Luna

by Sharon Butala

  Selena felt the hard muscle of Kent’s back under her hand, remembering how, when she had been only Phoebe’s age, they had gone out to his truck and spent half the night necking, and later, making love. How her body had been then, like Phoebe’s, soft, yet tough, and how Kent had buried himself in her, as if she were everything.

  She could feel the heat of his body radiating into her palm. She wished they could go home, go to bed. A wave of tenderness for him rose up in her and she lifted her hand and rested it on the back of his neck. He gave her a warning glance and twirled her fast around a corner.

  Then it was almost midnight, the band had stopped playing and gone outside for a smoke. On one side of the dance floor, four or five little boys were stacking white plastic cups into pyramids. They had apparently gone all around the hall and gathered the empty cups. They had so many that there were three separate piles of them, and a couple of little boys concentrating over each pile. Adults at nearby tables watched them, calling out good-natured advice.

  “Want another drink?” Kent asked. Selena shook her head no, watching the children. “Careful,” Kent called, laughing, to the nearest boy, who was trying to set just one more glass onto his pyramid, which now reached above his head. He was too little and, stretching to reach, he swayed a little, lost his balance, the pyramid wavered, and then all the cups came tumbling down. All around the hall the people who hadn’t noticed the children turned to see what was going on, while those who had, laughed and made a collective “Ohhh,” of regret.

  Diane had come to sit beside Selena. She held a sleeping Cathy on her lap and she rocked her now and then and smoothed her hair.

  “Why don’t you spread out her blankets and put her to sleep under the table in the kitchen?” Selena suggested. Her last words were drowned out in a second long, “Ohhh,” of commiseration as another pyramid fell, the plastic cups bouncing across the dance floor. On her other side Jason rose and found a chair closer to the last child who was still building his pyramid, his brow furrowed with concentration. Jason pulled his chair forward to offer advice to the smaller boy, who glanced shyly toward him, then turned back to his project. From across the hall, his face lost in shadows, a man called out encouragement, then another male voice, and a woman’s. The pyramid wavered, a chorus of “Uh-ohs” came from around the hall, followed by friendly laughter. The pyramid righted itself and the boy lifted another cup from the pile on the floor beside him. Even the members of the band, who had returned to the stage, were watching now.

  A movement in the knot of men standing around the open entrance caught Selena’s attention. Phoebe was working her way through the crowd, her shoulder turned sideways, the men moving aside for her when they realized she was trying to get past them. Brian wasn’t with her. Selena waved so that Phoebe would spot her in the dim, warm room and the crowd, but Phoebe’s head was down and she didn’t see Selena’s gesture. Instead, skirting the edges of the table and the people standing around watching the boy’s pyramid, she hurried down the length of the hall to the bathroom, clutching one side of her full skirt in folds against her hip. Selena was puzzled by this and by the tight way she moved—and where was Brian? Phoebe disappeared into the bathroom and Selena looked back to the entrance.

  Brian had just entered and was standing easily, spread-legged, a little apart from the other men, one hand dangling in front of his crotch, the other hand clasping it at the wrist. His face looked pale, but, she thought, it must be the light.

  “That’s the way, Terry! You got it there!” Barclay called.

  “Careful!” from Rhoda. The boy stood up, a cup in his hand, his arm stretched as high as he could reach over his head, preparing to set the last cup on the pyramid. People clapped and called to him. The child touched the top of the pyramid with the bottom of the cup, it swayed, he waited, drawing back his hand, then bringing it down to rest his arm for a moment while the pyramid tottered, then steadied. More calls, more laughter and advice from the ring of children that had gathered around him, and from the adults seated at the tables.

  The musicians were picking up their instruments again, talking to one another, glancing now and then to see how the boy was making out. Diane came back from putting Cathy to sleep in the kitchen and Tammy and Lana came running up. Tammy put her head down in her mother’s lap, yawned and rubbed her eyes. Lana wandered away.

  “Has Tony got a job?” Selena asked Diane.

