The Moon Sisters (11 page)

That’s not what happened, of course. We arrived, and you set up the tent, and we ate Dinty Moore out of a tin pot and drank root beer. You’d just asked if I wanted to roast marshmallows, melt them over thick slabs of chocolate, when I said I had to go to the bathroom. And I guess you didn’t think about it, that I was six and had never been off on my own before, because it was something Mom always took care of—back when she was taking care of me, of us, before her secret pregnancy and Henry and desertion. I thought it was a sign that you trusted me that you let me go off on my own, and felt tall in my shoes because of that. You gave me a silver flashlight and pointed the way. Follow the trail, you said, and you’ll see it; you’ll run right into the outhouses
.

My flashlight died before I got there. Maybe the batteries were old, or maybe something shook loose, I don’t know. But all of a sudden I was in the dark, the trail disappeared. I should’ve called your name, but I thought, I’ll find it. I thought, I don’t want to lose Daddy’s trust. I thought, I don’t want to get into trouble, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong; it was just that our nerves then were so raw, and I was confused about everything that had happened—more scared about that than about the forest. So I walked on in the dark, and hoped I’d find the bathroom or make my way back to camp. I wandered for I don’t know how long. Twenty minutes, maybe, before I cried your name, screamed your name, ran and ran. I thought, I have failed my father in every way, that you’d think I’d left you, too, just like Mom. I was afraid then—more afraid than I’d ever been in my life. I curled into a ball alongside a berry bush and wet myself
.

I saw your flashlight in the dark before I heard your voice. I told you later that I thought the dim glow was a ghost and that’s why I’d stayed hidden and didn’t walk toward it or call out to you when I could have. You found me, anyway, somehow. You hugged me close, damp pants and all, my clothes stained with the smilax berries around us, and said you’d never let anything happen to me again
.

But that’s not how it happens in my dreams. Tonight it was a bear who found me out in the dark, who chased me up a tree, his white teeth gleaming like false promises. From my place on a long branch I could see a bobbing light below, but when I called your name the light disappeared
.

Branik woke me. I didn’t realize I’d been crying in my sleep, calling for you. How embarrassing. A grown woman, in bed with her husband; a married mother, crying for her father. I told him, my good husband, that I was all right—of course I was—and left to get a glass of water but found myself sipping Scotch and writing this letter to you instead. I don’t know why, when it isn’t any use at all. Maybe because it still feels as if I’m lost in the dark sometimes and the trail has disappeared
.

You do miss me, don’t you? You must. I have to believe it, that you remember as well as I do how special that moment was—like a commitment ceremony of our own. We would make it without Mom, we would thrive by holding on to each other. I promised to stay close to you and be a good daughter, a good girl, to always listen, and to never wander again. You promised to try harder to be a good father, because we were all the other had left. We stayed awake and ate s’mores until dawn, and you told me silly stories to clear my head of lost mothers and ghosts and darkness
.

That was the start of our ghost stories, wasn’t it? And the start of our joking, too. Broke a glass? Blame a ghost. Slam a door? Damned ghost. And who knew ghosts could belch while watching television? We kept it light, because I still had nightmares that the light was there but you were not, and I couldn’t move because of the ghosts. You told me that one day, when I grew older, you’d take me to see a true ghost light on a bog, and show me that they were nothing to be afraid of, that maybe we’d chase one down and find a pile of treasure
.

We never did that, did we? Because I ran off with a man like my mother did, got pregnant just like her, too. Didn’t listen to you when you told me to stay. Turned into a bad girl in your eyes, who deserved her wet pants as well as her fear. I wonder if you blame yourself for not controlling me better, for not taking the wild out of the child, or if you tell yourself that there was nothing that could’ve stopped Suzanne Howell’s daughter from ruining her shot at a respectable life
.

There are two ways to look at everything, my wise husband says, but you never did see that. And now I am drunk and tired, and I still hate you, Daddy. Nearly as much as I love and miss you (goddamnit)
.

Beth

CHAPTER SEVEN

Good Daughter

   JAZZ   

F
or as long as I could remember, my mother had called on me to look after my sister, find and rope her in when needed. Only once did I almost lose her for real.

We were children in a department store in Kennaton. My mother was off looking at something in the kitchen section, so I stayed near the large appliances to look after Olivia. One minute she was there, the next she wasn’t.

What do you mean, lost?
my mother said when I told her. I could tell from the quirk of her mouth that she thought Olivia had hidden well and I had given up too easily.

I opened every refrigerator and freezer, and every oven and dishwasher
, I explained, my voice rising to convey significance. Strangers turned to stare.
What if she’s out on the street? Will she find her way home like that dog and dog and cat in
The Incredible Journey?
Maybe she has a map inside her head along with that calendar of dates
.

That reached my mother. Her eyes stumbled over the store as her voice cracked.
You were supposed to watch her! This is why I say … this is why!

