Northward to the Moon

by Polly Horvath

“Well, I don’t like it,” says Maya.

  “Who cares?” says Dorothy. “Have some more pancakes.”

  Maya frowns at Dorothy even harder. No one has ever talked to Maya this way. Particularly when she has on her fierce face, as she does right now. She doesn’t seem to know how to deal with it. The best she can do is glare menacingly and when this has no effect she shrugs and takes more pancakes.

  After we eat, everyone helps to clean things up except Max and Hershel, who want to know if they can go out and pet the horses. Dorothy says that is fine but they must get one of the young men out there to go with them. She says there’s Ben and Leeron and Hank.

  “You girls want to go too?” asks Dorothy.

  “I don’t like horses,” says Maya, although as far as I know she has never been around one before. “Do you have a television?”

  “Up in my bedroom,” says Dorothy.

  “MAYA!” I say. “At ten o’clock in the morning?”

  But Maya runs upstairs.

  “Okay, Mom,” says Ned. “I got a duffel bag of money in the car. John left it up with the Carriers in B.C. If I leave it with you, you can give it to him next time you see him.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it. I expect I’ve seen the last of him for a while, now that I won’t let him launder his money here anymore. I said I’d take his money once but no more.”

  “Do you know for sure he was laundering it?” asks Ned.

  “What do you mean laundering the money?” I ask him.

  “It means that John sort of hides the illegal way he got the money by giving it to my mother to buy a ranch. People lose track of the money and then when my mother sells the ranch, if she does, she can just give John a gift of the money and no one suspects it was his in the first place.”

  “That’s confusing,” I say.

  “It’s meant to be,” says Ned. “That’s how people hide money—by confusing everyone.”

  “Well, how did he get it illegally to begin with?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Do you know, Mom?” asks Ned.

  “Gosh no,” says Dorothy. “I don’t even know for sure that it is illegal. John says it isn’t. He says he won it gambling.”

  “But you don’t believe him?” asks Ned.

  “If he won it gambling, why not just put it in the bank?” asks Dorothy.

  “Exactly,” says Ned. “Which is why I went to Las Vegas to give it back to him. I don’t want a bag of illegal money.”

  “Well, I was willing to give John and his money the benefit of the doubt the first time. People do win big sometimes. But if he’s dropping bags of the stuff in the woods, then I think we gotta think the worst. So how’d you find me if you couldn’t find John?”

  “I ran into his magic assistant,” says Ned.

  “Oh, Miss Sequins,” says Dorothy.

  “Right. She told me.”

  “I’m surprised she remembered. She didn’t strike me as real smart.”

  “Well, no,” says Ned.

  “Anyhow, let’s talk of happier things. So, I take it you’ll be spending the summer here,” says Dorothy. “Let me get to know my grandchildren.”

  “When have you ever been interested in children?” asks Ned, gnawing on some bacon.

  “We’re family,” says Dorothy.

  “You don’t even know where any of us live.”

  “Well, you boys may make a point of disappearing but I’ll have you know I get Christmas cards regular from the girls. I don’t know why you say such things.”

  “You didn’t know our whereabouts when we were growing up,” says Ned.

  “I did too!” says Dorothy.

  “Nelda took off for six weeks once when she was thirteen and you didn’t do anything about it until the social worker came by.”

  “Well, you can’t keep track of everyone all the time, Neddie.”

  “And Maureen took the bus all the way to the Maritimes the summer she was fifteen and you didn’t even ask her what she wanted to do there.”

  “I assumed she wanted to see the Maritimes!”

  “Didn’t it occur to you it was a little dangerous, a girl that age traveling alone with hardly any money?”

  “Well, life’s a dangerous business, Neddie. I expect you know that by now. You can’t really keep anyone safe. So how about it? Stay here. I bet the boys would love a summer on a real horse ranch.”

  “Naw, we’re heading back to Massachusetts, Mom,” says Ned. “Maybe we’ll spend a day or two to rest up. I don’t know what to do about the money.”

