To See the Moon Again (36 page)

Julia's heart sank.
When you come?
There was only one thing that could mean.

Carmen came into the kitchen when she got off the phone. “Guess what? Uncle Butch says he has some connections with a couple of airlines. He thinks he can get a discount price on a plane ticket.”

A clever way to put it, Julia thought. It probably just meant he was using credit card points or frequent flier miles. “Well, that's good,” she said. Natural and sincere—that was how she hoped she sounded. Neither miserable nor falsely cheerful. “They're not planning to come down, are they?” It was an old habit of hers—posing a negative to verify the affirmative.

“Oh, yeah, Aunt Pam wanted to talk to you, but I told her you weren't handy, so she's going to call back later. They're leaving on Saturday to visit Butch's sister in Memphis—I think it's for a nephew's graduation—so they might swing by here first to say bye.”

Swinging by South Carolina on the way from Virginia to Memphis—that was a joke. But Julia knew there was no use fighting it. If Pamela had it in her mind to come, nothing would keep her from it. She poured another cup of coffee, then busied herself with cream and sugar, and much stirring, so that she didn't have to turn around. “What day are you thinking of leaving?” she asked.

Carmen was pulling clothes out of the washing machine and putting them into the dryer. “Next Thursday or Friday,” she said. “That'll give me a whole week.”

Another demonstration of a youthful perspective.
A whole week.
Spoken as if it were an eternity.

•   •   •

P
AMELA
and Butch pulled up in front of the stone house two days later around eleven in the morning. Thankfully, they truly were just stopping by since they needed to make it all the way to Memphis that evening. It was clear from the moment Pamela stepped into the house that she was still full of alarm and disapproval that Carmen was going “back there to
that place
,” which turned out to be the only way she would allow herself to refer to Wyoming.

Carmen had prepared an early lunch, which they ate together in the kitchen. Sandwiches, chips, drinks, grapes. Butch had found a plane ticket for her, of course. He gave her the boarding pass and itinerary he had printed out but wouldn't take the money she tried to give him. “No lie,” he said, holding up both hands, “it was free. I got a deal. I know people in high places.” And though Pamela was still mad, she mustered enough momentary good cheer to say, “That's the honest truth. Butch can pull more strings than . . . a puppeteer.” She even managed to chuckle over her little witticism.

Smart girl that she was, Carmen had Googled all the upcoming bluegrass festivals in Wyoming. Armed with this information, she permitted no opportunity during lunch for dead time, which she must have known would be seized upon by Pamela for argumentative purposes. The girl rattled off the names of bluegrass groups—Stringdusters, Long Way Home, Big Hollow Band, Haunted Winds, Bearfoot Boys—and told exactly when and where in Wyoming they were scheduled to sing during the summer.

And it worked. Both Butch and Pamela were drawn in. “
Rosebud and the June Bugs
are going to be there?” Pamela exclaimed at one point. “I love them!”

After lunch Carmen walked them out to their car. When she came back to the kitchen, she emitted a long whistle. “You would've thought I was about to
die
instead of just move to Wyoming. Wow, I'm sure glad you're not falling to pieces over this like Aunt Pam is.”

Julia was shaking out the place mats over the sink. “She does know how to carry on, doesn't she?” she said, adding a little laugh for a breezy effect.

•   •   •

S
UNDAY
came and went, and then they were down to four days. On Monday Julia went back up to the attic and brought down the boxes full of useless things she had weeded out. She set them by the back door. One of her errands today was to drop them off at the Goodwill donation center.

“Hey, what's this for?” Carmen said, pulling out the fondue pot. It was avocado green with a wooden handle and Teflon interior.

Julia explained the concept of fondue, showed her the long-handled forks of different colors, told her about the fondue parties Matthew loved when they first got married, well past the fondue craze of the seventies.

Carmen laughed. “Cool. Can we try it out one night before I go?”

