The Moon Sisters: A Novel

by Therese Walsh

  “You can see over his land from here, right out onto the swampland,” he said. “You’ll be able to sit up there all night if you want, look for those lights of yours. That is, if you want to go up, if you’re not afraid of warlocks and steaming cauldrons.”

  There was no question. Once upon a time, I’d been a monkey child, climbing trees all over town, even climbing to the top of St. Cyril’s Church one day. I liked to see the world from up high, get a bird’s-eye view of things—a different view, but real all the same.

  I let him direct me up the tree one step at a time—my bare toes resting in old notches, on old slats, his body warm and sure behind me—until we stood together inside the small structure. He drew me to the solitary window, where I skimmed my fingers along the frame, then described details that my eyes missed and the growing dark obscured. The scrubby brush of the land, a scattering of boulders. Tall reeds poking out of the swamp water that lay between Betty’s house and Bill’s. An old beaver dam.

  “Wish I could stay with you the whole night,” he said, and settled his hands on my waist.

  “So you’re going to do it?” I asked him. “Go to Bill’s and leave the coins there?”

  “I’d be stupid not to. For all he’s done, my piss-poor excuse for a father deserves everything coming to him. But do I want to set him up and send him to jail? Is that what I’m doing here? I’ve been asking myself that since we left J.D.’s, and I don’t know the answer, Wee Bit, now that I’m here.” I locked my hands over his and pulled them forward. He rested his chin on top of my head. “I’d be a fool to come up here, just to turn around and keep those coins on me, though.”

  “Maybe you could get rid of them another way.” Once more, I thought of my mother’s letters—the ones she’d stowed under her altar, and the one I’d pocketed in my coat. The words felt ripe in my mouth. “Maybe you should set them free.”

  “Yeah? Cast them out over the land?”

  He made a wide sweep of a gesture with our conjoined hands, like a farmer tossing seeds, before he turned me around. I first noticed it then, with my eyes closed and lost in a kiss. A light, shining behind my lids.

  My eyes fluttered open, and I glanced back toward the window. “Did you see that?”

  “What?”

  “Maybe it was a wisp.” There was still a hint of color in the dusky sky, but no sign of the flash I’d seen.

  “Wait till it gets dark-dark. If they decide to come out and play, you’ll know it. One summer I saw them out here every night, I swear.”

  “What do you think they are?”

  It returned when I closed my eyes again—a golden light, floating, blinking in long, slow drags like a lazy firefly.

  “Betty used to say they were the ghosts of Alice’s babies out there, dancing around a fire and looking for their mama,” he said. “Jake thought they were barn owls. My old man said they were ball lightning, come to burn me up if I didn’t listen to him.”

  “What do you believe?” My tongue felt strange—thick and woolly. “What do you believe now?”

  “I don’t know what I believe, but I’ll tell you, they’re not predictable. They might show up, they might not. I hope you’re not disappointed if you don’t see anything.”

  I opened, closed my eyes two, three times more, testing and testing. But the light remained after that, even with my eyes open, small but as brilliant as a star in the center of my not-so-blind spot. Dancing there like a grin.

  “Your sister didn’t want me to bring you here, you know.”

  “No?” I asked, entirely distracted.

  “She didn’t want me to tell you about the lights at all. Thought you needed to face reality, that that would be best.”

  “She goes on all the time about how she doesn’t understand me,” I said. “Makes it sort of ironic that she’d then claim to know what’s best for me, don’t you think?”

  “Livya—”

  The curve of his voice thinned as my blind spot shimmered.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him, asked myself.

  I could see less of him than before. My blind spot had grown bigger, expanded like a screen. The light was still there, but it had morphed, too, turned stark white and glossy, showed a hint of silver lettering.

  “Your grandfather is Orin, right? You mentioned his name once or twice.”

  “Yes, he’s my grandfather.”

  It was our family’s stove—that’s what it was, the white, the chrome letters. The light was the pilot light. How was this possible? I gripped Hobbs’s arm. “Something’s wrong.”

