“We’re alive!” I say to Alex, grabbing his arm and shaking it like a pom-pom. “We-are-alive! GO BENTWORTH!”
A woman nearby seems pleased. She is also a Bentworth fan. She tells us that Bentworth has the only female driver in the competition. Her name is Candy.
“Can-dee! Can-dee! Can-dee!” shouts the crowd.
“Can-dee!” Alex shouts, pumping his fist in the air.
Our bus is clearly the best. Oh, we are swellin’ with pride, we are. But now we can’t really see the buses, on account of all the steam and smoke. Engines are coughing. The bashing is just noise, steam, sputtering. “I think only one bus is alive, folks,” says the announcer. “Can anyone see? Uh-oh.… What? Okay, folks, we have a winner. The one bus that will go to the finals! It’s … it’s, what is it? It’s Trinity!”
“Trinity!” I say to Alex. “But they suck!” He shakes his head, sits, looks down.
We don’t stay for the finals. Too depressing. Besides, our lips are wrinkled from all the salt on all the nachos and popcorn. We get Cokes and head over to Helga, the headless woman. The sticky-sweet air is cooling off a bit. The fairground lights have blinked on, and an army of eager bugs cavorts in their glow. We each pay a dollar, walk into the darkness with a group of others. We gaze at a seated person who has a black shroud where the head should be. A plastic breathing tube is attached to the neck. “NO SMOKING,” reads a sign. “OXYGEN IN USE.”
“Helga sure has huge hands,” says a fellow onlooker.
“Yeah, and I’ve never seen ankles that big on a woman,” says another.
Soon we are joined in consensus. “We got rooked!” All of us. Together. Bonded in the darkness of disillusionment.
The headless woman is a man.
Later, after we leave the lights of the county fair behind us, we drive home and get bombarded by the moon. An enormous full moon. A moon that demands that you stop and take notice. It’s hanging over our pond like a giant lost polka dot.
We’re standing in the driveway with our heads bent back, admiring this amazing fact of country life: You could do needlepoint under the light of a moon like this.
“China,” Alex says. “Can you believe the people in China see the same moon that we see?”
China, I think. China is a place you dug to as a kid. I have little other association with China.
“I mean, isn’t it strange?” he says. “The exact same moon.”
“I can’t say that I thoroughly believe it,” I say.
“That’s what I mean.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I have a baby. A baby! My baby, as it turns out, is not a peanut M&M. She’s a lot bigger than a peanut M&M, although roughly the same shape. You can’t tell if she has arms or legs. She’s just an oblong there, on a bench, with two eyes moving back and forth. She’s wrapped in a blanket, swaddled up tight. She’s on this bench, in a park, watching children play on the monkey bars. The children run around her, singing songs and enjoying the afternoon sun. That’s the thing. The children don’t notice her. The children are too busy being children. My baby’s waiting for someone to notice her.
I wake up wondering where I am. She’s my baby. So where am I? I wake up wondering how you can have a dream you’re not in. A dream, in fact, about your own absence.
But I keep having the dream. The setting changes. Sometimes the baby is on a beach. Sometimes she’s in a toy store. She’s always a she. She’s always swaddled, and her eyes are always going back and forth, back and forth, like that cat clock you see sometimes. She’s looking for me. And I’m not there.
I don’t think you should be able to have a dream like this. This kind of dream should defy the laws of dream logic.
Here, anyway, is the thing I probably should have mentioned about my birthday: It’s the same as Alex’s. September 22. Yep. That’s us.
I know. I should have mentioned this. Yeah, yeah. This is cosmic. Well, sure it is. Well, in the beginning it was. One of those sweet astrological convergences you discover during those tender dating days. “We have the same birthday?!” That first year we took a trip to the mountains together, said “Our birthday!” and had a toast to the gods of coincidence. Then I gave Alex his present: a violin. Quite a present, if I do say so myself. He got me something equally wonderful, but the sad thing is I can’t remember what.
