by Laird Barron
“I give up.”
“It’s not an easy thing for me to say.”
She gets a tightness in her chest, as though something hurtful is on the way. This infuriates her, to fall prey like this, and she rises quickly, weight on the balls of her feet, prepared in an instant to walk out. At the same time, unconsciously, she claws her hands at her sides.
“Spit it out,” she says.
He nods decisively. But as the seconds tick away without his uttering so much as a peep, the tension mounts.
Finally, he summons his courage and breaks the silence. “Would you ever think of trying again?”
Her eyes widen. Her ears, she decides, are playing tricks on her.
“Trying again?”
“Coming back.”
“And doing what? Getting remarried?”
They’ve been divorced a year. Swiftly, he responds. “Not necessarily that. Just trying again. Trying to do better.”
Shock gives way to a peal of laughter. “You want me to come back? To you? To a man who works every minute of every day? Yet somehow, at the same time, defines the word ‘unsteady’? A man with more moods than a mood ring. A man not merely divided in his attention but divided against himself.”
She’s spoken the unspeakable. He would never have allowed this before, but he’s hardly in a position to tell her to shut up.
And now that the gates are open, she’s not about to hold back. “Do you know what it’s like? I’ll tell you. It’s like living with three people in the house. Someone is always the odd person out. Always. If you live alone, you get lonely sometimes. If you’re a couple, you fight and make up. If there’re three of you, there’s always a third wheel. Someone’s always out in the cold. Three is the absolute worst.”
“I take it that’s a no.”
She begins to reply, pauses, purses her lips. “To a threesome, yes.”
At first he doesn’t understand. Then it hits him. It’s an impossible request. Yet she’s such a commanding presence. Maybe he can do it. Maybe, with her help.
“I can’t promise,” he says.
“Can’t promise what?”
He makes a gesture to include the two of them. “You and me. Just us.”
She frowns, then pulls out her phone and types in a message. Moments later, the side door of the van slides open and a woman steps out. She has short blond hair, a pale complexion, and a stiffish, self-conscious gait, as though balancing something breakable on her head that could, with the slightest misstep, fall and shatter.
“Recognize her?” Carol asks.
She does look familiar. The hair at the back of his neck must think so, too, because it stands at attention.
“A friend of yours?” he asks.
“More than a friend.”
“Should I be jealous?”
“I can’t answer that. I will say it’s not why she’s here.”
“Are you trying to teach me a lesson? Is that it?”
“Why don’t you meet her and then decide.”
“Decide?”
Is he that obtuse? She has the urge to order the woman back into the van and slap Dr. Jim across the face. Not without affection. She would never slap a man she didn’t like or respect.
She glances around the room, then up toward the ceiling, imagining the upper floor. In her mind she’s measuring the house. She has to decide, too.
She turns her eye on Dr. Jim. “We’re not that different, you know.”
“Decide what?” he asks.
Measuring him, measuring herself. “If there’s room for all of us.”
Karin Tidbeck
* * *
MOONSTRUCK
Karin Tidbeck works as a freelance writer, teacher and translator in Malmö, Sweden. Her short fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Tor.com, Lightspeed Magazine and Strange Horizons and numerous anthologies including The Time-Travelers Almanac and Steampunk Revolution. Her work has received the Campbell Award, the SF & Fantasy Translation Award, as well as a World Fantasy Award nomination. “Moonstruck” was nominated for the British Fantasy Award 2014.
They lived on the top floor in a building on the city’s outskirts. If the stars were out, visitors would come, usually an adult with a child in tow. Alia would open the door and drop a curtsy to the visitors, who bade her good evening and asked for Doctor Kazakoff. Alia would run halfway up the stairs to the attic and call for the Doctor. At the same time, Father would emerge from the kitchen in a gentle blast of tea-scented air. Sometimes he had his apron on, and brought a whiff of baking bread. He would extend a knobby hand to pat the child’s head, and then shake hands with the adult, whom he’d invite into the kitchen. While the parent (or grandparent, or guardian) hung their coat on a peg and sat down by the kitchen table, Father poured tea and wound up the gramophone. Then Mother, Doctor Kazakoff, would arrive, descending the spiral staircase in her blue frock and dark hair in a messy bun. She’d smile vaguely at the visiting child without making eye contact, and wave him or her over. They’d ascend the stairs to the darkened attic and out onto the little balcony, where the telescope stood. A stool sat below it, at just the right height for a child to climb up and look into the eyepiece.