  “Not yet,” Diane said. “He phoned his old company and they’re supposed to call him back.” The little boy set the last cup on top, the pyramid wavered, appeared to settle, then faltered again, and down came all the cups, a shower of white plastic. They rolled and bounced, scattering out over the dance floor. The band began to play a polka, a dozen little kids ran onto the dance floor and began to gather the cups, waving and jostling each other to see who could gather the most, while the grownups, still laughing, turned back to their drinks, or moved out onto the dance floor.

  Suddenly Phoebe was beside Selena, sliding into Jason’s vacated chair. She was out of breath, as though she’d been running.

  “What’s the matter?” Selena asked, alarmed.

  Phoebe shook her head, said, “Nothing,” but without that spurt of anger Selena had come to expect. Had she been crying? Then Selena noticed a wet patch on her skirt.

  “My period started,” Phoebe said into her ear. She let her skirt hang down between their two chairs so that the wet patch could dry but not be seen by anyone else. “I wasn’t expecting it,” she said, not looking at Selena.

  “Did somebody give you a tampon?” Selena reached for her purse, which she found under the table in a puddle of spilled beer. Phoebe nodded.

  “I’m okay,” she said, still not angry. Puzzled, Selena glanced back to the doorway. Brian was still standing there, his legs planted firmly apart. He was looking out over the room at nothing. There was a tightness around his mouth, Selena knew she was really seeing it, that it wasn’t just a trick of the light.

  “What’s the matter with Brian?” she asked, nodding toward him. Phoebe turned her head, looked at him, closed her eyes, and turned away. A fight? Selena wondered. “How was the dance at Chinook? Was there a good crowd?” Phoebe shrugged.

  She was sitting on the chair Diane had left turned so that it was facing the dance floor, but she wasn’t watching the dancers. Her legs were pressed together, crossed at the ankles and she kept twisting her feet. Her arms were crossed in front of her, her right arm resting on her left shoulder and her left hand holding onto her right forearm next to Selena. As she watched this tight, uncharacteristic posture, Selena’s uneasiness grew. She leaned toward her and said into her ear, “Are you all right?”

  For a second she thought Phoebe was going to cry. Phoebe lowered her head even more, shook it no, a slight, almost imperceptible motion. “Did you have a fight?” Selena whispered gently, directly into Phoebe’s ear, holding back her light, sweet-smelling hair.

  Phoebe said nothing for a second, then nodded miserably, blinking, yes. Selena put her arm around Phoebe’s shoulders and turned her gently so that she was in shadow, facing the table. Phoebe lifted and slid her chair around. This way no one would see how upset she was.

  “It’ll be all right,” Selena whispered into her ear again. Phoebe said nothing. Selena brushed Phoebe’s hair back from her face and set it so that it hung down her back. She thought to herself, I’m not so sure I liked Brian anyway. Phoebe took a deep breath, her throat quivering, as if she might be fighting back tears.

  Selena noticed then that the bodice of her dress and the full skirt had come apart at the seam just below her belt. Selena pushed the seam together and tugged the belt down to hide it. Phoebe didn’t move. Bent forward that way, her arms on her lap, Selena, leaning close to her, couldn’t help but notice how round and full Phoebe’s young breasts were. How desirable she must be to men, she thought, so young and yet so womanly, and a pang of pity for Phoebe’s innocent beauty went through Selena. That’s why Kent is
so hard on her. To keep her safe, she thought, as if that were possible. She looked back to the doorway, but Brian had disappeared, or at least she couldn’t pick him out of the crowd standing in the doorway. Phoebe hadn’t moved, but since everybody who had been sitting on the opposite side of the table was up dancing, Selena didn’t bother trying to cheer Phoebe up. Let her feel badly for a little while, she thought. She just needs a little time. Kent was dancing with Rhoda; she was glad he wasn’t there to disapprove or to cross-examine Phoebe.

  She thought of her own father, but in the noise and confusion, couldn’t get a grip on her memories. Funny how she still sometimes found herself expecting him to come into the kitchen on a gust of wind, slamming the door, and shouting at her, what’s for supper, girl? as if by shouting at her he could fill the void left by her mother.

