Northward to the Moon (13 page)

Meanwhile my mother and Nelda, Maureen and Candace now all pile into three cars every morning, frantically trying to find a place that will take Dorothy. They have been told that sometimes
it’s just a matter of being at the right place at the right time. So much for waiting lists, says Candace. It gets my mother out of the way, though.

But what to do about the boys? They are annoyingly always around underfoot, or worse, under Ben’s feet. Then, thank goodness, Max rips his last whole pair of jeans and my mother decides to take the boys into town to get them some pants.

As soon as I hear this I realize it is the best shot I am going to get at my plan. Ben is in the ring. The boys and my mother will be gone. My mother has sent Ned off to drive Nelda. Of course, my mother could have sent Ned shopping with the boys and driven Nelda but I bet she put her foot down and told Ned it was his turn to get whispered at all day.

I race into the kitchen, throw together some batches of different-colored icing and put it into paper decorating cones. Then I call upstairs. “Quick, Maya, the marshmallows are ready to be cut and decorated.”

“I want to watch
The Price Is Right,”
calls Maya.

“Well, you CAN’T!” I yell before I think of a
more tactful enticing way to put it. “That is,” I go on, sounding very much like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel,” “the marshmallows are all done and waiting, dear.”

“They’ve been done for days,” calls Maya.

“But the icing is HARDENING!” I screech.

Ned is futzing around outside talking with Ben while Nelda waits in the car.

I run upstairs and say, “Well, I can cut and decorate them myself, if you want….”

Maya follows me downstairs with her blank look but I don’t have time to think about her facial expressions.

“Okay, you can use this plastic icing knife to cut the marshmallows, see?” I say, demonstrating. “But they all have to be
exactly one inch square
, so measure each one with this ruler.”

She nods. Good! Good, good, good. It makes sense to her. Of course, that means she is an idiot, but I can’t worry about that now.

“Then you make a flower on
each
one with a little green, a little yellow and a little pink, just like the picture in the book. I’ll show you.”

I do a petal and run to the window. Good, Ben’s
still there. Good, good, good. Will Ned
never
leave? I do a leaf, I run to the window.

“Okay, okay, I get it,” says Maya, trying to grab the cone. “Why do you keep looking out the window?”

Why? Why, why,
why?
Ah! “I’m checking the
light levels
. Of course, the light levels.”

“The
light levels?
What’s that?”

“What is it? What is it? Easy. The
levels of light
!”

“Why?”

Why? Why, why,
why?
Ah!
“Too
much light will fade the marshmallows. Look how bright ours are, but one wrong beam of sunlight and they will end up looking like the pastel ones in the supermarket. We don’t want
that.”

I race over and pull down all the blinds.

“Problem solved!”

“Do I have to keep the blinds closed?” asks Maya.

“Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Under no circumstances open the blinds! You don’t want second-rate marshmallows. You want
perfect
marshmallows!”

“You’re scaring me! Your voice is all weird.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” I snap. Then I take a deep
breath. I am so close. Don’t scare her now, I say to myself. Breathe, breathe. I take another deep breath. It makes me cough.

“Don’t cough on the marshmallows,” says Maya.

“I think the sugar is making me cough. I think I need to go outside and get some fresh air. You will have to start decorating alone. Do you think you can? I mean, I know you’re only eight….”

“I don’t need you to help!” scoffs Maya. “I’m a better drawer than you.”

“That’s right, you are,” I say soothingly. “You’ll do great if you just follow a few simple instructions.”

She nods.

“Okay, now remember to measure and remeasure all the marshmallows. You should end up with ninety-six,” I say, pulling a number out of thin air. I stopped listening to myself several minutes ago. Has Ned left yet? Is it safe to go out? I peek out the window.

“Are the light levels still good?” asks Maya.

“PERFECT!”

She looks scared again so I take another breath.

“Ninety-six. Can you remember that?”

“I
get
it,” says Maya. “Where are you going to be?”

“I don’t know. Don’t think about me, just think about the
marshmallows
, the
marshmallows
, Maya,” I say to her, handing her the plastic knife.

