The Slow Moon (19 page)

IV

Now We Are Awake

Thirty-nine

O
N THE
F
OURTH
of July Sophie and Grace went to see fireworks and dancing held on a small platform in the middle of a field. The whole night seemed constructed for a chance to explode into something new. For a time Sophie had been feeling ruined and grotesque, but tonight the flare of fireflies, the sparkling sound of fiddles, the honeysuckle and clematis casting a spell, the lustrous sounds of laughter—her own and Grace’s—turned the dissonance of the past months into a bad dream.

Tonight Grace’s mother had told Sophie she looked beautiful in her pink sundress.
Beautiful.
A word people had been hesitant, or negligent, to say to her anymore. But Grace’s mother told her, “Oh, honey, you look so pretty. Beautiful really. You’re turning into a lovely young woman.” These words had made Sophie feel exquisite, and she asked to borrow Grace’s sweater with plangent pinks and purples, sharp greens and iridescent blues, that rocketed into wild spokes, and she felt light-headed and tearful watching the fireworks bloom open into falling stars.

Everything around her seemed mortal and alive. She felt drunk. She felt she was going to be all right now. She leaned toward Grace and said it. “I’m going to be all right. I know I’m going to be all right.”

But at that moment three more fireworks went into the air and Grace misunderstood. She laughed and said, “Me too. But my mother won’t let us stay out all night.” She smiled at Sophie, and Sophie turned to see another rocket expand into a puff of tiny stars that hung suspended before disappearing.

Eventually, people began to leave, the fireworks done, children crying for more. The girls walked back to Grace’s house and sat on the porch steps still watching the sky for explosions.

“It’s actually happening out there,” said Grace. “Fireworks we can’t see, spectacular ones.” She pointed, pretending. “See? See that one?”

“Yeah,” said Sophie. “And there.” Then at the same moment they saw a shooting star and laughed uncontrollably. The laughter felt like something Sophie used to do when she was still Sophie, her back still straight, without the censure of every morning sunrise and every eye.

The next few days lumbered on without Sophie losing the context of hope that had come on the night of fireworks. The days turned into weeks, and Rita called to urge Sophie home. “It’s been three weeks,” she said. But Sophie stayed. She ate meals and swam at the community pool with her old friends and Grace. No one looked at her with morbid curiosity. No one knew how different she was, and so for a while Sophie slipped back into her body and lived as before, but Before would not come back completely.

“What does your doctor say?” Grace asked. “Does he say what you should do?”

“He says it takes time. He says that I need to let myself remember before I can forget.” Sophie thought for a moment. Her expression showed that she had thought of something.

“What? What’re you thinking?”

“Well, Dr. Brooks suggested once that I write something down about what I remembered, something about each man. Then to draw, or paint, and maybe something will come back then. He thinks it would help me to remember.”

“You want to do it now?” Grace asked. “Let the memories come in?” She spoke as though this might be simple.

“Maybe I will,” said Sophie, without any movement to do so.

Sophie did allow small parts to come back, but mostly she kept in abeyance any memory that moved into consciousness. She felt tired much of the time. She could not let anyone touch her. Whenever Grace’s mother tried to kiss her good night, she turned away.

Sophie had started smoking about a month ago, and when she was alone, she lit cigarettes, keeping the butts in a coffee can under the bed. She was sure her mother had been able to smell the smokiness in the house, but Rita hadn’t said anything about it. Sophie kept her habit a secret from Grace, but she suspected Grace had seen. She wished she could hide it from herself.

She wanted to redefine her life, though not the way her mother seemed to hope for. Each day she rose with a singularity of purpose: to find some small brightness in the day, just one moment, so that she could begin to reenter the world.

The water glistened as it dripped from the bathroom faucet. She could see it from where she sat on Grace’s bed. She liked watching it drip and hoped Grace’s mother would not get it fixed. Each time a new drop formed she thought of possibilities—all of the life swarming around in one drop. Her biology teacher had let them look through a microscope, and Sophie felt amazed at all that was going on in that small world. But that was before. Everything now was divided into Before and After. Whenever she thought of Before, she remembered the girl she had liked being. She remembered how powerful she felt Before, and could not get her mind around what went wrong.

She thought of something observing her as she had observed the life in the drop of water. She hoped that Whoever was watching could see a better life down the road.

On days when Sophie wanted to paint, Mrs. Jackson set up a place in the basement. Sophie stayed there for several hours, and when she came up Grace would be waiting for her, ready to take her swimming or to the movies.