  Before I could explain what I saw, Hobbs said, “He died.”

  “Who?” I shook my head.

  “Orin. I saw his obituary in your sister’s backpack. He died this past February. I don’t know why Jazz didn’t tell you.”

  “February?”

  I stopped thinking about the stove, and about the warm scent that seemed like my mother, like sunlight in the dark, and focused on Hobbs’s words.

  February was when it all happened. February.

  “When in February?” I asked, and held my breath.

  Not before she died. Not before February 19th.

  Not suicide, suicide, suicide.

  “February twelfth. I’m sorry, Livya, but I thought you should know the truth.”

  A bell clanged in the distance.

  “Shit,” he hissed. “That’s the Bill bell, which means trouble somewhere. Don’t move. I’ll be back.”

  He pulled away, left me with a growing darkness.

  Then …

  a puff of breath

  and the pilot light on the screen disappeared altogether.

  May 30, 2012

  Dear Dad,

  I woke up this morning with a strange feeling in my stomach. I didn’t understand it until later, after I’d seen Branik and Jazz off for the day, after Olivia and I played a game of hearts. I looked at the calendar and realized that it was your birthday. Today you are seventy-three years old.

  Seventy-three.

  It’s startling to realize how many years I’ve missed, and how many you’ve missed with me—and with your granddaughters. I’ve found myself wondering for the first time if I’ll never see you again, as time burns and burns, down and away, like thin sticks of birthday-candle wax.

  The phone just rang. When I picked it up, no one answered, but someone was there, on the other end. I said, “Dad?,” and the line went dead.

  God help me, I wish it was you.

  Happy birthday.

  Beth

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Mushroom Soup

  JAZZ

  I missed things about my mother, all the time. I missed the funny loop she used to make when tying her shoes. I missed watching her pet the cat with her bare toes sometimes in the evening, lying down on the couch. I missed the way she ran down the hallway after a shower, because she didn’t want any of us to catch a glimpse of her in her towel. I missed the way she’d loop her apron string, tuck it back into the tie around her waist. I missed her occasional stupid joke, even though I’d never laughed at them; I hadn’t wanted to encourage them, I guess.

  I missed my mother’s soups. She made good soup, maybe because they were rarely ruined and possibly even improved by her impromptu naps. All that stuff simmering in a pot, growing more complex. Carrot soup with curry. Pea soup with ramps. Chicken soup with celery and thick noodles. Minestrone with kidney beans and sausage, chunks of tomatoes, onions. The scent of soup had a way of filling the house as few other things could. It had a way of saying home, saying here, things aren’t that bad, saying breathe, eat, and know that you’re loved.

  I missed seeing my mother bent over her typewriter or staring out a window, lost in thought. Working hard on something that would never be finished.

  It’s crazy that I miss that.

  My last thought before I heard the bell was that I was pretty sure there was something wrong with Betty’s soup.

  Right after Betty left
, intent on learning herself if Bill was at home or not—and who was I to stop her?—I tucked one of my arms onto her table and rested my head there. I felt a little sick. Dizzy. Closing my eyes did nothing to improve the situation: a twisting helix formed behind them, made my stomach churn. It was easy enough to blame the pace of the last few days: the lack of sleep, food, and quiet; the miles of walking; the physical and emotional stress; and everything I’d seen and learned. I opened my eyes again and found that the room had turned purple.

  Mushrooms.

  What was it about mushrooms? They could be hallucinogenic. That had to be it. This was a mushroom thing. I should sit still until it passed. But, hallucination or not, as soon as I heard the bell—saw the giant Newton’s cradle that formed in my head when I heard it, with enormous metal balls swooping toward me, clanging too near me for any form of comfort—I was up out of my seat. I bolted for the door I’d seen Hobbs leave through earlier. Went outside to trample an untold number of Betty’s fairy rings with my socked feet. Ran across a land dotted with boulders and tall trees. Realized with no small amount of horror that the ground was expanding and contracting like a lung.

