Once, in a Town Called Moth

by Trilby Kent

  Ana hugged her.

  “Whoa, jeez! Down, girl.”

  “Sorry, I’m just—”

  “I know, it’s cool. Hey, and it means I don’t have to keep slipping notes through your letterbox. We can communicate like real people now.”

  “And Mischa’s number is in here?”

  “Yeah. Oh, and emergency calls are free. You know, like the fire department and police.” Suvi slid off her bed and grabbed her bag. “Come on—we can test it out on the road.”

  Suvi: Merry Christmas, beeyatches! Hope you’re having more fun than me. Julie’s making us play charades and Steve is wasted on brandy and has acted out Braveheart like three times already. Ho! Ho! Ho!

  Mischa: Merry Christmas, you guys. Mr. Winkler peed himself at lunch today just as Dad was bringing in the turkey. Not as bad as last year when EMS had to come for Mrs. Gage. Remember, S?

  Suvi: Holy crap, yeah Ana, you OK?

  Ana: Sorry—was at church. So different here.

  Everyone talks so much. Have to go. Stove lighter broken again.

  Suvi: Dude, GET THEE A FREAKIN MICROWAVE!

  Ana: Tell that to my father. More important: Lena texted back! Said maybe we could meet up in the new year.

  Mischa: You going to?

  Ana: ???!!!

  Suvi: Best. Christmas. Present. EVER. Right?

  Ana:

  Every year, Suvi’s parents threw an early New Year’s party for their neighbors up and down the street.

  “It’s become kind of a tradition,” Suvi told Ana when they met up at the toboggan hill on Boxing Day. “The people on either side of us always come, and the Richardsons, and Mrs. Patel and her daughter, and the Greek family with all those kids, and Jonty and Ben and their folks, and Mr. de Wet brings that biltong stuff that he dries himself, and there are always loads of randoms whose names I can never remember. Steve makes a huge goulash and people bring cookies and butter tarts and stuff and we basically pretend it’s New Year’s Eve but everyone gets to go home at, like, eleven so it’s not as exhausting for the little kids. Mischa’s going to be away with his folks, but you and your dad should totally come.”

  Ana took this all in, watching half a dozen snowsuited boys attempt to steer a chain of flying saucers down the hill. As the chain gathered speed, it doubled over on itself and two of the boys went flying into the slush. Their eyes shone black and bright beneath their woolly hats, and their teeth in their laughing mouths gleamed white. The flush in their cheeks was the only color in a field of gray.

  “I’ll mention it to him,” Ana said.

  “Mr. Rempel—we meet at last!”

  An explosion of laughter burst from the living room, where music was playing, as Julie took their coats. Women in lipstick and glittery dresses filled the hallway with a bright, perfumed haze; the men, more casually dressed, walked around in stocking feet. Some children crowded down the hallway on their way upstairs, and Ana was aware of yet more guests arriving up the front path behind them. “You guys are on coat duty until everyone’s here, OK?” Julie told her. “Suvi will show you where we’ve made space for them in the rec room downstairs.” She turned back to Ana’s father, who was taking it all in with an expression of bewildered amusement. “Mr. Rempel—I’m so sorry. I’m Julie. And I think you’ve met Steve outside the house before?”

  “Please, call me Miloh.”

  “Miloh!” Julie grinned broadly, and took him by the shoulders. “Come on in to the kitchen before Steve kicks everyone out—when he’s cooking he turns into a real tyrant. There’s mulled wine, or beer if you prefer…”

  Ana watched them go as she followed Suvi down the narrow basement stairs. “Do your parents know he doesn’t drink?” she whispered.

  “I think I mentioned it,” said Suvi. “But there’s Coke and stuff too. Relax, Ana—he’ll be fine.”

