds like synesthesia was her reply.

  I took another ko
lači for my plate, and ignored her attempt to find common ground between us.

  I was fifteen, and Olivia was eleven. Our mother had made the decision to homeschool her just three months before, so life at home wasn’t much fun. Books lay all over the place. Every spare dime seemed to go into buying them, too. That meant there wouldn’t be a lot under the tree for us, and we knew it going into the holiday.

  When the headache came, my mother worried it was because of all that. No big presents. Olivia at home. Jazz wasn’t feeling love, or something like it. I told her she was wrong—it’s not like I would’ve held out any hope for an iPod—but she still sat with me most of the night. Gave me medicine. Brewed tea for me, and watched to be sure I drank it. Offered her pillow when the ice bottle leaked water all over mine.

  Good daughter, good mother, I thought, remembering something I never should’ve read, my teeth ground together.

  I tried to ignore her, turned the other way, but I could still feel her there—a warm, worried, and resented presence. Don’t be here. Go away. I don’t need you, don’t want you looking at me, examining me, trying so hard to care. My forehead felt balled into a knot over the whole thing, which might be why I was sick in the toilet, my head exploding over the porcelain. Mama stood behind me during all that, rubbing my back.

  This, too, shall pass, she said.

  Would feeling like my mother’s personal atonement pass?

  How about the way I hated her right then, my good mother who never wanted me but wanted to control my every move and thought and dictate my future to prove that she was a good daughter? Could I purge that emotion into the toilet, too? It’s not like I wanted to feel that way, any more than I wanted a puking headache.

  It won’t pass, I said between heaves.

  Of course it will, she said. You’ll feel right as rain tomorrow, sweetie.

  Don’t call me that, I said, and she stopped rubbing my back. I don’t want to go to college.

  She didn’t say anything.

  She helped me back into bed a few minutes later, then reached for the warm ice bag. Time to dump the water.

  I won’t change my mind, I said, when she was halfway out the door. Don’t bother trying.

  She pretended not to hear me, but I know that she did.

  Long minutes passed as I waited outside for Jim, but I didn’t hear the rumbling return of his truck with my bus in tow. Maybe he’d had a problem. Maybe the bus was too big for him. Maybe …

  I walked back across the lot and toward the diner, settling my pack over a shoulder. Coffee might, at least, help my headache.

  The place was called Ramps, I noticed, and was nicer inside than I’d processed fifteen minutes before, with a polished black-and-white tiled floor, vinyl red booth seats, and a ceiling of ornately pressed tin. Central to the main room was a Snapple beverage cooler, butted up against a wall covered with old doors and knobs. The other walls were stripped to reveal brick and housed a display that reminded me of something from an Early American art exhibit, with everything from tin animal cutouts to signs advertising the cost of live bait (CRICKETS—$1, 50/COUNT). On a large chalkboard, a list of specials mentioned things I thought existed only on TV shows and in places like New York City—things like marinated chicken on focaccia bread with sun-dried tomatoes and pesto. And, I noticed with a sinking feeling that originated in my wallet, the people around us wore blouses and jackets, looked more like business professionals on a lunch break than travelers from Tramp hoping for a cheap seat.

  Set before Olivia, though, was no more than a drink and a piece of pie, which eased my throbbing head—but not for long. I’d been in the booth less than a second when she blurted out an idea as absurd as the dog I’d seen earlier on the stairs.

  “We can take a train to the glades.”

  “Olivia, please let’s not do this now. I need coffee,” I said, using one of my father’s favorite escape lines. Sense trouble? Delay. It had worked for him for most of my childhood. This, however, was Olivia, and with Olivia the rules had always been different.

  “No, Jazz, really. We can take a train,” she said, her eyes wide and her body tipped so far toward me that she seemed inches away from sprawling over the table.

  “That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had, and I’m including the time you wanted to dye the dog blue to match his name.”

  “I was six. This will work. I—”

  “Stop. I have a headache,” I said. “Jim isn’t back with the bus, and I have no idea how we’re going to get—”

  “But it’s the answer to all our problems,” she said, looking somewhere in the vicinity of my left ear. “The train down there is heading to Levi, and Levi’s close to the glades.”

