Northward to the Moon (10 page)

“You oughtn’t be on him,” says Ben, and he goes back to the barn. I turn to see Max and Hershel
happily carrying forkfuls of horse manure and putting it in a wheelbarrow. I wonder if they know what it is. They probably do. It would be like them to enjoy nothing more than messing around with a manure pile. Hershel has some smeared on one cheek.

I hear a scream and turn my head to see that Dorothy has been thrown from Satan and has landed on her back.

Ben comes flying out of the barn, vaults the ring and grabs Satan’s reins, pulling him away to keep him from running over Dorothy. My mother yells, “Call 911,” and then, in a flutter, seems to realize that there is no one but Maya in the house and so runs into the house to do it herself. I start to go into the ring to help Dorothy but Ben yells, “Don’t touch her! If she broke her back she needs to stay still.”

“I don’t think it’s my darned back, I think I broke my hip,” moans Dorothy, but at least she is talking.

The ambulance is faster than you would think so far out in the country.

The paramedics put Dorothy on a backboard
and onto a gurney. All through this I should be horrified but instead I cannot get out of my head the sight of Ben, as if he doesn’t have to deal with gravity the way the rest of us do, flying out of the barn and in one fluid motion vaulting the ring and grabbing Satan’s reins. There is grace here and courage and intelligence and something else, an ability to see what needs to be done in a flash and do it.

I keep replaying the scene in my head, only in my fantasy it is me on the ground and he picks me up and carries me out of the ring. Then I imagine we are in the wild flat plains and he is rescuing me from a whole herd of wild mustangs. They really do have wild mustangs in Nevada so this is not that far a stretch. Me and Ben and the mustangs. His hair flying back as his one hand projects him over the top rail.

“Ned, go ahead with her to the hospital and I’ll stay here with the children,” says my mother as they follow the paramedics to the ambulance. Suddenly their marriage seems dull and prosaic. How could I ever have thought they were having a romance? What do they know of romance?

I trail slightly behind them unthinkingly because I don’t know what else to do and it is because of this I hear my mother say to Ned, “Your poor mother!” and Ned whisper back, “Yeah, right. We can’t go now. Look who got the last word.”

W
e are sitting in Dorothy’s bedroom, where Maya has taken to hanging out about eight hours a day, watching game shows and soap operas, talk shows and the occasional news broadcast. I come in sometimes to hear Dorothy saying things like “Maya, let’s take a break from
The Price Is Right
and see what is happening in the world.” She has just said this and Maya has nodded and the two of them are sitting spellbound through floods and fires and abductions and philandering politicians and Maya puts the knuckles of her right hand to the side of her mouth, a gesture she has taken to making more and more often and which looks perilously close to thumb-sucking to me. Then, having
fulfilled their current-events duty, they switch solemnly back to a screen full of shrieking contestants and horrible music and ugly colored lights and sets. I don’t know which is worse. But at least during the game shows, Maya’s hand moves away from her mouth.

Ned has taken the boys into town to buy grain and my mother is busy scouting all over for Ned’s sisters’ phone numbers. Dorothy claimed to have written them down somewhere but then couldn’t remember where she put the paper so she asked my mother to comb through drawers. The first drawer my mother opened was in the buffet and it was crammed so tightly with string and old glasses and photographs and random pieces of paper that the drawer practically popped out, spilling its contents everywhere.

“This may take a while,” said my mother, so I’ve gone upstairs to see what Maya is up to. I cannot watch
The Price Is Right
and am hoping to talk Maya into playing a game of cards when we hear the wolves. It is a long harmonious song of many voices. It is so startling that it makes Dorothy click off the TV, which is something of a miracle. The
miracle of the wolves, I think. Or perhaps the miracle of the channel changer. But it turns out to be a miracle in more ways than one because Dorothy says, “There are no wolves in Nevada!”

“There are no wolves, period,” agrees Maya hopefully.

“That sure sounded like wolves to me,” I say. “We heard them up in northern B.C. and they sounded just like that.”

“But there are no wolves in Nevada,” says Dorothy. “Haven’t been for years. Anyhow, Maya, you’re safe as long as you stay in this room, just like I’m safe as long as I’m in this house. This is my safe place. They’re going to have to take me out of here feetfirst, toes up, in a coffin. You got it? You know why it’s so safe here? Because it’s the first house I found where you can look out any window and see the horizon in any direction. You can always see what’s coming before it gets you. And horses will warn you too. They’re like dogs in that respect. Now, you look out that window and I bet you don’t see any wolves. Let’s see what else is on TV.”

I think this is pretty creepy and a terrible thing to tell Maya. But I don’t know how to undo it without being rude.

Dorothy holds out the clicker and presses the On button. Wolf-wonder can only interest her for so long. There are large all-terrain vehicles to be won and hair products to price. It’s funny what some people think is real and choose to give their attention to. Those hair products and big refrigerators seem far more unreal to me than the wolves. Maya’s knuckles return firmly to her cheek but her face relaxes as she is drawn into the excitement of a woman trying to win a set of golf clubs.

At dinner my mother tells Ned that she has called all three of his sisters.

“My sisters?” he squawks, putting down his fork. “Maureen?”

My mother nods, chewing a mouthful of mashed potatoes. My mother makes the best mashed potatoes in the world. She adds a lot of chopped fresh parsley. I could eat an entire dinner of nothing but her potatoes.

“Nelda?”

My mother swallows and nods.

“Candace?”

“Yes, she seemed kind of strange,” says my mother.

“Strange how?”

