Iona Moon

by Melanie Rae Thon

  Still the woman snored, oblivious to all this death on the quiet road. When they passed the smoking pulp mills of Missoula, Iona thought it would have been as good a place to stay as any if she hadn’t had to worry about her brothers showing up next winter, finding her by mistake, feeling obligated to haul her home.

  It was almost two when they crossed into Idaho again. Nine hours, Iona thought, and here I am.

  She was glad to leave the woman in Coeur d’Alene, but she felt sorry for the boy.

  A trucker took her to Spokane. Twenty-five minutes and she was across the border, in a different state, free at last. He dropped her at the first exit, and it was almost five before she hitched a ride with two long-haired college boys headed for Seattle. One was blond and tanned, thick as a football player. The other was thin and wore wire-rims. They said their name was Larry, both of them. This made them laugh, and the skinny one rolled a joint.

  The road was dry and dusty. It hadn’t rained in Washington. Iona drifted toward sleep, then woke, startled. Every time she opened her eyes she saw the same thing: a farmhouse on a hill, a clump of trees, a red truck. The white houses made her heart pound. She kept thinking the boys had turned around and brought her home. She stuck her head out the window to let the wind whip her face.

  “You got a place to stay?”

  Iona opened her eyes in the dark car. One of the Larrys was talking to her. Now she saw a black lake, a long bridge, buildings in every direction, the yellow lights of winding streets, the glow of living rooms. The bridge wavered. She could be lost here, and safe.

  “We’re gonna crash with some friends,” said little Larry. “Sleep on the floor. They won’t mind one more body.”

  The concrete bridge floated on the water for more than a mile, a mystery, its lights delicate and blue, and Iona wondered why the years of waves hadn’t torn it from the shore.

  The Larrys took her to a two-bedroom apartment on Olive Street where five other people expected to spend the night. They ate chocolate cupcakes and potato chips, drank wine, smoked pot. Skinny Larry put his arm around her, and no one asked how they’d met. Later he got up to go to the bathroom. When he came back, Iona was lying on the floor behind the couch. She felt him staring. He stooped and jabbed her shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “wake up.” She played dead. If he was anything like her brothers, he’d give her a kick, just to be sure. But he didn’t. Iona heard blond Larry say, “I told you she was a waste of time, and not much to look at so what’s the point?”

  She woke before it was light; early enough to milk the cows, she thought. She climbed over the bodies in the living room. Larry still wore his wire-rims. The other Larry sprawled on the couch. Three girls huddled on a piece of foam, spooned together—little rabbits, Iona thought. No one had a blanket. She found her suitcase near the door. Someone had opened it and pawed through her clothes.

  She walked the streets, looking for signs: Room for Rent. Help Wanted. She’d have to wait till nine at least. No sense knocking at six in the morning. Yesterday she was in the barn taking care of the cows. One last time.

  She’d turned her life into an accident. If she’d left today she would have gotten a different ride, ended up in another part of town. Everything was luck, good or bad. One wild cell multiplied again and again in a woman’s body. One child skated onto thin ice and did a lovely pirouette before she drowned.

  She went the wrong way first, along a street of fancy houses with stained-glass windows and wrought-iron fences, past gardens where nymphs frolicked in fountains, and dogs lived in little replicas of their masters’ mansions. Every house was as big and still as Jay Tyler’s house. Who would let a girl like Iona Moon sleep in one of their clean white beds. She had mud on her shoes and dark stains on her jeans—blood, she thought, a chicken plucked and gutted a month ago.

  She circled back past the apartment on Olive, down a long hill and up another. No one had lace curtains in this part of town. She saw a house long-deserted, wood worn silver as an old barn, windows boarded. She knew how easily floorboards rotted, pushed apart by earth and weeds, how quickly thistles took the yard, how big sunflowers grew. She’d seen a roof torn away in a thunderstorm and understood that a house can become a husk in a single hour. She remembered her mother standing in the kitchen, moving from stove to sink. It was summer, a long time ago. The front door was open wide and so was the back. Iona stood on the porch and saw all the way through this house, clear to that burst of light, the bright space behind her mother. She was afraid for Hannah even then, though she couldn’t say why.

