Once in a Blue Moon

by Vicki Covington

  “He’s got a sweater vest on. And nice trousers.”

  Within minutes, a police car arrived. A few neighbors had gathered in the yard. A cop jumped out of the car, holding his gun close at his hip. Abi pointed to Landon’s door. Another officer emerged from the car and followed his partner inside.

  When they came out, a young man was in handcuffs. He looked as though they’d roused him from a deep sleep.

  “I think I know that guy,” Abi said to Landon. “Three frat guys used to live in your place. Harmless, but always partying.”

  The neighbors formed a semicircle around Landon. They were full of apologies, telling her that this kind of thing never happened.

  Jet arrived from across the way and asked Landon if she needed a Xanax.

  Landon thanked her and said, “I’m okay. But give me a rain check. You never know.”

  “I’m sure he must have been a friend of those dudes,” Abi said to Jet, who agreed.

  “I bet he was all messed up and thought his buddies still lived there and it was okay just to walk in,” Jet said. She was holding a glass of what looked like tomato juice, though Abi knew it was a Bloody Mary.

  “I forgot to lock my door,” Landon said.

  In an effort to redirect Landon’s attention, Abi introduced her to Jet, a night owl who hadn’t yet changed from her typical goth gear into pajamas; Sam, the friendly neighborhood pot dealer; Roy, who was probably the closest to Landon’s age and grew vegetables in his front yard; Tina, who often climbed out of her upstairs window and threatened to jump off her roof during parties she threw and then got wasted at; Sid, who subbed at a middle school and sold vitamin shakes on the side; and Nicole, a mousy bank teller who had once had a brief, ill-fated fling with Sid. Even though Abi knew Landon wouldn’t remember any of them, she still felt obligated to introduce them all. They drew together as close as possible, like a football team huddled for the next play.

  After a few minutes of camaraderie, they went back to their respective houses.

  “I’m off to my folks’ today,” Abi told Landon, “but don’t hesitate to let me know if you need anything.” She wrote her phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to Landon, telling her to call her if she needed to. “I love your hair,” Abi said, trying again to distract her new housemate, who was still trembling. “Let me French-braid it sometime.”

  Abi noticed that, despite the fact that the sun had yet to rise, Landon was already dressed in a long patchwork skirt and dangling earrings. She must have been up early, getting ready for the day, before discovering the passed-out frat boy in her living room. Even shaken, Landon was lovely.

  “That’s a really cute skirt,” Abi said.

  “Oh, thanks,” Landon responded finally as she walked back toward her front door. “I’m just an old, foolish hippie. I still can’t believe I left my door unlocked.”

  “Call me,” Abi insisted.

  Once she was back in her unit, Abi felt wide awake. The one bright side to the incident was that it had revved Abi up for the day ahead. She was going to visit her family at its compound of trailers.

  She put on a short denim skirt and a T-shirt with “BITE ME” printed across the chest in large black letters. She was aiming to stun her relatives into silence, or at least to scare them enough so they wouldn’t ask her about her dating life.

  She slipped into her Volvo station wagon, which she had inherited when one of her uncles died. The car’s odometer had long passed a hundred thousand miles, and it showed. She flipped on the radio and fished a half-smoked joint from inside the cellophane of her cigarette pack. She attached the joint to a roach clip and lit up. The hour’s drive was always unnerving. Most of her relatives still lived in the trailer park. Rather than being proud of her for escaping it, they seemed judgmental and sullen whenever she visited. If somebody did mention her having moved to Birmingham, they prefaced it with, “Now that you’re so uppity” or “Seeing as how you come from trailer trash, what makes you think . . . ?”

  They could be downright mean.

  Her daddy had cancer. That was the only reason she was going home.

  She took the interstate to the Bessemer exit and followed the road that led home. She had a good buzz from the joint, so she rolled the window down and let the heady mix of industry and agriculture fill the car. The combination smelled a little like mothballs, but because it was so familiar, she didn’t mind. She made the final turn onto the dirt road and pulled over to the side. Looking in the rearview mirror, she applied fresh lip gloss, sprayed some mint breath freshener onto her tongue, put Visine in her eyes, and ran her fingers through her hair. She braced herself.