  “Well, me either,” says Dorothy. “How about we take it to the sheriff and tell him we found it by the side of the road?”

  “They’d still want to know where we got it. Then they’d start investigating us. I think it’s asking for trouble. Besides, suppose, and I know this is unlikely, but just suppose we’re wrong and John earned it legitimately? What if he’s become one of those people who don’t trust banks and want to hide their money in their mattress or something?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think about that,” says Dorothy. “People who got their money legit want to hide it in their mattresses. People who didn’t get their money legit want to hide it in other people’s mattresses. What I think I got here, in this ranch, is a mattress full of someone else’s money.”

  We all go out and sit on the porch and rock in rocking chairs and on the porch swing.

  “Well, we’ve got a little time to think about how to handle the money,” says my mother.

  “Sure you do,” says Dorothy. “Look at that red-tailed hawk, Felicity. My, my. I do like the red-tailed hawks. You got as much time as you want. Stay and work on that novel, Ned.”

  “What novel?” asks Ned, his eyes working back and forth. He is starting to pick up the pace of his rocking.

  “That novel you said you were always going to write,” says Dorothy. She’s rocking slow and easy now with a little smug smile on her face.

  “That was years ago,” says Ned, really working the rocker now.

  “Ned writes pieces for CBC. That’s the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He writes essays about all kinds of things, and travelogues,” I pipe up.

  “Really? People pay for that?” asks Dorothy.

  “Yes,” says Ned.

  “Well, wouldn’t you like to do some real writing instead of that fluff?” asks Dorothy. “And now you can. It’s lonely here on the ranch, you know, with just Ben and the boys coming to help out. Nothing but a lot of tumbleweed.”

  “So move into town,” says Ned. His rocker slows down, hers speeds up.

  “I like horses,” says Dorothy. “I’m staying put. Easier for you all just to stay here.”

  Ned starts rocking more quickly. “I already said we can’t.”

  “I didn’t hear from Felicity,” says Dorothy. But she doesn’t turn to my mother, she’s still looking at Ned.

  “It’s Felicity’s house we’re going back to,” says Ned. “Of course she wants to go home. Nobody in their right mind would want to stay in Nevada.”

  Dorothy rocks faster. Ned slows down. Then Dorothy slows down a little.

  “Foolish,” she says. “Well, if I can’t convince you, I can’t. No one could ever convince you to do anything you didn’t intend to do in the first place. So, come on, Jane. I’m going out to ride Satan and you can watch.”

  Frankly, I’m surprised she gave in so quickly; things seemed to be building to a great explosive logjam and then, pffff, nothing.

  “Sure,” I say politely.

  “Ben!” she calls in the direction of the stable. “Saddle up Satan, I’m going to show Jane how to ride.”

  “You don’t want to do that, Mrs. N!” calls a voice. A young man emerges from the barn. He’s short and muscular and lithe. “He’s in a mood today.”

  “I don’t care,” she says. “I’ll knock some sense into him. Come on, Jane, gotta get my riding boots on, they’re in the tack room.”

  “I never envisioned your mother as a c
owgirl,” says my mother to Ned as we leave the porch.

  “A real Annie Oakley. You know she’s got a shotgun in the china cupboard? I saw it when I put the platter away.”

  “Not loaded, I hope,” says my mother.

  “Don’t worry, Felicity,” calls Dorothy over her shoulder. “I keep the shells up top of the cupboard where kids can’t reach, and the shotgun’s never loaded. But I like knowing it’s there.”

  I follow her into the tack room and she changes into riding boots. “Satan was my first horse. I knew nothing about buying horses in those days and just got him because he’s a magnificent-looking beast. But he’s a stallion and he’s mean. I should’ve known better than to buy a male. Never had any luck with males. Ben thinks I should set him free. He says horses like that ought never to be kept.”

  “Huh,” I say, because I have no idea really what she is talking about. She seems full of opinions, not the way I pictured her when Ned described how she was kind of vacant after his dad left. I thought she was going to be one of those hollow long-suffering women with dark haunted eyes and a victimish manner. Instead she seems perfectly capable of taking care of herself and getting what she wants.