  I followed the direction of her thrown-back thumb and noticed the train in the distance, the line of baby-blue Levi Pike cars. “Jesus, Olivia, that’s not a passenger train. It’s a freight train.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “People can ride and—”

  I shushed her, shut down her jabberfest before it could begin, then waved my hand when I spotted the waitress two tables away. “Coffee, please,” I said when she arched her brows in question. “Black.” She nodded, and was off.

  I tried another of my father’s favorite tactics: diversion. “I don’t suppose you have anything sensible in that bag of yours, do you? Aspirin? Tylenol? Anything?”

  “No,” she said, then veered back to the track of her choice. “It’s fate, Jazz, don’t you see? Why else would the train be right there, pointing in the right direction, going right where we need it to go?”

  Obviously my father’s techniques weren’t going to work; I’d have to do it my way.

  “First of all,” I started, “it isn’t ‘right where we need it to go.’ Levi is not Cranberry Glades.”

  “Rocky said it’s real close, and—”

  “Second of all, why the hell are we having this conversation? The answer is no. I can’t and won’t let either of us be carted all over the state in a dirty freight train. I won’t chase after you, either, and you have to stop doing things that mean someone does have to chase after you. I mean that. I can’t do it anymore, Olivia, I have a real job now. And Dad wouldn’t have a clue how to rein you in.” I watched with satisfaction as the light in her eyes faded away, then for insurance added, “You think harping on things that meant so much to Mom is good for him? He needs to let it go.”

  “There’s more than one way to let something go.”

  “Yeah? Well, this isn’t one of them.”

  Her gaze shifted from my ear to the window.

  “There you go, sugar,” said the waitress, setting a steaming mug of coffee in front of me, only one of her blond curls out of place. “Can I get you anything else? There’s a menu right over there.” She indicated where the menus lay, wedged behind a chrome napkin holder.

  I didn’t want anything, I told her, and seconds later she disappeared through a set of swinging doors. Mad, maybe, that I wouldn’t be adding substantially to the bill or her tip.

  I regarded my sister again. Pale skin—too pale for summer. Cracked lips. Thick black lashes I’d coveted for the better part of a decade. Unruly eyebrows. Fingers busying themselves with a new braid.

  “Olivia, listen.”

  “I get it, all right?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think that you do. You’re talking about doing stupid, dangerous, illegal things here.”

  “It’s only illegal if you get caught,” she said.

  I leaned closer, lowered my voice. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t just hear you consider becoming a criminal over this bullshit trip.”

  “It’s not a bullshit trip,” she said. “It means something to me. And it was everything to Mama.”

  “Why does it seem that you can’t hear me? Maybe those braids of yours are too tight.”

  She dropped her hands, made small fists on the table.

  I took a breath. “Listen, Olivia, I think even Mom knew life wasn’t going to
imitate Field of Dreams—‘If you visit the glades, the end of the story will come’—even if she wanted it to. And even if she didn’t, we know better, right?” I said, including her as a person of reason despite her nature, hoping she’d like feeling part of the club. “It’s pointless, taking a trip like this for a woman who’s no longer with us.”

  “A woman who is no longer with us?” Her crazy brows jammed together. “What is that, funeral-home-speak? How can you be so cold? That’s Mama you’re talking about. Mama.”

  Right. But one of us had to be practical. Sober.

  “Look, I know things have been hard since she died,” I said, “especially considering how she died, but—”

  “She didn’t kill herself. Don’t say she did.”

  Heat spread through my spine at this—my sister asking again that the world bend to her perception of things, even if she shut her eyes to reality.

  “Olivia Moon, you need to check yourself,” I said, struggling to keep my voice down. “It’s time to grow up, right now. It’s time to be what Mom would’ve wanted you to be. If you’re not going to do it for yourself or because it’s the right thing to do, then do it for her.”

  “I am doing it for her,” she said, with a rare edge to her voice.

  We stayed like that, mentally circling each other, until the sound of an overburdened vehicle made it past my black fog. I burned my mouth chugging down the coffee, then slid out of the booth gripping my bag, the backs of my legs sticking a little to the seat.

  “Stay here,” I said, looking down at my sister. “I have to tend to the bus, all right?”

  She stared off into the seat I’d vacated without a word of acknowledgment.

  “Olivia?”

  Silence.

  “Fine, be a bitch,” I said.

  I strode toward the door and somehow slammed right into the waitress, which loosed the metal coffeepot in her hand. It fell as if in slow motion, raining acid all over the pristine black-and-white floor.