Remember The Moon

by Carter, Abigail;

  “Perhaps.”

  “Great. I’m supposed to be happy for my wife to have sex with another man. That’s messed up.”

  At an upscale restaurant with long curtains draped between tables and linen napkins on the polished beech-wood tables, a waitress asked about drinks. Maya ordered a glass of white wine, Dom ordered water.

  She looked at him.

  “I haven’t had a drink in twelve years,” he explained before turning to the menu.

  “You don’t mind if I have a glass of wine, do you?”

  He waved his hand breezily, but a quick scowl fluttered across his face, as if he were trying to be fine with it, but wasn’t quite.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. It’s fine,” he said, looking at her as if challenging her to ask why. She didn’t. During dinner, they seemed like strangers trying to get to know each other. She asked about his children, who were grown, one just out of high school, the other college age. He talked at length about them. She told him about Calder. Their conversation sounded stilted, slightly formal, as if neither of them was quite comfortable in their surroundings. They fell into nervous, anticipatory silences, unsure of what might happen next. But their auras became a deep burgundy red as the electricity between them built.

  After dinner, in his car, he said, “Do you want to watch a movie?”

  “Sure,” she said. “What’s playing?”

  “I have a couple of Netflix movies...we could go back to my place, have some tea and watch.”

  I’m not ready.

  No, you’re not.

  “Sounds dangerous,” she said. He gave her a sly smile, accepting her unintended challenge.

  No sex. We’ll just watch a movie.

  Yeah, right.

  I expected a photographer’s apartment to be light filled, a loft perhaps, and although Dom’s ground floor condo had high ceilings with exposed ductwork and gray painted walls, the place was cast in deep shadow. His self-portraits were beautifully hung along the narrow hallway, giving it an art gallery feel. A dining table pushed against a wall was covered in trinkets – tiny bowls with ancient Roman glass beads, framed drawings, a collection of watches, more framed photographs that leaned against the wall. Against two walls of the bedroom stood giant mirrors, giving someone on the bed the ability to be seen from any angle.

  “Tea?” He stood in his narrow kitchen, unwinding his signature scarf from around his neck.

  “I’m good,” she said, obviously trying to sound relaxed. “OK then. Let’s see. I have The Bourne Ultimatum or No Country for Old Men. Which would you prefer?”

  Not the most romantic movies. I guess it’s good he didn’t expect me to accept his offer to come to his apartment!

  “Um, Bourne Ultimatum,” she said.

  He put the movie into the DVD player and then backed up to sit on the lumpy gray leather couch beside her, causing them both to sink in toward each other.

  “This couch sort of gobbles you up,” he said. He took her hand and began caressing it as they watched the opening credits in silence.

  Should I? Too soon?

  Yes, too soon, Lenie.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  You can always leave.

  Dom seemed to sense Maya's uneasiness because he pulled her to her feet and they stood facing each other awkwardly. She prepared for the anticipated kiss. His hands were shaking.

  “I thought you were going to kiss me the other night,” she said, her voice gravelly.

  “I wasn’t sure if that was what you wanted. Is it what you want now?” His manipulation had begun. I could tell she didn’t know how to answer.

  Am I attracted to him, or do I just need to get laid? It’s been so long and I’m so horny. I should wait. But my body is betraying me, melting like ice cream, morphing into a shape I can’t control as he stares into my eyes.

  You should wait.

  He leaned in slightly and they kissed, awkwardly. Her ice cream apparently melted. He pulled her into his bedroom. I turned away.

  Of course I wanted Maya to meet someone other than Marcus, but I hadn’t banked on Dominic. His aura had a sinister darkness to it, as if he had ulterior motives for seducing Maya. Yet she appeared to blossom in her relationship with him – she smiled more, color returned to her cheeks, she ate more. My fear was that she was moving too quickly, blind to his undercurrent of danger.

  “There is a purpose for everything, Jay. Maya needs to learn from this relationship.” Alice’s advice sometimes came without her presence. I knew her thought to be the truth, but I wanted to spare Maya inevitable pain.