I creep to the front door and peek out. The coast is clear. Good! Good, good, good. I am halfway across the yard, thinking Ned has left, when suddenly he comes out of the barn. Ben follows him. I quickly nip around the side of the barn and go in the back way. But they are coming back in. I hear their voices. I am standing by the hayloft ladder so I scamper up. I can wait in the loft until Ned finally takes off and then join Ben at the ring.

“We’re going to have to sell the tack too,” Ned is saying to Ben.

“Uh-huh,” says Ben. Even the sound of his grunts is thrilling. I shiver. There is a space between floorboards and I can see them talking by the door.

“And Ben …” There’s a pause. Ned is kicking some loose hay around.

Just go. Go already. Go, go, go!

“Why don’t you give poor Jane a break and take her riding?”

Ben looks at Ned blankly as if he hasn’t heard him.

“Oh, come on,” wheedles Ned. “Anyone can see she’s got a huge crush on you. Just give her a riding lesson.”

Ben winces.

H
ow I get into the house after that is a blur. I stumble and knock over some hay bales and Ben runs up the ladder to investigate, sees me and looks blank. I go down the ladder and pass Ned, who says something indistinct, like “Aw, Bibles …” and something else I don’t hear. I go into the house. I don’t even remember passing Maya and I close myself off in my room. I lie on my bed with a roaring river in my head. All I can hear are the rushing waters but behind it I am stung with betrayal. Nothing I believed was true. The universe aligned nothing. Ned betrayed me. So insultingly. So patronizingly. So thoroughly. Ben thinks of me, all right, but not as I believed. He thinks of me as
someone who makes him wince. All this passes in and out of my thoughts and then it is back to the nothingness of the roaring river.

Days pass.

My mother knows something is up. The tip-off is that every time Ned walks into a room, I walk out. Oh, why kid myself? Ned has told her. They tell each other everything. My mother gives me hugs absentmindedly every time I pass. It is the best she can do to show support without humiliating me further by letting me know she knows. Now, counting Ben, there are three people beside me who know my utter and complete humiliation. I am disgusting. So much so that the mere mention of me silences Ben. He cannot even address such a hideous notion. My feelings are so obvious that even Ned knows. He
pities
me. I am so inept that I need Ned to step in and beg Ben for favors. Ben probably already knew about my feelings.
That
is why he avoided me. I am loathsome and ugly and beneath his notice. And now he probably thinks I put Ned up to it.

I don’t know what to do with my time that will keep me away from everyone. I could make candy
with Maya but she is no longer interested. She didn’t even finish making the marshmallows but, as I later found out, left a big half-finished mess in the kitchen, which my mother cleaned up when she came home.

“Come on, Maya, let’s at least make nougat,” I say enticingly, trying to reinterest her. “Look at the picture, all those colorful little bits of stuff stuck in the white candy. How, oh how, does one get the bits in there? Let us find out!”

“Why won’t you let Ned have candy anymore?” she asks.

“Because he doesn’t deserve it,” I say.

“Why?” she persists.

“Because he’s the devil’s spawn.”

After that Maya avoids Ned too. She has never been terribly chummy with him, regarding him with a certain amount of cool speculative detachment. He is a little too frivolous for her taste, I think. But now with the idea that he is the devil’s spawn, she is keeping her distance. I feel vaguely guilty about giving her something else to feel frightened about. She sleeps in my room about two nights out of three as it is.

Then one night at dinner as Nelda quietly eats her sacred-apparition scalloped potatoes, Ned announces that he is thinking about going to Alaska.

“Ha!” says Dorothy. “Now, there’s a surprise.”

My mother has put down her fork and is looking at him with interest. Ned looks at her and his eyes drop guiltily.

“Listen, it’s just so fascinating to me. The whole thing with John.”

“So you thought you’d go when, Ned?” asks my mother.

“I don’t know,” said Ned. “Maybe when we get Dorothy settled.”

“Before we drive back to Massachusetts?” asks my mother. Nobody looking at her would guess that this hasn’t been their well-considered plan all along. She is eating her dinner as if they are discussing him going to get ice cream after dinner.

