Iona Moon

by Melanie Rae Thon

  The first time. He couldn’t look at her. He was a virgin and a fool. The first time. Surely she didn’t think there would be a second time.

  He meant to just drop her off, but she said, “Please—walk me to the door. I’m a little tight.”

  Whose fault is that? he thought. And his father’s voice answered: Every woman deserves to be treated like a lady. How could Horton believe that? Because he had never done what Willy had done, had never found himself with a woman like Delores Tyler.

  Willy left the car running. He walked around the back to open Mrs. Tyler’s door for her, offered his arm as she climbed out and held her steady up the long walk. “Will you be all right?” he said.

  “My husband’s not home.”

  “I know.”

  “My son’s asleep.”

  He felt sick to his stomach and blamed it on the cognac.

  “I know it’s silly,” Delores said, “but I’m afraid to go in alone. This old house is so big at night.”

  It’s a man’s duty to protect a lady. Willy hated the ring of Horton’s words and wanted to ask: Who will protect the man? But he knew his father could never understand that question. What kind of man needs protection?

  So, he was going to see her inside, flick on a few lights, blow the ghosts out of the corners. It was past midnight. Halloween was over. He thought of the Dracula mask. He couldn’t remember where it was—in the car or still on the table. Jay might have discovered it already. Perhaps he knew everything and was sitting on his bed in the dark, wearing the rubber face, waiting to scare his mother.

  The mask was on the table. Delores was safe, moving down the hallway, hitting every switch she passed. “Let me make you some tea,” she said.

  “I left the car running.”

  “Just a quick cup.”

  He looked at her smeared lipstick, her wrinkled dress. He had done this. He had bitten her nipple, much too hard.

  “Please, Willy, sit with me for a minute or two.”

  He nodded. He owed her this.

  They didn’t make it to the kitchen. Jay wobbled down the stairs. Willy stared at his friend, and thought he might not have recognized him on the street. Jay’s dirty-blond hair was pulled into a scraggly ponytail. He clenched the banister with one hand and his cane with the other. Willy wanted to embrace him so that he wouldn’t have to see Jay’s squinting eyes and furrowed brow, so he wouldn’t know how much each step hurt him.

  “Has my mother been filling you up with her sad stories, Willy Boy?” Even his voice had changed, had turned thin and cruel. Did the pain in his legs cause that too? Jay looked from Delores to Willy. He knew where they’d been and what they’d done. He probably even guessed that Willy hadn’t managed to get his pants off. “How the mighty have fallen,” he said.

  Delores Tyler’s face crumpled; every line deepened.

  Jay limped down the last steps, into the light of the hallway. He had aged too, in a sudden, brutal way. He was red-eyed but not drunk.

  Delores covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders heaved, but there was no sound. “We’ve upset my poor mother,” Jay said.

  Willy touched Delores’s arm, and she batted him away with one hand, revealing half her face. Mascara ran down her cheek in gray streaks. “Go,” she said. “Just go.”

  He drove too fast, slammed the brakes too hard, skidded at every stop sign. He was halfway home when he saw one of those damn kids sprint across the street, a stolen jack-o’-lantern tucked under his arm. He longed to hit the siren and scream out after him, but of course the Chevy had no siren. The kid was fast, climbing fences, cutting through backyards, but Willy kept catching him, a narrow shadow moving through the long beams of his headlights. He spun into a curb and leaped from the car to chase the boy down an alley. One block nearly finished him. He was stiff, out of breath, no match for the lithe child. But he had luck on his side, his father’s just god. The boy stumbled and the jack-o’-lantern flew from his arms. He sprawled; the pumpkin burst, an explosion of orange shards and splattered seeds. Willy was on the kid in a second, straddling his backside. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Willy said. He gripped the boy’s neck and pushed his nose into the snow.

  “I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “Goddamn thief.”

  “It was mine.”

  “Then why you running?”

  “I’m late,” he said. “My pa’s gonna whup me for sure.”

  Willy wondered if this might be true. The child was younger than he’d thought: ten—twelve at most. Halloween was over and it was just a jack-o’-lantern, after all. “Come on, kid, I’ll give you a ride.” Willy stood and the boy scrambled to his feet.