We found Olivia, of course, on another floor of the store after a woman called my mother’s name over the loudspeaker. And though we all mostly recovered from the moment via a rare session of retail therapy, I couldn’t let go of the look in my mother’s eyes at the thought of losing my sister—as if life without her would lack something vital. For a handful of seconds after seeing that look, I hoped my sister might be gone for good, that my family would be all mine again. This made me a bad girl, a bad sister and daughter, a bad person. I didn’t tell anyone.

If the shame I felt then could translate the way it did for my sister, morph into one of the five known senses, it would have sounded like a train.

I left Jim’s and my bus, ran down a long rutted hill and toward a train that seemed to be vibrating, creating an unreality of noise, a slam of sounds that drowned out my shouts as if they were nothing. From a distance I could see that a domino effect of movement had begun, each car jolting to attention, pulled to attention by the car in front of it, as sections of the train began to inch away, foot away, yard away, away.

But not the car my sister leaned against. Not yet.

She stood too far from me at the base of the hill, looking tinier than ever in our mother’s shirt. Before I could reach her, though, faceless strangers with enormous backpacks emerged from the surrounding woods. Pushed her into the car. Hauled themselves in after her as that section of the train began to move.

Men. Men, and a dog.

Bad girl, bad sister, bad daughter
, said the blood in my veins.
Your fault. Do something. Stop her
.

What else could I do? Go home? Tell my father and grandmother, I’m sorry, I lost her. Sorry, I wouldn’t stay with her. Sorry, I don’t know where she is, when she’ll be back, if she’ll wind up dead somewhere.

I couldn’t catch them, though I tried. Instead, I roared along with the train, ran until I reached another car. Not a boxcar. A car that was enclosed except for a rail-edged platform on the end, and a ladder I might catch if I pushed myself and didn’t trip on the stones nearest to the train, if I—

I leaped, surged forward against the ladder, and somehow landed a foot on the lowest rung. No small feat, considering the pack on my back. The train accelerated as I moved with careful steps—one foot to the left, then the other—until the opening to the platform was right there. I stumbled through it, onto something mechanical—not hot, at least not yet. All around me were things I couldn’t name, cylinders and curved pipes. Behind me were the ladder rails I’d traversed—and all that stood between me and the tracks. There was no way inside the car itself that I could see; I would have to stay on this half-guarded rim.

I grabbed hold of the ladder and shouted my sister’s name, threatened to kill the men if they hurt her, to kill them even if they didn’t. But I couldn’t even hear myself above the tremendous scream of the train.

Sometime after the second hour, as we snaked through the backsides of towns decorated with adolescent weeds and yesterday’s appliances, I vomited. The pain in my head had grown until my entire body ached. My fingers from gripping the ladder. My ears from the noise. My back and thighs from maintaining my balance as the car joggled from side to side. My eyes and face from the whip of wind and dust, which I couldn’t escape, because standing with my back to the airstream left me dizzy.

I was afraid to lean against anything behind me.

I was afraid to lean against the ladder in front of me.

I was afraid, most of all, of what might be happening between my sister and a group of strangers. I couldn’t know, couldn’t control, what happened out of my reach and sight.

The fear made me hot, made me shake, swelled my brain.

They were train people—vagrants—and desperate, I was sure.

Stabbed. Filleted. Robbed. Assaulted. Raped. Murdered.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

I vomited a second time.

Hours passed like a slow torture, until my headache ran its course. I did what I could for myself. Drank water from my bottles. Ate half a biscuit and managed to keep it down. Wrote haikus in my head about how a normal-seeming day could turn into a nightmare in a matter of hours, how sisters were the most distressing creatures on earth, how I would make it my life’s goal to repay Olivia for all this stress if we got through this.
(Please let us get through this. Let her be okay.)

I didn’t realize the end had come until it was on me, and even then I didn’t realize it was a normal end and not a disaster of some sort. The brakes wailed like a banshee, random crashes could be heard all around, we slowed. In the near distance, I saw groupings of barrels, stockpiles of wood, pieces of old railroad cars, and a tall building overlooking it all; we were in a train yard.

My car jolted when the train came to a stop, knocked me forward and then back onto one of the pipes. I eased one hand off the ladder rail before me, stretched my fingers, touched my face. Numb. Coated in sand or silt. My gaze snagged on a single flip-flop deserted in a sparse grass in the distance, and I swallowed hard.
Let her be okay
. And then the air cut from the train, and I knew it was over.

After hauling the pack once again onto my back, I found my way off—at first edging along the railed perimeter, then stepping down the ladder. My limbs felt like ghosts of my normal limbs, but eventually I put both feet on the rocky ground beside the train.

I saw Olivia right away, ten or so feet away from me, carrying her red bag. Alive and whole and fine.

Not filthy and exhausted. Not sick and numb and terrified.

Fear morphed into anger, an exact transfer of emotional energy, part for part.

And amplified when I saw
him
.