  ...I’ll admit it, Jay, I expected tears of guilt after having sex for the first time since your death, or numbness or apathy. Not spine tingling relief. Salty animal instinct transported me to a place within my brain, bereft of colour, size, darkness, light – an atrophied kernel deep inside that held proof that I am still alive, can still feel, and still love. Making love is a kind of surrender – not submission exactly, but a sense of inevitability, a release of a year-and-a-half worth of pent-up emotion. Should I fear this freshly escaped animal as a thing entirely untrustworthy? Its sweet face belies a truth about the power of sex and its relationship with grief. How easily I succumb. Maybe this is too much to be telling you, Jay, but I have no one else to tell...

  I knew I should have stopped reading, but curiosity got the better of me.

  He has that look. His contented smile and eyes softened in a way that tells me that his pain too has been assuaged through sex. It’s a look that scared me a little, so confident and smug, his claim so firmly staked. He credits me with his happiness, but I’m uncomfortable with this responsibility for his thirst, but I know that I am thirsty too, that together we’ll quench our mutual thirst, like the slave and the lion, in gratitude. Only a month ago, I cried into your bathrobe, Jay, trying to recapture the scent of your soapy fragrance that, after a year and a half, has long since turned to dust within its fibers.

  I will always love you, I hope you understand that.

  M.

  I do understand, Maya. I will always love you too.

  I knew it was a mistake when Maya invited Dom over for dinner at the house only a few weeks later, introducing him to Calder as a friend. When he arrived at the door, he stood waiting until she gave him a hug and an intimate kiss. He leaned against my kitchen counter and I saw him as Calder might – an old man with gray hair wearing a scarf. Calder came downstairs and eyed him suspiciously. Dom looked nervous.

  “Calder likes to cook,” Maya said, her tone upbeat.

  “What do you like to cook, Calder?” Dom asked. Calder shrugged.

  “He likes to make sautéed greens with onions,” Maya answered for him.

  “Cool,” Dom said. Maya sautéed onions and Calder quietly took over the task. Dom disappeared into the living room, plopped onto the couch, and began flipping through magazines. I would have sat at the counter talking to Maya as she cooked. Often I helped with the cooking or getting the table ready. I had an instantaneous glimpse of Maya's life with this man – him on the couch ignoring her as she cooked dinner, Calder miserable.

  “Don’t you want to come hang out with us?” she called, poking her head into the living room.

  “No, I’m fine here,” he said, giving her a terse smile.

  The awkward dinner was punctuated by long silences that were commented on by Calder saying in a sing-songy voice, “Awkward.”

  The few questions that Dom asked Calder were answered in monosyllables. Our son’s instincts about this man were bang on.

  When dinner finally ended and Maya had cleaned the kitchen, she collapsed onto the couch beside Dom.

  “Want a foot rub?” he asked.

  “Uh, OK. I guess that would be nice.” Maya looked at the stairs, listening for Calder in his room.

 
“Do you have lotion?” Dom asked. Maya looked at him quizzically.

  “You know, hand lotion or something?” Maya found a bottle of hand cream in the bathroom. Dom gently took her foot and began to apply the cream. Maya blushed.

  Well, this is weird.

  I’ll say, Lenie.

  He’s just trying to be sweet.

  Creepy sweet.

  I watched Calder sneak down the stairs from his room to peek at the action happening in the living room. Maya caught him watching and shook her head at him. Calder dashed back up the stairs into his bedroom, slamming the door as he made a flying leap face-down on the bed.

  Is he going to be my new dad?

  No way, Beano.

  But he’s rubbing her feet. Doesn’t that mean they’re going to get married?

  Nah. It just means he’s rubbing her feet.

  Calder smiled. Are they going to do it?

  Do what?

  You know, like have S.E.X.?

  I don’t honestly know, Calder. I’m dead, remember?

  Yeah, but can’t you see whatever you want? Couldn’t you see them having S.E.X.?