  Night filled the valley like black water. When the house stayed open, she felt the dark pour in.

  Now she saw that the mother in this memory was only thirty. Already her oldest boy was big enough to work in the fields with his father, to come home surly and sweaty as a grown man. When Hannah was Iona’s age, she’d watched her husband put their first baby in the ground. So no matter what happened to her in Seattle, Iona knew she had no right to pity herself.

  She spotted this in a window on Fir Street: Rooms to Rent. She sat down on the curb to wait. The house had two stories plus an attic, was white once and now dingy. Soot clouded the windows. This seemed like a good thing; no one would be able to see inside.

  “Fifteen a week, due on Monday. Twenty-five-dollar deposit,” the landlady said. Iona was still in the entry way. If Maywood Wilder had grown fatter and nastier every year of her life she would have become this woman. Her dewlaps drooped. Face powder clung in her wrinkles as if she had tried to fill them in. She peered over her glasses. “Well?”

  “That’s fine,” Iona said.

  “I’ll only charge you ten this week.”

  “It’s already Saturday.”

  “I’m doing you a favor.”

  Iona followed the woman up the stairs. She looked over her shoulder. “How old are you anyway?”

  “Twenty.”

  The landlady snorted. “What’s your name?”

  “Iona Moon.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said, “and I own the sea and the stars. Look, it don’t matter to me how old you are or what your name is as long as you’ve got the cash.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Thirty-five today. Fifteen on Monday.”

  “I remember.”

  The room was worse than Iona expected, but she pulled the roll of bills from her pocket and peeled off three tens and five ones. There were no sheets on the bed, no blinds on the windows. The mattress was stained, flattened by bodies much heavier than her own. But it was a corner room, and this was a blessing; she had two windows, one overlooking the street, the other facing the burned-out house next door.

  “I’m Mrs. Hagestead,” the woman said, “by the by. There’s no Mr. Hagestead.” She put her hand over her heart, or rather over her huge left breast. “Rest his soul.” She closed her eyes for a moment and swayed as if she hoped to faint. “But don’t think you can get away with any mischief just because I don’t have a man around.” She leaned forward to make her point. “This is a respectable place. No overnight guests. No cooking in the room.”

  She dug down the front of her dress and pulled out a chain with half a dozen keys on a ring. She took one off and gave it to Iona. “For the front door,” she said. The key was warm and damp. “The one for your room is in the top drawer of the dresser. Five-dollar charge if you lose a key and have to use mine.”

  Iona locked the door as soon as Mrs. Hagestead was gone, took off her shoes, and fell on the bed.

  At four she woke, teeth fuzzy, neck stiff. Afternoon. She only knew because it was light. She had to piss and her head throbbed. Cupcakes and wine. Pieces of yesterday floated back. She remembered where she was. No cooking in the room. She’d forgotten to ask about the bathroom. Maybe she was supposed to go out for that too.

  She found it at the end of the hall: toilet, sink, shower—a room the size of a closet. Bring your own toilet paper. Mrs. Hagestead had neglected to say that. The stink of urine seeped up f
rom the tiles. Somebody had missed. The outhouse was cleaner than this room. In the winter, her brothers pissed in the snow, tried to write their names in great loopy script.

  She changed her shirt, stuffed five dollars in her pocket and the rest in her left shoe. She had to find the second sign.

  Help Wanted. It took three hours of walking. From the top of every hill, she saw the mountain, a perfect cone, snow-capped and solitary, rising out of clouds—a mirage, a place you could never reach no matter how far you walked.

  She finally found the right one on Broadway, barely a mile from where she’d started: Night Shift. Ask for Manager. She was going to end up like Sharla after all, working graveyard at a convenience store called ’Round the Clock, sleeping all day, dreading the long nights when she didn’t work.

  Stanley Dorfman was hardly any bigger than Iona and three times as old. He said she could have the job if she didn’t mind working eleven to seven, six nights a week, starting tonight. “Buck forty-five an hour, one eighty-five if you last a month.”

