Please Don't Come Back from the Moon (11 page)

I added some banana peppers, a little salt, and another layer of cheese. When I put the halves of the sandwich together, it stood almost eight inches tall. I garnished the side of my plate with one handful of potato chips, and then a second.

"And Mack and I plan to get married," she said.

I brought the enormous sandwich to my mouth and took the biggest bite I could. My mother stared at me. I flashed her the thumbs-up sign and chewed and chewed.

"Of course, you don't have to come," she said. "I suppose you could stay right here."

I gave her another thumbs-up, took another bite as soon as I had swallowed my first. My mother left the room.

That night the phone rang. I figured it was Nick or Tom, wanting to go out and get drunk.

"Hello," I said.

"You never called me," a woman's voice said.

"Holly?" I said.

"Hello," she said.

SUNDAY I WENT TO
Holly's house, a small brick ranch in Redford. The yard was neat, with a few abstract, curvy sculptures and some flowers lining the front of the house. A statue of Buddha sat on the front porch, under the mailbox. The welcome mat didn't say
WELCOME
, it said
PEACE
. It was hot, and the air smelled like fresh-cut grass and heated asphalt. I remember that, because when Holly opened the door, everything smelled different. A lavender and peppermint scent washed over me, and I almost floated inside.

I might as well say it: I was taken with her beauty so suddenly, I was having a hard time keeping my basic bodily functions in order. She looked different than I remembered—taller. And her red hair seemed darker and deeper, almost auburn, and her gray-green eyes looked pale, almost silver. Even though it was summer, her skin was still very fair, and she had a tiny band of freckles dotting her nose and high cheekbones. When she smiled, her big eyes would get suddenly smaller and brighter, so it looked like two tiny gems of light were hidden under her eyelids. Her body was full of curves, with fuller breasts and hips than I remembered. Talking was hard enough, but walking was almost impossible. My limbs felt heavy one minute, and then I would take a step forward and my bones would turn to dust. My stomach was a swirling pit of water, and I worried that I might have to go straight to the bathroom.

Holly was dressed in a simple gauzy peasant shirt that was sheer enough for me to see the outline of the white camisole underneath. She wore a pair of denim shorts, cut high on her leg, and no shoes. Her toenails were painted purple.

The living room had wooden floors with small oriental rugs placed here and there. There was no television. There was a small stereo playing a tape of chants in a language I imagined was Indian or Chinese or something. A candle—the source of the lavender smell—flickered on a wooden table in the corner. There were some pillows on the floor, and a futon. "This is a nice place," I said.

"We're—I mean, I'm—just renting," she said. "Do you want a drink?"

"Sure, anything is fine," I said.

I sat on the futon while she went into the kitchen.

She came back a few minutes later with a small tea set on a wooden tray.

"I haven't had company in a while," she said. "This is nice."

She knelt on a small bench in front of me and poured the tea.

"It's peppermint," she said, handing me a small cup with no handles. "I think peppermint has a nice cooling effect in the summer."

I'd never been in a room like that in my life. I'd never seen someone kneeling on a bench like that. I'd never drunk peppermint tea.

"Mmm," I said, trying to hide the fact that I burned the shit out of my tongue. "Mmm."

We sipped our tea. I started to feel like it was a mistake to come and see her. What could she possibly have to say to me? And what did I have to say to her? Just as I was imagining a way to leave without hurting her feelings, Holly took the lead.

"How long have you been a lifeguard?" she said.

"Not long," I said. "A few weeks and then I quit."

"Because of Manny?" she said.

I nodded. I tried to look desolate. She leaped up from the bench like she had a great idea. She walked over to a small writing desk in the corner and started to shuffle papers.

"My parents came up here for the funeral," she said. "They're from Florida. My father retired early from Ford. They'd like me to move back down there."

"Would that be good?" I said.

"They drive me crazy," she said. "I grew up around here, you know. I came back here because my friend Annie opened a salon and said I could have a workspace there."

"Yeah, it's nice," I said.

