The Slow Moon (17 page)

Thirty-four

S
OPHIE HAD BEEN
away for a week, and though Crow often drove by her house after practicing with the Bandits, today he drove home along the road beside the river. The river sparkled with afternoon light, and he pulled the car over, wanting to hear the sound of water. A few dead fish lay on the bank, and he got out to throw them back into the river. They smelled rotten and made the air stink. Maybe something in the water would eat them. The fishy odor stayed on his hands.

He heard a quick rustle in the bushes, and without turning he could see, not six feet away, a buck. For a long moment neither of them moved. Then the buck took a few steps before jumping quickly into the woods, antlers angling through the trees. Another sound came, and another deer ran by, and another. Crow thought of the moment as a miracle, a sign of something good. A minute later he moved carefully back to the car, hoping to see them again, but they were gone. All the way home he thought of how he felt when he stood close to the buck.

Crow drove up to the house but did not call out when he walked in. He heard a quarrel going full force between his mother and Ava.

“Well, how perfect is your own marriage, Helen?” Ava asked. “Look at how you and Carl started out—you got pregnant and he had to marry you.”

Crow had heard rumors about his birth. He knew he had been born only a few months after his parents were married. He stood, not moving.

“No,” his mother protested. “That’s not what happened. Everybody just thinks it happened that way.”

“What do you mean?” He heard Ava walk across the bedroom and sit on the bed.

“I was pregnant, but not by Carl. Carl offered to marry me.”

“He agreed to take on another man’s child?” Ava’s voice grew stiff. “I don’t believe you.”

These sisters had put hurt on each other over the years. They knew exactly how to hurt each other, so that their hearts now had grown separate and hard, like two small kernels.

Crow closed the door to the kitchen. The sun came in and made a pattern of windowpanes on the floor.

“The man was already married,” said Helen. “He was my professor, and I thought I loved him. He was smart, and he thought I was smart.” Helen laughed derisively at her younger self. “But I never really wanted him. I always wanted Carl.”

“Did Carl
know
it was someone else’s child?” Ava spoke as if Helen might be lying. She could not believe Carl had never told her this.

Crow heard his mother sigh. “He knew everything. He had the idea to get married. He thinks of Crow as his own. Always has.”

“And Crow? Does he know?”

A shifting occurred, a rustle of clothes. “We never told him. We meant to, but we haven’t done it yet. It’ll be a hard thing to say.”

Ava looked around nervously. “Is Crow here? I mean, in the house?”

“No. He went out.”

“But his car’s here.” She pointed to Crow’s car parked in the driveway.

“Hey, I’m home!” Crow called out as though he had just come in. Both women sighed with relief. Ava touched Helen’s shoulder with the tips of her fingers. Her hands shone pale against Helen’s dark blouse. A tangle of words emerged, both of them speaking to Crow at once.

“Ava’s leaving tomorrow,” his mother called. “I hope you’ll be here for dinner tonight.”

Crow waved them off and went upstairs to his room, striding his new hurt with long legs. He carried this new weight like luggage he could not put down. He closed the door of his room, the presence of deer still in his head.

That night Crow lay in his bed, shocked by the way life could turn so fast. What went through his mind was how Bobby’s lost father was found; how his own father, his real one, had been lost. One person gets something; another has something taken away, like coins traded in a private war. He tried to imagine who he really was. The offering of the deer, the fish; then the argument between his mother and aunt; and finally the words, overheard and charged, that changed his belief in what was real.

The air in his room grew thick and all these thoughts came in. Crow didn’t know who anybody was anymore. He felt as though he was seeing a photograph of himself standing with the family, and in the photo his eyes looked startled, as though the person taking the picture had not warned him.

His hands still smelled like fish. He had scrubbed them, but the odor lingered. He put them under the covers, as far from his face as he could get them.

Thirty-five

A
VA, HER STRAIGHT
hair and dimpled cheeks, her eyes blazing, had oriented Carl’s life for years—something she herself had often told him. But her absence disoriented his marriage. She seldom left his thoughts. Whenever he saw a girl, or a woman, in town or in a neighboring town—someone’s wife, a secretary, a prostitute—he thought of Ava. He saw the woman, and an image of Ava would haunt him for days.

When Ava offered her body, with nothing held back, Carl felt lucky. He convinced himself he could have this happiness without damaging his marriage.

The first time Ava went with Carl to a shabby motel a few hours outside town, the sky was moonless. She wore a plain black dress.

“Is she okay?” Carl’s first question was about Helen.

“Yes. I told her I was going to a movie. She encouraged me to go.” Ava looked confident, determined.