  “I have to help serve lunch,” Selena said to Phoebe, seeing the other women going to the kitchen. “Do you want to help?” Phoebe shook her head no, and pointed to the wet patch on her skirt. Selena patted her arm, and was startled to find it cool, almost cold in the hot room, and glancing once more at her, rose and went into the kitchen. At the door, she turned and looked back. Lola was just depositing her little boy in Phoebe’s arms for Phoebe to hold while she helped with the lunch. Phoebe was cradling him and looking down at him with a serious, tender expression. Selena remembered how eagerly she herself had been to hold the other women’s children when she was a girl, sometimes even secretly pretending they were her own. At one time or another, she thought, glancing quickly around the room, she had held and rocked nearly every child in the hall.

  When the buffet table was set with food again and people were lined up and serving themselves, Selena went looking for Diane. She found her in the kitchen checking Cathy, where she lay asleep on the floor in the corner.

  “Too bad Rhea couldn’t come,” Selena said, as Diane got up and brushed off her skirt.

  “I think we should get her to a doctor,” Diane said. “She’s getting awfully funny.”

  “She always has been funny,” Selena said. “As long as I can remember. It’s all those years alone.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Diane said, sighing. “When I’m gone, can you handle her yourself?” It was true, Selena realized, she would be the last close relative.

  “I’ll have to, I guess,” she said. She thought of Diane gone, living somewhere in the city. Tony trading in his workclothes for white shirts and a suit. She thought of Rhea, sixty years a ranch wife, most of those years without electricity or plumbing or telephone, now a half-crazy old woman, unable to enjoy the amenities she once would have given anything for. “It’s funny, isn’t it,” she said. Suddenly she was so tired she thought she might never move again. Rhea, alone in her shack, her husband dead, her children gone or dead. Would they all wind up that way? Was that what happened to your life?

  “What?” Diane asked, watching the lineup of people across the kitchen from them.

  “I just keep thinking …”

  “What?”

  “That our lives would turn out … differently …” Diane laughed.

  “Nothing ever changes out here,” she said. But that’s not true, Selena wanted to say. Everything was changing.

  They were silent, leaning side by side against the counter. Selena yawned, then covered her mouth. She thought of her bed at home, Kent’s weight on her, his breath in her hair. When she didn’t understand things, when the world moved too quickly for her, there was always that retreat. How glad she was to have it.

  “Have you found a buyer for your farm?” she asked.

  “Probably Doyle. His land borders ours and he’s about as land-hungry as they come. He won’t be able to pass it up.”

  “Just as long as he can pay for it,” Selena warned. Diane seemed not to hear.

  Mark was passing them in the line now. He tossed Selena a quick, wordless half-smile, a little embarrassed, it seemed, at having a mother. She saw again his bony wrists sticking out of his too-short shirtsleeves. He would be a big man someday, bigger than Kent. Already he had left her behind, as if what she thought and knew were no longer of any consequence.

  It was two o’clock when all five of them got into the car and started for home. Jason fell asleep in the back seat, his head bouncing against the window, which didn’t seem to disturb his sleep. Mark sat against the other window, with Phoebe in the middle. Mark leaned forward.

  “Rick says his old man is going to buy Tony out.” Kent, leaning back to hear Mark, merely nodded.

  “You’d think he had enough land,” he said. “Some people are never satisfied.”

  “Did Tony talk to you about it?” Selena asked.

  “Yeah. He said he can probably go back with that company he used to work for summers when he was in college.” He was silent for a moment, thinking. “I hope to hell he can. I haven’t got the money to help him if he gets into trouble. And I don’t think that family of his will lift a hand.”

  “Well, if it comes to that,” Selena said slowly. “Phoebe’s room will be empty this fall, and I always grow plenty of garden, and there’s always lots of beef.” Kent laughed.

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. That sister of yours …”

  “Who knows,” Selena said, her tone dreamy as she yawned. “Maybe she’s right.”