So Julia set it aside. That would be their last supper together. A trip back in time for herself, a novelty for Carmen. Maybe it would brighten up what could be a difficult meal.

The last few days were filled with odd sensations. It was curious how a bland, tuneless word like
departure
could suddenly turn onomatopoetic; say it aloud and it sounded like something ripped in half. And there was no explaining how she could feel both heavy and empty. Warring wishes were another mystery: one minute, wishing she could have more time to prepare herself for Carmen to leave and, the next, wishing it were already a thing of the past. The waiting was terrible, yet she clung to each day. She felt a dread that was nearly tangible, as was her relief upon waking each morning and thinking,
Not today, not yet
.

And hopes collided with hard truths. Her dreams for Carmen to stay with her, go to college, distinguish herself as a star student, be like a daughter to her—all of that set against the realization that a twenty-one-year-old didn't need a supervisor like the one she would be, caring too much about every aspect of the girl's life.

There were other contradictions: one day, watching Carmen intently across the table or room or yard, trying to memorize every gesture, every vocal nuance, every comical thing she said and did, and, the next day, turning her head, refusing to even look at her. Or one day, drawing near to listen to her play and sing through all the verses of a song and, the next, leaving the house as soon as she heard the first few notes.

One of the songs Julia never walked away from was “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.” That one made her go still every time, for she somehow felt closer to Jeremiah every time she heard his daughter sing one of his favorite songs.

Julia had never before realized it was a song about going to heaven. Or so Carmen told her. Nor did she know that Michael was one of the archangels and he was rowing the boat across the Jordan River. Or that the song was actually an African American spiritual. For some reason Julia had always associated it with hippies and communes and Joan Baez.

The way Carmen sang it reminded Julia of a gathering storm. She started it slow and soft, like a friendly rainfall, increasing the tempo and volume ever so slightly with each verse, from the brother lending a helping hand and the sister helping to trim the sail, right on through the mother and father waiting on the other side. By the time she got to the verse about the Jordan River, it was considerably livelier, especially the line “Kills the body but not the soul!” And at the end, when the trumpet was sounding the jubilee, it was like a tempest, though more spectacular than terrifying. She even did some hand thumps on her guitar for a little rhythmic flair.

And then there was the French folk song Carmen had learned from Dr. Boyer a few weeks earlier. Julia always listened to that one, too, though she didn't know at first that it was actually a carol about a shepherdess who had been to the manger in Bethlehem, had seen the baby, Mary and Joseph, the animals, the angelic hosts. Julia was no judge of the girl's French pronunciation, but it sounded convincing enough.

And then only three days remained. On Tuesday night Carmen sang the French song again on the screened porch. Julia was watching the news in the living room but crept into the kitchen to listen. It was just after ten o'clock, and through the back door she could see the twinkle of fireflies in the cool dark of the yard.

The girl started the second stanza, more slowly than usual:
“Est-il beau, bergère? Est-il beau? Plus beau que la lune, Aussi le soleil. Jamais dans le monde on vit son pareil.”
All at once she stopped singing. Julia waited for more, but all remained quiet. She returned to the television and soon heard Carmen in the kitchen, then footsteps in the hallway, then a door closing.

Sometime the next day Julia found a sheet of paper on the floor in front of the glider. She turned it over and saw it was the French song written out by hand, with the English translations under each line. She looked at the second stanza:
Is he fair, shepherdess? Is he fair?
And then the answer:
Fairer than the moon, fairer than the sun. Never in the world has such a one been seen.

So that was why Carmen had stopped singing. It was easy to see how one uniquely beautiful child could remind her of another.

And in Julia's mind, this was the most perplexing part of the girl's decision to leave, yet one she couldn't bring herself to mention. Wyoming had to be more than fifteen hundred miles from Roskam, North Carolina. How could she bear to put so much distance between herself and Lizzy? Perhaps the same question was troubling Carmen, for she grew pensive the next day, disappeared for an extended walk after lunch, and went to her bedroom early that evening. Her guitar case stayed closed up tight.

