“Aunt Julia?”
The sound made her jump. She looked up to see Carmen standing at the top of the ladder.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the girl said. She climbed up into the attic and sat down facing Julia. “Can we talk?”
Julia’s eyes fluttered down to the magazines in her lap, then back to Carmen’s face. “Sure,” she said. “This can wait. I was just going through these boxes.” She tried to be nonchalant as she laid her hands over the magazines.
“I need to go to Wyoming,” Carmen said.
It took Julia a moment to find her voice. “Wyoming?” she said. “When? Why?”
Carmen took the questions in order. “Yes, Wyoming. Right away. Among other things, to honor my mother.” She must have read confusion in Julia’s eyes. “You know, Pastor Chris’s sermon on Sunday—he was preaching directly to me.” She paused, then tried again. “What he said about how a woman who wants to honor God always honors the woman who gave her life—you know?”
“Oh, right,” Julia said.
“But when he said it’s never too late to make things right,” Carmen continued, “I felt like standing up and saying, ‘Uh, excuse me, what if your mother is dead? Isn’t it a little too late then?’” She stopped again as if hoping for a reaction, at least a flicker of agreement, perhaps wondering if the same kinds of thoughts had crossed Julia’s mind. She went on. “But then it was like I had asked my question out loud because remember the next thing he said?”
No, Julia didn’t remember the next thing he said, and she didn’t want to be told, but she knew she was about to be anyway. She felt a wave of dread, for she knew now where this was heading, especially since the thesis had already been stated: I need to go to Wyoming.
Carmen was evidently picking up on the fact that Julia hadn’t heard much of the pastor’s sermon, for she started summarizing. “He said if your mother’s dead, maybe there’s someone else back home you need to make things right with, which might mean making a trip. A literal trip. Life is too short, he said, to carry grudges around in your heart. Spiritual freedom always requires forgiveness. He also said you might need to write out a confession or apology and read it out loud at her grave.”
Julia raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Maybe Carmen was testing her, throwing in something preposterous to see if she would take issue. Surely the preacher hadn’t really suggested a graveside speech, but if he had, maybe that was good. Surely Carmen could see the absurdity of that. Surely that part would make the whole idea of a trip sound a little silly. Especially such a long trip.
The girl continued. “But he said you should start by asking God to forgive you for not showing her the respect she deserves. And by remembering the good things about her and being thankful for those.” Carmen looked down at her hands, closed into fists. “So I’ve been doing a lot of remembering. I tried for a long time to forget all the good things about Lulu because deep down I was still so angry at her.” She looked back up at Julia. “But now I feel like I owe it to . . . Lizzy to do this.” She paused and swallowed. “It didn’t make sense at first—I mean, Lizzy won’t ever even know me, and for sure won’t ever know if I honored my mother, but I can’t get away from it. I owe it to Lizzy to honor her grandmother. And to do that, I need to go to Wyoming.”
If only Julia had been attentive enough on Sunday to hear even the gist of the preacher’s sermon, she might have been able to forestall all of this drama and soul-searching. She could have initiated a conversation that very day, could have gotten it all out in the open, could have asked Carmen about some favorite memories of Lulu, and—though this part would have been especially hard—could have also dredged up some good memories to share about her own mother. By focusing on the positive, she might have distracted the girl enough to keep her from falling into such gloom and making such a drastic decision.
But she hadn’t. Instead of support, she had given Carmen space—that is, solitude—and in so doing had left her defenseless against the kind of grief and misguided resolve brought on by regret. So now, this: I need to go to Wyoming.
• • •
JULIA quickly began constructing an argument. She had to be careful, of course—controlled and organized. Tone was as important as substance. The most logical starting point was easy: How can a child be at fault for not honoring a mother who rendered herself ineligible for honor? She hesitated, though. She knew Carmen well enough to anticipate her answer to that. She could mimic not only the girl’s exact words but also her delivery, prompt and confident—the slight elevation of pitch, the lift of chin, the unflinching gaze, all of it so typical of the kind of mind that allowed no shades of gray. She could hear her now: You do right because it’s right, not because it’s what somebody deserves or doesn’t deserve. Wrong is always wrong. The fifth commandment says to honor your father and your mother. Period. So skip that point; it was a lost argument. Besides, hadn’t Carmen just said Lulu had some redeeming qualities?
