The Moon Sisters: A Novel

by Therese Walsh

  I’m sure Jazz noticed from behind whenever I tripped over a root or rock, though she never said anything. Hobbs, who led the way, didn’t speak, either, unless I spoke first, like the time I realized I couldn’t see Jazz behind us when I stopped to look.

  “Don’t go too fast, or we’ll lose Jazz,” I said.

  “Right.” He shifted his backpack. “We wouldn’t want to lose Jazz.”

  I should’ve been happy, because we were on our way; we’d get to the glades. But it was hard to be happy when the day smelled like a big pot of I-hate-your-guts.

  When I was five, there was a storm cloud over Tramp that had the eye and tail of a monster, and brought the loudest thunder I can remember, filling my head with black icicles along with the regular burst of mustard-gold fog. Some in town swore that it brought a tornado, because it ripped limbs off trees and knocked the power out for a week. Whatever it was, it became a source of childhood nightmares for me. I’d wake after being chased by black icicles, and Mama would bring in a damp washcloth to soothe my skin and wipe away my tears. Oftentimes she’d fall asleep on the covers with me still attached to her like a barnacle, and I’d drape the washcloth over her nose and eyes to try to wake her. But not much bothered Mama when she was sleeping.

  If Jazz were a storm, she’d be a storm like that. I could feel the pressure of her sometimes in the small spaces behind my cheeks—a promise of hard rain and wind and darkness, a willingness to rip limbs from branches. Whenever I’d felt that pressure from her at home, I’d left the house. Gone for a walk or a swim in the stream that ran through town, or headed across the road to see if Mrs. Magee’s cat had more babies. Something about Pippin’s purr always put my head back in the right place, the deep sounds spindling from ear to spine, relaxing my muscles as I pet her and admired her wee ones. I couldn’t do anything like that now. I couldn’t leave. I needed my companions, was dependent on them both.

  I tried to remember that there were two ways to see even this situation. I would be stuck with a pair of mad and quiet people for three days. But being stuck would give me time to practice using my peripheral vision. Maybe I’d get better at everything. Maybe I’d prove that I didn’t need those glasses after all. It was the last thought I had before I tripped and fell on my forearms again.

  In retrospect, I’d say the fall was a good and fortunate thing, but in that moment it seemed like anything but. Jazz helped me up with a tug of hands, and called Hobbs back to us with a sharp word. He pulled out his bottle of Vladimir to help clean what Jazz called a mess of dirt and blood, and again offered me a sip as a mental analgesic. That’s when Jazz said something along the lines of “Booze? Olivia needs to reduce her inhibitions like I need another excuse to punch you in the face.”

  It didn’t matter that I would’ve said no.

  They started in on each other again, name-calling worse than ever, until the pressure building inside me threatened to rip the skin clear off my body.

  “Go away!” I cried, covering my ears with my hands. “Both of you, just get away from me!”

  I never yelled—not ever—but I guess I was pretty good at it when I put my mind to it, because they shut up.

  “I mean it,” I told them with a neon voice that warned, I am seriously on the edge, don’t push it or I will explode all over you. “Take a time-out. You, that way.” I pointed. “You, the other. Come back in five minutes.”

  And they left.

  Huh.

  Quiet all around me.

  I was on my fourth shaky breath when I heard a familiar rush, off in the distance. I walked forward, over a small embankment, to find a snaking body of water spread out like a welcome mat.

  The stream that coiled through Tramp was a thin trickle of a thing most of the year, but how it raged in springtime, filled my eyes with a fireworks show when I closed them to listen. Here there were no fireworks. Best I could tell, this was an easy stream. Not too loud or wide or rushing. Hobbs had mentioned that there was one nearby, that we’d need to run some of its water through his filter to refill our bottles. And though I wouldn’t deny that a drink would taste good, what I needed then was something else.

