Barbara Samuel (10 page)

As they grew older, Kitty discovered all kinds of treats for them to share—cheese fondues and homemade pizzas, whatever food had caught her exuberant imagination. They’d put on the Beatles or The Doors or the Rolling Stones—Kitty was the original rock ‘n’ roll baby—and dance while they cooked and ate. Sometimes, she’d put their hair into fancy styles or they’d paint one another’s nails. And when it came time for her to get ready, the girls went with her into her bedroom and helped pick out her earrings and bracelets and which eye shadows and lipstick colors she should wear. It was always Luna’s job to decide the perfume, and it was a ritual to spritz it over the polished and beautiful Kitty just before she left them with their baby-sitter. The smell of it lingered in the room long after she’d driven away.

Luna smiled now, remembering it. “There’s nobody like your grandma, you know it?”

Joy grinned. “She’s so cool. Do you know she has like ninety-seven bras and all these girdles and stuff? She showed them to me last time I was here. Zebra prints and velvet and everything.”

“Me and Elaine used to sneak into her drawers and try it all on.” Something about bras made her remember Thomas and she jumped up, looking around madly for the scrap of paper he’d given her the morning at his grandmother’s house. “Dang. I have to call this guy, right now.”

“A boyfriend?” Joy asked with a lift of her eyebrows.

“No, not exactly. I just met him.” The number was on the fridge, stuck beneath a magnet in the shape of a chili pepper. “But I told him I’d meet him for ice cream tonight, and I’m sorry to say that I forgot when I agreed to it that it is the first day of school.”

“What difference does that make?”

Luna carried the number over to the phone and picked it up. “I just think it would be nice to be here.”

Joy got up and pushed the button down. “Wait a second, will you?”

“Okay.” She hung up the phone.

“Do you have a lot of boyfriends or guys you see? Do you go out on dates a lot?”

“Not hardly.”

“That’s what I thought. Grandma’s always saying she wants you to get out more.” She, seeming far the older, folded her hands on the table. “A woman needs male companionship. I think you kinda like this guy, because your cheeks are red.”

Which made them redder, of course. “He seems nice.”

“Mom.” Joy leaned on her elbows. “I’m living here now. You don’t have to be somebody else, you know,
you can just have a normal life. You don’t have to be somebody’s idea of a perfect mother with me—I already have that back in Atlanta, and she drives me crazy.”

“Perfect, huh?” In spite of herself, she was a teeny bit wounded.

“I don’t mean that as a compliment, dude. She’s always, like, chirpy.” Joy did a valley girl thing with her head, back and forth. “And she’s always got, like, perfect hair and perfect makeup and she wears a size three. Most of my friends don’t even wear a size three, you know what I mean? It’s stupid.”

Laughing, Luna said, “So, I should feel better because my hair looks like I stuck my finger in an outlet, and I wear a size twelve on good days, and I rarely remember to wear lipstick, much less anything else?”

Joy’s face was serious. “I know you’re just kidding around, but that is what I mean. You’re real. I mean, Grandma’s real, too, even though she’s all into how she looks. With April, it’s like she’s doing it because she’s scared. Sometimes, I wanted to just see her get really mad, throw something or yell at someone, or just one time, eat a whole piece of cake instead of just taking a bite out of somebody else’s.” Her mouth tightened. “I never want to be like that. Never. It’s like Dad’s her god, and she’ll do anything to give him what he wants, but he never even notices all the things she does.”

A tightly bound bundle of emotions rolled down some internal slope and smashed into Luna’s diaphragm. She reached instinctively for Joy’s hand, and the bundle exploded on impact, scattering pieces of memory all over the place: she saw April, tense and tight, smiling perfectly, not a blond hair out of place, as she sat in on the trial. Saw her, three tiny tears running down her peach-soft cheeks, as Joy started screaming, “Mommy! Mom-MEE!” Saw April, brittle and stiff,
trying to win love from a man who had no idea what it really meant or how to deliver it, and she felt painfully, deeply sorry for her.

“Thanks, Joy,” she said roughly, and swallowed her emotionalism with a wry grimace. “You know, you’ve always done this, been so brutally honest it shocks people. I’m so glad you didn’t outgrow it.”