A more promising idea came to her, though she realized even as she said it that it was a minor point. “Lulu may not even have a grave. She had your father cremated, remember. If they did the same for her, what would be the point of going back?”
Carmen’s look said, Weren’t you listening to what I just said? But she answered patiently, politely. “I can talk to Ida, maybe Effie, too. I was the one who started all the trouble by leaving home all those years ago. Left Lulu high and dry. Ida, too. They depended on me. I didn’t even leave them a note. Just took their car and their money and Daddy’s guitar and disappeared, then . . .”
“You were sixteen,” Julia interrupted. “Sixteen-year-olds do foolish things.”
Carmen held up a hand, shook her head. “. . . and then I show back up and say, ‘Oops, my bad, things didn’t work out, can I live here again?’ Think about it—why wouldn’t they say, ‘Get lost, kid, it’s not that easy’? I mean, I stole from them. And they didn’t have that much.”
Julia thought of something else that might work. She made herself talk slowly, calmly. “You said one time that Ida and Effie hated you because they hated Jeremiah. You said they turned Lulu against you. Well, let’s imagine that a year or two later Lulu started wishing she could see you again. That would be the most natural thing in the world—to want to see your child again. She probably thought about you day and night.”
Carmen was listening, her eyes fixed on Julia’s face. She looked to be on the verge of tears.
Julia continued, cautiously. She didn’t want this to become too emotional, but it had to have more than a purely rational appeal. “Did Lulu . . . ever pray?” she asked.
Carmen nodded. “All the time before Daddy died, a lot of times out loud. Afterward, mainly to herself. She cried a lot.”
Tears and prayers—that evoked a tender scene. A little pathos was good. “So after you went back and they turned you away,” Julia said, “Lulu probably spent hours praying for you and wishing she knew where you were so she could ask you to come back.”
Carmen looked down. “Well, maybe but . . . Ida was still calling all the shots.”
Julia suddenly lost sight of wherever she had been heading with this line of thought. She paused, then quickly improvised. “Well, my point is that if Lulu were still living, a trip home would make perfect sense. There would be a strong bond there already, and you could build on that. Both of you would be older and wiser now. Ready for a reconciliation. An answer to her prayers, forgiveness all around.”
A squirrel skittered across the roof above their heads. Julia glanced up at the cobwebby attic beams, then at the drifts of insulation between the joists. It was surprising how clearly she could hear the chirping of birds through the roof. She looked back at the small floored area where they sat, surrounded by boxes, bins, dusty miscellany. Another odd setting for a conversation with Carmen.
“But she died,” Carmen said. “No use thinking about if she hadn’t.”
“My point exactly,” Julia said. “Lulu’s n
ot there, so there can be no appeal to her motherly instincts. So let’s say you go all the way back to Wyoming and they slam the door in your face—again—or don’t even open it in the first place. What good has that accomplished? It will be a lot of money and time for nothing.”
“I’m paying for it,” Carmen said. “I have enough saved up to buy a plane ticket. Or I might start out by bus. I haven’t decided yet.”
Julia didn’t like the wording: I’m paying for it. It sounded like a decision already made. Furthermore, how could that be? Though Carmen was thrifty, how could she have saved that kind of money from her neighborhood jobs? But Julia rebuked herself for mentioning money. That wasn’t the issue here. She needed to steer the conversation back to her main point—the futility of the trip. Yet still very carefully, gently.
“It might be wiser to start with a phone call,” she said. “I have the number somewhere around here. Butch found it for me last year. You can tell a lot about Ida over the phone, and she can tell a lot about you. She can see how much you’ve changed and grown up, and . . .”
“I don’t want to call,” Carmen said. “I want to go. I want to see her face-to-face.”