Alia would crawl into an armchair in the shadows of the attic and watch the silhouettes of Mother and the visiting child, outlined against the faint starlight. Mother aimed the telescope toward some planet or constellation she found interesting, and stood aside so that the child could look. If it was a planet, Mother would rattle off facts. Alia preferred when she talked about constellations. She would pronounce each star’s name slowly, as if tasting them: Betelgeuse. Rigel. Bellatrix. Mintaka. Alnilam. Alnitak. Alia saw them in her mind’s eye, burning spheres rolling through the darkness with an inaudible thunder that resonated in her chest.
After a while, Mother would abruptly shoo the child away and take his or her place at the telescope. It was Alia’s task to take the child by the hand and explain that Doctor Kazakoff meant no harm, but that telescope time was over now. Sometimes the child said goodbye to Mother’s back. Sometimes they got a hum in reply. More often not. Mother was busy recalibrating the telescope.
When the moon was full, Mother wouldn’t receive visitors. She would sit alone at the ocular and mumble to herself: the names of the seas, the highlands, the craters. Those nights (or days) she stayed up until the moon set.
On the day it happened, Alia was twelve years old and home from school with a cold. That morning she found a brown stain in her underwear. It took a moment to realize what had really happened. She rifled through the cabinet under the sink for Mother’s box of napkins, and found a pad that she awkwardly fastened to her panties. It rustled as she pulled them back up. She went back into the living room. The grandfather clock next to the display case showed a quarter past eleven.
“Today, at a quarter past eleven,” she told the display case, “I became a woman.”
Alia looked at her image in the glass. The person standing there, with pigtails and round cheeks and dressed in a pair of striped pyjamas, didn’t look much like a woman. She sighed and crawled into the sofa with a blanket, rehearsing what to tell Mother when she came home.
When the front door slammed a little later, Alia walked into the hallway. Mother stood there in a puff of cold air. She was home much too early.
“Mother,” Alia began.
“Hello,” said Mother. Her face was rigid, her eyes large and feverish. Without giving Alia so much as a glance, she took her coat off, dropped it on the floor and stalked up the attic stairs. Alia went after her out onto the balcony. Mother said nothing, merely stared upward. She wore a broad grin that looked misplaced in her stern face. Alia followed her gaze.
The moon hung in the zenith of the washed-out autumn sky, white and full in the afternoon light. It was much too large, and in the wrong place. Alia held out a hand at arm’s length; the moon’s edges circled her palm. She
remained on the balcony, dumbfounded, until Father’s thin voice called up to them from the hallway.
Mother had once said that when Alia had her first period, they would celebrate and she would get to pick out her first ladies’ dress. When Alia caught her attention long enough to tell her what happened, Mother just nodded. She showed Alia where the napkins were and told her to put stained clothes and sheets in cold water. Then she returned to the attic. Father walked around the flat, cleaning and fiddling in quick movements. He baked bread, loaf after loaf. Every now and then he came into the living room where Alia sat curled up in the sofa, and gave her a wordless hug.
The radio blared all night. All the transmissions were about what had happened that morning at quarter past eleven. The president spoke to the nation: We urge everyone to live their lives as usual. Go to work, go to school, but don’t stay outside for longer than necessary. We don’t yet know exactly what has happened, but our experts are investigating the issue. For your peace of mind, avoid looking up.