  “Right?” he said. “Are you crazy?” But Kent, too, seemed to have lost interest in the argument, and when she didn’t reply, said nothing more. The car hummed softly, carrying them through the starlit summer night, toward their home. Selena thought again about Phoebe’s strange behaviour. Phoebe hadn’t gone to say good-night to Brian, but as they were leaving, he had come toward her and caught her arm as she passed him. Selena pretended not to notice. He had said something in an undertone to Phoebe. Phoebe had answered him, but had not stopped for long, so they hadn’t had to wait for her like they usually did.

  Then there was that grad night business, Selena remembered. When all the kids were returning to the hall after changing into jeans for their all-night barbecue, Phoebe had come toward Selena looking angry, hurrying across the empty floor, Brian trailing behind, an exasperated look on his face, trying to catch up with her.

  Phoebe had only wanted Selena to take her grad dress and good shoes home with her, why Brian should be annoyed about that, Selena didn’t know. As Phoebe handed her the dress, Selena noticed that the blouse Phoebe had changed into had a button missing. Irritated that Phoebe hadn’t seen it, she searched through her purse for a safety pin. Brian stood there like a forty-year-old husband waiting impatiently for his wife. Selena had deliberately taken her time fastening the blouse.

  “You okay, dear?” she asked into the back seat.

  “Yeah,” Phoebe said.

  “Why wouldn’t she be okay?” Kent asked. Selena patted his wrist.

  “Never mind,” she said playfully Phoebe made a sound, it might have been of disgust or agreement, and Selena twisted around to look at her. But it was dark in the back seat and she couldn’t make out Phoebe’s face.

  AUGUST

  At first Rhea can’t make out what lies below. She is aware only of being high, high above … above what? Nothing of importance. She doesn’t think this, it is simply there. She is detached, indifferent. She turns her attention to the things below, observing without warmth or anxiety, as though all her human emotions had been stripped from her. She sees a group of women. They are doing something. They talk to one another, they turn to and away from one another, their hands are busy, their bodies are moving. She hears their voices, but their conversation, their activities are so trivial, so irrelevant seen from this new plane of consciousness that she does not even bother to try to understand what they are saying or what they are doing.

  Gradually it comes to her that she is no longer one of them, that she is elevated, on a higher plane than they are. But this is not possible, some other part of her tells her new, detached consciousness. No, I don’t want this, it says. I’m just an
ordinary woman. And at once she feels herself growing smaller, dwindling, her fleshly warmth returning, she sweeps through layers of blackness, with great effort returning from that calm detachment to the safety and comfort of her own flesh.

  It is as though she is two selves. One is the self of the body, the heart-driven, vein-filled, blood-rushing, breathing body, and the other a creature that lives inside and sees out the eyes of the flesh-and-bone self. The creature inside looking out the eyes of the body sees … the yellow mass of wild sunflowers she gathered on impulse the evening before and thrust into a quart sealer.

  Sunflowers. Flowers of the sun. The sun’s flowers. She feels her fingers, fat and warm on the crocheted doilies of her chair arms. She flexes them. Her wedding ring is worn to a thin, tarnished thread that cuts into the flesh of her third finger. I’ll have to have that ring cut off one of these days, she tells herself again. Filed off, torn off, wrenched off. She laughs, listening to the sound, long, ringing peals of sound like bells, or water over polished stones in the bottom of a coulee. She laughs again, to hear herself.

  She is sorry she picked the sunflowers. They are too big and garish, they have none of the delicacy of so much that grows on the prairie, and no scent worth mentioning. Better to gather the wild roses, or the sage itself, dusty and silvered, to scent the house. A momentary aberration, she tells herself, and repeats the phrase several times, pleased with the sound of it.

  Slowly she begins to feel all one person, the two selves melding as they always do after one of these visions. She waits, calmly sitting in her chair in her living room. She waits. How well I wait, she compliments herself. I always could wait. Learned young, she thinks, learned it when I was still a child. Sitting in the truck, the wagon, the buggy, the model ?—over by the sale ring or next to the elevators or in front of the beer parlour or on the main street in town on Saturday night—hour after hour, waiting on the men. Who do they think they are, that we should have to wait for them, always be waiting on them—blowing children’s noses, singing them songs till they fall asleep. Waiting, knitting, waiting … A woman has to know how to wait.