  A canopy of oak trees hung across the drive, their natural beauty almost stately. Still, only dilapidated trailers lay ahead.

  She heard them before she saw them—a covey of rowdy kids she referred to as her nieces and nephews, though they were actually cousins of some kind or another. They stood in the middle of the dirt road, barely registering Abi’s approach. She sat on the horn to herd them away from her car. That’s when she saw two of the boys holding a cat by its legs, swinging it around.

  “You little shits!” she hollered, throwing the car into park and raising a cloud of dust.

  They dropped the cat, which crouched frozen where it landed. Abi scooped it up and gave the kids her most withering glare. She was so mad she didn’t even think to soothe the cat, a calico. She climbed back into her car and laid it on the passenger seat.

  One of the bigger girls yelled after her, “Don’t tell Mama and them!”

  Abi once used the phrase, too. She never quite understood who the them was, but she knew the word was pulled out when the situation was dire. When she bailed her cousin Petie out of jail, where he’d been held for public intoxication, the first thing he’d said was, “Don’t tell Mama and them.”

  She drove up to her mama and daddy’s double-wide and parked on the shady side. She grabbed her purse and the cat, knocked on the door, and walked in. Her daddy was on the scratchy old couch with the remote control in hand. A football game was on, but he turned it off immediately when he saw her.

  “How’s my baby?” he said, hopping to his feet to gather her and the cat in his arms. Her daddy was one of the few men she knew who was taller than she was.

  “Hey, Daddy,” she replied in the sweet voice reserved only for him.

  “You got a new cat?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What’s its name?”

  “Grits,” she said off the top of her head. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t tell him the truth about the rescue that had just occurred. It wouldn’t have surprised him one bit. She simply didn’t want to cause a ruckus. She did know that she was taking this cat home with her. She set it on a chair and quickly peeped under its tail to see if it was female. Thank God, it was. Abi thought there were too many balls in the world already.

  “Where’s Mama?” Abi asked.

  “Over at Aunt Sister’s.”

  “Well, don’t go get her,” she said flatly.

  Her daddy smiled and walked to the kitchen. Abi followed him.

  “Your mother has redecorated,” he said, gesturing like a Price Is Right model.

  The motif, according to Mama, was Kountry Kitchen.

  “Spelled with a K,” he emphasized.

  “Of course,” Abi replied.

  She knew that it wasn’t right to love one parent more than the other, just like it wasn’t right to love one kid more than the others. But for as long as she could remember, she and Daddy had this thing they shared—a way of coping with Mama that involved subtleties and sometimes, less subtly, laughing their heads off when she left a room after going on one of her rants about how country music had gone to hell or how black people were taking over America or, more recently, how upscale JCPenney was. Mama had started working part-time at the JCPenney to supplement Daddy’s VA benefits and had taken to giving Abi lectures about fashion and dressing for success during their obl
igatory Sunday-afternoon phone calls.

  Abi looked around the redecorated kitchen.

  The backsplash tile was speckled and printed with a rooster under an apple tree. The oopsy daisy curtains were white with a pattern of tiny sliced limes. A tin sign nailed to the wall read, “I Kiss Better Than I Cook.” A stack of resin shotgun-shell coasters was on the small peninsula, along with a magazine open to an article, “Magical ways to use Mason jars this Christmas.” The refrigerator boasted magnets of snowmen and more roosters. The biggest magnet read, “It’s My Party And I’ll Fry If I Want To.”

  Abi fingered one of the resin coasters and laughed. Her daddy just shook his head.

  “Want some tea?” he asked her. He pulled a pitcher from the refrigerator. It was new, too. More roosters.

  “What’s the deal with roosters?” she asked.

  “You know, I quit trying to figure out your mother years ago.”

  He cracked an ice tray and dropped some cubes into two glasses, then poured the tea. Abi had always wondered why they needed ice if the tea was already cold. Just one of the many things the family did without much reason. Like how it put up Christmas lights even though the trailers were on a dead-end road and nobody would see them. Abi could hear Aunt Sister’s reply: “Those lights are for us to enjoy.” Around here, us was different from them. Us was everybody who called the trailer park home—Sister, Mama and Daddy, Abi’s two uncles, several no-good cousins, and their offspring, that motley crew of cat torturers.