Out in the street, people were looking up. The balconies were full of people looking up. When Alia went to bed, Mother was still outside with her eye to the ocular. Father came to tuck Alia in. She pressed her face into his aproned chest, drawing in the smell of yeasty dough and after-shave.
“What if it’s my fault?” she whispered.
Father patted her back. “How could it possibly be your fault?”
Alia sighed. “Forget it.”
“Go on, tell me.”
“I got my period at a quarter past eleven,” she finally said. “Just when the moon came.”
“Oh, darling,” said Father. “Things like that don’t happen just because you had your period.”
“Are you sure?”
Father let out a short laugh. “Of course.” He sighed, his breath stirring Alia’s hair. “I have no idea what’s going on up there, but of this I’m sure.”
“I wish I was brave,” said Alia. “I wish I wasn’t so afraid all the time.”
“Bravery isn’t not being afraid, love. Bravery is perseverance through fear.”
“What?”
“Fancy words,” said Father. “It means doing something even though you’re afraid. That’s what brave is. And you are.”
He kissed her forehead and turned out the light. Falling asleep took a long time.
Master Bobek stood behind the lectern, his face grey.
“We must remain calm,” he said. “You mustn’t worry too much. Try to go about your lives as usual. And you are absolutely not allowed to miss school. You have no excuse to stay at home. Everyone will feel better if they carry on as usual. Itti?” He nodded to the boy in the chair next to Alia.
Itti stood, not much taller than when he had been sitting down. “Master Bobek, do you know what really happened?”
The teacher cleared his throat. “We must remain calm,” he repeated.
He turned around and pulled down one of the maps from above the blackboard. “Now for today’s lesson: bodies of water.”
Itti sat down and leaned over. “Your mum,” he whispered. “Does she know anything?”
Alia shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Can you ask? My parents are moving all our things to the cellar.”
She nodded. Itti gave her a quick smile. If Master Bobek had seen the exchange, he said nothing of it, which was unusual for him. Master Bobek concentrated very hard on talking about bodies of water. The children all looked out the windows until Master Bobek swore and drew the curtains.
When Alia came home from school, she found the door unlocked. Mother’s coat hung on its peg in the hallway.
“Home!” Alia shouted, and took off jacket and shoes and climbed the stairs to the attic.
Mother sat on the balcony, hunched over the telescope’s ocular. She was still in her dressing gown, her hair tousled on one side and flat on the other.
Alia forced herself not to look up, but the impossible Moon’s cold glow spilled into the upper edge of her vision. “Mother?”
“The level of detail is incredible,” Mother mumbled.
Her neck looked dusty, as if she’d been shaking out carpets or going through things in the attic. Alia blew at it and sneezed.
“Have you been out here all day?” Alia wiped her nose on her shirt sleeve.
Mother lifted her gaze from the telescope and turned it to somewhere beyond Alia’s shoulder, the same look that Doctor Kazakoff gave visiting children. Grey dust veiled her face; the rings under her eyes were the colour of graphite. Her cheekbones glimmered faintly.
“I suppose I have,” she said. “Now off with you, dear. I’m working.”
The kitchen still smelled of freshly baked bread. On the counter lay a loaf of bread rolled up in a tea towel, next to a bread knife and a jar of honey. Alia unfolded the towel, cut a heel off the loaf and stuffed it in her mouth. It did nothing to ease the burning in her stomach. She turned the loaf over and cut the other heel off. The crust was crunchy and chewy at the same time.
She had eaten her way through most of the loaf when Father spoke behind her. He said her name and put a hand on her shoulder. The other hand gently pried the bread knife from her grip. Then her cheek was pressed against his shirt. Over the slow beat of his heart, Alia could hear the air rushing in and out of his lungs, the faint whistle of breath through his nose. The fire in her belly flickered and died.
“Something’s wrong with Mother,” she whispered into the shirt.
Father’s voice vibrated against her cheek as he spoke. “She’s resting now.”