  The goulash was late, and one of the neighbors had to run back across the street to get more dressing when it turned out that Julie hadn’t made enough for both salads, but nobody minded. They stuck another log on the fire, and Ana’s father managed to tease the dwindling flames back to a mighty roar, which made everyone in the living room applaud and cheer as if he’d just scored the winning goal at the Stanley Cup. Ana was the only one who noticed the color rise to his cheeks, saw in his smile a modest thrill. He caught her eye and raised his eyebrows as if to say, These people are crazy, but who am I to complain?

  So she was happy and confident, by the time she found herself lining up for food, that he could fend perfectly well for himself in this strange world of skimpy dresses and loud music and wine stains on one arm of the couch. At one point she had heard him talking to some other men about the porch that he’d rebuilt for Mrs. Fratelli; later, one of the neighbors asked if he wanted to help flood the neighborhood ice rink later that week, when it would be cold enough for the kids to start skating outside again. Ana’s father had grinned and nodded, and reached across the table for another Orangina.

  She was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for Suvi to join her, when she became aware of a chair scraping next to her. It was Jonty, the boy from three doors down, wearing a velvet blazer, balancing a plate overfilled with goulash and bread rolls and a dollop of taramasalata from the buffet table.

  “Hi,” he said. “Ana, right?”

  Ana nodded. “And…Jonty?”

  “John. Jonathan.”

  Ana nodded. She remembered him from the summer, when he’d seemed to consider her with distaste and vague disappointment. She studied him now as he ate and decided that it was actually a look of concentration, a look that suggested that he found it easier to think about people than talk to them.

  “Is that wine?” she asked.

  “Shiraz,” he said. “Would you like some? My dad brought it.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Hey, Jonty. Budge over.” Suvi nudged her plate onto the bar stool next to him. “Jeez, is that a smoking jacket?”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Did it come with a pipe?” Suvi jabbed at some goulash with her fork, sending a piece of onion splattering across the floor. “Aw, crap.”

  “Nice one, Fidgety Philip,” remarked Jonty.

  “Very funny. Hold on, I’m going to get some paper towel.”

  When she’d gone, Ana looked at Jonty. “Fidgety Philip?” she said. “Zappel-Philipp?”

  He smiled. “You know Struwwelpeter?”

  “Do people read that here?”

  “Not generally. But I’m into old German stuff.”

  Ana nodded. It was hard to tell from the way he spoke whether he was being sarcastic or deadly earnest. Perhaps this was something all the boys learned at his school. Then again, perhaps it was just Jonty.

  John. Jonathan.

  “The music in there is getting out of control. Every year, Suvi’s parents get a little more trendy.”

  Ana strained her ears over the chatter and clatter of dishes.

  “I don’t know this song.”

  “It’s hipster stuff.”

  Ana shrugged. “I kind of like it.”

  “So, Plattdeutsch?”

  “Yes. Only, if you were talking about Mennonites, you’d say Plautdietsch. It’s like regular Low German with a special accent.”

  “It sounds strange. Almost, I don’t know…Dutch, or something.”

  Ana nodded. Suvi still hadn’t returned—one of Steve’s work friends had trapped her in the hallway to ask about babysitting rates—and in a way Ana was glad. John’s plate had been empty for at least the last ten minutes. If he’d wanted to escape their conversation about declensions and vowel lowering, he would have had the perfect excuse.

  Instead, he asked, “What do you think of Walpole?”

  “It’s OK. Different.”

  “Not kind of feral?”

  “…?”

  “You know, wild? Hairy?”

  “Oh, yes. The kids there are not very disciplined.” Ana inclined her head toward the living room. “My fat
her would say.”

  “My father would agree. My mother thinks it’s the real world. If it were up to her, that’s where we’d go to school.”

  “The real world is wherever you are, I think. Not one or the other.”

  Jonty nodded. “Fair point,” he said.

  “John, we’re going!” Ben poked his head around the kitchen door. “Dad says can you get our coats? Mom and Julie are doing their long good-bye thing.”

  “As usual.” Jonty drained his glass and set it on the table.

  “I can show you where to find the coats,” said Ana. “You didn’t get here that early, so they should be near the top of the heap.”