  I shucked my clothes down to my undies, then waded into the frigid water, into the heart of the stream, until it skimmed the flesh above my knees. I stood there with my eyes closed, my arms limp at my sides, and felt the drop of my pressure, steady and sure, and such a relief that I nearly wept with gratitude. Again, I was able to focus on things outside myself instead of everything crushing up against my insides and smothering my organs.

  Silt and rocks cradled my feet.

  Sunshine melted a cloak of heat over my arms.

  Off in the far distance, a tumble of water, a small waterfall. I couldn’t see it, but it shadow-danced along my eyelids in lemon and russet tones.

  I walked against the current. Let the scent of moss take me back to me and Mama knee-deep in water just like this, fishing for lunch because we were sick of peanut butter and jelly. Of Mama and me collecting guppies to study. Of Mama taking a nap by the shore while I gathered pebbles, and Papa coming up on the both of us, seeing her there, kissing her eyelids until she woke and smiled up at him. Prince Charming. I’d know you anywhere.

  I was still walking and thinking about that moment when someone grabbed my arm.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” he said over my gasp.

  Hobbs. He turned away when I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “I’ve been calling you, Livya.”

  It was the first time he’d used my name with that voice of his—a voice that smiled on its own even when he growled.

  “You should’ve told someone you’d come out here,” he continued. “What if something had happened?”

  Should’ve tasted like unsent letters and unfinished stories. Like ghost breath on a mirror.

  We should’ve thought about this kitchen, my father had said. Should’ve made sure the door couldn’t close all the way in case the gas was on and the light went out. Should’ve made sure the window was always cracked. Should’ve spent every cent we had to make the heat better so you could work at your desk all year round instead of in the kitchen, instead of always having to settle. He opened the window and screamed my mother’s name, cried right there over the sink. Beth Moon! I should’ve told you I loved you more!

  It bruised my heart still to remember.

  “Maybe I should’ve,” I told Hobbs, as trickles of water made their way from my arms to my abdomen. “But sometimes I need to be by myself. Sometimes I need to get away.”

  “But you’ve said yourself that your eyes—”

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “It’s not like I’m going to forget about what’s wrong with me, so I don’t know why everyone keeps bringing it up like I will.” My pressure started to rise all over again. “And it’s not like I’m happy to need people. Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like more right now than to not need anyone.”

  “Settle yourself, Wee Bit,” he said. “I don’t have to stick around.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, and then I dropped my hands, cupped them in the water, and splashed my face. Droplets streamed down to the tip of my nose. “I’m sorry. I do want you to stick around.” I wasn’t upset with Hobbs. I was embarrassed because he’d found me stripped down in more ways than one. But I didn’t need to be.

  Ruby had said, Be real. This was real. No hiding.

  “Should I—?” He glanced back in my direction, then away again. Still unsure whether to stay or go. Where the line might be. Where to put his eyes when in the presence of a strange girl in her underwear.

  I’d make it easy for him. “Do me a favor?” I asked.

  “What favor?

  “Help me clean this mess?”

  There was something about his awkwardness, as he removed what remained of my old bandages, that made me feel all the better. Strangely empowered, as he brushed over my wounds with careful fingers beneath the surface of the water, evicting dirt and blood. There was a t
rust pact here. And Hobbs was a nurturer. Who would’ve thought?

  “What’s that smile about?” he asked, which made me smile wider.

  “I like you,” I said.

  “You don’t know me to like me,” he said.

  I liked his habit of helping others—trapped dogs and stumbling Californians and blind girls all. I liked the puzzle of him, wanted to understand things like why he found it so hard to hear a good word about himself without earning it in some clear way. I liked the way he emanated a scent all his own, the way it conjured up the image of a faraway place and of herbs I’d never tried before but might like simmered in a stew.

  “I like what I know,” I said, and he released my arm. I tried but couldn’t read a single expression on his face.

  “Maybe there’s as much to not like as there is to like,” he said.

  “Maybe you just can’t see it.”

  “Your tattoos?”

  “My cloven hooves.”

  “So that’s what I heard on the trail back there.”

  “Very funny,” he said, giving nothing away.

