The Moon Sisters (7 page)

“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.”

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
.

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   

A
nger 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
.