The Pull of the Moon

by Julie Paul

  The next morning, when Dylan left for work, Mario was watering the yard, pissing stance, smoke in the mouth.

  “Morning,” Dylan said and then got a good look at Mario’s face. “Oh. Wow. You okay?”

  One eye was swollen shut, and Mario had bandages on both cheeks; part of one eyebrow was gone.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You probably heard.”

  “Well, we . . .”

  “She’s left me.” Mario turned off the hose and looked at Dylan directly, for the first time. “She said I was too selfish for her.”

  “Oh,” Dylan said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Look at my face, man!”

  Dylan looked. “That’s pretty beat up, buddy. Hey, I better—”

  “I’m fucked, man,” Mario said and tossed his butt into the rhododendrons beside the stairs. “Sheri’s my life. You know what she gave me for my birthday?”

  Dylan shook his head.

  “Fucking boudoir photos. Of herself.”

  “Wow,” Dylan said.

  “I know. The best gift anyone’s ever given me. And now . . .” He opened his hand quickly, like a magician. “Poof. Gonzo.”

  Dylan had been walking slowly toward the street, stepping lightly on the wet grass. “That sucks, Mario.”

  Mario lit a fresh cigarette. He took it out of his mouth and looked at it. “She’s even got me smoking her brand.”

  Dylan chuckled. “Sorry, man. Hey, talk to you later.”

  Mario sat down on the soaking lawn. “Sure,” he said, but he was off on another planet, staring into space.

  That evening, things got worse. While Dylan played dollies with Lulu in the living room, Jess was in the bedroom folding laundry, sniffling every thirty seconds because she was coming down with a cold. She came out, gave Dylan a weird, silent, sideways nod, and waited until he caught the drift to follow her into the bedroom. He smiled, hooked Lulu back up to Big Bird babysitting, and stole away, his mind going south.

  “Look,” Jess whispered.

  Mario was outside, shirtless, in boxers, backyarding with his friends again, talking to them in an extra-chipper voice. “Come try this, Grey! Yum. Come and get it.” He was crouching down, staring at a greyish-brown squirrel, and between him and the squirrel were half a dozen cigarettes, stuck into what looked like marshmallows. The cigarettes were lit. “Come on, little guy. Come and try it.”

  “What the hell?” Dylan said.

  “You have to stop him,” Jess said.

  He sighed. “I’ll try.”

  Outside, he approached the scene cautiously. “Hey, man.”

  “Oh, hey. Good timing. I’m trying a little experiment. Want to see if animals can smoke. I saw a baby smoking on YouTube, from somewhere in Asia, so I figured it might be possible.”

  “Well,” Dylan said. “But—”

  “See, if they eat the marshmallow, from the bottom to the top, then their mouths will naturally end up on the end of a butt. Poof! They breathe in once, they’re smoking.” He took a drag from his cigarette and blew rings. “The baby did that choice trick, too, you know. Maybe I’ll teach these guys, down the road. You don’t want to overdo it on the first day of school.”

  The guy had gone manic. “Mario,” Dylan said. “You sure this is safe?”

  Mario was concentrating on sticking another cigarette into a Jet-Puffed. Dylan started to uncoil the backyard’s garden hose from its holder on the wall and walked back to stand beside Mario.

  “Just in case,” he said.

  “They’re aquaphobic,” Mario told him.

  “It’s for the cigarettes. Just in case.”

  Mario picked up the nozzle and aimed it at Dylan. “You think I’m crazy.”

  Dylan shook his head. Suddenly he was sweating, heart dancing, as if something worse than water would come out of that hose. “No, no, man. I’m just a bit of a . . . a worrier. Around fire, you know?”

  “Sheri thinks I’m crazy. She’s got a lawyer now, and she wants half of everything.” He looked at Dylan. “I cut the couch in half this morning. I started on the bed, too, but the axe head came off the handle.”

  The hose was still aimed at Dylan, but Dylan was edging toward the corner of the house, where he could turn and make a run for it. Two grey squirrels were cavorting around the marshmallows.

  Mario looked at the squirrels and then at Dylan. “Hey,” he said. “I just got me a big idea.” He looked at the nozzle in his hand as if he’d never seen it, then put it down. “I’m gonna trap one for Sheri. You wanna help?”