  “I can be funny.” I made my eyes round, realized I was flirting, and found that interesting.

  I liked Hobbs. Maybe I liked Hobbs.

  And why not? Had I ever met anyone so intriguing? Besides, it had been a long time since I’d had a fling—since Stan. He and I parted ways because death was the opposite of a fun time, which is all either of us had been in it for. It had been fun while it lasted, though. He hadn’t minded that everyone in Tramp considered me a freak, and in return I hadn’t minded that he was shorter than me by half an inch. Height didn’t matter much in the backseat of a car, at any rate—not when the car was big enough.

  “What are you up to?” asked Hobbs.

  “Five foot two,” I said, still trying to be funny. “How old are you?”

  “Old enough for trouble, so you’d better be careful.”

  Maybe it was a warning I should heed. I thought again of Stan and that morning, and pushed it all back again. I wouldn’t think about that when there was sun on my arms. Hobbs was not Stan. Stan’s voice had looked like pieces of cheese falling from a grater. The curves of Hobbs’s voice were smooth and perfect. Voices could tell you things, if you listened, and I listened now more than ever.

  “Nineteen,” I guessed. “Twenty?” He shifted. Twenty, then. “What do your eyes look like?”

  “Shards of glass.”

  “What color glass?”

  He didn’t answer. Neither did he move.

  I stood as high as I could right there—extending my feet, finding a convenient and stable rock to climb upon—and brought my face right up alongside his. Hobbs was much taller than Stan, and thin as a shadow.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Trying to climb a wall.”

  “What?”

  “Just hush a second.” I angled my head, tuned in as well as I could to the periphery. “Stay still.”

  A web of artful lines and arcs over his cheeks. Pale skin where there wasn’t color. A wide mouth that formed a straight line. Big eyes. I couldn’t be certain—it was harder to see color in the periphery than it was straight on, especially when that color was on a subject as small as an iris—but I could tell his eyes weren’t dark as coal, so I made my prediction anyway: “Green.”

  He straightened right up, which is when I realized that he’d hunched, met me partway.

  “Sounds like you can see just fine,” he said, with a voice that said he wasn’t happy to learn it.

  I could’ve said it was a lucky guess on my part, but let it drop. He was funny, Hobbs, the way his moods turned.

  I settled back onto the flats of my feet. “I can see well enough to hop a train, and walk a path without tripping too many times, and smell a chocolate morning.”

  “Chocolate?”

  “Mmm,” I said, and my mouth watered. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, but I’ll tell you everything, if you want. If you stick around.”

  “I’m here, right?” he said.

  A small fish brushed by my leg in a flurry of life, dashed away.

  Yes, he was there. And I was glad.

  My time with Hobbs in the stream would’ve made for a perfect memory if not for the way it ended. Two people stood in wait for us on the shore. My skin puckered when I realized it, and it wasn’t just because I was cold and in my underwear.

  “Red Grass.” Hobbs’s voice boomed across the water. He clutched my elbow as we waded forward, closer to land.

  “Ho there,” came a voice like gravel, a voice I recognized from the train. I felt better knowing it wasn’t a pure stranger standing there, but I’d feel better still with my clothes on. I knew without anyone saying anything about it that the person with him was my sister; I felt her judging eyes all over me.

  “How in hell did you find us?” Hobbs asked. “Where’d you go before? Did the bull get you?”

  “Nah, call of nature,” said Red Grass, setting down a pack that had to have been twice as large as Hobbs’s, and his wasn’t small.

  “But I knew I’d catch you again. Tracking’s what I do, what I’m best at. And I got a new deal for you, Hobbs.”

  “Of course,” Hobbs said under his breath.

  “Where are those yuppie hoboes?” he asked.

  “Surf and Jop took off,” Hobbs said.

  As soon as the water was shallow enough, I let go of him and made my way toward the clothes I’d left on the shore. Jazz came to stand beside me, a human shelter from the boys.

  “Nice look.” Her voice was a low hiss of noise. “What is wrong with you, Olivia?”