  “No fucking way,” the kid said. He looked older again, mean, a thief for sure. “You’re a crazy motherfucker.”

  Willy wanted to choke him for that, but the kid was off; Willy didn’t have a chance. The car door had swung open. From a distance, the yellow light of the dome made the Chevy look submerged in murky water.

  He sat on the cold seat rubbing his knee. He must have bashed it when he jumped the boy. How the mighty have fallen. Now he remembered the mask lying on the table in the Tylers’ entryway. Motherfucker. He’d forgotten it a second time, left it for everyone to see: Delores, Jay, Andrew Johnson Tyler. His frightening disguise was false and harmless, his own face ridiculous.

  17

  Jay sat on the edge of his bed, wondering if Delores had told Willy how pretty she used to be, and slim. He imagined her crying softly, explaining how the doctor carved her belly to get him out. Perhaps she showed him the scar Jay had never seen. He wished he knew Muriel’s god and believed in this night of prayer and hope, the eve of All Saints’ Day. He remembered Muriel lighting candles for the dead trapped in Purgatory, saying her Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s, whispering: Our Father.

  He felt a flutter in his chest, his heart a flame, guttering in a drafty room. Muriel said: He won’t ever look at me again if I do this. She had one Jesus small enough to hold in her hand at night under her pillow. His pinpoint eyes revealed neither grief nor rage. But the tiny body twisted, rising off the copper disk, full of misery. She lay awake in the dark, feeling that body, touching Christ’s little hands and perfect feet, fondling the piece of cloth, a thin wrinkle of metal that hid his sex and kept him safe and separate even in death.

  On the lawn in front of her house a plaster Mary draped in blue stood watch, nose chipped, fingertips broken. She bowed her head as if to confess: Even I have not been chaste. Jay believed the child of his sin was trapped in Purgatory, waiting for his candle to be lit so his soul could rise up to God, waiting to be born again, to the right mother at the right time.

  To the right father. Jay couldn’t make himself say those words. He was never going to be a father to any child except the one she gave away. Sometimes he was hard when he woke, but when he touched himself he felt a pain shoot down his thighs, all the way to his torn knee and cracked shin. He imagined his mended bones splitting and knew that if he made himself come he would break apart again and again.

  Delores stayed downstairs; Jay imagined her in the kitchen, drinking from her silver flask. He knew all about his father’s business in Boise. He’d heard the argument that morning, heard Andrew say: I’m going; heard Delores answer: Someday I might not be here when you come home. That made his father laugh, and Jay wanted to fly down the stairs, bash him with the cane to make him stop. Sonuvabitch. But he knew his father would turn on him, cool and mocking, knew just what he’d say, smirking with the pleasure of his own joke: Actually, you’re the son of a bitch—literally speaking. Now he felt the vast empty space between his dark bedroom and the bright kitchen; he heard the rush of air like wind whipping down a gorge in this fatherless house.

  Horton Hamilton was awake, waiting for his son to come home. Willy saw the light and knew he was in for it. You worried your mother half to death. He slid as he hit the brakes and almost missed the turn. For once he wasn’t afraid to face his
father. What he’d done tonight was much worse than anything Horton might imagine. He felt giddy, freed by his secrets, like the boy who had stolen money from his mother’s purse but was punished for tracking mud on the living-room rug. The five-dollar bill burned in his pocket. He was eleven years old, elated and full of guilt.

  He’d bought a G.I. Joe with the money he’d taken. By Christmas it was abandoned, given to the Salvation Army so that some younger, poorer boy would find it in a box under a tree. Flo touched his cheek, and Horton whispered, My little man. They couldn’t read his mind. He was relieved, then disappointed. Only God knew everything. God made him hate the doll. Serious and firm, the god of childhood forced him to give it away but did not demand that Willy expose his crime.

  He wouldn’t have to tell them about Delores Tyler either—or the boy in the alley—but he wondered what penance his old god might exact.

  He remembered Flo, sitting beside her mother’s bed, weeping. I’m sorry, Mom. Over and over—sorry—though his grandmother couldn’t hear. What had Flo done? He couldn’t imagine. But he saw his grandmother’s teeth in a jar of blue water and knew this was the small white room of his own future, knew for certain he would find himself saying the same words.