  Dylan took a deep breath and glanced up at his own bedroom window. Jess was up there, watching the showdown. “I should probably go.”

  “Just take a sec,” Mario said. “You got a clothes basket in that pad of yours?”

  “Sure,” he said. As if he could get it past Jess.

  He and Jess had met when both of them still possessed a certain quality—courage, maybe, a level of risk-taking—that was gone. Since Lulu had come along, or even before that, even while she was still a thought, a star-wish, a penny-throw dream, Jess had become a woman with more to lose. Sometimes Dylan saw a figurative basketful of eggs on her head, a thing she was balancing as she navigated through her days. And nights. Even at night, she’d stopped initiating anything. No surprise nakedness met him beneath the covers. Her mouth guard was in automatically every night at ten, the sound of its custom-shaped plastic clicking into place a reminder to Dylan that she was more intimate with it than him. He felt big, and sloppy, and needy. A thing to be endured, even if she still said she loved him every night. A person can do anything regularly, once it’s in the habit list.

  Back before Lulu, they just put up with more—if she hadn’t come along, they’d still be in that first apartment, making do with the tiny hot water tank, showering together, leaving the dishes until it ran hot again. They’d both still have full-time jobs, too, and be socking away a few bucks for a holiday where nude time was a priority, or else they’d be long gone from this city, with its condos as expensive as Italian villas.

  All of this came to Dylan as he received Jess’s look from the window, Lulu in her arms. He should move away from Mario, get back to his wife and child, and leave the crazy guy to burn whatever was in his path.

  But he’d caught a chipmunk once, in a cake carrier. He knew how this trick went down. “There’s a box in the bike storeroom,” he said. “That’ll work. We just need a decent stick and some bait, and string.”

  Mario grinned. “Right on, man. We’re gonna do this thing!”

  When Dylan came back with the box and a broken hockey stick, Mario was scooping peanut butter and sunflower seeds onto a plate. Dylan looked up at his window, but Jess was gone.

  They rigged the trap and waited. When Mario handed Dylan a lit joint, he didn’t say no.

  “Women like gifts,” Mario told Dylan. “I shoulda thought of this days ago.”

  “Chocolates would be easier. Or flowers.” Dylan couldn’t remember the last time he’d given Jess anything, other than the rest of his giant muffin from his coffee break at work.

  “Nah,” Mario said. “Old hat.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Check it out.”

  A black squirrel was under the box, licking at the peanut butter.

  “Isn’t that the one that hurt you?” Dylan asked.

  “Yeah, the little fucker. Even better to give him to Sheri, to show I didn’t hurt him at all.”

  “You wanna pull the string?”

  “You pull it. I’ll give you a signal when he’s right underneath. Watch for this.” Mario nodded twice, quickly, then got into position.

  Dylan’s heart started racing, as if he were back in Grade 6, spying on girls, or waiting to trip the bullies. He felt good. Alive.

  He watched Mario with the attention of a raptor, waited for the nod, and when it came—BOOM!—the box fell before he’d even realized he’d pulled the string.

  “Bingo!” Mario cried and ran over to hold the box down tight against the
grass.

  “Nice one, Mario.” High-five.

  “Team effort, man. Like fucking Sesame Street here. Co-operation.”

  Dylan wondered if he’d been listening in on Lulu’s TV habits. Of course he had; the floors were like cardboard.

  “Just one problem,” Mario said. “How do I get this guy to Sheri?”

  “I’ve got just the thing!” Dylan had seen an old cat carrier down the street in a free pile. He raced, found it still there, and sprinted back, feeling like a torchbearer.

  Mario was stoked. They got Blackie in the carrier by ripping one end off the box and jamming the opening of the plastic cat kennel in front of it, and once the squirrel made the move, Mario was on his way, grinning like the madman Dylan believed he was.

  In the apartment, Lulu was already asleep for the night. Jess was on the iPad, scrolling through apartment listings, with Mozart quietly playing in the background.

  “Well, we did it,” he said.

  Jess didn’t acknowledge him.

  “Jessie,” he said. “He’s crazy, but he’s harmless. I think if we talked to him he’d cut back on the smokes.”