  She said fine, and he shook her hand. His palm was greasy, like the strands of hair matted across his scalp. He wheezed when he talked, but that didn’t keep him from lighting up a cigar as he showed her around the store.

  “Ever work a cash register?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Ever work somewhere that you had to make change?”

  She shook her head.

  He wore jeans and cowboy boots, the tiniest boots Iona had ever seen on a man.

  “Ever stock shelves?”

  “Only at home.”

  Stanley coughed and spit into a yellowed handkerchief. “Maybe this would be quicker if I just asked what you do know.”

  I know how to milk a cow, Iona thought, and skin a rabbit. I can change a woman’s bed while she’s still in it. But Stanley Dorfman wouldn’t be interested in any of that. He showed her how to use the coffee maker, and told her to watch the mirrors near the ceiling when kids were in the store. Just kids? She didn’t ask. He pretended he was a customer, piled chips and milk and sardines on the counter. He asked for Marlboros, soft pack. “Twinkies,” he said, “where are they?” She didn’t know. “Aisle three,” he wheezed, “don’t forget.”

  At eleven, Stanley left her on her own. “I trust you,” he said. “Don’t prove me wrong.”

  The place was busier than Iona had expected. ’Round the Clock was next door to an all-night gas station. People who needed gas in the middle of the night needed cigarettes and chocolate too, six-packs of Coke, and large coffees.

  Iona watched the man at the pumps. His long dark hair was parted in the center, pulled back and braided. He bounced off one foot when he walked, as if his right leg was stiff and heavy. Iona thought of Jay learning to walk like this, without a cane, without feeling sorry for himself. The man wore sneakers. Even from a distance Iona could see they were twice as long as Stanley Dorfman’s little boots. His jeans were faded, but his loose shirt was a brilliant blue.

  By three o’clock the street was dead. The man in the glass cage leaned back, rocking his chair on two legs.

  He must have felt her staring, just as she’d felt Larry’s glare. Wake up. Sometimes Leon sneaked into her room. She took deep, slow breaths. Sometimes he reached under the blanket. She groaned and rolled toward the wall. At breakfast Leon ate fast and didn’t look at her. She wanted to ask him: Did you come to my room last night, or was I dreaming? The man in the station stood up and glanced at the store. She started wiping the counter. “Always something to clean,” Stanley had said on his way out. “If I happen to drive by here, I don’t want to see you standing around picking your nose.”

  The man stretched and left his booth, then headed across the lot. He kept his leg more rigid than he had when Iona had watched him pumping gas, checking oil, washing windshields. Arthritis, she thought, bad joints, like Hannah, too young for that but life wasn’t fair. The bell above the door didn’t ring when he opened it. He moved up and down the aisles, trying not to limp. He looked at soap and spaghetti sauce. He read a box of crackers—each side and even the bottom. He pulled four different ice-cream bars from the freezer and inspected each one before he put it back in its place. He considered cans of tuna and Spam, studied the lunch meats in their tight plastic wrappers. He was the kind of guy who could slip a can under his shirt every time you blinked, the kind who could stuff every pocket and never show a lump.

  “Can I help you, sir?” Iona said.

  “Yeah, keep your eye on the station, will you?”

  He thought she was stupid. She watched his big hands and silver belt buckle; she watched the mirrors to check his back and front at the same time. Even so, she thought she might be missing something. The blue shirt swelled, filling up with deviled ham and red apples, a quart of milk, a bag of Oreos. But how could she accuse him if she didn’t see it happen?

  Finally he stood at the counter. His shirt deflated. He’d taken nothing. “How old’s the coffee?” he said. She wondered what he meant. For all she knew, Stanley had kept it on the shelf for five years. She shrugged. “When did you make it?”

  “One-thirty.”

  “Then we could use a fresh pot.” He had a high, broad forehead, bony cheeks and sharp jaw—as if his skin was stetched thin, pulled too far over his skull. He was dark, as dark as she was. Dog drag you across the field? He had that look. If Jeweldeen was here that’s what she’d say.