  We go to the riding ring, where Ben is holding the reins of a huge black snorting beast.

  “You see what I mean?” asks Dorothy, mounting him. “You stay outside the ring, Jane. You too, Ben. He’s meaner than a snake today.”

  “You oughtn’t be on him,” says Ben, and he goes back to the barn. I turn to see Max and Hershel happily carrying forkfuls of horse manure and putting it in a wheelbarrow. I wonder if they know what it is. They probably do. It would be like them to enjoy nothing more than messing around with a manure pile. Hershel has some smeared on one cheek.

  I hear a scream and turn my head to see that Dorothy has been thrown from Satan and has landed on her back.

  Ben comes flying out of the barn, vaults the ring and grabs Satan’s reins, pulling him away to keep him from running over Dorothy. My mother yells, “Call 911,” and then, in a flutter, seems to realize that there is no one but Maya in the house and so runs into the house to do it herself. I start to go into the ring to help Dorothy but Ben yells, “Don’t touch her! If she broke her back she needs to stay still.”

  “I don’t think it’s my darned back, I think I broke my hip,” moans Dorothy, but at least she is talking.

  The ambulance is faster than you would think so far out in the country.

  The paramedics put Dorothy on a backboard and onto a gurney. All through this I should be horrified but instead I cannot get out of my head the sight of Ben, as if he doesn’t have to deal with gravity the way the rest of us do, flying out of the barn and in one fluid motion vaulting the ring and grabbing Satan’s reins. There is grace here and courage and intelligence and something else, an ability to see what needs to be done in a flash and do it.

  I keep replaying the scene in my head, only in my fantasy it is me on the ground and he picks me up and carries me out of the ring. Then I imagine we are in the wild flat plains and he is rescuing me from a whole herd of wild mustangs. They really do have wild mustangs in Nevada so this is not that far a stretch. Me and Ben and the mustangs. His hair flying back as his one hand projects him over the top rail.

  “Ned, go ahead with her to the hospital and I’ll stay here with the children,” says my mother as they follow the paramedics to the ambulance. Suddenly their marriage seems dull and prosaic. How could I ever have thought they were having a romance? What do they know of romance?

  I trail slightly behind them unthinkingly because I don’t know what else to do and it is because of this I hear my mother say to Ned, “Your poor mother!” and Ned whisper back, “Yeah, right. We can’t go now. Look who got the last word.”

  Ned’s Sisters

  We are sitting in Dorothy’s bedroom, where Maya has taken to hanging out about eight hours a day, watching game shows and soap operas, talk shows and the occasional news broadcast. I come in sometimes to hear Dorothy saying things like “Maya, let’s take a break from The Price Is Right and see what is happening in the world.” She has just said this and Maya has nodded and the two of them are sitting spellbound through floods and fires and abductions and philandering politicians and Maya puts the knuckles of her right hand to the side of her mouth, a gesture she has taken to making more and more often and which looks perilously close to thumb-sucking to me. Then, having fulfilled their current-events duty, they switch solemnly back to a screen full of shrieking contestants and horrible music and ugly colored lights and sets. I don’t know which is worse. But at least during the game shows, Maya’s hand moves away from her mouth.

  Ned has taken the boys into town to buy grain and my mother is busy scouting all over for Ned’s sisters’ phone numbers. Dorothy claimed to have written them down somewhere but then couldn’t remember where she put the paper so she asked my mother to comb through drawers. The first drawer my mother opened was in the buffet and it was crammed so tightly with string and old glasses and photographs and random pieces of paper that the drawer practically popped out, spilling its contents everywhere.

  “This may take a while,” said my mother, so I’ve gone upstairs to see what Maya is up to. I cannot watch The Price Is Right and am hoping to talk Maya into playing a game of cards when we hear the wolves. It is a long harmonious song of many voices. It is so startling that it makes Dorothy click off the TV, which is something of a miracle. The miracle of the wolves, I think. Or perhaps the miracle of the channel changer. But it turns out to be a miracle in more ways than one because Dorothy says, “There are no wolves in Nevada!”