  “Olivia!” I shouted, and my voice took form in the air, like foam peanuts spilled from a box.

  Hobbs appeared out of nowhere, running toward me, then past me. “She’s in the tree house,” he shouted, and I looked up the hill he’d run down. “Stay there!”

  A giant lit tree lay at the top, jeweled stairs spiraling around the outside of it. I blinked hard—not real—but didn’t care just then. The ground was breathing.

  I took the stairs two at a time, and when I reached the platform at the top I could hardly believe my eyes. This was a delusion. A grand, mushroom-inspired hallucination. But Jesus Christ, this looked like my family’s kitchen in Hobbs’s tree house. The blue-clothed table with its scuffed pine legs to match the chairs. The old refrigerator. The small window, its curtains, the L-shaped counter and the chipped basin sink, a few colored bottles on a shelf. The typewriter. The stove.

  I squeezed the strap of my backpack, surprised that it was with me, that I’d hauled it along. It felt strange, cold and bumpy beneath my fingers.

  A note appeared in thick block letters on the refrigerator, like a rainbow of alphabet magnets: DON’T LOSE YOUR MARBLES.

  The A was red.

  A glass on the table reflected the image of a person behind me, and when I spun around I found my sister lying on the counter I’d just seen empty. Her left hand dangled toward the floor; the other rested alongside her head.

  “Olivia?” I adjusted the bag on my back.

  Her angle confused me. No matter how I tried to approach her, I ended up facing her bare feet.

  “Leave me alone,” she said.

  The floor shifted restlessly under me; I sat on the table and lifted my feet to the chair, not wanting anything to do with it. “Olivia, something is messed up and I—”

  “I can’t talk to you right now! Will you go?” This time her voice reverberated off the walls in waves.

  “Keep it down.” I glanced again at the agitated floor, sure now that it was trying to take a nap and we were only making it angry. “What’s your problem, anyway?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Grandpa Orin was dead?”

  I dug my fingers into the blue cloth, felt the splintering of wood beneath my nails. “What?”

  “Why didn’t you say anything? Why are you carrying his obituary around like your private dirty secret?”

  “You’re one to talk,” I said, scrambling. “You didn’t tell me about the letter you found, did you? You were hiding that, weren’t you? And you still are.”

  “Leave me alone about that letter!”

  The sound she made—a gasp or sob—distorted as if thrown into the auditory version of a fun-house mirror. This was not the rational conversation I’d hoped to have with her, and I still wanted that letter. As hard as it might be under normal circumstances—not to mention circumstances in which the floor snored—I’d have to try not to push her.

  All right. I took a breath.

  “At first I didn’t mention the obituary because I’d promised Mom that I wouldn’t. I saw her just after she found out, and she didn’t want anyone to know.”

  I rubbed my fingers along the straps pressing into my shoulders. Marbles. The bag’s straps felt like marbles.

  “After Mom died, I didn’t say anything because it didn’t matter,” I said. “Because her being gone took priority.”

  And everything was falling apart, I added silently. You were falling apart. Staring at the sun. Losing your eyes. Dad with his booze.

  “I didn’t think much about him after that until yesterday,” I continued, “when I realized the truth might hit you hard.”

  “Why did you think it might hit me hard?” she said, with a voice that seemed—looked, somehow—clumped. Like curdled milk.

  “It’s such a clear connection, Olivia.”

  “That she killed herself, you mean?”

  “Yes. That she killed herself.”

  Her cry grew blue tentacles that dribbled down the counter and puddled onto the sleeping floor. “It’s my fault.”

  “What? That’s not—”

  “I knew she was in one of her up-and-downs that morning, and hardly tried to help,” she said. “I knew it, and I left her anyhow. It was my job to pull her out of her funk and be there when she needed to—”

  “It was not your job, it was—”

  “Before I left, I told her to stay warm, Jazz. What if she turned on the stove because I told her to stay warm? I can’t remember if it was on before I left or not, and I told her—”

  “Olivia Moon, you stop it right now, do you hear me?” I got to my feet, strained to get a glimpse of her face, connect with her however I might, but again I couldn’t see past her toes. “You can’t believe what happened is your fault!”