"Michael," she said. "No, it's not nice. It's depressing. I can't think of anything more depressing than the Detroit area."

"I like it," I said.

"Where else have you been?"

"I went to Toronto once," I said. "And Ohio. Around there."

"You need to travel more," she said. "The world starts to feel small if you stay still for a long time."

"Tell me about it," I said.

She finished messing with the papers on the desk and started to stretch in the center of the room, like she was getting ready to run a race. She took deep breaths with each stretch. I could have watched her back arching, the rise and fall of her rib cage, all day long.

"How have you been doing?" I asked.

"Great," she said. "I mean, I think I am handling things remarkably well."

"You look good," I said.

"God, let me tell you the most scary thing, Michael," she said. I noticed she was saying my first name a lot, which gave everything she said an intense and urgent edge. "Some days I wake up and I think, well, I guess now I don't have to work so hard. I guess now I don't have to hold a steady job, have this house to live in, stay in one place, and think about school systems."

I just nodded.

"I hate this music," she said. "I mean, it's fine, but I've been sick of it lately. Chimes and sitars. I've been more into Dylan lately. And Fleetwood Mac.
Songs in the Key of Lifeby
Stevie Wonder. He's great. Do you know how great he is?"

I said I agreed, though I didn't know exactly which album she was talking about. She went over to the CD player. "Pink Floyd," she said. "I forgot all about Pink Floyd. But it's good shit, really. In college, I listened to R.E.M. and the Smiths all the time. Pink Floyd was mostly for getting stoned."

"Sure," I said.

"God, listen to me," she said. "I've got diarrhea of the mouth or something. I'm thirty-three and I sound like I'm eighteen."

"I like it when people talk a lot," I said. "I never have anything interesting to say."

She smiled and tilted her head, like she was trying to look at me from a different angle.

"It's just, most days I think of Manny and can't move," she said. "Can't get out of bed, I'm so sad. And then some days—I mean, I'm still sad all the time—but I wake up and think, well, there's a lot less I
have
to do now. I can do whatever I want. I don't have to, for instance, try to get Manny's father to acknowledge his existence anymore, or to send child support. And I don't have to know where my next paycheck is coming from, and I don't even need a house, I can keep all my possessions in the trunk of my car and travel all over the country, or the world, because nobody cares what I do all of a sudden. And then I'm relieved. For just a second. Relieved! And then I hate myself and start crying again, not only for Manny, but for me, because I feel like a weak mother."

She stood and went to the window.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Twenty-two," I said. "Twenty-three this fall."

"That's so young," she said.

She paced along the window.

"Why don't you come and sit down with me?" I said. "You're moving around too much. It makes me nervous."

She did. "You are a sullen creature for twenty-two," she said.

I agreed with her.

"Are you sick of tea? I am. Do you want a drink?"

"Yes," I said.

"Tequila? It's summer. We should be drinking tequila with a little lime. I can make margaritas."

"Good," I said.

"Good," she said.

I followed her into the kitchen and watched her make the drinks. I had always thought margaritas were slushy drinks served in giant glasses, but she made them with a little ice, a lot of tequila, and a splash of some sort of flavored mix in a plastic bottle. She rimmed the glasses with salt and a wedge of lime. We went out to the back porch with our salty glasses.

I finally worked up the nerve to ask about Manny's father. She told me that Manny's father was never her husband and she had no idea where he was now.

"Somewhere in Spokane," she said. "A drunk to beat all drunks. That's all I know. I don't think he knows Manny is dead. I'll have to find him and send him a letter soon."

She told me that she didn't have many friends at work, other than Annie, the owner of the salon. And even Annie was just her best friend from high school; she had three kids and a husband who golfed, Holly said. All they really had in common was a nostalgic kind of loyalty.

"Most of the women there think I'm strange. They're nice enough, but they cut hair and put on makeup for a living," she said. "And I'm a practitioner of the healing arts and we just don't connect. I believe people come to me because they're spiritually needy and they believe people come to them because of split ends."

"Huh," I said.

"So no more lifeguarding? What now?"