The second year I spent weeks in used-camera shops looking for the exact model of the exact vintage Nikon that I knew he dreamed about. I found it forty miles from my home. I found the case that went with it, forty miles in the other direction. He got me something equally amazing, but the sad thing is I can’t remember what.
See what I’m getting at? Isn’t this sad? Tomorrow! Tomorrow is it. Tomorrow is my birthday. And look at me: I am standing here in this bedroom, wrapping his present, feeling positively flush with joy in anticipation of the moment when I give him this present. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I am totally out of the spirit of receiving. I am all about giving.
This is so wrong.
A birthday should be me, me, me. Not him, him, him. My birthday should be my own personal Day of Receiving. The Day of Me. On your birthday you have permission to be the person you have spent your every posttoddler day suppressing. “Hey, everybody! Look at me! I am the center of the universe! Now give me stuff.”
Instead—and here is the really sad part—I don’t care what he gets me. I am too excited about what I got him.
I got him a pair of cowboy boots. His first ever. Is there a better present for a man? Other than a violin and a vintage Nikon and, okay, a pool table, which will be coming someday. These boots are authentic Justin cowboy boots. I mean, these are cowboy boots. Dark brown. Lots of tooling. Leather soles. Big chunky heel. Oh, he’ll be able to wear these babies over to George’s barn and scratch and spit with pride. I’m standing here in the bedroom wrapping them in paper with little red cowboys all over it, and I can smell that new-leather smell right through the box.
The phone rings.
“Hello?” I say, speaking through a piece of Scotch tape.
“Oh, hi, hon, it’s Caroline.” Our postmaster. Postmistress? “I have something up here for you,” she says. “A big flat thing Debbie doesn’t think she can fit in your mailbox.” Debbie is our mail lady. Caroline and Debbie account for fifty percent of our postal employees. The other half are Vivian and Kathy.
A present? A big flat birthday present? I tell Caroline I’ll be right up. I finish wrapping, hide the box under the bed. Alex is in the kitchen filling salt shakers. Now, how can he be filling salt shakers? It’s birthday eve, for heaven’s sake. Shouldn’t he be … wrapping?
“A present!” I say. “Caroline just called to say there’s a big flat birthday present waiting up at the post office.”
“Yours or mine?” he says.
“Oh, it must be mine,” I say, even though I have nothing but blind hope to support the prediction. I am, however, somewhat delighted to find the spirit of receiving starting to fill me.
I grab my keys, ask Betty if she wants to ride in the car with me. She could use an outing. She could definitely use some head-out-the-window ear-flapping time.
The Scenery Hill Post Office occupies a small room separated by a partition from Scenery Hill Hardware. The sign out front proudly announces our ZIP Code: 15360. This sign was hand-carved by Jim, a taxidermist who lives four doors down. Caroline started at the post office over twenty years ago as a cleaning lady, worked her way up. She is more than just a postmaster. She’s the person in Scenery Hill you go to if you need to understand anything. Caroline can tell you when Kenny the grocer is coming back from his fishing trip, or who has a car to sell, or who last saw your dog running down Needmore Road. We got our plumber through Caroline, and also a snowplow.
“How are you, dear?” Caroline says, the moment I walk in the door. “Oh, hi, Betty,” she says, looking down. “Nice to see you.”
“She needed an outing,” I say.
“She’s filling out,” Carol
ine says.
“It’s nice of you not to use the F-word,” I say.
“Fat?” she says.
“Well, it was nice of you,” I say.
“Oh, Betty, you are not fat!” Caroline says.
“Say thank you, Betty,” I say, half-expecting to hear it. I tell Caroline that neither Betty nor I think she’s fat, either. “It’s just that she used to be so skinny, and now that she isn’t skinny, well, some of my friends from the city say she looks fat.”
“City people,” Caroline says, shrugging. She’s a slight woman, about fifty, with short red hair and a nervousness about her. “Look, I have something to tell you,” she says, turning serious. “And look, I’m sorry.”