  “I saw the way her voice looked, so low down, but I told myself she’d be okay because I had plans and … Why did I ignore what she said?”

  “What did she say?” Why had I never asked that?

  “She said, ‘If you live your whole life hoping and dreaming the wrong things, what does that mean about your whole life?’ ” A spiderweb sensation crawled over my arms and up the back of my neck. “Maybe Hobbs is right. Nothing brings on pain like a dream. Grandpa Orin was the dream. He was everything. She knew he was gone that morning—that’s what she meant, why she was so upset. She was in pain, and I—I left her!”

  She gave another blue-tentacle cry, and I met it with one of my own.

  “I left her, too—the day she found the obituary, I left her in the kitchen!” I said, and felt something dark and dormant crack open inside of me, like my own private tomb. “Don’t think it doesn’t slay me to remember that, because it does.”

  That I hadn’t made her talk to me, hadn’t dug any deeper.

  That I hadn’t told anyone.

  That, if I had, maybe none of this would’ve happened.

  It was all there, under my own loose floorboards—my slow-boil pot of water.

  “You’re not the only one with regrets, Olivia Moon. You’re not the only one with grief issues. You’re not the only one who misses her, either, even if you think it’s true,” I said, and I swear I felt dirt on my tongue.

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said, her voice quieter than it had been.

  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll never know if Mama and I might’ve been friends one day. And now I have to figure my shit out alone.”

  “Is that why you took her letters?” she asked. “To figure things out?”

  Maybe. Maybe that was the reason.

  The letters on the refrigerator changed colors; even the A turned purple.

  “Those notes are tied to my life,” I said, as I blinked back at the message. “They’re what she wrote because I was conceived. That’s why he disowned her, you know, because I existe
d.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Believe it or not. It’s true.”

  “Have you read them?”

  “No.” I corrected myself, focused again on my sister’s toes. “I read a few, but that was years ago.”

  Why hadn’t I read them already? All of them, start to finish?

  The answer shot through me with a stunning suddenness: I was afraid to read about all the ways that I might’ve ruined my mother’s life—turned her into a person who couldn’t complete things, who slept too much and couldn’t face her days with any regularity, who’d left her children an inheritance of abandoned dreams. Not opening those envelopes left me with the slimmest hope.…

  It’ll taste like hope, Olivia had said. The will-o’-the-wisp.

  Olivia needed hope because she feared what the letter she’d found would say, too, that it would prove that our mother had committed suicide.

  Mama’s life meant something—dreams and hopes are worth something!

  Of course Olivia would want to believe that, because if your own mother decided life wasn’t worth living, and dreams and hopes weren’t worth having, what did it mean for you? What did it mean when you were just eighteen? If you thought it was your fault? If you felt that fear confirmed in your grandfather’s obituary?

  The room gave a little spin.

  Olivia wasn’t on a counter at all—of course she wasn’t!—and the reason I faced her feet was that she was laid out on a branch. I was not standing on a table; I straddled a wooden tree-house window—one foot on the floor, the other on the same branch as my sister’s body. Behind me was a simple tree house. Gone was the intricate staircase. Gone were the stove and the typewriter. The refrigerator and its letters.

  Gone, finally, were my marbles.

  “Olivia, what the hell are you doing out there?”

  “The light was here earlier. I saw it. I thought I smelled Mama, but now everything tastes like ashes again.”

  “Olivia, the soup we ate is making us sick,” I said as evenly as I could while my heart beat triple time in my chest. “It’s making us see things that aren’t there, do you understand me? You’re on a limb, an actual tree limb, and the ground”—I looked down, felt even more nauseated—“is not close. For God’s sake, be careful!”