"Finish school," I said.

"Then what?" she said.

I didn't answer right away.

I told her a little about my philosophy class, which made me feel very boring and immature. I told her that I still hadn't bothered to apply for a new job, even though my lifeguarding money was pretty much gone. Still, at least for a while yet, I almost always had access to Mack's old Buick, good free food at my mother's house, and a free place to sleep. I had always felt like I didn't have to know what I planned to do next, but now that my mother and Mack were moving, I knew I had to start thinking.

"God," she said, "I've always hated that question: 'What's next?' Why am I asking that? You don't have to know what's next."

"Well, that's good," I said to Holly, "because I don't have a clue."

We had finished our drinks. Holly went into the kitchen and I followed her. I watched her make another margarita for each of us. She handed me back a glass that smelled like it was pretty much straight tequila with a little salt and lime.

"I have to drive home." I said, taking another drink. "Go easy on me."

"You can spend the night," she said. "It's inevitable."

***

IN THE MORNING
, when I came home, I found a
FOR SALE BY OWNER
sign in the front yard.

I stopped by Kolya's room. His door was shut and I knocked. He came to the door and opened it slowly.

"Oh, it's you," he said. There were three boxes on his bed and another one on the floor. I noticed he had a magazine called
Barely Legal
in one of the boxes. I remembered my first copy of
Barely Legal.
I'd stolen it from the Qwik and Cheap in eighth grade. My father had found it and confiscated it. Later I found it with his tools in the basement.

"Why are you packing already?" I asked him.

"We're moving in a few weeks," he said.

"So soon?"

"The house is ready. They're closing the deal in a few weeks. Mom was waiting to tell you last night, but you never came home."

"And you're going to the new house?"

"I can't wait," he said. "You know what my school is like. Full of assholes! A shithole."

"Still?"

"Don't you remember anything about high school?"

"So you want to move?" I asked him.

"Mikey, I hate Maple Rock," he said. "I hate this house and this street. I hate everything I know. I fucking hate Maple Rock."

"Wow."

"You should start packing soon too," he said.

But I had already decided I wasn't going, and I told him.

"Oh, well, that's rich," Kolya said. "That's too much."

I told him he sometimes talked like a fifty-year-old faggot and left the room.

THE NEXT NIGHT
I drove by Holly's house before it got dark. Just seeing her front door in the twilight got me excited. I had to stop. As hard as I tried to remember it, the previous night was a blur. Skin and sweat, flailing limbs, thrusting in the dark. I wanted more of it. I stood on her porch for a long time, and rang the doorbell again and again. Finally she came to the door in a long blue T-shirt. Her hair was messy and her eyes were squinty. "You're persistent," she said. "I was sleeping. I thought you must be somebody from work coming to check on me. I canceled all my appointments today. That fucking tequila."

"Can I come in?" I said.

"Sure," she said and walked away. I followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table. She disappeared into the bathroom for a minute then came back and kissed me on the cheek with minty breath. She brought me some herbal iced tea, and leaned against me when she set it down. I felt her breasts against my shoulder blades and her breath on the back of my neck, which gave me goose bumps all over. My spine twitched and shivered.

Holly said, "How cliché is this? Thirty-something woman finds a young stud, gets drunk, seduces him, and fucks him over and over. How often has this happened to you?"

"Never," I said, which was the absolute truth. I had a flash of Mrs. Gagliardi, the woman I had lost my virginity to the summer my father disappeared, but that seemed completely different.

"You didn't have to come back here," she said.

"Why? Didn't you want to see me again? Should I leave?"

"Well, I suppose it's what I needed. Look, it's just—no, I don't want you to leave. You're fine. I like you. But don't feel like you have this burden now. I don't want you to wake up in the morning and say, 'Holy shit, I got involved with an old woman who has a dead son.'"

"I won't," I said.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she said.

"No!"

"Tell me the truth, because I don't want to end up with a screaming nineteen-year-old banging on my door and calling me a whore. I was nineteen once too. I know what can happen."