“What’s happening?” Grace asked one day. “I mean, are you remembering anything?”

Sophie nodded.

“So what’ll you do? Can I see what you’ve painted?”

“Tomorrow maybe. I’m not finished.”

“But have you remembered?”

“You know the worst thing about going back home?” Sophie said, not answering Grace. “People feeling sorry for me, you know?”

Grace nodded, but she didn’t know.

“And I just don’t know if another trial is going to help me feel better. I mean, how can that help?”

“It’ll keep them from doing it again.”

“If I’m right, if I’m remembering right—”

“Then you do remember!”

“Listen, I’m just tired of being ‘the girl who was raped.’ That’s all. I’m afraid that if I say who it was that people, even my mom, will see me that way all over again.”

“But you can’t make yourself
unraped,
can you?”

Later that night after Grace was asleep Sophie went outside and sat on the ground. The word
unraped
kept going through her mind. And she thought she knew now how getting unraped happened: by going back through the memory of it all. She had done that earlier today, and she remembered lying on the ground, the shirt around her head slipping off, seeing the shadows of boys—three boys moving through the woods—their height, the turn of their hair, the way they walked, small gestures she had seen before. And she knew who they were.

The field beside Grace’s house held a phenomenon of fireflies hovering close to the ground. Sometimes cars passing by stopped to watch the field light up, sparkling with movement.

Tonight Sophie had the field all to herself. She felt rich. The moon rose low, like a piece of fruit, over the hills. The orange-gold light sifted down around Sophie, dropping its yellow gown, a soft silky mantle covering her. She didn’t know what was happening, but felt dared to do something bold.

“What?” she said out loud. The moon was taking off its clothes, making a deal with her: you can be as polished as a petal of light—your body, without clothes.

So she slipped off her shoes and socks, pants and shirt, slowly removing her bra, her panties, then she stood—open-bodied, her heart like a fountain. She conspired to be a literal moon. She moaned and heard herself moan. She didn’t know how long she stood there waiting to become blossom, or leaf, shuddering, breaking into her body again.

It was the hour of moths, and the moon came close to her face—a simple touch of wings, and she was done. She reached to put her clothes on, but she knew that the evening had changed, and that the night had become for her, in those few moments, a revelation. She was coming back to the world.

The next day Grace’s mother made soup in a huge pot and the girls helped cut chunks of meat, carrots, celery, three kinds of beans, and potatoes to go in it. The house smelled of a flavor you could almost taste, even without putting your lips to a spoon. This morning they had eggs and bacon or waffles and the family sat around the table eating and talking the way Sophie used to do with her mother and father.

Grace’s parents teased and kissed each other, bickering in small ways. Sophie wished she could go back to that time with her own mother and father. She wanted everything to be the way it was when her father was alive.

“Your mother called,” Mrs. Jackson told Sophie. “She’d like to come this weekend. She misses you. She says six weeks is too long to be away.”

“She doesn’t have to,” said Sophie. “I’m going home. I want to stay through the weekend, then go home.”

Mrs. Jackson leaned toward Sophie with a large spoon for her to taste the soup. “Try this. But
foof
it first.” Sophie blew on the hot broth and tasted. She nodded approval.

That night Sophie spoke to her mother on the phone. “I’ll stay through this weekend,” she said, “then come home on Monday.”

“Oh, darling,” Rita said.

“I’ll call with the flight time,” said Sophie. “Mrs. Jackson will help me change it.” She sounded happy. What she really planned to do was come home early, on Sunday, to surprise her mother. “So don’t do anything till I call.”

“Well, good.” Rita could hear something different in Sophie’s voice. “Oh, honey, you sound so good. I can’t wait.”

That night Grace’s parents had a fight. The girls could hear them arguing, and the next morning they found Mr. Jackson asleep on the sofa in the den.

“What happened?” Grace asked.

“Nothing we can’t work out,” he told her. “You girls been up long?” But his face looked pinched and unhappy, and Sophie wondered if this was an After time for Grace’s father and mother. She wondered if they would look back on the time of Sophie’s visit as Before.