  “There are no wolves, period,” agrees Maya hopefully.

  “That sure sounded like wolves to me,” I say. “We heard them up in northern B.C. and they sounded just like that.”

  “But there are no wolves in Nevada,” says Dorothy. “Haven’t been for years. Anyhow, Maya, you’re safe as long as you stay in this room, just like I’m safe as long as I’m in this house. This is my safe place. They’re going to have to take me out of here feetfirst, toes up, in a coffin. You got it? You know why it’s so safe here? Because it’s the first house I found where you can look out any window and see the horizon in any direction. You can always see what’s coming before it gets you. And horses will warn you too. They’re like dogs in that respect. Now, you look out that window and I bet you don’t see any wolves. Let’s see what else is on TV.”

  I think this is pretty creepy and a terrible thing to tell Maya. But I don’t know how to undo it without being rude.

  Dorothy holds out the clicker and presses the On button. Wolf-wonder can only interest her for so long. There are large all-terrain vehicles to be won and hair products to price. It’s funny what some people think is real and choose to give their attention to. Those hair products and big refrigerators seem far more unreal to me than the wolves. Maya’s knuckles return firmly to her cheek but her face relaxes as she is drawn into the excitement of a woman trying to win a set of golf clubs.

  At dinner my mother tells Ned that she has called all three of his sisters.

  “My sisters?” he squawks, putting down his fork. “Maureen?”

  My mother nods, chewing a mouthful of mashed potatoes. My mother makes the best mashed potatoes in the world. She adds a lot of chopped fresh parsley. I could eat an entire dinner of nothing but her potatoes.

  “Nelda?”

  My mother swallows and nods.

  “Candace?”

  “Yes, she seemed kind of strange,” says my mother.

  “Strange how?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say. It was a difficult phone call for her, after all, hearing that her mother broke her hip and fractured some vertebrae and will never walk without a walker again. Being asked to come see her after so many years. It seemed a little odd to all your sisters, I’m sure. And they didn’t know who I was. But Candace seemed, I don’t know, she kept making me repeat everything and then when I asked if we had a b
ad connection, she said no, she was just texting various people on her BlackBerry and after that she kept putting me on hold so she could take other calls.”

  “What does she do?” asks Ned.

  “She’s a realtor.”

  “Oh well, that explains it. They’re all like that. Totally insane.”

  “Really?” says my mother. “I suppose nowadays they all have cell phones glued to their ears. It wasn’t quite so bad when I dealt with them.”

  “When were you dealing with realtors?”

  “Oh, you know, after I inherited the beach house. They all wanted me to sell it.”

  “Oh yes, the beach house,” says Ned, chewing away. “Good potatoes.”

  “What about the beach house?” I ask.

  “Back when I got it, well, I guess a few years after that, actually, beach property got to be more in demand and so realtors were always calling, fishing around, hoping I’d sell. A lot of them got sand in their good shoes walking over the beach and knocking on my door.”

  “See what I mean? They’re desperate people,” says Ned through another mouthful of potatoes. A glob drops from the edge of his mouth onto his plate, like snow falling off the roof, and the boys laugh.

  “Did you ever want to sell?” I ask. There is nothing like finding out things you have never known about members of your own family.

  “No, of course not. Never,” says my mother. “What could I buy with the money that I would want more?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Right,” says Ned, who is conflicted because he is trying to eat potatoes and get information all at the same time. It is always a hard choice when it’s my mother’s mashed potatoes. The first instinct is to remain silent so as to be able to consume more rapidly. “Well, gosh, how did you even know where to find my sisters?”

  “The Christmas cards,” says my mother.

  “Oh, right, the Christmas cards,” says Ned dismissively.

  “Dorothy told me that your sisters had each enclosed her phone number with her card. Dorothy was annoyed because they enclosed their phone numbers instead of just picking up a phone and calling her, so she never called them either. But she squirreled the cards away somewhere and couldn’t remember where. It took me most of the morning to find them,” says my mother.