“She might not even still live there, you know,” Julia said. “Effie was at death’s door when I talked to Ida—didn’t I tell you that? And hadn’t Ida come out there originally just to help Lulu after your father died? Wasn’t she from the South somewhere? So why would she want to stay in Wyoming after Lulu died?” Julia could hear the strain in her voice, the faster pace. How quickly a simple goal like staying calm could be abandoned.
• • •
CARMEN leaned back against one of the boxes, shifted a little so she could rest an elbow on it. She gazed up at the rafters. “This is kind of a peaceful place up here, isn’t it? You could make yourself a nice little studio loft.” She pointed. “That’s called a ridgepole. I learned that when I worked on a roofing crew one day in New Hampshire.” She laughed. “One day. They were hard up for help. They paid me in cash at the end of the day. Good money, too. They told me I was coming along pretty well for a newbie and things would start up again at seven the next morning if I could come back. But I said I was heading on down the road the next day, which was a decision I made right there on the spot. I was so sore I couldn’t lift my arms.” She looked at Julia. “You’ve always lived in the South, haven’t you?”
Julia sighed and nodded. It was vintage Carmen to veer off the subject, sometimes when she sensed tension and sometimes for no apparent reason at all.
The girl closed her eyes. “I guess there’s really no way anybody who hasn’t been to Wyoming could understand why people like it there.” She paused, then, “I miss it so much. Especially Sweetwater County. That’s where Painted Horse is.”
Julia was taken aback. Never once had she imagined such a thing. To her, Wyoming sounded like a place you would want to get away from, not return to. She used to have an old map game as a child, with removable pieces for all the U.S. states. Wyoming was a brown rectangle, she remembered that. Maybe that was the source of her impression that it was a dull, nondescript state.
“I miss every part of it,” Carmen said. “The cottonwoods and the wind and meadowlarks and all the wide open country.” She was gesturing a little, her eyes still closed, as if seeing it all in her mind. “The sky is so big and so blue, and the mountains and the sunsets—you’ve never ever seen a sky like that.” She opened her eyes. “And all that clear, clean air, and the wild horses and bison and antelope and sheep and cattle and all the ranches.” She had dropped the dreamy tone now. “And the fishing—Daddy took me all over the state. Lakes and dams and beaver ponds everywhere. Trout and splake and sunfish and catfish, even some crawdads at Moon Lake. Once Daddy caught a landlocked salmon—that far from the ocean! And he would make a little fire and we’d eat whatever we caught right there straight out of the water.”
She sat up straighter. “And rivers and waterfalls and trails—I mean, real historical pioneer trails, where real pioneers carved their names on rocks. And in late spring we get a little rain and all these pretty flowers spring up, like they’re growing straight out of the granite. And all the mountains and hills and buttes—I can’t begin to name them all. The Rockies and the Tetons and Flaming Gorge and Honeycomb and Flattop and . . . the tumbleweed and the elk and the rodeos and . . .”
She stopped abruptly and laughed. “Okay, I know—my organization stinks.” She made a gushing sound and with her arms pantomimed an eruption. “Sorry for the geyser. I got carried away big time. I guess it’s just been building up inside me. I know it doesn’t sound like anything special to you, but for me it’s just . . . home. Not a single day goes by that I don’t think of it.” She took another deep breath and let it out.
Julia said nothing. What could be said after a speech like that? Maybe she should start humming “Home on the Range.”
• chapter 29 •
ANY OTHER SPRING DAY
But Carmen wasn’t done talking. “I guess when I left the second time, it was a little like getting kicked out of paradise. Not that home was this . . . utopia or anything, but I knew I’d been bad and didn’t deserve to be there. I guess I thought there were angels with flaming swords posted all around the border or something.” She paused. “Paradise Lost. But it hit me the other day—I can go back, I really can. And I want to. I want to see it all again. Especially the sky. Whenever I think of heaven, I imagine this huge domed ceiling, with all the colors of a Wyoming sunset.” Her voice faltered, but she gathered herself quickly and covered it with a laugh. “Okay, now, that’s humiliating—getting all choked up over the sky. Sorry.”