  “Pot’s half full,” Iona said.

  “You Dorfman’s daughter?” The gas man took a silver toothpick from the pocket of his jeans and scraped at something between his front teeth.

  “No,” Iona said. Did he think she looked like Stanley?

  “Then don’t be so tight with the man’s coffee,” he said, “and make a fresh pot for your pal Eddie.”

  “You’re not my pal.”

  “Yeah?” He glanced over his shoulder, shaded his eyes and looked out the door. He peered at the empty gas station. “Is there somebody around here you like better?”

  “Eddie what?”

  “Birdheart,” he said. “Used to be Rogers.” He didn’t explain. “You?”

  “Iona Moon.”

  “Lucky girl,” he said. “Now make me that coffee, will you?”

  At two minutes to seven, Odette Dorfman arrived. The bell on the door was working again. She looked Iona up and down. “Stanley’s done it this time,” she said. She was nearly six feet tall, her neck long and sinewy. Her head seemed too small, bobbing so high above her body. Iona imagined Odette lifting little Stanley in her arms. She saw the man, small as a wooden dummy on Odette’s lap. In their bed, he might disappear, buried beneath her, tiny sliver of a husband and his big-boned wife.

  “What’re you lookin’ at?” Odette said. The skin around her eyes crinkled.

  “Nothing.”

  “Do much business last night?”

  “Some.” Stanley could lift up Odette’s dress and hide between her legs. Maybe he was there right now. Maybe Odette couldn’t feel him.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t get smart with me.”

  “I’m not.”

  Odette’s mouth shrank to a wrinkle. “Yes, I can see that,” she said.

  Iona lay on her mattress, too tired to sleep, smelling the smoke and hair and sweat of the man who had lived in her room before she did. She wondered what had happened to him and hoped he hadn’t died in this bed. She tried to figure out how long it would take to earn enough money to buy sheets and towels. By fall she’d need a blanket, by winter a quilt. She thought of Sharla, though she didn’t want to. She knew she was lucky to find a job but suspected there was always a graveyard shift for girls like them, girls with no one who expected them home at night. She was worse off than Sharla already. Sharla’s bed was clean and so was her toilet. Still it was a relief in a way, to miss all the bright hours, to stop seeing faces in daylight.

  She’d have to buy some blinds. That was the
first thing. The room was too light. She pulled a shirt over her eyes. And she needed paper and pen, one stamp, one envelope. Dear Daddy, I’m fine.

  Dear Father.

  Dear Frank.

  She couldn’t even write the first line. It could wait. If she gave him her address, he might think she wanted him to come after her or send twenty dollars. He might be mad about the grocery money, might write to say she owed him. Maybe she’d just send a postcard, no greeting, no return address. Arrived safely. Got a job. Hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding the truck. Love, Iona.

  No, scratch the love—just Iona.

  10

  Iona knew the other tenants by their sounds. The man in the attic vacuumed every day. One night the man next door fell against the wall and cussed. Iona pictured him, huddled on the floor, nothing but a few inches of plaster between them. She could see the mirror image of her own room: stained mattress on a metal frame, dresser with three drawers and loose knobs, one lamp, one straight-back chair, a closet without a door, two wire hangers. She heard him stagger to the bed and collapse again. The springs were shot. The mattress sagged. Iona felt his back curve into it and remembered the other room, how it looked afterward, bed stripped, chair empty, though she herself had sat there hour after hour. Dresses still hung in that closet, all but one, and Iona wanted to stand in the close dark, feel rough wool and worn cotton against bare skin, smell the leather of broken shoes. She wished to watch the last line of light disappear as the door closed and she stayed inside.

  She heard footsteps, fast and light, the Scavenger Lady—that’s what Mrs. Hagestead called her. Iona hadn’t seen her but knew she collected treasures and stuffed them in shopping bags, dug in garbage bins, brought home shoes without mates, wheels but no wagon, books half burned. She lined the shoes up outside her door as if she expected the absent half of each pair to walk upstairs in the night.