  “Lay on, Macduff.”

  They passed Suvi in the dining room, where she was being grilled on school matters by old Mrs. Patel. Suvi grimaced at Ana, who gestured to the basement steps. “Just one minute,” she mouthed.

  Ana went sideways down the narrow staircase, partly to avoid slipping and partly because it felt strange to be walking with Jonty behind her; she felt a need to face him as they talked.

  “There was a system to begin with,” she said. “Then some of the little kids tried to help and it got a bit messed up. The rule was supposed to be that only Suvi and I would come down here, so we’d be able to keep track of everyone’s stuff…”

  “Jesus. A coat-check cartel.”

  “What do your coats look like?”

  Jonty glanced through the pile. “I don’t see them here. Ben’s is bright yellow. As in, stupid bright. Visible-from-space bright.”

  “They must be in the back, then.”

  She led him through the rec room and into the empty workout room that Steve’s rowing machine shared with the boiler. She reached around the door to flip on the light switch, but stopped as she felt him take her hand.

  Ana turned and found Jonty standing suddenly quite close. He was watching her with a serious expression, as if waiting to decide something—or waiting for her to decide.

  “John! Dad says hurry up!” bellowed Ben from the top of the stairs.

  He leaned in abruptly, tightening his hold on her hand for just a second. His lips tasted of wine; he breathed softly through his nose, warm on her cheek.

  “John!” Heavy footsteps on the stairs.

  “Dammit…” He pulled away, letting go of her hand. “There they are—the yellow one and the red one and the two black ones. Here, I’ve got it…”

  She watched as he bundled them under both arms. “Happy New Year,” she said, just as Ben arrived to take his coat from his brother.

  Jonty smiled quickly—a light turned on and off again. “Thanks,” he said. “And to you too, Mejal.”

  “Well,” her father said, as they crossed the street back to their house. “That really was quite a lovely evening.”

  Ana didn’t think she’d ever heard her father use the word “lovely” before. She felt her breath swing back toward her through the frosty darkness and was glad when a car rumbled by behind them, drowning out the sound of her still thumping heart.

  She didn’t tell Suvi about what had happened with Jonty. Suvi would have squealed and demanded details, or else she would have pulled a face and teased Ana about it for weeks. Either way, Ana would have had to try to explain something she herself didn’t understand.

  Later, it would occur to Ana that her first visit to the beach should have been in the summer. Sand sticking to sunscreen, the smack and bounce of a beach ball skimming a net, children squealing as they flirted with the surf.

  But it was mid-January as she sat on the Queen East streetcar, staring through the grubby condensation at slush-tracked side streets and the desolate snow-covered beach. Every surface that wasn’t covered with snow was crusted with salt, and she found herself thinking of the salt fields in Bolivia: great expanses of dazzling white that made you thirsty just to look at them, and traces from dried-up volcanoes that left cracked hexagons in the surface, like the patterns her father etched into cork and cardboard.

  Lena had suggested that they meet at the Goof—“Get off at Beech, cross the street and it’s the Chinese restaurant with a 1950s sign outside,” her text said, and Ana spotted it almost as soon as she stepped off the streetcar. The neon sign spelled out “Good” in vertical letters and “Food” in horizontal ones; above this, “Garden Gate” was spelled out in loopy cursive. Enormous diner windows made it easy to see in. A family was being served steaming plates of chow mein at a central table while an older man sat on a bar stool, reading a newspaper and absently tapping his coffee mug with one finger.

  She’s not here.

  Ana forced herself to go in, slipping into a booth near the door so that she could watch people as they entered.

  She’s not coming.

  The plastic tabletops had been made to look like wood. A laminated menu listed lunch specials on one side, drinks and desserts on the other. Ana stared at it, pretending to ponder her order. She looked around for the toilets. If she had to throw up, she’d probably have five seconds, tops, to get inside—

  “You look like a lime juice kind of girl,” said a voice next to her. An elderly waitress licked her thumb and flipped to a fresh page in her notebook. “Or a hot chocolate, given how cold it is today. You ready to order?”