  Nothing. Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll.

  “You find anything?”

  Jess sighed. “Mostly one bedrooms.”

  “Shitty.”

  “I dunno,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked his way. “You stink like pot.”

  He nodded, inwardly panicking. Was she moving out without him? “I’ll take a shower.”

  “A one bedroom is all we can afford, in the good neighbourhoods.”

  Ah, good. It was only money again. “I’ll get another job,” he said. “Whatever it takes. Unless we change our minds and stay here. I like this place. The tub, the light—”

  Jess was shaking her head, pointing at the floor. “Not on your life.”

  At 7:00 AM, pounding on the door awakened them.

  “Dylan! Open up, man!”

  Mario was holding the squirrel cage. “He’s dead.” He thrust the cage toward Dylan. “The little bugger died on us.”

  It seemed true—Blackie was motionless, laid out on his side.

  “Shitty,” Dylan said. “I thought you were taking him to Sheri yesterday.”

  “I couldn’t find her.”

  “Daddy?” Lulu was suddenly hugging his legs. “Have breakfast now?”

  “I don’t know what to do, man.” He set the cage down. “It’s like everything I touch turns to effing dust.”

  He said effing, in front of Lulu. He wasn’t such a bad guy.

  “Dylan,” Jess called, in a thick, smoker’s bark. Her cold was worse.

  “Hang on,” he said to Mario. He swung Lulu up onto his hip and went into the bedroom.

  “Get him out of here,” she growled. She opened up the covers for Lulu, who snuggled into Dylan’s spot.

  Nothing. He had nothing to say. He just nodded and went back to his new buddy and his new buddy’s new pet, a pet with a serious health problem.

  Mario was looking at the photo collage on the wall. He turned to Dylan, wet-eyed. “You’re a lucky son of a bitch.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “What’s your secret?”

  “To what, marriage?”

  “Yeah. The domestic life.”

  Dylan wanted to laugh. It was like asking a priest about his sex life, a jobless man about ways to get hired. He shrugged. “Showing up?”

  Mario stared at him, silent for a golden moment. “Exacta-mundo,” he said and thumped him on the shoulder, hard. “Dude. You are a genius.” He moved toward the door. “I gotta go, man. Sheri texted me. She’s at her mother’s now, and she’ll have to leave for work soon. I just gotta get down on my knees, you know. Show up. I think she just might take me back! Thanks, eh?”

  Lulu came tottering out. She peered into the cage, hunched over like an old woman tending to the fire. “Kitty?” she asked. She smiled at Dylan, a bright smile as though she was looking at a Christmas tree.

  The feeling came to Dylan’s scalp first: a slow trickle, like the fist-as-egg trick his brother used to do on the top of his head. The tingle spread to his face, then his arms, and soon he had the shivers all over. He knew what he had to do. He had to find the missing piece of this puzzle called his family. Lulu was lovely—a gem of a girl—but she was still lacking a winning edge, or something. Jess was incredibly stressed, to say the least. And he was . . . lonely. The fact of it hit him like he’d been shoved.

  He had a dead squirrel at his feet and a kid who couldn’t tell the difference between a cat and a rodent. How could he even think of raising a child in such a sterile home? She was shaking the cat carrier and Jess was shouting at him and he knew only that his next step was to go out and get them a pet.

  He picked up his daughter and took her back in to Jess. “He’s gone,” he said. “And I need to go out for a bit.”

  “I’m sick,” Jess said. “My throat is on fire.”

  He leaned down and kissed her forehead. She had a sick-sweet smell about her. “Stay in bed, and I’ll bring home something that will make you feel better.”

  “A babysitter?”

  “I’ll take her with me.”

  “No. Not if it involves that psycho.”

  “No, no. He’s off trying to win Sheri back.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Come on, Lulu, let’s go get you ready.”

  While she was in the bathroom, calling out for him to wipe her bum, Dylan was disposing of the body. He opened the cage door, tipped the carrier until Blackie slid into a wrinkled gift bag, and after folding the edges down and sticking them closed with a piece of tape, he ran outside and deposited the bag into the dumpster.