Dorothy has come down to dinner for the first time. She can’t do stairs yet but she can shuffle a bit forward on her walker and Candace and Ned made a chair with their arms and carried her downstairs. She said it was a harrying ride and she did
not plan to do that again. She seems quiet at dinner. As if she is saddened somehow by having all these grown offspring around the table. She sits next to Maya and they speak to each other in short, quiet half-sentences, as if during the few weeks we have been here they have developed their own code. Dorothy has been teaching her Abenglabish and sometimes they speak that instead.

“So you’re going to go see Dad? Whew!” says Maureen. “Maybe we’ll end up having a big family reunion someday after all. Wouldn’t that be a kick?”

“Yeah,” says Ned. “First I get to see my mother and sisters and now Dad and John. And I gotta find out the answers to some questions. Listen, it’s all just so fascinating to me. I’ve been up night after night mulling it over. Why did John leave the money with the Carriers? This is what I’ve figured out. He must have been on his way to see Dad in Alaska when he discovered he was being followed. He’s in B.C. when he suspects someone is hot on the trail of the money. And then he remembers that I’d stayed with the Carriers and so he scouts around, finds out where they live and leaves the
money with them. Purportedly for me but really just a safe place to ditch it until he can come back for it.”

My mother, who has been eating dinner and listening with interest, puts down her fork and nods. “Yes,” she says. “It’s the only explanation we have so far that makes sense. But of course you won’t know for sure unless you talk to him.”

“Exactly!” says Ned. “And then, of course, I’d want to return the money to him anyway. And, Mom, you don’t want it around here when we leave.”

“What money?” asks Candace, suddenly getting her business face again. It is more pronouncedly wrinkly than her regular face. “What’s all this talk of money?”

“John left a bag of money,” begins my mother, and stops. It’s really a hard thing to explain.

“He
what?”
says Candace.

“A
bag
of money?” says Maureen.

“For who?” asks Candace.

Nelda is still working on the Virgin. Maybe she is too devout to take any interest in bags of money.

“It’s a long story. The thing is to return it,” says
Ned. “I mean, we’re not saying it’s hot or anything, but who knows where it came from? Best thing is to get it back to him.”

“Can’t they tell if it’s hot by feeling it?” asks Max.

“He means stolen,” I say to Max.

“You and Ned are outlaws,” says Max.

“No, we’re not,” I say.

“Outlaws!” says Hershel, and he and Max bounce in their chairs and pretend to shoot pistols around the table, saying “Bang bang bang!”

“Oh, shut up,” I say. My mother looks at me but I am all the way down at the other end of the table.

“You’re just going to go to Alaska and start
looking for him?”
asks Candace as if she cannot believe her ears. “You could be gone for
years.”

“I don’t think it would take so long. There aren’t that many people in Alaska….” Ned is very interested in his pork roast suddenly.

“There aren’t that many people in Alaska?”
Candace echoes.

“Well, after we have Mother moved into the facility, of course.”

“After you have Mother moved
WHERE?”
shrieks Dorothy, suddenly coming fully awake and alive.

“NED!” says Maureen.

“Oh honestly, Ned,” says Candace, throwing her napkin down on the table. “Nelda was going to break it to her tactfully.”

“Tactfully my eye. Now, just what do the four of you have cooked up?” asks Dorothy.

I notice she leaves my mother out of this. I am glad. My mother was never too thrilled about the whole plan from the beginning.

“Mom, we wanted to wait until we found a place …,” begins Maureen.

“Someplace nice,” says Nelda in her squeaky little soft voice.

“Someplace nice?
Now wait a cotton-pickin’ minute,” says Dorothy. “I may have lost the use of my hip but not my mind. I can find my own nice places, thank you very much.”

“HOW?” asks Candace. “How can you find your own nice place? You can’t ever walk properly again.”

“How do you plan to go? Do you fly and we drive back or do you drive and we fly back to
Massachusetts?” asks my mother as if she hasn’t heard anything else going on at the table. It is the one and only sign that Ned’s news about Alaska has distressed her because it is so unlike her to tune out others.

“I can never
walk
again?” asks Dorothy, but this time as if she can barely breathe.

“Well, I’d have to use some of the money from the bag, of course, as expenses, but I guess I would fly, yes …,” says Ned.