  Grits had made herself comfortable, curling up and recovering nicely from the ordeal.

  Abi and Daddy sat at the kitchen table. He took her hand.

  “How are things in Birmingham?” he asked.

  “Great, Daddy. I’m making lots of money just being nice to the people I serve. And,” she said, cocking her head to the side, “I flirt a bit, too. There’s one lawyer who comes in a couple times a month, and he leaves me a hundred-dollar bill every time.”

  “How about that,” he replied.

  “And you? How are you feeling?”

  “I feel fine now. But the chemo begins in a couple of weeks.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop, and Abi could tell he wanted to say something else. “There’s something I need to ask you about.” He looked down into his glass of tea. “You know, the chemo is supposed to make you real nauseated. And everybody’s saying that marijuana is good for that.”

  Before he could finish asking, Abi interrupted. “Of course I can get you some.”

  He smiled. “I don’t know how much money to give you.”

  “Don’t even think about that right now,” Abi said, waving away the suggestion. “You know I’d do anything in the world for you, Daddy. And believe me, this is no problem at all. I can get it easy from one of my neighbors who runs a little mom-and-pop dealership out of his apartment.”

  That’s when she heard her mama’s voice at the door.

  “Abigail!” Mama shouted. She knew Abi hated to be called by her full name. Even worse, when Abi was little and into something Mama didn’t want her into, like making mud pies, she’d call to her, “Abigail Lynn!”

  Mama walked into the kitchen. She was wearing pink capris and crimson slip-on shoes. Her shirt was printed in a potpourri of geometric designs that made Abi a little dizzy.

  “Well, how do you like the new me?” Mama asked her, striking a pose.

  “You look very nice,” Abi lied.

  “Well, it’s plus-size, of course. But I get a 15 percent discount on anything I buy there. How do you like the new kitchen?” she asked, and kicked her shoes off. She sat at the table with Abi and her daddy.

  “The kitchen is nice, too, just like your new outfit,” Abi said.

  “I can get you some great deals on clothes,” she said, glancing at Abi’s “BITE ME” T-shirt.

  “Thanks, Mama, but I’ve got plenty right now.”

  Her mama lit a cigarette. “What does ‘BITE ME’ mean?”

  “Oh, it’s just a way to be funny.”

  Mama coughed and waved her cigarette smoke away from Daddy. “You know your daddy starts his treatments soon,” she said.

  “Yes, we were just talking about it.”

  Then, pleasantries and updates aside, Mama started headfirst into her usual questions. Was she seeing any nice boys? Was she making any money as a waitress? Shouldn’t she drop out of school and go to work for the telephone company? Of course, Mama meant South Central Bell, which was surely not hiring, due to the fact that it no longer existed.

  Abi was dying for a cigarette but didn’t want to smoke in front of Daddy.

  “Well,” Mama went on, “are you dating anybody?”

  “Not in particular,” Abi replied.

  “You know, all your cousins are married now except for you.”

  “Yes, seems that I knew that.”

  “I want me some grandchildren,” she said. “Sister has so many now.”

  Abi wanted to say she’d seen the little tyrants when she got there, but she was interrupted by Grits, who jumped from the chair and walked toward Mama.

  “Where did that thing come from?” Mama asked, clutching her hand to her neck like she was grabbing a string of pearls.

  “Mama, that thing is a cat, and she’s mine.”

  “Seems like in a place as big as Birmingham, there would be a lot of boys to pick from,” she said, getting back to the subject at hand, the subject that drove Abi crazy. “Might not need another cat then.”

  Daddy sat silent, sipping his tea and reaching out to scratch behind Grits’s ears.

  Mama got up from the table, went to the bedroom, and returned with a JCPenney catalog. “Here,” she said, “let me show you some things I’m considering for Christmas presents.”

  Abi looked at her daddy, who was hiding a smile. She knew that he knew she was in total misery.