  He stood on the steps stamping snow off his boots, watching Flo and Horton through the window. As soon as he was inside, Flo said, “Your father found him; he’s okay. No gloves or hat, just a thin jacket—who knows how he got here—but he’s all right. He was walking back and forth across the bridge, as if he couldn’t decide whether to come to town or head out to the Flats.” Willy wished he’d seen Matt Fry. There would have been no visit to Delores Tyler, no drive to the river, no vision of Jay hobbling down the stairs, no skinny kid sprawled on his belly.

  “And do you know what your father did?” She waited for Willy to shake his head. “He drove Matthew straight out to his parents’ house.” Her throat tightened. She couldn’t finish the story.

  “They said they’d give him another chance,” Horton said. He was both humble and proud, too shy to look at his own son.

  Willy knew his ironic god would punish him, but had never guessed how swift and simple the blow would be.

  Alone in his room, he gazed out the window, at the snow falling on the street and on the lawn, on all the lawns as far as he could see. Would Matthew learn to talk again, get a job, make his parents glad—or would he take his mother’s car for another joy ride and end up in the river? Maybe he’d set the drapes ablaze—one more time—light the whole goddamn house some night while his mother and father slept, forever safe in their beds upstairs. Sometimes the object itself forces you to act. A knife demands to cut: to whittle a stick or open a fish, to stab the dirt or draw blood from your own thumb. Perhaps that’s how it was with Matt Fry. The river called and the car answered. The match said: Strike me, and the curtains said: I want to burn.

  The next morning, Willy took a drive out to the Frys’ place. He remembered how Clifford Fry had boarded up the basement windows years before to keep the boy from breaking into his own house. Now the boards were gone. The Frys put Everett in the attic. This time they took the opposite approach. The dark is merciful. Willy wondered about the room downstairs. If a child cried out in his sleep, would his parents hear?

  He drove slowly but didn’t stop. The snow was melting, and it had started to rain. Ruts of the road ran with muddy water.

  The dark is merciful. A lie. The dark leaves its own memories, more powerful because you cannot see: flowers crushed in a sweaty palm, a woman’s perfume, the taste of cognac in his own mouth, the taste of it in hers.

  And the dark made its own claims. That night, long after his trip to the Flats and hours after he was off duty, Willy Hamilton found himself turning down Willow Glen Road. If he’d known what he wanted, he might have had the courage to stop. But he wasn’t even sure who he wanted to see. He imagined himself burying his face between Delores Tyler’s soft breasts, begging her for another chance. He saw himself running up the stairs, pounding on Jay’s door, telling him to get up off the goddamn bed and start living his life. He knew he couldn’t do both, so he did nothing at all.

  He thought he had been braver as a child. At least he could act. Once he heaved a stone, broke a school window. Because he wanted to do it. Because the window said: Break me. Terror thrilled him. He’d made this—not a sculpture but a hole, still undeniably and completely his. The alarm sent him reeling, and he ran faster than he’d ever run, faster than he could run today. When he heard the wail of his father’s siren, his heart seemed to stutter, off beat; he didn’t know if he was wild with happiness or fear.

  Hunched under the covers of his bed, Willy thought of Delores, how surprised he was when she lay down and her breasts flattened, turning loose and flabby, not at all as he had pictured them. Her body scared him; he didn’t know why.

  None of Willy’s imaginings could bring him close to the thoughts of a woman. How could he guess that she waited for him to come again. How could he know her shame, how it hurt her to think of taking off her clothes in front of him, how the difference between them was a cruelty he did not mean to inflict, how his lean body reminded her of all the things she could never be and never have. She touched her own scarred belly, her fat thighs, her white dimpled buttocks. How could she ever bear to let him see. No, if it happened again, it would be exactly as it was the first time. They would be in a car by the river. She would hike up her skirt and pull down her pantyhose. No man would ever gaze at her, full of longing, while they made love in a rose-lit room.

  One day passed and then another. He drove by her house. She stood at the window. She saw him, but he did not stop. It snowed again. His headlights carved a pair of yellow tunnels in the street.