“Don’t you feel bad about this? I mean, your sister?”

“I can’t think about that. If I think about it, I’ll leave right now.” Ava didn’t ask how he felt. “You want me to leave?”

“No.”

By the set of her mouth, he knew she meant what she said. If he had stopped at that moment, then these years would not have happened, or maybe they would have happened with someone else.

But Ava.

She walked as though she had invented walking. Men watched her move across the street or enter a restaurant. Nothing about her movements was rehearsed. Her body carried the music of moving or speaking, like an instrument. And she looked at Carl as though some secret might be revealed in a second—or not. Carl waited to see what she would do next.

“You haven’t done this kind of thing,” she said, entering the dingy room. “Have you?” She looked as if she were fire, and would set them on fire. He watched her undress, noting a birthmark, small as a dime, on the inside of her thigh. She opened her mouth onto his neck and shoulder, and Carl felt the moment of long imprisonment vanishing in a rush. They lay together naked for a while before turning toward each other, before being pulled completely into the blue Tennessee evening.

Ava believed that someday Carl might marry her. Carl said from the beginning that he would never leave Helen. Still, he needed Ava. She gave him the spontaneity he lacked. Helen, over the years, had turned practical, businesslike. The business of raising children had preoccupied her. Ava lived in the realm of senses, and when he thought of her he wanted to turn off the lights, to sit in half-light or firelight, to be aware of shadows and smells. When he was with her, he felt he was entering a safe cave, and over the years he had found it a place too difficult to give up.

“Nothing is finished,” Ava told him. “Not love, not grief, not being alone. We pretend it’s finished, but we’re just fooling ourselves.”

After Crow’s trial, Carl decided he would end it with Ava. He would prepare himself to be without her. Helen’s sleep had been fretful all spring. He felt her restlessness at night and his own panic during the day. He hoarded the details of a slow day, the way Ava had taught him. He wanted the small moments to carry him, but he kept alive his regret and found no peace. Ava had made him into someone new, though she was also the source of his regret.

Every June the river flooded, like clockwork. The current moved heavy with debris, breaking up piles of leaves and sticks left by earlier high water. Carl knew the habits and inclinations of this town. He had lived here all his life and he knew the currents in both water and people.

The town, constructed on a bend of the Tennessee River, was home to people from a wide range of occupations: farmers, store owners, the regular mix of teachers, doctors, and lawyers, scientists who studied river currents and erosion, disorderly wanderers who landed in town out of necessity, hoping to find work or kindness. A new group of commuters—people who worked in Chattanooga—built sprawling farmhouses where they lived like landed gentry. With the new people came a few fancy shops, along with one pricey restaurant that arranged food on the plate in artistic fashion, sprinkling its offerings with exotic sauces and herbs.

Carl tried to remember summer days full of details so small that no one even spoke of them. Could he go back to the time before sidewalks, when pebbles pushed through the soles of his shoes? He had walked to school along railroad tracks, past street lamps stoned dark by boys, past familiar stores and woods that bordered the town. He walked to the small hobbled schoolhouse with a dirt yard, fenced at the perimeters, and a tire swing that hung from the limb of a huge oak. All of that was gone now, whitewashed by concrete.

The trial had brought them all into a new place, and Carl felt that he could not be visible again until the windows were open and he could hear the high creak of trees in the wind and the rush of morning through the screen door, see the blurry light of evening.

He wondered if Ava’s absence might unravel his marriage more than her presence did. He wondered if he was about to orient his life or disorient it.

At the end of June Carl told Ava that it was over. He told her straight out.

“I’m glad you’re leaving tomorrow,” he said. “And if you come at Thanksgiving, or Christmas, either way”—he squinted in concentration—“it’s over. I mean, now.” His voice sounded dry. He had thought about giving her something, an expensive bracelet or a CD player.

They met at a place outside town. Usually they would stay in the room a few hours, resting on the soft sheets, shower together, drink wine, eat in bed.

But this time, when Ava got out of the car, Carl could see that she already knew what he would say. To his surprise, she didn’t argue.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I know.”

She hadn’t cried. She hadn’t been angry. And after those few words she told him she would leave the next day. She kissed his mouth, her small wrists, dainty like the wrists of a girl, rested against his cheek.

The whole thing ended just like that, with a whimper.

They went back to the house, arriving at separate times. A skyline on the west side gave view to the sun going down below the curve of the earth and tree line. Mongrel dogs wandered the streets—new mutts each year, expecting to be fed.