  Mama sat and scooted over next to Abi.

  “Okay, look here. I’m sending cards this year.”

  “To whom?” Abi asked.

  “I got friends,” Mama said. “I got people I work with, and we got people—family—who don’t live here. I’ve narrowed it down to three. Here’s the reindeer with bells.”

  Abi noted the ornaments hanging from the antlers.

  “And here is the simple winter print,” Mama continued. “Look at all that snow. And here’s the Three Kings, the Wise Men.”

  The Wise Men’s beards curled up at the end, and the gifts they were carrying to baby Jesus were wrapped in contemporary paper with big bows on top.

  “So, which one do you like the most?” Mama asked.

  Abi searched for the least of three evils, finally settling on the simplest. “I think I’d go with the traditional winter print.”

  Mama looked at her, and Abi knew she’d chosen the wrong one.

  “I kind of like the reindeers,” Mama said.

  Abi stood and stretched. She was going to slap her mother silly if she didn’t get a cigarette soon, but it seemed cruel to light up in front of Daddy.

  “Sit back down, Abigail,” her mother demanded. “I’m not done.”

  Abi did as she was told.

  “Now, here are the gifts. Look at the roulette drinking game.”

  “What does that mean?” Abi asked.

  “I don’t know, but there’s another game here, see, called the Tic-Tac-Toe Drinking Game. See that board? And here are the glasses, some marked X and others marked O. I don’t know if these drinking games are such a good idea around here. But Petie might like them.”

  “Mama, you don’t give drinking games to an alcoholic.”

  “Why not? That’s who they’re made for.”

  She went on to show Abi a food grinder, processed meat pouring out of the mixer attachment, a hand-held vacuum cleaner, paisley melamine dinnerware, and finally a camo bedsheet set.

  Mama leaned in and whispered to Abi, “I might get that for your daddy’s bed, since he was a soldier.”

  Abi smelled the cigarette on her
mother’s breath, and her own lungs ached for smoke. “I need to get some fresh air,” she said.

  “One more thing and that’s it,” Mama promised. “Now, I’m showing you them because I might just get you one.”

  She pointed to a pink velour hoodie, then a gray fleece V-neck pullover, a white boat-neck sweater with navy-blue piping, a long-sleeved sweatshirt—also pink—with a lace neck, and finally a short-sleeved polo- collar shirt dress.

  “Don’t get me that,” Abi said, pointing to the dress.

  “But it’s Liz Claiborne,” Mama argued.

  Abi could bear it no longer. She leaned over and gave Mama a perfunctory hug. Mama’s hands were still on the catalog. Abi noticed how swollen her fingers were and how her wedding ring looked like it might slice through the skin at any moment, it was so tight. No amount of soap and water could get that ring off.

  “Listen, I’m gonna take a walk down to the pond.”

  “You’re staying for dinner, aren’t you?” Mama asked. Back home, everybody called lunch dinner.

  “Maybe so,” Abi said. She turned to her daddy. “Don’t let the cat out, okay?”

  He nodded and smiled at her.

  “Aunt Sister is baking a hen,” Mama went on.

  It wouldn’t do any good to remind her mother that she was a vegetarian. Either Mama couldn’t remember it or didn’t approve of it and therefore pretended not to understand.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Abi said.

  Once outside, she hurried to her car, grabbed her cigarettes from the dashboard and a beer from the cooler in the backseat. She headed down the footpath to the pond.

  Few members of Abi’s family ever left the trailer park for good. One rare wing had done just that when Daddy’s sister Nell married a tobacco farmer in Tennessee. When Abi was a little girl, her parents accepted an invitation to visit. They packed their old Chevy and headed north on Highway 31. It was August, and all the windows were rolled down. In the cornfields, the ears had tassled out and turned brown.

  When they crossed the state line, her mama said quietly, “I never been out of Alabama before.”

  They arrived in late afternoon, in the high heat. The trip was a big deal for Mama and Daddy, Abi could tell. They gasped at the sight of Nell’s home on a hill. Mama scooted across the bench seat closer to Daddy, like they were on a date.