  “I’m waiting for someone,” said Ana.

  “No problem. I’ll bring some water in the meantime.”

  What was “a lime juice kind of girl” supposed to look like?

  Fresh panic. Was she being watched even now, by a woman sitting in a car across the road? Sizing her up? “A lime juice kind of girl.” Sour? Green? Chilly?

  There was no car; there was no woman. But Ana imagined herself peering through the misted diner window at the girl hunched alone in a corner booth, nose stung red by the cold, awkward in her own skin, dwarfed by her parka. She had taken off her hat but not her scarf; pools of brown water were forming under her salt-stained boots. Is that the daughter Lena would choose to bring back into her life, given the chance?

  Of course she’s not coming.

  “They do an all-day breakfast too, you know. The banana pancakes are kind of amazing.”

  Ana looked up, ready to deflect another waitress. But the woman standing in front of her wore a long patchwork coat and slouchy, snow-dusted boots. Her hair shimmered with tiny frozen droplets and her cheeks were flushed from the cold.

  “Can I…?” The woman put her arms out, made as if to hug her—then froze. Ana had stood up, flinched at the sudden gesture like a startled animal. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s fine,” said Ana, watching her sit down and wishing, wishing, that she hadn’t jumped like that.

  She backed into the booth. “I might just get a coffee.”

  “Sure. You’re not too young for that? I mean, you like coffee? But sure, totally. Totally. Where’s Meg?” The woman began to take off her coat, catching the waitress’s eye. She mimed two coffees. “And a slice of coconut cream pie. Two forks.”

  It didn’t feel strange, exactly. It didn’t feel of anything. If Ana had passed this woman on the street, she wouldn’t have given her a second thought.

  “Wow. You’re gorgeous, do you know that? Like how I imagined, only…” She shook her head, wiped her eyes. “Taller. So tall, like your father. Like a goddess. My beautiful daughter…”

  The middle part of her mother’s face was familiar, but the flesh around it had filled out, obscuring those bits Ana should have recognized. An attractive face, not as young as she’d expected. More surprising was the way she wore her hair like a mane down her back, dangly gold earrings with little colored glass beads, a scarf unwound to reveal layered V-necks. There was nothing of Colony Felicidad here, no trace of those people, that life.

  They sat, facing one another.

  “First thing’s first. You know it’s not really smart to meet with people you’ve only ever talked to online, right? Does your dad know you’re here?”

  “No.”

  “Does an
yone?”

  “No.”

  “Can I give you a piece of advice, then? This is a bad idea. Don’t do this kind of thing again, OK?”

  Don’t meet my mother who left when I was five again?

  “And try some of the pie. You’ll thank me.”

  They waited in silence as the waitress put out the coffee, plates and forks. When she had turned away, Ana said, “Lena.”

  Her mother looked up.

  “Is that what you’re called now?”

  Her mother nodded. “Yes. And…Ana?”

  “It was his idea. I like it, though.”

  “That’s OK, then.”

  It was about as awkward as having a conversation with a nice enough stranger, but no worse. Ana waited until her mother looked down to spear a piece of pie before studying her face, searching for some sign of herself. She did not want to be caught staring. The nose that wasn’t her father’s: was it like this woman’s, straight and square at the tip? The voice, sweetly husky: Ana had always thought her own was low, glottal, un-feminine. Aspects of herself that she had always wondered about—her appearance, her personality—could have been a part of this woman too. Or not. Where did they connect?

  “How is he? Your father.”

  “He’s fine. He’s looking for you.”

  Her mother breathed deeply. “You’ve been here how long?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  “No…I mean, in the city?”

  “Oh. Uh, a few months.”

  “Why, though? Why would he do this?”

  “I don’t know—he won’t tell me. There were some things…” Ana looked out the window. “He argued with Gerhard Buhler just before we left.”

  Lena said something under her breath. Then, “Are you in school?”