“Well, it’s hard to say. It was a difficult phone call for her, after all, hearing that her mother broke her hip and fractured some vertebrae and will never walk without a walker again. Being asked to come see her after so many years. It seemed a little odd to all your sisters, I’m sure. And they didn’t know who I was. But Candace seemed, I don’t know, she kept making me repeat everything and then when I asked if we had a bad connection, she said no, she was just texting various people on her BlackBerry and after that she kept putting me on hold so she could take other calls.”

“What does she do?” asks Ned.

“She’s a realtor.”

“Oh well, that explains it. They’re all like that. Totally insane.”

“Really?” says my mother. “I suppose nowadays they all have cell phones glued to their ears. It wasn’t quite so bad when I dealt with them.”

“When were you dealing with realtors?”

“Oh, you know, after I inherited the beach house. They all wanted me to sell it.”

“Oh yes, the beach house,” says Ned, chewing away. “Good potatoes.”

“What about the beach house?” I ask.

“Back when I got it, well, I guess a few years after that, actually, beach property got to be more in demand and so realtors were always calling, fishing around, hoping I’d sell. A lot of them got sand in their good shoes walking over the beach and knocking on my door.”

“See what I mean? They’re desperate people,” says Ned through another mouthful of potatoes. A glob drops from the edge of his mouth onto his plate, like snow falling off the roof, and the boys laugh.

“Did you ever want to sell?” I ask. There is nothing like finding out things you have never known about members of your own family.

“No, of course not. Never,” says my mother. “What could I buy with the money that I would want more?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“Right,” says Ned, who is conflicted because he is trying to eat potatoes and get information all at the same time. It is always a hard choice when it’s my mother’s mashed potatoes. The first instinct is to remain silent so as to be able to consume more
rapidly. “Well, gosh, how did you even know where to find my sisters?”

“The Christmas cards,” says my mother.

“Oh, right, the Christmas cards,” says Ned dismissively.

“Dorothy told me that your sisters had each enclosed her phone number with her card. Dorothy was annoyed because they enclosed their phone numbers instead of just picking up a phone and calling her, so she never called them either. But she squirreled the cards away somewhere and couldn’t remember where. It took me most of the morning to find them,” says my mother.

“There, you see!” says Ned as if this explains it all.

“I see,” says Hershel.

“I see too,” says Max.

They are unwavering in their support.

“You see
what?”
asks Maya.

I frown. I take this as a sign that all this TV watching with Dorothy has put Maya firmly on her side, if sides must be chosen.

“Anyhow, the upshot is that they are all coming for a nice little visit,” says my mother.

“They’re coming for a
visit?”
says Ned, and he drops his fork into his lap. I laugh.

“Well, yes, I invited them. I mean, something has to be done about your mother when we go back to Massachusetts. I thought they might want to come and visit too. Dorothy won’t walk properly again. Someone has to tell her and someone has to help her figure out what’s next.”

Ned’s mouth works for a few minutes and no sounds come out and then finally he says, “Jeepers.”

“Jeepers,” says Max.

“Jeepers,” says Hershel.

“What’s for dessert?” asks Maya.

The next problem is where to put everyone. My mother and Ned have one of the farmhouse’s big bedrooms. Maya and I have another and the boys another and Dorothy has her own. Finally it is decided that a cot can go into Dorothy’s room for Maya, since they have become so simpatico, and an extra cot can be moved into our twin-bedded
bedroom so that the three sisters can all sleep there, and I can sleep in the pantry.

“In the pantry?” I say plaintively to Ned as he helps me move out all the cans and jars to make room. “With the
rats?”

“Oh, come on, Bibles, there aren’t any rats. Besides, don’t blame me, blame your mother, this whole thing was her idea.”

“Well, you did say we were leaving for Massachusetts so that means someone has to be here to care for Dorothy,” I say.

“I know, I know,” mutters Ned. He is nervous. How can someone’s family make him so nervous?

The first one to arrive is Maureen. She is fat and a lot older than Ned, I think. She looks to be at least fifty and her face hangs in pleasant jowls. She has a farm in Ontario that she shared with her husband for years before he died of a heart attack. She shows us a picture of the two of them standing on their front porch together. He is hugely fat and jolly-looking. I think running her farm alone, the lone fat soul on all those acres of corn, must be very sad for her.

The second one is Nelda and she is as thin as Maureen is fat. Her hair is dyed black and she
wrings her hands a lot. She looks sort of like a bird and she wears a big bejeweled uncomfortable-looking cross around her neck. Maureen tells me privately that Nelda has become a Catholic and no one has trusted her since. “She sends
religious
Christmas cards,” she says to me.

I like Maureen because she talks to me like I am an adult and because that first night when we are all together, after supper when we are sitting on the porch watching Ben work the horses, she says, “Look at that young man. If I were a girl, I’d make a play for him. Ah, me, to be that age again!”

“Sex on a stick,” says Candace, the realtor sister. She has just arrived this evening, during supper, actually, and no one knows what to make of her. She has a very young modern haircut and her hair is dyed blond. She has lots of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth and she dresses in clothes that aren’t too tight exactly but are maybe a little tight for how old she is. She clicks her nails on the table a lot and without moving much always gives the appearance of a lot of restless decisive motion that nonetheless achieves nothing. It is as if she is trying to hatch an
egg
.

Ned and my mother are in the kitchen dishing
up dessert so they don’t hear this remark about sex on a stick, but Maureen and Nelda do. They glance over at Candace and give her a funny look.

Dorothy can’t come down the stairs and Maya is having her dessert upstairs with her. The boys are racing around the barnyard. They are perpetual-motion machines or like the law of inertia. When they are running around nothing stops them unless we pin them down and then you put some food into them and they are asleep and they sleep the sleep of the dead until the movement begins again. Boys are so uncomplicated, I think. They move, they eat, they sleep; they don’t spend endless amounts of time thinking about it all like girls. They pretty much do this until they wear themselves out and die.