Forty

S
UNDAY MORNING WAS
gray and misty. At eleven-thirty Rita sat at the kitchen table in her robe and underwear. She had bathed and washed her hair. At noon Charlie would arrive and they would climb the stairs for a long lunch. Rita had made roast beef sandwiches and bought potato salad from Charlie’s favorite deli. The night before, she’d made brownies, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and stacked them on a blue plate. Charlie liked to eat a bite of dessert before every meal. Even at breakfast he might have a few bites of doughnut or coffee cake before eating cereal or eggs.

Sometimes they made love before lunch, sometimes after. Rita didn’t care which. She put the sandwiches in the bedroom and looked forward to his knock at the back door.

“Rita?” She felt pleased to see the image of him through the screen, and opened the door, hugging him slowly. When she went to hand him a mug of coffee, he was smiling.

“You think coffee’s what I want?” He reached beneath her robe to feel the soft curve of her body, and pulled her toward him. “Coffee’s not what I want.”

“Don’t make me spill this,” she said, placing the mug on the counter and untying the sash of her robe. The weeks without Sophie had spurred their romance. They spent many days and nights together and were beginning to talk about how to explain their relationship to Sophie when she returned home.

“I only have until two o’clock,” he said, grinning.

“Sophie’s coming home tomorrow,” she told him.

He kissed her mouth hard, and they stumbled upstairs to the bed.

Rita had surprised herself with Charlie. She hadn’t really been able to be with anyone since Ben, but the first time Charlie kissed her in the back of the store, she felt herself opening.

She had been searching in the storeroom for a particular type of hammer for a customer. “The ball-peen hammers, Charlie,” she said. “Where are they?”

Charlie was unpacking a box that had just come in. As she waited for his response (he seemed to be thinking about the answer), he swerved and kissed her without warning, his arm wound tightly around her waist, his body pressed against her. The kiss was soft but took her breath away. Then he handed her the hammer she needed.

When Rita went back to the customer, the woman said, “Well, that must be it.” Then she looked at Rita and asked, “Are you all right, honey? You look kinda pee-kid.”

Rita smiled weakly. She left early that day. When the door closed behind her, she heard the small bell announcing arrivals and departures and felt a shift toward something good.

In the bedroom Charlie folded Rita into his arms, wrapping the blanket around them. He buried his face in her neck as though she were a smell he couldn’t inhale enough of. He held her close. “Sweetie,” he said.

Rita didn’t know how many years it had been since she had heard that particular endearment come her way. Ben had called her honey, darling, and various pet names, but only her grandfather had called her sweetie. And since he’d been dead now for more than twenty years, the familiarity of it had gone. She’d heard other couples use the term, but now it was hers again, along with this man who loved her so easily.

“What’s this town saying about us?” she asked.

“They’re wondering if we’re going to settle down,” he said. “That’s the rumor.”

“Should we settle down?” She spoke to the ceiling.

“Maybe. Ben’s been dead for almost three years, Rita.” Charlie lay back. Rita didn’t say anything and he wondered if she was mad. “Anyway,” he said. “I wasn’t asking you to marry me.”

“I know that.” She laughed.

He smiled wickedly. “Not yet.”

In the spring Sophie had questioned her mother about Charlie. “You like him a lot, or what?”

“Charlie’s a good friend,” Rita had said. “I do like him. Don’t you?”

“I just keep thinking about Daddy,” Sophie answered. “I don’t want you to forget about him.” She watched her mother’s face intently. Rita went to the sink and washed off a pear, took a bite. She chewed slowly, as if she were remembering something but not saying it. Sophie walked over and took a bite of her mother’s pear.

Rita was startled. “You can have it,” she said and reached to wash another one, but Sophie threw the pear out the back door and went to her room.

That night Rita made all of her daughter’s favorite foods for dinner: macaroni and cheese, baked pork chops, tossed mesclun salad, and Sara Lee crescent rolls. All through dinner they spoke about school and Rita’s work at the store. Neither mentioned Charlie’s name.

An afternoon rain came down hard, and thunder and lightning made the privacy of the bedroom seem like a tent. By the time they made love, ate lunch, and made love again, the wind had abated, and they both fell asleep.

Charlie sat up quickly. “What time is it?” he said. “How long did we sleep?”

“Not long,” she said, stretching.

He took a sip of the water Rita kept beside the bed, and she watched the liquid move down his throat. His chest and arms glowed with a light sweat. He smelled vinegary and clean. He put down the glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and saw her watching him. He rolled over onto her.

They heard someone come in. The front door slammed, and they heard someone running upstairs.

“My God,” said Rita. “Someone’s in the house!”