Julia couldn’t say at what point during the girl’s monologue she had begun to catch on, but by the time it was over, she knew she could talk herself blue in the face and never convince Carmen not to make the trip. I need to go to Wyoming, she had said, and that was exactly what it was. A need, like the kind that involves physical suffering. As in I need surgery. As if she would die without it.
“I had no idea,” Julia said. But it came to her all at once that she should have. She thought of the days in New England last fall, when her eyes were beholding such beauty all around her, while her heart was already longing to get back to South Carolina. She hadn’t realized she loved it so much until she got so far away from it. So why did it never occur to her that Carmen might feel the same about the place she knew best?
Now that Julia knew what she was up against, her worry was full-blown. A visit to Wyoming could be dangerous—the same way it was for an alcoholic to walk past a bar. She gave a rueful laugh to gain time. “I guess I could have found all this out if I had asked you the right question for a practice essay: If you could choose another state to live in, which would it be, and why? I guess I just assumed everyone knew South Carolina was the perfect place to live.”
Carmen smiled. “It does have some pretty spots. The whole East Coast does, but, well, I hope you won’t take this wrong . . . but you do understand that the Appalachians and the Smokies and all the rest aren’t real mountains, don’t you? And I don’t have anything against trees, but isn’t there any such thing as moderation? I mean, you have to wait till winter around here to see the sky. And speaking of moderation, when summer gets cranked up, it’s like . . . an inferno. And the singing of the cicadas—well, it’s sort of cute, but I like the sound of coyotes a lot better.”
The telephone rang downstairs. Both of them looked toward the attic stairs, but neither of them moved. The answering machine came on, then a voice. The words were indistinguishable, but Julia could tell it was Pamela.
“And all this time, I thought you liked it here,” Julia said.
Carmen laughed. “Well, it’s not a horrible state. I’m sure there are worse.”
“So all this isn’t only about honoring your mother, is it?” Julia said. She didn’t mean to imply the girl hadn’t been truthful. She knew how desire for one thing could lead to desire for another without cancelin
g out the first.
“Well, no, not completely,” Carmen said. “But that’s how it all got started. Pastor Chris got me thinking, and then it was like everything came together.”
“So even if you found out Ida wasn’t still there and Lulu wasn’t buried in a grave,” Julia said, “you would still want to go, just to see it all again. Right?” She already knew the answer.
Carmen nodded. “I’ll tell you what I want to see more than anything. I want to see home. I mean, specifically. Did I ever tell you it was a trailer? Daddy had it anchored and insulated tight, and he had these big semi tires bolted to the roof, but sometimes you could still feel the wind shaking it. I guess that should’ve been a little scary, but it never was. I loved feeling the power of the wind but knowing we were all safe inside. I want to walk through it again and sit outside on the step at night, where Daddy and Lulu read me stories and sang songs and told me the names of the stars. And the moon—you’ve never seen anything like it. All that sky to show it off.” She sighed. “I want to see the moon again.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the same one we have here,” Julia said.
Carmen laughed. “Daddy’s favorite folk song was ‘Michael, Row the Boat Ashore’—did I ever tell you that? In the summertime he would play his guitar and sing it under the moon.”
“What if home isn’t still there?” Julia said. “They call them mobile homes for a reason, you know. Maybe somebody hooked it up and moved it somewhere else. Or if Ida still lives there, she may not . . .”
“Yeah, I know. She may not let me in the front door, but I’ve got to try. And even if there’s just a bare spot where it used to be, I can still stand there and look out in every direction as far as I can see and talk to Lulu and . . .” Carmen broke off and looked at Julia. “I told you she grew up in Arkansas, didn’t I? And when she ended up in Wyoming, she said she knew that was exactly where she was meant to live for the rest of her life. She loved it. But I don’t guess Ida ever forgave her for leaving Arkansas. Or refusing to leave Wyoming after Daddy died.”
To See the Moon Again Page 34