  The calls started a week later. At first he only breathed while she said, “Hello. Hello?” The third time he called, she said, “Willy, is that you?”

  He hung up and thought about the kind of girlfriend he wanted, one with smooth skin and silky hair, a girl with a nice smell who would sit beside him at the movies and hold his hand, a girl who would be afraid of men on the screen but not of him. He wanted this girl to kiss him passionately in his car by the river, her tongue exploring his mouth, her body arching against his until he grew hard and she said: That’s enough.

  The girl he dreamed had round cheeks and big eyes, a small nose and pretty little mouth. Her eyebrows were high and light. She was fair, not necessarily blond, but pale. She didn’t look like anyone in particular, and Willy realized that the face was childlike, unformed. As soon as it began to take on more definite lines, the fantasy dissipated and the girl said things he didn’t want to hear: Don’t worry, baby. It’s always like this the first time. She kept a flask in her purse and drank too much. She moved from shadow to light, and he saw that her face was lined and the skin beneath her eyes was so dark it looked bruised. She unbuttoned her own blouse. No one said: That’s enough.

  He didn’t call for two days. On the third day, he rang. She said, “Hello,” and he said, “Are you alone?” Just like that, an obscene caller without a name. She knew him, knew what he wanted, not like the little girl in his fantasy who didn’t know anything, who could always say no. “Do you want to come over?” He was nodding. “Willy?” He realized she couldn’t see him. “Yes,” he said. “Then come.”

  She’d fixed herself up, lipstick and blush, yellow hair pulled back and pinned in a French knot. It had been a long time since he’d seen her in daylight. “You look nice,” he said, and it was true.

  In the car, he asked her where she wanted to go. She answered quickly; everything had been decided. He wondered how this had happened and if he should be afraid, but he drove west, toward South Bend, just as she said.

  He said, “Shall we have lunch?” And she said, “I know why you called.” He waited. “It’s only fifteen dollars.” For a moment he thought she meant he’d have to pay. “For a room,” she said.

  Until now his worst crimes had come from trying t
o be too good. He remembered fourth grade, how he tattled on Roy Wilkerson when he saw the older boy copy from his spelling test. And Roy was punished by Mrs. Finch, struck on both palms with a ruler, as if the hands themselves were bad. Willy watched the fat, sobbing boy, feeling every blow in his own body but still believing he’d done the right thing.

  What he was doing now was wrong. He thought of Iona, what she wanted, what she tried to make him do. He saw that this was God’s punishment for the pious, to give him the desire he’d judged most harshly.

  His first silent call had set this in motion, and now he couldn’t stop—they were here, climbing three flights of stairs at the South Bend Hotel, putting the key in the lock, opening the door. He knew what Flo said, that God heard only silence and hushed words. It was too late to pray nothing would happen, so he prayed to be kind.

  The day was overcast, already dark, but Delores pulled the blinds. She’d brought a candle. Stains on the bedspread, dirt on the rug, in this flickering light almost invisible. Merciful. She pulled the pins from her knotted hair and shook it loose. When he sat beside her on the bed, they kissed, lightly—there was time now. She took off her coat and he reached under her sweater. Her camisole was satiny, smooth as skin over skin.

  She touched his shoulders and his arms. Beautiful boy, she said, and the words shocked him. She told him to take off his clothes, and he stood before her, completely naked, unashamed for the first time—because he was beautiful; in her eyes, he was. She guided him to parts of his body he’d barely known, arch of the foot and inner thigh, the delicate space between each finger, the hollow between each rib—he came too fast but grew hard again and was amazed when he moved inside of her, so warm there, so different from his own hand; nothing had ever felt like this. And he was surprised by his own tenderness, his longing—a desperation to make her feel what he felt.

  She still wore the red camisole, afraid her belly would frighten him, ashamed to think her breasts might remind him of the vast gulf of age between them. He felt too good to her, a sting, flesh on flesh, the long muscles of his legs, tongue in her mouth, fingers in her hair, the bones of his hips pressing into her, an imprint she would feel for days. She didn’t want to scream, didn’t want her face to contort or turn a brilliant red, so she held herself back and still she came, a ripple of small shocks that racked her body. It had been so long since anyone had made her come—she wanted to weep with gratefulness.