Charlie looked at his watch. “Two-thirty,” he said.

Footsteps came down the hall toward their door, and as the door opened, Rita heard, “Mom? Where are you? Mom?” Sophie was excited to be home and her voice rippled as she opened the bedroom door.

Rita pulled the covers over Charlie, reaching for her robe. No one could speak. They could see a taxi pull away from the house.

After a long moment Sophie ran downstairs; she ran outside and down the street. Rita hurriedly dressed and chased her, going to the edge of the yard, calling. Charlie was dressed by the time Rita returned to the bedroom.

“She’s gone.”

“God, I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you know she was coming home today?”

“She probably wanted to surprise me. Oh, God, Charlie, what have we done?”

“You want me to find her?”

“No. No.” She could hardly look at him. “Just go.”

Charlie slipped on his shoes without tying them. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do, anything I can say to her. Je-sus, I can’t believe this happened.” He gave Rita a swift kiss on the ear and left the house.

By the time Sophie came home, Rita was bending to clean up some spilled coffee grounds. “Come here,” she said and opened her arms.

“You lied to me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t tell me. I feel so stupid.”

“Oh, honey.” Rita held her daughter tight against her breast. The power was scattering between them. “You shouldn’t feel like the stupid one. I’m the one who’s stupid.” She pulled back and looked at Sophie, the heartrending tenderness of her daughter’s face and hands.

“I wanted to surprise you,” Sophie said.

“You did.”

Sophie nodded. They smiled at each other.

“I’m so glad to see you.” Rita hugged her daughter and would not let go. “Surprise or not. I am so glad you’re home.”

As they held each other, Rita thought how far they had come from drives along Montana roads seeing fields of horses, cows, and happy lambs.

At the store Rita could not keep her mind on work, so Charlie told her to go home early. On the way home she bought a pizza and the car smelled deliciously like tomato sauce and sausage. As she pulled into the driveway, she saw Sophie sitting in the backyard. She took the pizza out on a tray with some iced tea and paper towels.

Sophie’s expression seemed unusual as she lifted a slice of pizza and a paper towel from the tray her mother set before her.

Rita sat on the ground. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Well, I just have something to say.”

Rita waited to see what might come.

“Remember when Dr. Brooks said that I might start to remember?”

“Sophie. Oh, honey.”

Then Sophie said
out loud
the names of the boys. Rita had to keep herself from cursing, though under her breath she railed. She burned.

“When did you know this?” Rita asked cautiously. Dr. Brooks had advised Rita to stay calm if Sophie told her anything.

“A few days ago. I was waiting to be sure in my head.”

Rita barely moved, trying to be careful. She watched Sophie take another piece of pizza, pick off the sausage, leaving the mushrooms. “I remembered one day at Grace’s while I was painting on a canvas they had in their basement. And I saw their faces.”

Rita handed her daughter a glass of tea and saw her drink almost all of it. She poured more. She didn’t know if she should encourage Sophie to continue. “Honey,” she said.

Sophie pulled away. She was trying to tell more.

Rita put her hands on her ears, even though she wanted to hear. She thought she might vomit, and gagged slightly. “Have you talked to Dr. Brooks?”

“Yes.” Sophie sobbed. “I told him. He told me to come home.”

“May I hold you for a little bit?”

Sophie leaned against her mother’s shoulder, and Rita rocked her back and forth. A sound came out from Rita, like an oboe, coming from her mouth and arms and legs. They swayed like this for a long time.

“You want to go inside now?” Rita lifted Sophie’s head, wiping tears away with her thumbs. They brought the rest of the pizza and iced tea into the house and Rita locked the back door. Sophie sat motionless at the kitchen table, gathering her arms around her as if to protect her chest and heart.

“You want a cigarette?” Rita asked her. An impossible question, since Sophie knew her mother didn’t allow anyone to smoke in the house. But Rita took out a pack of cigarettes from the kitchen cupboard, and lit one for Sophie, handing it to her. “Better take it,” said Rita. “It’ll be the last and only time I’ll ever offer you one.” A hint of laughter hung around her mouth and eyes, but the laughter couldn’t quite let go.

Sophie took the cigarette between her fingers and drew in smoke as if she’d been doing this for a long time. She held the smoke in her lungs, then blew it out.

As Rita watched her daughter, she thought her small body might burst into flame. She thought the smoke curling through her vessels could hardly be the healing Sophie needed; but for now, the offering had been right.