Joy turned her hand so she could hold her mother’s, and rubbed her thumb over her knuckle. “Well,” she said, “not everyone appreciates it.”

“I know. But it’s you, and you can’t go around changing yourself for other people. It never works.”

“Like April.”

“Not exactly. April is naturally that person—she’s a southern belle, and it might be time to get rid of that kind of model, but she’s doing what she thinks is the right thing.” Luna took a breath. “I was really remembering myself. Can you imagine me trying to be a southern belle? I tried so hard.” Laughing, she shook her head. “It was just not a good fit.”

Joy shuddered and used the action to pull free. “Just go out with this guy tonight, huh? I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll be home by eight-thirty.”

“Okay.” She stood up and started to clear the plates away. “I have some homework to do, anyway.” At the sink, she turned wickedly. “Don’t forget to carry condoms. You know how guys are.”

“Joy!”

She cracked up. “I’m only kidding, Mom.”

“You are so much more grown-up than you were a year ago.”

“It happens,” she said, and that faint bitterness crossed her lips. She turned the water on in the sink, staring down into the forming bubbles with a distant expression.

Carefully, Luna focused on the task of screwing on the lids of condiment jars. “Joy, did something happen this year?”

“What do you mean?”

She retied the baggie of turkey, snapped on the top of the container that held sprouts. “Something upsetting.”

“You mean because I look so different?”

Luna met her eyes. “It’s a pretty big change.”

A loose shrug, laced with disappointment. “Lot of things happened, but no one hurt me if that’s what you mean. Nobody molested me or stalked me or anything like that, and I haven’t started doing drugs, so don’t worry about that, either, okay?” She snapped off the water and leaned her thin hip on the lip of the counter. “I won’t lie—a lot of my friends do drugs and I look like a freak, so they offer, but I’m not interested.”

“Okay,” Luna said easily, and smiled. “You still say ‘freak,’ huh? That’s what we used to say.” She tucked the jars and bags back into the fridge, and plucked a dishrag out of the water to wipe down the table. “But here’s the thing, Joy, there’s really a uniform between groups, and it’s like you went from Army to Navy. There had to be a reason.”

“Freaks don’t ask you to be anybody but yourself,” she said. “I really got tired, Mom, of all the … crap … my friends were doing. Like one girl almost committed suicide over failing a test. She’s like sixteen and she thinks her life is over? That’s bad.”

Luna had a sudden thought. “Does it have anything to do with April, the way she likes everything to be?”

A flicker, something dark, crossed Joy’s face. “No.” She bit the word off. Anger was in her eyes when she looked hard at Luna. “You know what? I love April. She’s a good person. And she never gives me a hard time about all this.
In a way, she kind of likes me looking wild—she thinks I’m brave not to care what people think.”

Listening between the lines, Luna asked, “How does your dad feel about it?”

Joy smiled, almost bitterly. “He hates it.”

Ah. “What’s going on with you two?”

A shrug. “Nothing.” She opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head. “Nothing. We’re just really different people and I don’t like his values very much.”

Luna nodded. Taking a breath, she forced herself to stop there. A little at a time was better. “How was it at the new school today?”

“Not bad.” She tugged some rubber gloves over her hands—one of her vanities was very long, black fingernails. “I made a friend, which is nice. She lives right across the field, over there. Her name is Maggie. Her dad died in a car accident last spring.”

“I know who she is. That was really sad—he wasn’t very old. Is she okay?”

Joy shrugged. “I guess. I mean, how all right could you be when you lose your dad?”

“Right.” She hesitated and added, “Well, I used to be fairly good at this stuff, so if it seems like she might need someone to talk to, I’m here.”

“Thanks. I thought of that, too.”

Luna got the broom, and Joy rinsed the dishes. “Mom,” she said after a while. “Why did you quit? Even Dad says you were a really good therapist, even when …” She colored.

“Even when I was drinking?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know,” Luna said honestly. “It seemed wrong, all of a sudden, to be trying to help other people get their lives together when mine was such a mess.”

“But you’ve been sober for four years.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged.

“Don’t you ever miss it?”

“Drinking or counseling?” She smiled to take the sting out.

Joy’s eyebrows rose. “Both, I guess.”