Uh-oh. Something about my package? She broke my birthday present?
“We’re moving,” Caroline says, after a big inhale. She looks down, runs her finger along a groove in the counter. “It’s all my dumb fault.”
Moving? I’m not sure if she’s talking about the post office or perhaps her family. “I’m … sorry,” I say.
“You know, I have been asking for a new post office,” she says. “For years.”
No, I didn’t know that. Caroline tells me she’s long complained about the work conditions to her bosses at the central office. And who could blame her? How was a person supposed to work like this? The space heaters barely keep up in winter. There’s never enough light. And the sorting space problem is just getting worse: The daily stack of incoming 15360 mail has grown in the past few years from ten feet to more than forty.
“Like I told my husband,” Caroline says. “I said, ‘I asked for a new post office, but I meant one right here in town.’ ”
“They’re moving the post office out of town?”
“Up by the Frosty Kiss,” she says. “That new building?”
“Ew.”
“Yeah. Like I told them, I said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘A post office should be in town.’ ”
The Frosty Kiss is about a mile away. Not really that far, actually. But technically well on the outskirts of downtown Scenery Hill, such as it is.
“I told them a post office should be a gathering place, like a hardware store,” she says.
“Right,” I say.
Our existing post office is definitely a Scenery Hill hot spot, especially in the mornings, when folks meander in and catch up on gossip with Debbie and Kathy as they sort.
“I told them a post office should be a strolling-up-to place,” she says. “Or else what is the point?”
“Exactly,” I say.
“But why would they listen to me?”
“They should listen to you,” I say. After all these years hasn’t she earned the right to express her post office philosophy? “But, look,” I say. “Caroline, most people have cars. The post office can still be a gathering place.”
“It’s not the same,” she says. “I saw the plans. Everything is regulation this and regulation that.”
“Oh.”
“There’s a wall,” she says. “A huge wall.”
“A wall?”
“Between the public and Debbie and Kathy’s mail-sorting area. That’s it. No socializing. My sorters will hereby be anonymous mail-sorters.” She shakes her head, disgusted. “Like I told my husband, I said, ‘They’re taking the personal out of the post office.’ ”
“It’s not right,” I say.
“It’s certainly not,” she agrees. “And what about Sammy? Oh jeez, if only they knew what went on around here. Then again, I’d probably get fired.”
“Oh, Sammy—” I say.
Sammy is the mentally retarded man who lives a few doors down. He has depended on Caroline and the post office to give structure to his days since he was a boy. He comes in each morning, usually dressed in his bright orange hunter’s jacket—in summer as well as winter—and Caroline gives him things to do. Post a sign on the bulletin board maybe, or make sure the pens on the counter are lined up right. Caroline takes care of Sammy. She takes his laundry home and washes it and irons it, even though her husband says this is well beyond the call of duty for a postmaster.
“Well, it’s my dumb fault,” she says again. “I don’t have anyone else to blame. I should have shut my mouth and been happy with what I have.”
She reaches on a shelf for my mail. “Here you go, dear.”
“This?” I say. “This is my package?”
“Did I lead you to believe it was something exciting?”
“No—” I look down. The big flat envelope says: “Happy Birthday from your friends at Dish Network.”
Oh.
Apparently, I have just been inducted into ClubDISH, the Preferred Members Club.
I have two words to say to that. Yip. Ee.
Did they have to make this envelope so big? Did they have to make it a trip-to-the-post-office envelope?
For my birthday I see here that Dish Network, the provider who brings TV from outer space into my house via the twelve-inch platter perched on our roof, is giving me a certificate for an entire free Dish Network system, including installation, that I might give to a friend. So let me get this straight. I get to give somebody something for my birthday. Hmm. I wonder if these marketing people know they’ve hit a raw nerve here.
“I’ll see you later, Caroline,” I say.