Thirty-six

A
URELIA
B
AILEY TOOK
the old highway going from Lexington, Kentucky, to South Pittsburg, Tennessee. It was the long road home, but she grew tired of the interstate and took this back road to slow things down, see some real country, maybe stop at a diner, something with local flavor. Aurelia felt absolutely sentimental about local flavor. The road followed the river for many miles.

She had gone to Kentucky to get Bobby. Until a few months ago, the idea of such a trip would have been inconceivable; now she wondered if it might turn into a regular occurrence. She hoped Bobby would talk about his time there, but she prepared herself for the closed-lipped attitude he had been exhibiting for months.

Bobby came out to the car, saying goodbye to his father and the new wife. He put his suitcase into the trunk, got into the passenger seat, then leaned his head against the window. He moved immediately into a quiet defiance. He did not think about how the experience felt to his mother. He had watched his father walk to the car and embrace her—a gesture unfamiliar to him since he was four years old. The new wife stood in the doorway.

“Well, what do you know,” Robert Bailey said—a phrase, an expression of greeting that he had used all his life. Even Bobby remembered it.

Aurelia felt startled of soul. Robert did not look the same at all. Prison had turned his hair gray, given his skin a rough-edged, lineny texture. He still had small, perfect teeth, large brown eyes. An aura of caution surrounded him. To hold him felt illicit. They talked for a few minutes, and as she got back into the car she imagined herself consoled, uncrowded.

“So,” she started, ignoring that Bobby’s eyes were closed. “How was it?”

Bobby sat up, waiting until the house was out of sight. “It was okay,” he said, then he turned toward the door to settle into a hazy tent of sleep. His legs, too long for the front seat, pushed against the dashboard. Aurelia hoped that when Bobby woke he might answer a few questions about Robert’s life in Kentucky. She felt she deserved to know.

Rain came down in rivulets across the windshield, softening the pink dust along the shoulders of the road. A steady rain had followed her most of the way there, and now when she crossed the river Aurelia noticed the water had risen a few inches since yesterday. Swollen mountain streams roiled with whitecaps, flooding the ground, leaving an edge of foam on the lip of the bank.

“Where are we?” Bobby asked when he woke. “Are we lost?”

“I just thought I’d take this old way,” Aurelia explained. “I get so tired of the interstate and the same old look of everything. So I got off. I like riding alongside the river.”

“Can I drive?” asked Bobby.

“I guess so.”

“Cool.”

They pulled onto the shoulder, opened the car doors, and switched sides—like people in flight. Bobby took the wheel, turned the key.

“Listen to that motor,” he said. He loved to drive on long trips, on strange roads.

“What’s the matter with it?” Aurelia cocked her head to listen.

“Nothing’s the matter. Just listen.”

“Oh.”

As he drove, the tires hit pavement seams and ticked down a rhythm that kept them both quiet for a while before Aurelia asked, “You want to tell me about how it was to be with your dad for the past two weeks? You know I have to ask, Bobby.”

“It was fine,” he said.

“Maybe a little more than that?” She laughed at his resistance.

“No. It was good.” Then he broke into life. “At first when I got there, I was mad at you, thinking about how I had a dad who’d been around all these years and I never knew where he was.”

“He talk to you about that? About going to prison?”

“Yeah. He said he was glad I never saw him there. He said he kept up with me through you. Still, though, you should’ve told me about him. I thought he was dead all that time.”

“He made me promise not to tell you he was in jail, Bobby,” Aurelia told him. “I tried to honor what little pride he had left.” She decided to test his mood. “Did he tell you why he was incarcerated?”

“Embezzlement,” said Bobby, trying to minimize, keep the crime at bay. “He said it was embezzlement.”

In fact, Robert Bailey had spent ten years in prison for creatively stealing money from his law firm. He and Aurelia had met in law school and fallen in love so fast Aurelia could hardly believe it. They married and moved to Washington, D.C., both lawyers, but in different law firms.

At first Robert waged small battles with nameless faces, often winning. He was quickly promoted, until the battles became larger, involving more money. He imagined himself wealthy and successful. He imagined he should receive more money than the firm was giving him and eventually was discovered performing illegal activities. He was arrested and convicted, and though some of his partners also participated in the scheme, they let him take the blame. (Aurelia suspected they offered him money to be the scapegoat. And that he had started his new life with this money.)

One night during that glassy band of days, Aurelia dreamed that Robert was an eagle flying in an arc of wind, wings barely turning as he rode the current, a graceful slide. But when she woke inside her own room, in her oversized bed, she saw the cage of air around him. He lay beside her, the edges of dream around them both, a blue air choking her. She would not be pulled down with him. She went to Bobby’s room, dressed him, and told Robert that they were leaving. She had seen her husband only one time since that day.