  Well maybe, but I wouldn’t tell you if I did.

  Why not?

  Because it’s none of our business.

  It’s my business if Mama marries this dude.

  Well, that’s for your mama to decide.

  I hope she gets rid of him. He’s creepy. He scares me.

  Your mom’s a smart gal. She’ll do the right thing, buddy. You should get some sleep now.

  Not with creepo downstairs.

  Right, well, I’ll just hang out here with you then.

  A month later, Maya's mother, Estelle, came for a visit from Ontario so that Maya and Dom could take a weekend trip together.

  “You can tell Calder you’ll be on an artist’s retreat,” Estelle suggested. She wanted to see her daughter married again. She didn’t seem to care to whom.

  Maya found a bed and breakfast online in an old cannery in a town two hours outside of Seattle. They drove together in Dom’s car, listening to a playlist she had downloaded onto an iPod, full of sexy-romantic love songs, most of which were too schlocky for me. I would never have listened to Dido or Jack Johnson. I always thought Maya and I had similar tastes in music, but I realized that perhaps she had just acquiesced to my music selections of Steely Dan and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

  They held hands across the console of his car. As they spiraled onto a highway onramp, he turned to her and said, “I would die for you.” The words shocked me. Would I have died for her? Now that I was dead, it was hard to say. It’s easy to die for someone. It’s much harder to let them go.

  “I’d rather you didn’t.” She laughed.

  “No really,” he said. “I’m serious. I would die for you.”

  “OK,” she said. “Wow.” She turned and looked out the window, deep in thought.

  They spent the day and evening locked in the room of the B&B, popping out for lunch and then dinner and again in the morning for breakfast. On their way back to Seattle the next day they took a detour and drove up to Hurricane Ridge, which even at the end of April was still covered in snow. He threw nuts to the giant black crows in the parking lot, stark against the white landscape, and for a moment the idyllic winter mountain scene took on a sinister quality, reminiscent of an Edgar Allen Poe poem. My presence was not lost on Maya. I had to warn her about this guy somehow, but she seemed to see my presence as my acceptance of her relationship rather than a warning.

  Zigzagging back down the mountain, they talked about Calder.

  “Calder needs to accept me for who I am,” Dom said as the Mercedes careened dangerously close to the cliff’s edge.

  The statement hung in the air. The little crease between Maya's eyebrows appeared. I knew that perplexed look. Maya knew she couldn’t expect Calder to readily accept a new guy suddenly entering their lives, and now this dude expected an eight-year-old to “accept him for who he was”? What did that even mean? Wasn’t Dom the adult? Shouldn’t he be accepting Calder for who he was and being sensitive to a child’s needs?

  “Kids are kids,” Maya said. “I don’t see how I’m going to get Calder to just accept our new situation overnight. It’s going to take time, Dom.”

  “You lead by example, Maya. You need to be comfortable with our situation in order for Calder to be.”

  “I thought I was.”

  “Not entirely. You are not being completely honest with Calder. What did you tell him about where you were this weekend?”

  “Well, he doesn’t need to know all the details.” She paused. “I told him I was on an artist’s retreat.”

  “See what I mean? He’s going to know you are not being honest with him. I was always perfectly honest with my kids and my dating. They just had to accept whatever happened.”

  “Yes, but your kids weren’t with you 24/7,” she countered. “You had opportunities to spend the night with someone while your kids were with your ex-wife. Calder will not take kindly to anyone spending the night in my bed. I don’t have that freedom.”

  “You have to make that freedom. You need to set boundaries. Lock your door. Tell him what’s going on.” Maybe he has a point.

  What point?!

  Dom is giving me the advice of someone who has experienced dating while having teenaged kids. Maybe I’m allowing Calder to rule my relationships and I’m creating a situation through my tiny lies that has left him feeling unstable, not knowing what to believe.

  Hardly, Lenie. You are doing what’s best for Calder. You are being a good mother.