“Hey, in case I don’t see you tomorrow: Happy birthday! And tell Alex, too!”
Well, that’s weird. I don’t remember ever telling anyone around here about our birthday collision. Sometimes I wonder if Debbie reads my mail.
“Thanks,” I say. “Do you know when moving day is?”
“They haven’t told us. Last I heard, they were getting bids on the new sign.”
“Bids?”
“It has to be regulation,” she says.
“Regulation!” I say.
She gives me an army salute.
“Ten-four!” I say, because I can’t think of any army talk.
“Bye-bye, Betty,” she says. “And I think you look great. Nothing wrong with being a fuller-figure gal.…”
When I get home, I give Alex the mail. “Happy birthday from your friends at Dish Network,” I tell him.
He’s hunched over a ham sandwich. He flips through the mail and takes a surprising interest in ClubDISH, the Preferred Members Club.
“George,” he says. “Why don’t we give this to George?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” George and Pat don’t strike me at all as the TV type. Or I don’t want them to be the TV type. There are some people you want to keep nice and settled in your romanticized image of peach pie making and sheep shearing and beef slaughtering.
“Guess what, the post office is moving,” I tell him. “Up by the Frosty Kiss.”
“That new building?”
“Yep. Caroline just told me. She’s upset.”
“Modernization is not something Scenery Hill is ready for.”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“No. But we still have the hardware store to go to.”
“If the new Home Depot in Washington doesn’t put it out of business.”
“Yeah.”
“Listen—I don’t think you should give George the Dish Network coupon,” I say. “I don’t want to be responsible. You know? I’ll be the person who infected the area with TV.”
“You don’t think that’s maybe a little … grandiose?”
“Hey, it’s my birthday,” I say.
“Yeah. Well, almost.”
“You have to admit it’s kind of a rotten birthday present from our friends at Dish Network.”
“The gift of giving,” he says. He’s finishing his sandwich, eyeing some Oreos.
“Whatever.”
“Speaking of which, are you ready for your present?”
I look at him. Has he lost his mind?
“I thought we could start early this year.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Presents on birthday eve?
No. We have a ritual. We “surprise” each other by having our presents waiting at the bottom of the bed so that presents are the first thing we each see on the morning of September 22. It’s a little bit tricky to pull this off. “Okay, well, good night, I’m just gonna stay up and read a little bit,” one of us will say. And the other will pretend to be asleep, waiting for the first to finish reading and go to sleep, so he or she can sneak the presents out and onto the bed. Each year we seem to hope that the other has forgotten all about this, or in any case we want to be the clever one who remembers. And so inevitably we end up bumping into each other in the hallway in the middle of the night, presents in hand.
Alex is sitting here dipping his Oreos in milk. “Why don’t you just go put my present on the bottom of the bed now,” he says. “And I’ll pretend I don’t know.”
“You really want your present now?”
“Why not?”
“It’s September twenty-first?”
“It’s September twenty-second in China,” he says. True. And ever since we got this China idea in our heads, there seem to be a lot of new dimensions to consider.
“And we’re going to be out most of tomorrow, so I thought—”
“All right,” I say. “It’s your present. You can have it now if you want. But don’t blame me if you walk around tomorrow feeling naked and horrible.”
“Naked and horrible?”
“You know what I mean.” I head into the bedroom, pull the box out from under the bed, perch it atop the down comforter.
“Okay, ready!” I call to him.
He prances into the room.
“Happy birthday!” I yell, flinging my arms like a magician toward the box.
“Back at ya, birthday girl,” he says, because this is what he always says.
He touches the box, nods as if to show preliminary approval. “Love the paper,” he says. He unwraps. He sees the “Justin Boots” logo on the box. His eyes get as big as Utah. He opens the box. He sees the boots through the tissue paper. His eyes grow to the size of Montana. He looks at me, the boots, me. He seems afraid to actually touch those boots.
The Exact Same Moon Page 13