  “I needed to cool off, so I did what I had to do,” I said, not letting her ruin the calm inside me.

  “Well, put your clothes on. I have something to tell you.”

  “Last I knew, I could hear with my clothes on or off,” I said, though I slipped on the T-shirt. “Well?”

  “In private,” she said, hovering like the dark cloud she liked so well to emulate.

  I wasn’t in the mood for a private tongue-lashing, though, so I didn’t rush. I tugged on my cutoffs, fighting the denim a little against my wet skin. I pulled on my socks, one at a time, and tied my sneakers.

  “Livya?” Hobbs called.

  I ignored the sharp words that tried to anchor me to my sister—“Olivia Moon, you come back here”—and walked right up to the guys.

  “Give us a minute, Red,” Hobbs said, and the older man moved away and started to sing.

  Jazz swore behind me.

  “If Red makes you uncomfortable, I can try to get him to piss off,” Hobbs said, as Red Grass crooned on.

  “Catfish, catfish, going up a stream. Catfish, catfish, where you been?”

  “I can try,” Hobbs repeated, “but I can’t guarantee anything. I’ve known that guy for about a month, which is long enough to know he can be an annoying son of a bitch who tries to control things he shouldn’t and is harder to shake than a dug-in tick.”

  “I grabbed that catfish by the snout, Lord I pulled that catfish out!”

  “But he’s got a tent you’d like,” Hobbs said, “and you’ll never go hungry with him around. Red, he knows how to fish.”

  “Olivia. Now,” said Jazz, closing in on me.

  There had to be some truth in it somewhere—a kind of rule or law of physics. Two control-freak types together would keep each other occupied, would need to define the alpha and the beta of it, and so would have something to say to each other. Probably a lot of somethings. Which meant a lot less of those somethings directed toward me.

  “I’m fine with Red Grass,” I said. “Really, I am.”

  November 11, 1995

  Dear Dad,

  I thought you should know that you have another granddaughter! Olivia Francis Moon was born this past June, with a wisp of blond hair that turned black almost overnight and a look in her eye that said, “Hello, I’m trouble.” She does not sleep, and would prefer to wear h
er dinner than eat it. Despite all of that, I’ve fallen madly in love with her.

  Jazz is four now, and I can trust her to behave for short spans of time when I put Olivia down for a nap so that I can catch up on sleep or do some things for myself. This miracle can only be achieved because she’s a good listener and as serious as a soldier when I ask her for help. My mother-in-law, Drahomíra, says I’m lucky because most four-year-olds are the opposite of accommodating. (Was I difficult at that age? Do you remember?)

  One day you’ll meet them and see that I’ve made two healthy grandchildren for you, and become the daughter you always wanted me to be. I’m calmer now, Dad, and saner and more responsible. I know that was always your greatest worry—that my impulsivity would be my undoing, that I’d self-destruct like Mom. But you’d be wrong to worry. I’ll bet you’re calmer, too, and that soon you’ll be ready to put this behind us. Then you’ll see that Branik, despite a great lack of money, is a very good man.

  Olivia’s crying, so I’ll close now.

  Thinking of you,

  Beth

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Fascination with Death

  JAZZ

  Babka replaced the biscuit bus with a modern van late last year. She had a friend who refurbished totaled vehicles, and that guy—Smitty—came into the store one day and told her he had a beaut he’d sell her “for cheap,” because her creaky old bus was living on borrowed time. Smitty was a retired body-shop worker, so he knew a thing or two about fixing cars. The van had air-conditioning, he said, and fabric seats and a CD player and cassette slot both, so it didn’t matter that the radio wouldn’t work well. Smitty got his biscuits free after that, because of course she took him up on his offer.

  Dad brought Olivia and me along on deliveries in that van for two solid weeks after our mother died. Maybe he was afraid for us, even though we could’ve stayed with Babka. Maybe he was afraid for himself. Maybe it was Babka’s idea that we all stick together. I don’t know, and can’t recall if I ever did.