•   •   •

A
ND
then they were down to the last day. Julia rose early, full of purpose. She had made her plans during the night. She wouldn't mope. She wanted Carmen's last memory of her to be something positive and admirable, not pathetic. She got dressed, went to the grocery store and bank, and was home shortly after ten. She set about making a Coca-Cola cake, something she hadn't done in many years, an idea perhaps triggered by the thought of the fondue supper. While fondue had been Matthew's favorite supper, Coca-Cola cake had been his favorite dessert.

The time for interrogating the girl was over. Julia had asked all her questions during the past week, trying to slip them in offhandedly but utterly failing, sounding instead like the middle-aged worry-wart she was.
Where will you live? What will you do for money? Do you still have friends in Wyoming? Will you call if you need help? Will you let me buy you some new clothes and shoes? A cell phone? A laptop?
The last three were answered with a firm but gentle “Oh, no, thank you, I want to travel light.”

They both knew that all the questions came down to one:
How will you ever make your way in the world?
And though the girl offered no specific answers, she gave confident, optimistic ones, always in Old Testament terms:
I will follow the fiery pillar, the Red Sea will part, manna will fall, I will mount up with eagle's wings, angels will attend me.

Clearly, Carmen had plans for this last day also. Having rallied from the previous day, she showed no signs of sadness, nor anticipation, only good-natured determination to put these final hours to practical use. After lunch she spent a good while outside, cleaning the rest of the windows, climbing onto the roof to check the gutters, tagging the last of the irises, sweeping the front walk.

She was washing the Buick in the driveway when Gil pulled up in his pickup, on the pretext of leaving some bags of fertilizer, which he could just as easily have brought on his regular yard day next week. He and Carmen talked for several minutes, Gil holding his battered hat against his heart like a gentlemanly old suitor. Before he got into his truck to leave, he took a step back and gave a courteous little bow. Carmen, her hands clasped under her chin, bowed several times in return.

Julia, watching from the kitchen window, was tempted to laugh, though it occurred to her at the same moment that it was only further evidence of Carmen's unerring instincts about people. That Gil adored her was obvious. And just as obvious was the fact that any kind of physical contact would have overstepped a boundary and discomfited him. So there they were, a Polish yard man and a girl from Wyoming, saying their farewells like two Buddhist monks.

In the middle of the afternoon, Carmen took the Buick for an oil change. She wasn't gone long. “Once again Jiffy Lube lives up to its name,” she said when she walked onto the back porch, where Julia was sitting with a book in her lap, though not reading. “I would've been back even sooner, but Ricky was telling me all about his wife's trip to China.”

Julia motioned to the wicker table, where she had laid the two
Green River
magazines. “There are a couple of things in there I want you to read—if you don't mind. I marked the pages. It won't take you long. They're stories.”

“Oh, bummer,” Carmen said, laughing. “You know how much I hate stories.” She walked to the table. “I'll do it right now.” She picked the magazines up. “You know what Ricky told me? His wife went to this open-air market in China, where they had all these live
scorpions
impaled on the end of sticks, and you could pick which one you wanted
to eat
and the vendor would fry it for you right there in this big pot of oil.”

Julia gave her a look. “If that's a hint, it's too late. We're just having steak and chicken for our fondue tonight.”

Carmen said, “I'm going to miss your sense of humor, Aunt Julia.” She sat down on the glider and opened one of the magazines. “Hey, you wrote this?” She looked up at Julia. “I thought you said you didn't write.”

“Just read them, and then we'll talk,” Julia said.

•   •   •

W
HEN
Carmen finished reading, Julia told her. It seemed that it should have taken much longer to confess a shame carried around for so many years, but it was over quickly.

Carmen was nodding before she was done talking. “I remembered the one about the boy at the rodeo. Daddy read parts of it to me while he was writing it. I didn't remember how it ended, though. And I didn't remember much of the other one at all, except for that girl that killed all the chickens.”