“He said we just left one night,” said Bobby. “Just left. He said he didn’t really blame you though.”

“I didn’t know what to do, Bobby. I felt ashamed. I was afraid the trouble he got into might affect whether or not I got a judgeship somewhere. In fact, I think it did keep me out of some places, but the people in Tennessee already knew me. I had to earn a living in order to support you, you know.”

Bobby had not thought of this.

“I also paid off some of what Robert owed.”

“You did?”

“Yes. I did.”

“Did you ever visit him in prison?”

“Once. Once I did. It was his thirtieth birthday. I took the train to Maryland. Left you with the Davenports. Remember when you spent the weekend at their house? You were about seven.”

Bobby remembered.

“I rented a car and took him a chocolate cake with candles. Of course, the guards pretty much destroyed the cake looking to see if anything was hidden inside. I tried to smooth it before I took it to him. I don’t think he cared that it was messed up. He was glad to see me. He ate that whole cake, almost, during the hour I was there.”

“That’s the only time?”

“Yes. I’m ashamed now of just leaving him like that. Plenty of shame to go around, I guess.” She waited. “I loved your dad, Bobby. I really loved him.” As she said this she turned on the radio, trying to find music Bobby would like.

Bobby had never heard his mother say those words, but as he thought about it, he remembered photographs she kept around the house. He thought the photos were more for him than for her. His father did not have old photographs in his home. He had a new family.

During Bobby’s visit his father acted affectionate in an offhand way. He had a wife and two children now, so that even when they did things together as a group, Bobby felt like an outsider. Bobby’s ideal version of his father and the actual experience didn’t coordinate. He didn’t know what to think about the discrepancy.

“This doesn’t seem like the road home,” Bobby said as he turned up the volume on the radio. He began to pound a percussive beat on the steering wheel and dashboard.

“Well, it is.”

They drove leisurely through the small towns and at noon stopped in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, for lunch at a place called Hot Thomas’s Bar-be-que. “His first name’s really Hot,” said Aurelia. “He’s about six-four. He’s always behind the counter, or used to be.”

“Who’d name a kid Hot?”

“He probably acquired the name as a teenager,” Aurelia said. She could tell that Bobby was impressed by the name, even envious.

“Cool,” he said, nodding.

Bobby drove again after lunch, and Aurelia noticed how he was less surly while driving, more willing to talk. The rain was over and streaks of late light poured like water through the trees.

“I wondered,” said Aurelia, “if you might decide to live with your father.” She was unable to hide a catch in her voice as she spoke. “I mean, if you might want to move to Kentucky.”

Bobby looked at his mother.

“If you do want to, I won’t stop you, but,” she added, “you can’t leave soon. Everybody who knew Sophie will have to be questioned.”

“They’ve already talked to me.”

“Yeah, but they will again. I’m sure.” She tried to gauge his mood.

“Well,” said Bobby, “I don’t want to live with him anyway. I want to live somewhere, but not there. If we win the Battle of the Bands, some doors are going to open.”

“Bobby,” she said, then decided that this was not the moment to warn him about the possibility of losing.

Bobby sensed her warning. “We’ll be up against some good bands, I know that. But I think we’re going to win. We’ve got to.”

Aurelia couldn’t quite fathom the fragment of anxiety in his voice. She let them ride in silence. They passed through a small town, a stretch of low houses and stores, then a couple of horses in a pasture.

“Did you call Crow? I mean, did you talk to him while you were away?” Her tone was accusatory.

“I called him once.” Bobby did not say that Crow wasn’t home when he called. “About the band and stuff.”

“Does he think you’re going to win?” Aurelia studied the folds of her skirt.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Her mention of Crow had broken something, a trust, and the air between them felt strained now. Bobby grew quiet for a long while before he suggested that his mother drive.

Everywhere Aurelia’s uncertainty as to what happened that night, and the fear of Bobby’s participation, was abundant. After all, she was trained to see lies, had been schooled in the expert excuses and denials of the guilty. But she also knew her penchant for believing the worst of people, and she had tried hard all of Bobby’s life not to bring her suspicious nature into the home. She knew how a lack of trust could so easily bring to life exactly what is suspected. She knew she could make true what she feared. She tried not to wonder if she had done this to Robert.

She tilted her head, a feeling of dreamlike confusion falling over her. “It’s not im
poss
ible to imagine that someone we know might be guilty,” she said, no ounce of threat in her voice. “Rita says that Sophie still can’t remember anything. When she does remember, though,
if
she does—she might say something that’ll break apart everything.”

“I don’t know,” said Bobby, in answer to nothing.