  A few weeks after their trip together, Maya sat in the Mercedes with Dom, Calder in the back seat as their ferry sliced across the Puget Sound on a sunny Mother’s Day after a weekend at a friend’s house on Vashon Island. Dom looked at Maya with a pained expression. The previous night, when Calder asked where they would all sleep, Maya assured him they would each sleep in separate rooms, knowing she told a white lie in an attempt to avoid a night of temper tantrums and sleeplessness.

  “What is it?” she asked, Dom’s face shaded by the dark hull of the boat.

  “Well... I guess I’m not feeling that there has been much space in the context of your past life for me to be who I am in our relationship. You bring your husband up in conversations. A lot. I don’t bring up my ex that way. I don’t have photos of her around my place. It doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of room for me in what we are creating.”

  Maya looked shocked. Calder, luckily, was plugged into his iPod. “I talk about my husband to help Calder.” I could hear the defensiveness in her voice. She turned then to look at Calder, to see if he could hear them. He looked up, briefly, but was oblivious to the conversation happening in the front seat. Maya turned back toward Dom. “It’s my job to keep Jay’s memory alive for him.”

  “Oh,” he said, thoughtful. “I’m glad you told me that. That makes sense and makes me feel a little better.”

  Have I been talking about you too much, Jay?

  Of course not.

  “This is not really about you, exactly,” Dom said. “It’s my own reaction to your past, and I need to examine that. You’re just being you. I need to figure out where I fit in the context of your past.”

  “I’m glad you recognize that because I don’t think I know any other way to be in our relationship. Jay is a presence in my life. I like to think I am sensitive to you and how it must be dating someone with a ghost in their closet, but I did love him very much and that hasn’t gone away. I will try and be more sensitive to your feelings,” Maya said.

  “I feel that love when I go to your house – the photos, your attention. You seem elsewhere when I’m at your home. I feel like we can’t be ourselves at your house the way we can at mine.”

  Yeah, be
cause I don’t want to screw you in front of my kid!

  You make me laugh, Maya!

  I rejoiced at Maya's anger. Apparently, I didn’t need to do anything at all to interfere with this relationship. Dom would kill it all by himself.

  “When we’re at my house,” Maya explained as if to a child, “I have a son who needs my attention. I can’t help that. We’ve only been going out for two months now. Calder needs time to get used to the situation.”

  “Yes, but it’s not just that. I feel like there is this big mound of dough that is your life and your past and I’m trying to find a tiny air pocket within it to be who I am. We should be bringing ease and grace to your son and your home.”

  “I thought we were,” she replied.

  What’s with all this ‘ease and grace’ garbage?

  I think that’s ‘Dom speak’ for ‘it should all be about me’, Lenie. This dude is such a narcissist!

  Dom followed that stellar weekend conversation with a text and email blackout. Maya finally called him two days later. “Is everything OK? Should we talk?”

  “I value integrity,” he said over the phone, his voice terse. “Not being truthful with your son means you’re not being truthful with me or with our relationship.”

  Maya closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m doing my best, Dom. I’m sorry if you feel I’m not being truthful, but I have to do what I think is right for my son.”

  This was my fault. My stupid ego over Marcus had created more turmoil for Maya and Calder, a consequence I couldn’t have foreseen when I conjured “Sean Connery” into Maya’s life. I would need to find a way to undo this mess, though it looked as though it was unraveling quite successfully without my help.

  Chapter Eighteen

  AUGUST 7TH, 2007

  It’s 4 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I wonder what you must think of me? Widowhood has clouded my sense of character judgment, clearly. What a catastrophe with Dom. Three months of my life I will never get back. Can I justify my idiocy in any way? I honestly thought you had sent him to me, Jay. That you, as my cosmic guardian angel, had found me a perfect new mate. Crazy, I know. But that feeling gave me a false sense of inevitability about this new relationship. God, I’m such a romantic fool sometimes. The idea that you would actually set me up from the afterlife. Foolfoolfool.