Alia and her father went about their lives as the President had told them to: going to work, going to school. The classroom emptied as the days went by. Alia’s remaining classmates brought rumours of families moving to cellars and caves under the city. The streets were almost deserted. Those who ventured outside did so at a jog, heads bowed between their shoulders. There were no displays of panic or violence. Someone would occasionally burst into tears in the market or on the bus, quickly comforted by bystanders who drew together in a huddle around him.
The radio broadcasts were mostly about nothing, because there was nothing to report. All the scientists and knowledgeable people had established was that the moon didn’t seem to affect the earth more than before. It no longer went through phases, staying full and fixed in its position above the city. A respected scientist claimed it was a mirage, and had the city’s defence shoot a rocket at it. The rocket hit the moon right where it seemed to be positioned. Burning debris rained back down through the atmosphere for half a day.
As the moon drew closer, it blotted out the midday sun and drowned the city in a ghostly white light, day and night. At sunrise and sundown, the light from the two spheres mixed in a blinding and sickly glare.
Mother stayed on the balcony in her dressing gown, eye to the ocular. Alia heard Father argue with her at night, Father’s voice rising and Mother’s voice replying in monotone.
Once, a woman in an official-looking suit came to ask Doctor Kazakoff for help. Mother answered the door herself before Father could intercept her. The official-looking woman departed and didn’t return.
Alia was still bleeding. She knew you were only supposed to bleed for a few days, but it had been two weeks now. What had started as brownish spotting was now a steady, bright red runnel. It was as if it grew heavier the closer the moon came.
Late one night, she heard shouts and the sound of furniture scraping across the floor. Then footsteps came down the stairs; something metallic clattered. Peeking out from her room, Alia saw Father in the hallway with the telescope under one arm.
“This goes out!” he yelled up the stairs. “It’s driven you insane!”
Mother came rushing down the stairs, naked feet slapping on the steps. “Pavel Kazakoff, you swine, give it to me.” She lunged for the telescope.
Father was heavy and strong, but Mother was furi
ous. She tore the telescope from him so violently that he abruptly let go, and when the telescope crashed into the wall she lost her grip. The floor shook with the telescope’s impact. In the silence that followed, Father slowly raised a hand. The front of Mother’s dressing gown had opened. He drew it aside.
“Vera.” His voice was almost a whisper. “What happened to you?”
In the light from the hallway sconce, Mother’s skin was patterned in shades of grey. Uneven rings overlapped each other over her shoulders and arms. The lighter areas glowed with reflected light.
Mother glanced at Father, and then at Alia where she stood gripping the frame of her bedroom door.
“It’s regolith,” Mother said in a matter-of-fact voice.
She returned upstairs. She left the telescope where it lay.
A doctor arrived the morning after. Father gave Alia the choice of staying in her room or going over to Itti’s. She chose the latter, hurrying over the courtyard and up the stairs to where Itti lived with his parents.
Itti let her into a flat that was almost completely empty. They passed the kitchen, where Mrs Botkin was canning vegetables, and shut themselves in Itti’s room. He only had a bed and his box of comics. They sat down on the bed with the box between them.
“Mother’s been making preserves for days now,” said Itti.
Alia leafed through the topmost magazine without really looking at the pictures. “What about your father?”
Itti shrugged. “He’s digging. He says the cellar doesn’t go deep enough.”
“Deep enough for what?”
“For, you know.” Itti’s voice became small. “For when it hits.”
Alia shuddered and put the magazine down. She walked over to the window. The Botkins’s apartment was on the top floor, and Alia could see right into her own kitchen window across the yard. Her parents were at the dinner table, across from a stranger who must be the doctor. They were discussing something. The doctor leaned forward over the table, making slow gestures with his hands. Mother sat back in her chair, chin thrust out in her Doctor Kazakoff stance. After a while, the physician rose from his chair and left. He emerged from the door to the yard moments later; Alia could see the large bald patch on his head. The physician tilted his head backward and gave the sky a look that seemed almost annoyed. He turned around and hurried out the front gate.