Luna straightened and met her eyes. “Yes.” She took a long, deep breath against the very small nudge of cigarette hunger rising in her lungs. “Drinking was a great escape, you know? And life gives us a lot of reasons to run away. So, sometimes when things are hard or scary, I still think about a nice shot of tequila. But I go to a meeting or I call my sponsor or I take a walk or”—she waved a hand to the back room—“or go do some crafts.” She paused. “Do you worry about it, me falling off the wagon?”

Joy met her eyes. “No. You know, it was kind of unreal. I never saw you drink, so it’s not like something I ever think about.”

“I’m glad.”

Joy pulled the basket out of the drain and emptied it in the trash. “What about counseling? You miss that?”

Luna swept a pile of mess from the floor into the dustpan, considering. “Yeah, I do. Every now and then, I give some thought to art therapy, using creativity to help women find out more about themselves.”

“Why don’t you do it, then?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. One day at a time, huh? I think I’m where I’m supposed to be right now.”

Joy nodded, and put the basket back in the sink. Luna settled the broom by the wall.

“Mom?” she said.

She turned.

“I’m glad I can talk to you. It means a lot to me that
you just tell the truth.” She was blinking against a sheen of tears. “Thank you.” “You’re welcome,” Luna said.

It was a fairly long hike to the Dairy Queen from her house, so Luna got dressed early—tossing through about six different shirts before Joy helped her settle on the turquoise peasant blouse. “Makes your shoulders look sexy,” she said. “And I think you should put up your hair, just let a little bit of it trail down your neck.” She piled it up to illustrate. “See?”

So she wore it the way Joy pinned it, feeling like she was getting a special blessing for the date as she headed toward town. It was a gorgeous evening. The air was dry, cooling now as purple rain clouds ambled in from the southwest, turning the mountains a deep, dark blue. Sunlight poked through the clouds here and there, falling like solid golden needles in some places, liquid as orange juice in others.

It was those kinds of views that had haunted her in her years away. Whenever people would sigh over a beautiful sky or landscape, she had to bite her tongue to keep from saying, “Yeah, it’s nice, but you should see my hometown.” Hard to tell people that their landscapes are beautiful, but … well, not quite like this. She sometimes felt drunk on all that color, wanting to eat it, rub it all over herself, save it in jars and paint it on her clothes and ceilings.

Most of her walk was quiet. She walked past small houses with wide expanses of field around them. Once in a while, she heard a goat bleat, or a dog rush up to a fence. For the space of a quarter mile, a cheerful stray Border collie with a bandana collar trotted along beside her.

The quiet changed when she hit the main drag, of
course. Tourists clogged the streets with RVs and BMWs and motorcycles. They walked the sidewalks in groups of two and three and four, sporting sunburns and Tshirts with pictures of aspen trees and Indian pottery. Luna fell into the swarm, suddenly nervous when she spied the DQ sign up ahead. In a moment of panic, she ducked into the coffee shop and ordered a double latte on ice, buying herself a little time along with the infusion of caffeine courage. Carrying the paper cup, she drank of it deeply, undissolved sprinkles of turbinado sugar landing like heavy stars on her tongue as she walked the last block to the DQ.

Thomas was there already, and he didn’t see her right away. She slowed down, taking him in, marveling with a little smile that she was actually going to sit down with him. Talk with him. Eat something with him. How often had she eyed him at the grocery store, peeked through her windows at him as he carried bags of supplies into his grandmother’s house?

Passersby noticed him. His body was angled to the west so that the purple and orange light illuminated the craggy size of his nose, the high brow, and unkindly lit on the small curve of belly over his belt. He looked calm and dangerous with his hair loose on his shoulders, and she realized that he probably knew a certain sort of woman would like that hair a lot.

He saw her and raised his chin, crossing his arms over his chest in a loose way. The edge of a welcoming smile touched his mouth and it made Luna feel so wildly beautiful that she wanted to giggle. Toss her hair. Something.

“Hey,” he said, quietly.

She took a sip of her latte and moved closer. “Hi,” she said, feeling small next to him. He wore boots with a good heel, and her head only came to his chin.

“Did you walk?” he asked.

She nodded.

“You have no car or you like walking?”

She met his eyes and told the truth. “I don’t have a driver’s license.”

“Drinking?”

Rare that anyone just came out and asked. Luna found it made it a lot easier to say simply, “That’s right.”