  Lulu was off the toilet when he came back in, running around with no pants, chanting, “I did it! I did it!” She had a piece of toilet paper stuck to her rear.

  “Hooray!” he shouted and told her to get her pants back on. He knew he should do a re-wipe but what would that do for her confidence? He was ready for changes. He didn’t want to wipe bums any more. Besides, if Lulu smelled a bit off, it would go completely unnoticed at the pound.

  Two hours later, they brought home their salvation: a fur-faced wonder, a beast of cuteness even Lulu couldn’t match. Jess was still in bed, so they didn’t wake her on purpose. She woke up from all the commotion—the galloping of four paws, the squeals of joy—and found them in the living room. Dylan really felt better than he had in months. Animals were therapeutic. They gave unconditional love, and didn’t care what you wore or smelled like. Really, they were models of the ultimate parent.

  What followed was not pretty. Snot and tears and venom and whimpering and fur and names filled the apartment. Lulu was put back in front of Oscar the Grouch, while Jess and Dylan took it into the bedroom. The fight—an understatement—was on, despite Jess’s sore throat and the adorableness of the new pet. Yes. No. Yes. No. Ping pong.

  Dylan was not backing down. He was on a high, this time a natural one, despite this valley in his marriage. He would keep the dog and Lulu was on his side and—

  As Jess stomped away from him, he noticed she already had a bit of fur on the back of her pyjamas. It made him happy.

  She went into the bathroom and locked the door—a sign she was not approachable. Lulu banged on the door anyway, saying cute things like, “Mommy, Fuzzy wants to hug you,” and “Fuzzy’s licking my face now and it tickles! Help!” and bursting out in giggles.

  Betrayal was what Jess had called it in the bedroom, and it was the word she said again when she emerged, her face a bloated pink-and-white map to somewhere he didn’t want to go. He was using Lulu as a tool. How could he put her in this position?

  In other words, they couldn’t take the animal away from Lulu now. She was already in love.

  He had doubted Jess’s theories before, about the energy of others affecting them in all those other places they’d lived with shared walls, but he was starting to think
there was something to those theories. In fact, just the other day at work, he’d read of a Japanese man doing crazy things with water. He spoke certain words around vessels filled with water, and the molecules changed shape. When he said, Thank you, a beautiful crystal formed. When he said, I hate you, the shape went wonky and asymmetrical. If water could shift with only a word, why not humans? Some alien on Star Trek had called people “ugly bags of mostly water.” It was starting to add up.

  Jess was turning into a Sheri, raging about something when no raging was necessary. And wasn’t he turning into a Mario, just a simple guy out to make people happy?

  He would get Jess some lingerie, and flowers, and candy, put a dollar value on his devotion and see what happened. Or maybe she would just come around and lighten up. Because Mario and Sheri were in the backyard, both of them laughing. Dylan closed his eyes and made a wish. Fuzzy came over, and gave him a watery kiss, right on the lips.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, this book could not exist without my husband, Ryan Rock. His relentless optimism, faith, dish duty, tennis matches, and love have carried me through. My daughter, Avery Jane, provided, among countless other blessings, beautiful songs, chocolate cream pie, and honest answers to my question, Does this sound okay? Your patience, my dears, has been superhuman. Thank you.

  Thanks to my parents, Joyce Paul and Jim Paul, for believing in me. To my siblings, Janey, Jessica, and Jon, as well as my dear Nana, Dorothy Paul, and my stepson, Jonah Brown, thank you for being a superlative cheering section.

  A big shout-out to my writing cohorts:

  Fiction Bitches, current and past: Patricia Young, Arleen Paré, Barbara Henderson, Claudia Haagen, Cynthia Woodman Kerkham, Jill Margo, Dede Crane, and Lisa Baldissera. The WWC: Laurie Elmquist, Kari Jones, and Alisa Gordaneer. My Writamin buddies: Traci Skuce, Jenny Vester, and Sarah Selecky. My Montreal writing pals: Alice Zorn, Kathleen Winter, and Lina Gordaneer. All offered their eyes and ears to early versions of these stories.

  Thanks, also, to:

  Everyone at Brindle & Glass—Taryn Boyd, Pete Kohut, Cailey Cavallin, Tori Elliott, and Emily Shorthouse.